rungholt
August 1986.
Severus Snape had anticipated that the new school year would offer only the customary indignities: dunderheaded students, insufferable colleagues, and the occasional brush with mortal peril.
But while the Boy Who Lived languished in a cupboard in Surrey, Snape was forced to endure a fate scarcely less tragic: he had been saddled with a trainee teacher.
A tenacious, irritatingly competent young witch, utterly impervious to his disdain and unperturbed by the shadows of his past.
As dark forces stirred and old enemies resurfaced, she found herself precisely where she had no business being: at his side. And when the school year culminated in poison and bloodshed, Snape was forced to concede that this entirely unwanted apprentice had repeatedly stood between him and certain death.
A state of affairs of which he, naturally, thoroughly disapproved.