Five years after the defeat of Voldemort, Hermione Granger returns to Hogwarts as the school's new Potions Professor. She's prepared to deal with trouble-making students, exploding cauldrons, and the difficulty of being less than a decade older than most of her students … but she's not prepared for what she finds in her classroom.

Why has Minerva McGonagall inveigled so many of her former students to return to Hogwarts as staff, this year of all years? Do the mysterious rumours about the dungeons have anything to do with the jinxed Defence Against The Dark Arts position? And can Hermione, Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville and Luna unravel the mystery while steering a new crop of mischief-prone students in more productive directions?

Additional tags: Banter / Angst / Action-Adventure /Mystery / Ensemble Cast / Slow Burn Multiple Plotlines / Canon-Typical Violence / POV Multiple / Background Relationships

What reviewers have said:

"This is lovely. I feel like I'm reading another Harry Potter book."
"I adored this story."
"I just binged this whole fic in one go."
"Captivating"

A Note on Canon: This fic is definitely in the 'Epilogue, What Epilogue' camp, although I have taken some elements from the epilogue in weaving a possible future. The main divergence from canon is, of course, that Severus Snape survives. I did consider making him a talking portrait, but that gave Hermione an awful lot of work to do on her own.

Apart from that, I've tried to stay as close to canon up until the Epilogue as I can. Where the book canon and the film canon diverge, I must admit, I've chosen the version I like best, rather than choosing to always follow one or the other. However, whenever characters think back to events that occurred during the canon timeline, the dialogue is from the canon, and not written by me. I, of course, own none of the characters I have borrowed to play with.

A Beginning

Hermione Granger did not hesitate.

Brainy bookworm though she was, she was a Gryffindor to her core: as subtle as a Bludger to the face, and as cautious as a bull at a gate. She spoke out, charged ahead, and crashed through. True, she had always had a greater tendency to pause for thought when it was warranted than either of her best friends, but she did not, ever, hesitate.

Yet with the door of the Potions classroom in front of her, she was hesitating now.

There was absolutely no reason to do so. The room was empty — she knew it was. Professor Slughorn had left a week ago. It was days before students would start arriving for the start of the new school year, and no other staff member would have a reason to be down here, in the dungeons, in this particular classroom.

Was it remembered nerves that held her motionless? Years of knowing that Professor Snape was on the other side of that door, ready to pounce on the slightest mistake and eager to humiliate anyone who displeased him?

No. Because, as terrifying as he'd been — and he'd been terrifying, especially in those years when they hadn't been entirely sure of his true loyalty — Hermione had never been frightened of his classes. Intimidated, yes, at times, by how very much he knew and how very paltry her own understanding of the subject was in comparison, but that had driven her to work harder and do better. She had at times feared him, but she had never feared Potions.

Even if she had feared him, even if she had been one of the students who had to brace themselves to step over the threshold of his classroom, that would have been no reason to stand frozen with one hand on the door now.

Because he isn't there. You know he isn't there.

You're one of three people who can be surer than anyone else in the world he isn't there.

Because you're one of the three people who stood there and watched him die.