Startling Semblance

Walking the familiar corridor, Jennifer arrived at the staff-room.

The huge, heavy, oak-set doors stood menacingly in front of her and she felt the same butterflies in the pit of her stomach that she had always felt when stood in that spot. Her fingers twisted and untwisted nervously in the folds of her black robes and her bottom lip was held softly between pearly white teeth, her blue eyes temporarily closed to block the fear that had begun to bubble in her chest.

Still - she knew postponing the event would only make it worse in the long-run, so with a deep breath; determinedly flicking her hair behind her shoulder, she pushed open the door and took several confident strides into the room.

It hadn't changed since she had last been in there. It was still dark, and gloomy, it still had far too many pictures on the wooden panelled walls and too few comfortable chairs in front of the fire.

The first face to look up was that of Professor Snape.

Jennifer dared to smile.

"Ah, Miss Bonnet. Yes, I've been told of your expected arrival..." he said, his voice silky and amused.

Jennifer nodded courteously.

"I'd not been told to expect you in here, Severus," was her reply.

If the staff room hadn't changed since her childhood - then neither had Severus Snape. Still weedy-looking, still hook-nosed and slimy-haired, and still with that arrogant smug sneer upon his face.

No, Dumbledore had failed to mention him.

Another face looked up at the brief exchange of words between the two.

This time Jennifer allowed a genuine smile to cross her lips.

"Remus?" she said, taking a step towards the battered chair he was sat in.

The eyes were the same old, but the body was worn; he looked ill, painfully so, and his features were drawn and withered.

He smiled though, and the eyes lit up... there was still spark in the poor man.

"Jennifer," he said, and stood to shake her hand, giving it the slightest of squeezes. "How was the journey?"

She couldn't stop the smile from breaking into a grin.

"Fine, I just - I can't believe you're here. Professor Dumbledore didn't say... anything." She tried not to gush the words out - but it was so hard. She'd been dreading starting her new post at the school ever since it was offered to her, but now... well, now things were looking up.

Professor McGonagall entered the room, her thin, be speckled face, as stern as it had always been, although with a few more worry lines crossing it in her later years.

"The ceremony and feast are about to begin," she said, her voice still as clear as a bell, unchanged from Jennifer's transfiguration lessons so many years ago.

She turned to leave again, no doubt to collect the waiting first years from the ante-chamber, but before she closed the door, she turned back to face Jennifer and smiled. "Welcome back, Miss Bonnet."

Jennifer smiled warmly in return and wondered how she had been dreading this day so badly for so long.

"Come on, I'll walk with you - we have much to catch up on," said Remus, taking Jennifer's arm lightly in his own and watching as Snape stalked off and out of the door without so much as a backwards glance.

The Great Hall was decked with candles, brightly lighting the otherwise dismal first night of the Hogwarts school year. The sky above, bewitched to mirror the sky outside, was flecked with streaks of lightning every now and again, spatterings of rain falling from black cloud-laden Heavens and disappearing round about the middle distance between the floor and where the ceiling ought to be. The sight was normal to Jennifer; she'd seen it a hundred times during her years at the school, but to a newcomer, it must have been so very magical.

The sorting began, with hushed whispers dimming to silence as the hat began to sing.

I may seem old and threadbare

But listen to my song

Appearances can be deceiving

And opinions can be wrong

I have this role at Hogwarts

The role of the Sorting Hat

I find where people need to be

And really that is that

Don't laugh; my job is not a giggle

It's often difficult to judge

Whether someone is finely drawn

Or more of just a smudge

If I detect a brave soul here

Then Gryffindor is the place

A gallant and a noble House

Their fears they dare to face

If learning is within the mind

To Ravenclaw you go

Their cleverness astounds us all

You'll not meet one who's slow

If I can see true loyalty

I'll send you to Hufflepuff

They will always stand right by your side

Whenever things get rough

If cunning is your greatest strength

Then Slytherin is your rest

They stop at nothing to reach their goals

Because nothing stops the best

So there's my job description

Think how hard it could be

Could you do it? I doubt you could

Which is why they employed ME

So take a seat, you firsties

Come try me on for size

I'll call your House; and you will see

Your new family, when you open your eyes

'Yet another new song...' Jennifer thought to herself, clapping in appreciation with the rest of the Great Hall.

