Defense Against Potions
Oct. 4th, 2015 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waddiwasi posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
hellfighters[Remus Lupin is suffering from some serious déjà vu.
It's been sixteen years since he last attended the Start of Term feast at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It's been sixteen years since the last time he boarded the Hogwarts Express from London, or watched several dozen frightened children try on the oversized Sorting Hat, or entered the halls of the school that was his home for most of his adolescence. Sixteen years, almost half a lifetime in physical time and far more than a lifetime in experience. And yet Hogwarts has hardly changed at all. Oh, the students have changed since he was last here, there are some new or altered decorations on the high walls of the Great Hall, and the rest of the faculty is new or at least slightly aged, but Hogwarts is still the same school he left when he was eighteen years old. It's as if Hogwarts is some sort of strange bubble in the changing world, stationary in time, frozen and gilded like a statue to childhood. It's like stepping into his own past.
But, he reminds himself, there's no time to be amazed or poetic. Hogwarts might not have changed in years, but he certainly has. He's a professor here, not a student, and he's got responsibilities to see to. He checks his watch: half-past ten. His quarters - a private suite of rooms in the professors' hall this time, rather than a tower dormitory - are fully furnished and his small suitcase of worldly possessions is already unpacked. But he's got one thing left to do before he can rest. He'd rather wait until morning, honestly, because he's still very tired from last night despite sleeping for most of the day. And especially when he's so tired he does not fancy meeting with this particular childhood nemesis, who clearly still holds a grudge after all this time. But he's got to keep appointments, and this appointment in particular is tantamount to his and everyone else's safety. Slipping his wand into the pocket of his shabby robes and locking the door behind him, he sets off down the quiet and torch-lit corridor.
He'd been in the professors' hall as a student, of course, despite the area being off-limits. But he's not as familiar with this place as the rest of the castle and he's not certain where each professor lives these days. He passes doors labeled, "Flitwick" and "Sinistra," names that held about as much power to him as minor deities during his first few years as a student here; now he knows them both as kind and knowledgeable adults. He's still trying to wrap his mind around the idea that he is one of their colleagues now. He takes a left turn into a corridor that twists and turns around what must be the backs of several magically-enlarged rooms, and then in the yellow torchlight makes out the door he's been looking for. A verdigris-streaked label dubs it simply, "Meeting Room V." He knocks softly and then opens the door for his first meeting with Professor Severus Snape, Potions Master.]
It's been sixteen years since he last attended the Start of Term feast at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It's been sixteen years since the last time he boarded the Hogwarts Express from London, or watched several dozen frightened children try on the oversized Sorting Hat, or entered the halls of the school that was his home for most of his adolescence. Sixteen years, almost half a lifetime in physical time and far more than a lifetime in experience. And yet Hogwarts has hardly changed at all. Oh, the students have changed since he was last here, there are some new or altered decorations on the high walls of the Great Hall, and the rest of the faculty is new or at least slightly aged, but Hogwarts is still the same school he left when he was eighteen years old. It's as if Hogwarts is some sort of strange bubble in the changing world, stationary in time, frozen and gilded like a statue to childhood. It's like stepping into his own past.
But, he reminds himself, there's no time to be amazed or poetic. Hogwarts might not have changed in years, but he certainly has. He's a professor here, not a student, and he's got responsibilities to see to. He checks his watch: half-past ten. His quarters - a private suite of rooms in the professors' hall this time, rather than a tower dormitory - are fully furnished and his small suitcase of worldly possessions is already unpacked. But he's got one thing left to do before he can rest. He'd rather wait until morning, honestly, because he's still very tired from last night despite sleeping for most of the day. And especially when he's so tired he does not fancy meeting with this particular childhood nemesis, who clearly still holds a grudge after all this time. But he's got to keep appointments, and this appointment in particular is tantamount to his and everyone else's safety. Slipping his wand into the pocket of his shabby robes and locking the door behind him, he sets off down the quiet and torch-lit corridor.
He'd been in the professors' hall as a student, of course, despite the area being off-limits. But he's not as familiar with this place as the rest of the castle and he's not certain where each professor lives these days. He passes doors labeled, "Flitwick" and "Sinistra," names that held about as much power to him as minor deities during his first few years as a student here; now he knows them both as kind and knowledgeable adults. He's still trying to wrap his mind around the idea that he is one of their colleagues now. He takes a left turn into a corridor that twists and turns around what must be the backs of several magically-enlarged rooms, and then in the yellow torchlight makes out the door he's been looking for. A verdigris-streaked label dubs it simply, "Meeting Room V." He knocks softly and then opens the door for his first meeting with Professor Severus Snape, Potions Master.]
