Chapter 13

The weeks previous had been the worst moments of school Atlas had ever had the misfortune of experiencing. Sir Cadogan – the new guardian of the Gryffindor Common rooms – had been challenging any student that passed to duels, making the passwords impossible to remember to boot whilst changing it every few days. A majority of the house was ready to slash his painting themselves at another misplaced password change if something wasn’t done. So Atlas, living in momentary bliss, had been tricked into dealing with the painting – which was what led to the nightly poker sessions the picture wanted to play in exchange for a single password change a week.

To others, it was worth it but to Atlas and her loss of sleep, it was not. Hermione even had to stop her from walking straight off of one of the revolving staircases in one of her dazed episodes one time, resulting in her breaking down into a fit of hysterics – Atlas hurriedly apologising for her disfunction in the background. Let’s just say, after that, the prospect of having Professor McGonagall ordering a few ghosts to trail her hadn’t been a bad idea after a bit of reevaluation.

There had been a few moments though, where Atlas hadn’t had to worry about the whispers of her father or Sir Cadogan challenging her to a duel. Those moments were with Hermione while they studied in silence or with the Gryffindor team and their poorly weathered training sessions. Those were the moments where Atlas would slacken her shoulders, sigh and smile in contentment.

Now was no different. She was walking back to Gryffindor tower after a practice turned mud fight, Fred and George were covered in it and picking at Atlas who had remained the cleanest of them all. The girl was only paying half attention to them, her broomstick in hand and arm and shin guards tucked underneath her armpit, she was thinking of reinforcing them that night, as well as her chest piece.

“We’re not playing Slytherin!” Oliver suddenly announced, looking much angrier than Atlas had ever seen him. She couldn’t blame him, they had been using training based on what they thought a Slytherin team would do. “Flint’s just been to see me. We’re playing Hufflepuff instead.” 

“Why?” The team chorused, save for Atlas who was staring down suspiciously at a chocolate frog George had just given her.

“Flint’s excuse is that their Seeker’s arm’s still injured,” Oliver gritted, his eyebrows narrowed. “But it’s obvious why they’re doing it. Don’t want to play in this weather. Think it’ll damage their chances…”

As if to accentuate the point, a rumble of thunder sounded from outside.

“That’s bollocks,” Atlas stated plainly, tucking the treat in her pocket and the twins burst out laughing, even Angelina and Katie joined in, Harry just shaking his head in amusement and Oliver still seething in the background, “What? It is. Draco got hit by one of Buckbeaks talons, I got snagged by three.”

“Exactly, he’s faking it!” Harry agreed, nodding his head vigorously.

“I know but we can’t prove that,” Oliver sighed dejectedly, Atlas going over to pat him on the back. “Thanks, Atlas. It’s just, we’ve been practising all those moves assuming we’re playing Slytherin and instead it’s Hufflepuff.”

“Yeah, they’ve got Cedric as their new Captain and Seeker,” Atlas nodded sympathetically as if she herself wasn’t on the team. Angelina and Katie giggled so she turned to them with a cocked brow, “What?”

“He’s that tall, good-looking one, isn’t he?” Angelina grinned.

“Strong and silent, you hang out with him don’t you, Atlas? Maybe you could introduce us,” Katie smirked, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. Atlas grimaced at the idea and shook her head quickly, Harry laughing at her reaction and hooking his arm around her shoulder to pull her along.

“He’s only silent because he’s too thick to string two words together,” Fred retorted, “I don’t know why you’re worried, Oliver, Hufflepuff is a pushover. The last time we played them, Harry caught the Snitch in about five minutes, remember?”

“We were playing in completely different conditions!” Oliver shouted, his eyes bulging slightly.

“Cedric taught me a bit of what I know too, so he’s pretty good,” Atlas added unhelpfully and Oliver groaned into his hands, looking more hopeless than before, “Sorry…but we shouldn’t give up right?”

“Of course not!” Oliver yelled as if the notion itself had killed his entire family, “We mustn’t relax! We must keep our focus! Slytherin is trying to wrong-foot us! We must win!”

