Prologue:

Hogwarts was uneasy for most of the people within her halls were uneasy. The staff clustered together in little groups, breaking apart only to cluster again in different groups. Most of the talk was the usual talk for the beginning of a school year, but every now and then a word would stop half said, a sentence would die unfinished as the staff shared an unvocalised fear or concern. Hogwarts did not like it when her staff was upset, it made them irritable and the magic within her walls would spike with them. Unhappy staff were a literal pain for Hogwarts and she hoped this concern would pass soon. If it didn't pass soon she was hoping that the Sorting Hat would find out during the Sorting and pass the message on, for now she could only watch and worry.

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore was consuming candy as if he feared it were going out of fashion and would become unavailable. Professor Minerva McGonagall was involved in an transfiguration verse charms duel with Professor Filius Flitwick, and great was her relief that Flitwick's humorous tap-dancing pineapple was vulnerable to her goblet which was taking a brief showing as an exotic bird she had long since forgotten the name of. Professor Sprout was trimming roses with more speed than care and had twice trimmed herself already. In the dungeon where the last person Hogwarts could easily find was almost invariably to be found, Professor Severus Snape was either trying to blow the castle out of existence, or he was trying to prove that even a castle could dodge as well as he could. Hogwarts had twice been forced to hastily move a wall lest it cease to exist and she was starting to get annoyed at his haphazard approach to a medium he was usually careful about. She let him destroy his own door, but she had first removed the portrait from the other side of it and added a stone wall behind it so the hallway didn't suffer. The Hogwarts Express was due in less than an hour and it would be a far from good impression for the new students if they arrived to find that half their castle was absent because of a manic potions professor.

It was an alarm in Dumbledore's Office which reminded him of ensuring that the staff presented a unified front at the Staff Table in the Great Hall. Most of the staff only required ten minutes to arrive, but Dumbledore knew well that it would take at least half an hour to pursuade the Potions Master to cease and desist in whatever he was currently engaged in and show face. The alarm was set accordingly and Dumbledore judiciously decided to call Snape by the fire rather than risking a personal appearance for the argument. There was a decent chance that the irate professor was doing something volatile…if only to prove that there were some things in the world more dangerous than the arrival of Harry James Potter.