Water-horse (Snape fan fiction)

Student Unrest

Ch.4 -- Student Unrest

"Here's that other volume of Adler you asked for, Professor." Madam Pince, with a deeply disapproving expression, thumped a cracked volume down to join the pile at Snape's elbow. Snape, immersed in blurred blackletter type barely two inches from his prominent nose, had given no sign of even acknowledging the librarian's presence; but the cloud of dust and shredded beetle-wings that rose as the covers hit the table proved impossible to ignore. He emerged suddenly from the pages of "Totem and Taboo", looking furious, then disappeared equally abruptly behind a curtain of lank hair in the throes of an uncontrollable sneeze. Even Madam Pince, despite her librarian's immunity to dusty tomes, caught her breath for a moment and had to blink several times before she could continue.

She poked at the spine with a bony finger. "Muggle binding," she observed darkly, as if this were the worst that could be said of any object, book or not. "Look at the state of it...and not even a hundred years old yet."

"I should be more interested," Snape said coldly, having produced a large greyish handkerchief from one sleeve and used it to mop streaming eyes, "to know where the volume I requested has been for the last--"

He glanced up at the clockface above the centre of the bay opposite, currently displaying a small owl in the act of stooping on a long tuft of grass, frowned, and looked again, more closely.

"...for the last three hours?"

His chair, thrust back hurriedly, caught on the table and almost spilled a large morocco-bound Viennese volume onto the floor. Madam Pince frowned and caught it.

"Your requested volume, Professor, had been mis-shelved some fifty years ago by my esteemed predecessor, under 'Harmonica'. Under the circumstances, I feel that to have located it at all--"

She turned, and huffed indignantly. Not only was Professor Snape, as usual, not listening, this time he was no longer even in the room.

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The mixed crowd of fifth-year students milling outside the dungeon, O.W.L.s or no O.W.L.s, had clearly reached the optimistic stage of wondering if their teacher had been waylaid by an unexpected Venus Man-Trap or otherwise prevented from turning up for the lesson at all.

One group of Slytherins, hovering eagerly at the foot of the staircase with occasional backward glances, were all too evidently on the verge of abandoning any intention of attending Potions whatsoever. Their faces fell almost comically when they caught sight of their Head of House sweeping down the stairs.

Snape checked his pace for a moment at the sight of the little group. "Well, well. Anyone might be excused for thinking that young Tench had a compelling reason to wish to avoid today's Potions class...."

Tench, a hulking youth with close-cropped fair hair and hands like hams, was looking acutely uncomfortable. His four friends, eyes fixed on the flagstones at their feet, were attempting to shuffle back towards the main group without being too obvious. It was not a very convincing performance.

But curious Gryffindors were drifting up from the corridor below, clearly agog, and Snape had no intention of giving out the dressing-down his weakest student so richly deserved in their hearing. "I'll see you -- and that disgraceful essay -- after the lesson, Mr Tench," he said softly, with what might have passed for a smile, and glided past the little group of Slytherins without a backward glance.

It was not a good start to the afternoon; and having arrived for the class almost ten minutes late, he then had to waste further time in getting the restive students back under control. Several of the Gryffindors, cocky as ever, were attempting to finish a game of Parrel-Sticks they had started out in the corridor, under cover of unpacking their cauldrons. A selection of items of personal adornment were confiscated from those girls who had been unwise enough to pass them around in the belief that his back was momentarily turned.