“Oliver, calm down!” Fred hushed, looking slightly alarmed. “We’re taking Hufflepuff very seriously. Seriously.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re just saying that?” Atlas grinned, shooting a look over at the twins who smirked and winked back at her. 

“Got something in your eye?” Harry asked them when Atlas scrunched up her face in distaste.

Angelina and Katie laughed loudly.

***

Seeing Professor Snape at the front of the class as she and Harry walked into their DADA lesson ten minutes late was not something Atlas had prepared herself for on that Friday afternoon. She had been expecting – of course – Professor Lupin, smiling and waving at her as she walked in. Expected the man to be there to wave off their lateness and offer them a seat and maybe even a secret bar of chocolate to Atlas who would always light up ever so slightly.

Though unfortunately, he hadn’t been. It had to be the one time Atlas was late that Snape was teaching, all thanks to Oliver who kept on and on about more Quidditch strategies when they had bumped into him, as well as other comments, one being on how neither Harry nor Atlas were wearing their house colours, or rather, hadn’t been wearing their colours at all. It had just slipped Atlas’s mind that morning and Harry still had his, lost, somewhere in his bedroom.

The words Harry had been in the middle of saying died out in his throat and Atlas saw the way he tensed in her peripheral. Professor Lupin was out of work, days after Professor Snape’s so-called medicine was given to him, the theories were no doubt running rampant through the boy-who-lived’s brain.

“This lesson began ten minutes ago, Black, Potter, so I think we’ll make it ten points from Gryffindor. Each. Sit down,” Snape drawled and Atlas sighed, readjusting her bag strap and walking over to Hermione who smiled sorrily at her. “Not there, Miss Black.”

“But…this is my seat,” Atlas said, furrowing her brows. He stared at her, gaze cold and piercing, she wanted to argue with him but refrained, she didn’t want to land herself in detention a day before her first proper Quidditch game. So, with a weary smile to Hermione, Atlas turned and sat down next to her next best thing. Ron.

“Not that bad, is it? Sitting next to me?” Ron asked, casting a glance to Atlas who rolled her eyes amusedly and turned to look over at Harry who was still stood standing in an interrogative daze.

“Where’s Professor Lupin?” He asked eventually and Snape turned, eyebrow raised.

“He says he is feeling too ill to teach today,” Snape mouthed with a twisted smile. “I believe I told you to sit down?”

But Harry stayed where he was.

“What’s wrong with him?”

Snape’s black eyes narrowed, “Nothing life-threatening,” he said, looking as though he wished it were. “Five more points from Gryffindor, and if I have to ask you to sit down again, it will be fifty.”

“Harry, sit down,” Atlas urged and the boy finally obliged, walking slowly over to Hermione and sitting down next to her, eyes still trained on Snape who scoured the class, judgemental as always.

Growing up with the man as her original potions teacher, Atlas had grown accustomed to the look, it never did phase her anymore, but something about that moment made her deeply uncomfortable. It wouldn’t be a lie to say she’d gotten used to Professor Lupin, standing up at the front giving them all fun lectures on Grindylows and Red Caps, so seeing Snape standing where he was was off-putting.

Having him as a teacher, in general, was unsettling, he was too overbearing, too strict, too conservative, he was a bully to most. It didn’t help that the man had had it in for Atlas ever since they’d met. There was a reason – she knew – she’d read her mothers salvaged journals, the ones not destroyed in the fire started in her house days after she was rescued from the site of her mother’s murder.

Soon enough, Atlas was knocked out of her daze by the sound of Snape slamming her textbook open, “Tell me, Miss Black, did you come to my class to learn or did you simply come here to daydream?”

“Forgive me sir but I have a feeling this is a trick question,” Atlas replied cooly, noticing a few chuckles sounding around her and Hermione’s suddenly ashen complexion. She kept going, “Would you like a comforting lie? Or a harsh truth?”

“Turn to page 394…” He drawled, teeth gritted and eyes deadly. “Now, which one of you can tell me the difference between an Animagus and a werewolf?” He continued, eyes still staring directly into Atlas’s own, taunting, daring for her to say anything out of line, “No one?”

