Mist and Vapors

"Potions master?" the woman asked dumbly. "And your name is Severus...?

"Snape. Severus Snape. Our Potions master and Head of Slytherin House," Dumbledore said, looking a bit puzzled, when Severus didn't answer. He looked back and forth between the two teachers who stood stiffly facing each other, eyes locked.

"Hannah Hannigan?" Snape seemed to have finally found his voice.

"Yes?" she answered tentatively.

"Any relation to Frank Hannigan, by any chance?" His eyes started to glitter dangerously.

"My father."

Severus turned and strode from the room. Hannah murmured a quick excuse to the Headmaster, and hurried after him. "Severus, wait!"

He was already half way down the corridor by the time she reached the bottom of the moving staircase.

"Wait!" She took off after him in a near run. When she finally caught up with him, she grabbed the sleeve of his robe. "Please stop and talk to me."

He suddenly turned and glared at her, his face angrier than she had ever seen it. "What do you want?"

She looked at him helplessly. "I am sorry, I was so surprised...I didn't expect..."

"Do not play dumb," Severus hissed.

"What do you mean?"

"You must have known who I am if you are Frank Hannigan's daughter. The... little run-in he and I had was front page news for several days, after all. You would have recognized me. Please don't insult my intelligence." He turned and started walking again.

"Severus, I try to stay as uninformed about my father's business as is humanly possible." Hannah was trying her best to keep up with his long strides. "To tell you the truth, I had very little contact with the Wizarding world over the last year. So please excuse my ignorance, but..."

"What a lovely little charade," Severus interrupted her, talking as to himself, without looking at her. "It must have pleased him to no end that while he was threatening me, his dear daughter was nicely placed to extract information for him, keeping an eye on me. Yes, I am sure he got quite a laugh out of that. Did he get you the job here, too?"

"You think I was spying on you for my father?" Hannah looked flabbergasted.

"A bit too much of a coincidence, don't you agree? The daughter of someone who would like nothing better than to dig up some dirt on me, showing up at the remote village where I am staying, striking up a conversation..." What a fool he had been. He must be turning soft. How could he ever have thought that...

His thoughts were interrupted when he realized that she had stopped abruptly. When he looked back at her, he saw with surprise that she stood there, trying hard not to laugh out loud, her shoulders shaking with barely suppressed mirth.

"Pray tell me what is so amusing?" he demanded in irritation.

"Is that what you think? That I was gathering information for him? Severus, I have no idea what happened between the two of you. Honestly, I don't." She sat down on the base of a column, still grinning.

"But let's just assume for a moment that you are correct. So - I know that you take your coffee black and your tea with milk. I know that you prefer red wine to white, and that in particular you love Beaujolais and hate Chablis. I know that you consider Alchemy of Fourteenth Century France gripping literature, think Sherlock Holmes is 'tolerable' and Shakespeare highly over-rated. I know you prefer dark over milk chocolate, that you hate the taste of capers, but like olives; black, not green. I know you definitely don't like nicknames, and that winter is your favorite season. And about a hundred other equally scintillating tidbits. The only items I can recall that might be of even the slightest interest to him would be your opinions on the Werewolf Acts, which he shares, by the way, and that you think the Ministry is run inefficiently, an opinion which is shared by half of Wizardom." She started laughing again. "Sorry, it just struck me as funny. If I am a spy, I think I am the most useless, clueless spy to ever have graced the face of the earth."

She looked up at him, took in the expression on his face, closed like a barred window. She stopped smiling.

"I am glad to see you," she said softly, as she stood up. "I'm sorry for my reaction in there. I was... surprised."

A bitter smile played around the corners of his mouth. "So you say."

"I would like to be friends, still. Is that possible?"

"You are Frank Hannigan's daughter."

"I take it that is a 'no'."

He looked at her coldly. "I have no reason to want to continue a relationship of any kind beyond the professional."

"I suppose you don't," she said quietly. "I'm sorry. I'll see you around, then?"

He nodded curtly, and turned to leave. Almost as in afterthought, he turned around. "What are you teaching?"

"English Composition."

Miss Nose-in-a-Book. It made sense. Merlin, he would have to see her every day. Frank Hannigan's offspring. And it had been mainly at his behest that the position had been created. The irony.

"One more thing," he said. "I would appreciate it if you would not tell anyone of our previous encounter."