She had seated herself between the tiny Professor of Charms... whos name she had forgotten; having not taken Charms since the end of her OWLs, and Professor Lupin, although she couldn't get to grips with calling him that any more than she could get used to thinking of Severus as Professor Snape... or herself as Professor Bonnet for that matter.

The start of term notices followed... much the same ones that had been called at the feasts during Jennifer's time; although the third floor corridor was a new one. She elected to ask about it later, rather than disturb the exquisite feast that had sprung up around them.

She smiled and talked with the small Professor beside her, remembering his name in time to prevent any embarrassment, as she helped herself to potatoes and mushroom pie.

Steeling a sideways glance at Remus, she noted that despite his ill appearance, he was eating well, and the candle light of the Hall made him look less drawn out than he had earlier in the staff room.

"So, Professor of Duelling. That's a new subject... what made you want to go for it?" he asked her during a break in her conversation with Filius Flitwick.

"Well," she began, recalling it as one of the very questions she was asked during her interview for the position. "It is closely twined with Defence Against the Dark Arts, and that is what I studied and lectured on at institutes all over the world. I have spent most of my last few years at Beauxbatons... but I heard of the new post coming up and thought it would be an ideal opportunity for me. I could return to England, not that I didn't like France... they just eat too much meat..."

She smiled as he chuckled. Of course, her vegetarianism was legendary at school, and although the craze was more widespread nowadays, it was still funny to him.

"What do you teach, and how long have you been here? And what about Severus? When did he get appointed? Don't tell me he's the Defence teacher, please..." she said, in a hushed tone so that only Remus could hear.

"He's not," Remus said, a wry smile flickering across his features. "I am."

Jennifer grinned and nodded.

"I've been here three years now. On and off. As for Severus, he's been here for years. He teaches Potions, very well too, but he wants the Defence job. The enthusiasm for the Dark Arts hasn't left him."

'On and off... yeah - your schooling was a bit like that too Remus...' she thought sadly. The man seemed to be plagued by the same ill health he appeared to have held as a boy.

Still she would let nothing dampen her feelings now, not at the first feast she'd been to since she had left Hogwarts almost score years ago.

The feast finished quite some time later and with a final pre-term buzz of applause, the student began to rise and leave the Hall, heading to their common rooms and to bed.

Jennifer stood and turned to Remus, but he was talking with a group of the older students. Her eyes travelled across the Hall, willing to take in the surroundings and the view from the teachers table while it was still a novelty, but her gaze caught, snagged on an invisible snare. He was talking to James Potter.

It was a good few seconds before Jennifer remembered to breathe, and when she did, it was with shallow, careful breaths, calming the heart that had jumped into her throat.

So that was Harry was it? She'd never seen the boy, of course she knew of him, she was close friends with his parents before they were murdered. Still, she'd temporarily forgotten he was even at Hogwarts, and the shock of seeing him, and seeing James so clearly in him, was breathtaking.

Remus smiled to the students and they walked off towards the exit, as he turned back to her.

"Shall we?" he asked, motioning to the door that would lead them along the passageway to the staffroom. He caught sight of her face and stopped, realisation coming across his features and then sadness.

"Jenny. Are you alright?" He placed his hand on her arm, and she offered a feeble smile. "He looks so much... I never thought... I'm fine, I - I just didn't expect..." she couldn't say any of what she meant to without wanting to cry - her voice painfully tight as it was. Remus didn't need to hear the words though - he understood and nodded empathetically.

"He's amazing. He really is. James would never have dared dream that Harry could be as special as he is now. And that's without the scar and all associations," he said, and rubbed Jennifer's arm gently.