Hermione was so clearly waving her hand around in Atlas’s peripheral.

“How disappointing…” He sneered, backing away from her desk and going back to the front, “So Professor Lupin hasn’t even taught you the basic distinction between-“

“We told you!” Parvati shouted, catching Atlas off guard, she’d never really seen the girl speak out like that, “We haven’t gotten as far as werewolves yet.”

“Please, sir,” Hermione started, looking around desperately as if trying to get the man to see reason, “we’ve only been through Boggarts, Red Caps, Kappas, and Grindylows. We’re supposed to be going into Hinkypunks–“

“Miss Granger,” Snape said in a voice of deadly calm, “I was under the impression that I am teaching this lesson, not you,” Hermione turned pink and looked back down at her desk, Atlas tensing up in the background. 

She’d never cared to dislike Snape but at that moment, she hated everything about him. From the way he carried himself to the way he breathed, everything about him, she hated. Seeing him so often was really starting to grate on her, bringing back the memories from the days she would slightly mess up a potion and he would berate her for it, when she would study in advance and he would poke fun at her for it.

“Well, well, well, I never thought I’d meet a third-year class who couldn’t even recognise a werewolf when they saw one, I will be telling Dumbledore how behind you are…” Snape continued.

“Please, sir. An Animagus is a wizard who elects to turn into an animal,” Hermione supplied and Atlas sighed at Snape’s chosen topic, it was obviously a dig at her and Professor Lupin, “A werewolf has no choice, with each full moon when he transforms, he no longer remembers who he is. He’d kill his best friend if they crossed paths.”

“That’s the second time you’ve spoken out of turn Miss Granger, are you incapable of restraining yourself? Or do you take pride in being an insufferable know-it-all?” Hermione closed her mouth looking down to her lap on the brink of tears, it was something she was called often. Even by her own housemates, who had begun glaring at the Professor with seething hatred – which was really a testament in itself – but for Hermione, no matter the teacher, she never liked being told off.

Something snapped beneath Atlas’s desk and just as she was about to stand up, Ron grabbed at her arm and pulled her back down, “You asked us a question and she knows the answer!” He argued and it was a surprise to the majority as he was one of the ones to call Hermione a know-it-all at least three times a week. “Why ask if you don’t want to be told?”

In a second, Snape was upon him and Atlas, leaning close so he was inches away from Ron’s face, “Detention, Weasley,” he snapped quickly, “And if I ever hear you criticize the way I teach a class again, you will be very sorry indeed.”

“You shouldn’t threaten your students,” Atlas gritted, fists bawled so tight her right arm started to spasm slightly – a side effect from where a few of her muscles had been shredded in Buckbeaks accidental attack.

“What was that?” Snape challenged and Atlas took it head-on.

“You shouldn’t talk to your students like that, no wonder you ended up a Boggart. Do you take pride in being a child’s worst nightmare? Is that it? Or are you still mad because the class got to see you all dressed up in the attire you save for the bedroom on lonesome Sunday nights?” She asked, cocking her head to the side as if she were genuinely curious. A few gasps came from around her, some chuckling nervously and others – Hermione – greying from thinking of the punishments their unfortunate classmate may go through.

“Just like your mother,” Snape seethed, eyes dark with barely held rage.

“I’d usually say thank you but after reading her journals I don’t want to be compared to my mother by you of all people,” Atlas fired, snapping her left hand to her right arm to stop it from shaking so bad.

The class waited for the man’s response, expecting a burst of outrage, a threat of expulsion, a life-time of detentions but no, Snape simply scoffed and stood up again, making his way back to the front, “10 points from Gryffindor,” He turned to his board “As an antidote to your ignorance, on my desk by Monday morning, two rolls of parchment on the werewolf, with particular emphasis on recognising and killing one.” Everyone in the class let out groans of annoyance.

“It’s Quidditch tomorrow,” Harry said, looking to Atlas and then back at Snape, Atlas sighed and let go of her arm, bringing it back up and onto the table.

“Then I suggest you take extra care, Mr Potter. Loss of limb will not excuse you. That goes for you as well Miss Black!” Atlas rolled her eyes.