"Of course."

As he turned and walked off, one small, treacherous thought jumped into his head, a thought he was quick to banish - the thought that there was probably not another person in the world who knew or cared how he took his coffee and tea.

That evening, Hannah sat down on her bed, legs crossed under her. She looked around - it was a more than adequate room. It would take her a while to get it to look the way she wanted, but she could already see it in her mind's eye. It would do. Nicely.

She had unpacked her suitcase, and sorted two boxes of books into the bookcase. Her quilt was on the bed, lending warmth to the otherwise still quite barren room. There was a small fireplace in the parlor, and a large window with a view over the lake in the bedroom. To her astonishment, there had even been a small kitchen row in the parlor corner. The house elf who had taken her to her room from McGonagall's office had been quite surprised. Such accoutrements didn't usually seem to be part of the package for teaching staff quarters. She wondered who was responsible for it - maybe Filius; he was probably the only one in the school who knew her well enough to have made the request. Well, the only one who knew her at all. Other than Severus.

She stretched, and with a sigh took a small diary with a leather-tooled binding out of the drawer of her night stand. A rueful look on her face, she opened it to an entry several days back.

Today I waved farewell to my lovely (though, I grant you, quite one-sided) mirage of a summer romance. In the end, it was just about perfect. No loose ends and no regrets. The memory is tied up with paper, ribbon, and a bow, ready to be set on the shelf. So goodbye, Severus, wherever you are; I hope life treats you well. Summer would have not been the same without you. Later, when I take the package off the shelf and look at the memories, there you will be - tall, dark, and intriguing. And I will smile.

For a moment she closed her eyes, remembering the feel of the sand beneath her feet, the cool evening breeze, his arm around her shoulders. Then, flipping through the pages until she found a pristine, white one, she got out her quill.

Well, my first day at Hogwarts, and my lovely summer romance just got plunged down into the icy waters of reality, where it never would have had a chance to exist in the first place.

She leaned back against the pillows, untangled her legs, and propped the book up on her knees.

It turns out Severus is a teacher here, and that there is obviously a lot of bad blood between him and my father. So he jumped to the worst conclusions.

In a way, it is a bit of a relief, because it certainly saved me from a bunch of frantic back-paddling. No awkward explanations necessary now why I get all carried away one day and just want to be 'friends' the next.

Even so, there was this look of distrust on his face. I have seen him look angry, irritated, indifferent, embarrassed, amused, detached - but he never looked at me like that. And all I wanted was to make that look go away, to make him realize I didn't deserve it.

Hannah closed the book with a snap. It was all for the best, she was sure. Yes, definitely. She sighed again. There was one other thing she was sure of - she would need to find out exactly what had happened between Severus and her father.

Two days later, all the staff had arrived. As Severus sat down for breakfast, he saw Hannah further down the table, talking animatedly to Filius Flitwick.

Next to him, Minerva McGonagall sniffed. "She's Frank Hannigan's daughter, did you know that? I just can't stand that man. Wonder what she's doing here," she said, suspicion in her voice.

"Teaching Composition, I believe," Severus said dryly.

Minerva was looking daggers at him. "I know that. But don't you think there is more to it than that? It just seems odd."

Severus shrugged. "We'll see."

Minerva was still looking at the newest staff member. "Well, she seems to get along alright with Filius. They are on a first-name basis, you know. He came into my office while I was giving her an orientation. Seemed quite familiar with each other, really." She looked on disapprovingly. "I tried to ask him about her later, and he basically told me to mind my own beeswax, and if I wanted to know anything, I could ask her."

Severus hid a smirk. The mental picture of the diminutive Charms master standing up to the tall, stern Deputy Headmistress was somewhat amusing.

"Still," she continued, "I don't know why Albus would hire anyone with close ties to the Ministry. Why would we want to invite them to stick their long noses into our business? No, I don't like it, not one little bit."

At that moment, the owls made their way in, hooting and flapping, delivering letters and packages. A screech owl flew over in his direction, landed on the table, and dropped a package in front of him. He looked at the plain, brown-paper-wrapped box in surprise as he handed the bird a piece of toast - he had not expecting a delivery. Turning the package over in his hands, he looked for the sender's name or address and found nothing. All of a sudden, warning bells went off inside him. Carefully, he stowed the package beneath his seat unopened. He would look at it later, when there wasn't an audience.