She didn't reply, but nodded and inhaled deeply, willing the tears to disperse without falling down her cheeks.

Remus looked again to the door and Jennifer smiled and walked towards it, Remus walking by her side as the two had done so often in their childhood.

The evening had passed with little importance, the gathering in the staffroom being informal and relaxed. Her sleeping quarters were on the first floor, towards the southern end of the castle; along with her office and her classroom.

She stepped into the room. The window was closed, and the iron-gilt pane showed nothing but darkness outside. The time rung by the great clock in the clock tower chiming just a few minutes beforehand told her it was bout one in the morning. Plenty of time to get some work done then.

She began in the lengthy classroom.

Sorting the textbooks for general reading along the shelf that lined one short side of the room, she decided she'd ask the librarian for some more books to fill the empty spaces in her collection later. She added pictures and diagrams to the wall opposite the bookshelf.

The centre of the room was largely occupied by a duelling platform, spread with an ornately engraved midnight-blue sheet, stars and constellations dancing across the fabric in fine threads of shimmering gold and silver.

Jennifer smiled and continued, placing plush beanbags in the corner for class discussions and checking the number of wooden tables and benches that stood stacked along the back wall of the long room.

It had struck three by the time she moved to her office.

A single, heavy oak writing desk and carved chair stood in the centre, facing the door. A window dominated the wall opposite the door; the walls were stone but by no means damp or dingy, and there was a small iron fireplace on the left side of the room. She moved the desk so it faced the fireplace; the door and the window to the sides, setting it back against the only featureless wall in the room.

The young woman unpacked one of her trunks; all her paperwork, and notes, and stationary, arranging it all into her desk space and onto a small book cabinet she had bought with her. She added her various trinkets and ornaments, placing Dark Arts detectors along the windowsill, not that she needed them there, but they were oddities that she found interesting, just as some people felt the need to have vases everywhere, or figurines of farm animals.

It was five in the morning when she retired to the bedroom, a black cast-iron framed four-poster bed in the centre, a large iron-gilted window to the left of that, and the door to the right on the wall behind. A large Victorian-style fireplace stood opposite the bed, the embers still glowing. The floor was stripped to the planks, the wood varnished with dark lacquer and a large white heavy rug spread across the room, leaving a few feet of bare floor around the perimeter of the room. The bed was made fresh and ready for her, the sheets, duvet, pillows and throw all in the same clean white, the drapes hung high around the bed also blank and matching the heavy white curtains. The walls were hung with three white tapestries, all showing scenes of stars and flowers, all finely embroidered with silver and black threads, upon darkly varnished panels.

Jennifer sighed contently and closed the door behind her, slipping her feet from their shoes and unbuttoning her shirt as she lifted the lid of the trunk she had placed at the foot of her bed. Glancing out of her window, for she did not believe in closing curtains, she noted that the moon was on its wane. The stars had begun to shine through the clouds, and the rain it seemed had stopped.

Finding her nightdress, she pulled it from the trunk and slipped out of her clothes, walking over to the corner of the room to where a small vanity table stood with a washbowl and jug of clean water. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, checking her reflection in the mirror before walking back to the bed and sliding the silk dress over her head.

The sandy-haired woman tugged her hair from its clasp and let her hair fall to its natural place, around her shoulder blades. Jennifer smiled, yawned and stretched, pulling the duvet and throw back to reveal the inviting crisp sheets of the double four-poster.

Easing herself into bed, she allowed her skin to feel the chill of the new cotton before setting her head back on the plush pillows and closing her eyes. It was still a good twenty minutes before she slept, despite the late hour and the long day.

She slept with the curtains open, because she liked to be able to say that the last thing she saw at night was the stars, and the first thing she saw in the morning was the dawn.

That night was different. Harry was the last thing she saw. She couldn't get him out of her mind... and one of the first things she would see the following day would be him as well; she had the Seventh Year Ravenclaws and Gryffindors for Duelling; nine sharp.