“What if it’s the loss of life?” She retorted, a few of her classmates chuckled but when Snape stood up straight and leant on Atlas’s desk again, they silenced.

“Then I expect those two rolls of parchment to be part of your parting gift, Spattergroit,” He practically spat and Atlas scowled, eyes narrowed again as her chest clenched painfully in warning. Bringing up her mother had been a wrong move but spitting out the name he used to call her? Was it not enough that he had tormented her in life but now he did so in death as well?

“What are you going to do if I don’t? Magic me back to life and give me detention, Snivellus?”

“Another word and I’ll escort you to the Headmasters office myself!” Snape seethed at the name. Atlas backed down, calming her cramping chest and leaning back in her chair she motioned for the man to take the stage and he spun around and went back to teaching, his face moulded into a scowl the entire lecture.

He spent the rest of the lesson ridiculing Lupin’s way of teaching until the bell rang and in the end, they hadn’t learnt anything. The Quartet packed up their things and left the class, Harry eventually bursting and going on about how much Snape hated Lupin.

“Snape’s never been like this with any of our other Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers, even if he did want the job,” Harry said to Hermione and Atlas – Ron had to stay behind and get his detention sorted. “Why’s he got it in for Lupin? D’you think this is all because of the Boggart?”

“I don’t know,” Hermione said pensively. “But I really hope Professor Lupin gets better soon…” she finished in a small voice and Atlas knocked out of her vengeful stupor for a moment to grab Hermione’s hand, tucking it in her pocket.

“Don’t be upset,” Atlas said, looking dead ahead with a pink hue to her cheeks, “You’re not insufferable at all…”

“What about a know-it-all?” Hermione grumbled and Harry cast a glance at the two of them, eyebrow raised in question. Atlas motioned for him to turn around.

“You’re not a know-it-all…being a know-it-all would imply you spoke on topics you yourself didn’t fully understand, you only ever really comment on stuff you know,” Atlas smiled, ruffling her hair. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, “Though I suppose you can be a little aggressive about it sometimes.”

“Aggressive?” Hermione blanched as Harry laughed in front of them.

“Yeah…aggressively smart, I mean,” Atlas leant forward so only Hermione could hear her next words, “sometimes when you say things, you sort of lack tact…”

“Tact?”

“Mhmm,” Atlas nodded, standing up straight and smiling, “you don’t take into account the consequences as long as it gets results or as long as it seems logical.”

“Consequences?” Hermione mumbled.

“Do I need to remind you of how you acted towards Lavender and Binky’s death?” Atlas asked and Hermione winced, burying her face in her free hand. “I, for one, know you had good intentions, you didn’t want the class to believe in Trelawney’s predictions because of how…” she glanced at Harry and leaned in so he wouldn’t hear, “negative they were but the way you came of…” she winced, “it sounded like you didn’t care and only wanted to sound smart.”

“Oh…” Hermione mumbled and looked up at Atlas, “I’ve never really…thought…about it like that…”

“I’m not saying it makes you an inherently bad person, Mione,” Atlas grinned, giving her hand a squeeze in her pocket, “Just something I’ve observed and heard about, something you need to work on. Take into consideration how something could affect someone rather than the result of something or if it sounds logical.”

“Yeah…” Hermione nodded, scratching at her cheek. “I will.”

“Brilliant,” Harry sounded, smirking at the two, “Never thought I’d see the day someone taught Hermione a lesson.”

Despite herself, Atlas laughed and Hermione went red to the tips of her ears. “She may be right a majority of the time but the destruction she leaves is deadly,” Atlas teased with a smirk, pinching the girl’s cheek. 

“Can say that again, you know she once said getting expelled was worse than dying?”

“Really Hermione? Expulsion is worse than dying?”

“Hogwarts is my life, studying is my oxygen, knowledge is my food,” Hermione went on, laughing to herself by the end of it, Harry and Atlas joining in. A confused Ron caught up to them red-faced and cursing something awful about how he’d have to clean the bedpans in the hospital wing without magic.

At that, the three laughed harder, Ron joining in even though he had not the foggiest what was going on.