If  You Don't Like Conversation in a Book, Skip This Chapter!

I returned to my chambers after the first day of classes in a reasonably good 
mood.  I had made two Hufflepuffs and a Gryffindor break down in tears today; one 
of the Hufflepuffs had been a fourth-year who ought to have known better than to 
provoke me.

No doubt Flora Sprout would be irritated and would refuse to speak to me.

I had also told a group of frightened third-years that Trelawney was a talented 
seer, and that no doubt whichever of them she had said would die would certainly 
keel over at the earliest opportunity, at which point the unfortunate victim of 
Sybil's idiocy fainted, amid much screaming.

Ah, students.

Potter was no doubt out with the Gryffindor Quidditch team; I'd given him leave to 
oversee their practices.  I sat down to start grading the essays I'd set over the 
holidays.  I calculated I could probably terrorize at least ten students by 
writing "see me" across the tops of the parchment.

Potions is not a subject for the undisciplined of mind; my students must have the 
utmost focus in my class: to create the potion, and to overcome the outside 
distractions (namely, me).  I hummed to myself as I marked the essays, which were 
not quite as shoddy as I had anticipated.

I heard Potter enter, but ignored him.  He moved around the room for a while 
before fetching "The Myth of Purity" from its shelf.  I continued working while he 
read.

"Master?"

"Hm?"

"You're humming 'Jerusalem.'"

"What of it?"

"I didn't know you knew it."

I looked at him.  "I *am* English, Mr. Potter.  I could hardly avoid it."

"Sorry.  I just--"

I narrowed my eyes.  "You seem startled every time I betray any humanity at all, 
Mr. Potter."  He flushed and looked back down at the book.  "You don't like me, do 
you?"

He rubbed one finger along the binding. "No."

"And I don't like you."

"I know."

"So would you agree, Mr. Potter, that we would then, naturally, have skewed views 
of each other?  Tend to view the other as rather less than we would otherwise?"

He cocked his head to one side and studied me a moment before answering.  "No.  I 
don't think we have to, at any rate." He bit his lower lip, his expression 
serious.  "I mean, you're one of the smartest wizards I've ever met.  I know 
you're really good at Potions, and I'm hopeless at them.  I don't *like* you, but 
I think I know a lot about you.  Especially these past few years."

I searched his face, but read nothing in it but that damnable Gryffindor nobility.  
"We have been allies, Mr. Potter, but never friends.  I doubt we shall ever be 
friends; the hate between us runs deep."

He shrugged.  "I wouldn't call it *hate*.  If I hated you--" He broke off, 
shrugged again. 

I waited for him to speak.  When he did not, I held out some of the essays to him.  
"Check these for spelling and grammar, if you would, then get them back to me.  
Tonight we will be starting the Horrific Transfigurations; I'd like to have most 
of the second-year essays finished by then."

He took the essays from my hand and came around to my writing desk.  "Move over."

"Why?"  

"I need a place to write, and the table hurts my back.  Move over."  

I glared at him, but complied.  I would have to get him a desk of his own.

There was something companionable about working with him at my side.  Something 
familiar--his power near me, in concert with my own.  Odd.  The only true 
companionship I have sought in many long years has been Albus's; I did not think 
to find anything so pleasant in the son of a man I hated.

Hrr.  I thought of Potter's stammered explanation that he had not understood the 
reality of apprenticeship; next to me, he scratched away with his quill, quite 
unaware of my scrutiny.

I had not understood, either.  I suspected that I still did not.

* * *

Dinner was a dismal affair; the students were raucous, Flora was obviously 
displeased that I had traumatized her precious Hufflepuffs, and Albion kept 
staring at me.  Potter, to my surprise--but not my displeasure--encouraged Albion 
with a look and a grimace, and when the man finally turned away, gave me that 
wicked grin of his.

Cybindia Hooch leaned over as I idly turned my cutlets into tiny naked sheep.  She 
whispered "You know, you really are going to get in trouble for that some day."

"For what?"  The sheep wandered around my plate, bleating.

"That tendency of yours to set people against one another."

I skewered a sheep with my knife and ate it before answering.  "I don't know what 
you're talking about."

Cybindia, fond of freshly caught prey herself, didn't even wince.  "We all know 
the Ministry doesn't trust you.  And you and Harry have never got along.  I don't 
know what game you're playing with him and Albion, but if you're not careful--
Severus, the Aurors have never truly understood what you were doing."

I killed another sheep.  "I appreciate your concern.  I assure you--Potter knows 
the rules of the game."

"Well--if you're certain."

"Quite certain."  I held out my knife to her. "Sheep?" 

She waved it off.  "No, thank you.  I had some field mice earlier."

I ate the rest of my sheep in relative peace.  Albion appeared perfectly 
horrified; Potter, who was by this time quite resigned to my habits, discussed his 
course of study with Catherine Sinistra in-between mouthfuls of his food.

Albion muttered something about "the Dark Arts" that could be heard all the way 
down the table, but I ignored him.

* * *

Potter and I looked out over Hogwarts from the Astronomy tower.  A wind whispered 
around us as he spoke.  "The Horrific Transfigurations are those that trap an 
aware human mind within another body," he said.  "That's what the books say.  But 
they don't say much else.  Are werewolves transfigured like this?"

"No," I said.  "Werewolves have no human awareness, and their transformations are 
temporary and externally triggered."

I rubbed at the Dark Mark on my arm.  It had gone back to its normal dull ache 
over the past week, but today it was irritated and sore.  "Suppose," I said, "that 
I were to turn you into a wolf, through a Horrific Transfiguration.  You would 
have a wolf's body, a wolf's instincts and needs and desires--but you would be 
aware, all the time, of what you were doing.  Unable to stop it, but aware.  So if 
your wolf-body killed a child--"

He shuddered, and I waited for him to speak.

"And--you can also just trap someone," he said.  "Turn them into--I don't know.  A 
bush.  Or a flobberworm."

"Traditionally, a myrrh tree.  But yes."

"Why a myrrh tree?"

Oh, Mr. Potter.  You should know better by now.  "*Balsamo myrrha*!"

He screamed as the transfiguration tore him apart. The scream echoed from the 
towers and drew the ghosts from the walls; the Baron appeared beside me, warning 
off the others.

Where Potter's eyes had been, two streams of resin leaked; his tears, I would 
imagine.  "Myrrh," I said, laying my hand on the bark of his body, at the scar in 
the wood that marked his own scar.  "With wine, an anodyne--" and I pressed in, 
opening a fissure with my hand, so that resin ran from the scar to join his tears.  
"Also known as *karam*.  A holy oil.  An embalming oil."  My fingers were sticky 
with myrrh; the scent was heavy in the air.  "Astringent.  Stimulant.  Used in 
many medical potions--Myrrha, turned by her gods into this tree."

The Baron moaned softly beside me. 

"*Veritas*," I whispered, my hand still on Potter's scar.

The transformation back was lightening-quick, and he stood before me, pale and 
cold against my hand.  I removed my hand, held it up to him: still covered in 
myrrh.

"Oh.  My.  God," he said, sinking to the floor.  "That was--"

"Yes," I said.  "It was."  I pulled him to his feet.  "We have work to do, boy."

The Baron vanished, but the scent of myrrh stayed as we worked into the night.