Chapter Text
Chapter 1 – The Arrival
The thestral-drawn carriage rolled to a halt at the edge of the Black Lake just as the last sliver of September sun slipped behind the mountains. Alandrea Thorne stepped down without waiting for the driver, boots crunching on frost-tipped gravel. The wind caught the hem of her travelling cloak—black wool lined with subtle silver runes that shimmered only when light struck them at the right angle—and whipped her hair across her face. She didn’t bother pushing it back. She had forgotten how cold Scotland could be, how the air tasted of pine and old magic.
Hogwarts rose ahead of her, windows glowing amber against the dusk, unchanged and yet entirely different. Fifteen years. Fifteen years since she had last walked these grounds as a seventh-year with too much ambition and not nearly enough caution.
She adjusted the strap of the single dragon-hide satchel slung across her body—everything she owned that mattered was inside—and started up the path. The castle doors opened before she reached them; Hagrid’s enormous silhouette filled the frame.
“Professor Thorne!” His voice boomed across the courtyard, fond and thunderous. “Yeh came!”
“Someone had to keep you lot from burning the place down,” she called back, letting him sweep her into a rib-cracking hug that lifted her boots clear off the ground.
When he finally set her down, his beetle-black eyes were suspiciously bright. “Dumbledore said yeh were the best there is. Reckon the kids’ll be right terrified o’ yeh in about five minutes.”
“That’s the plan,” she said dryly, brushing soot from her cloak. “Lead the way, old friend.”
The Entrance Hall smelled exactly as she remembered: candle-smoke, roast beef drifting from the Great Hall, and the faint metallic tang of centuries-old stone. Students were already filing in for the Welcoming Feast, younger ones gawking openly at the scarred woman striding beside Hagrid like she belonged there.
And perhaps she did.
Minerva McGonagall met them at the foot of the marble staircase, tartan robes impeccable, mouth pressed into the thin line that had terrified generations of Gryffindors.
“Alandrea.” The name carried seventeen years of history in two syllables. “You cut your hair.”
“You haven’t aged a day,” Alandrea countered, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Still planning to murder Fudge with that hat?”
“Only on Tuesdays.” McGonagall’s eyes softened a fraction. “The students are… excitable. Try not to break too many of them on your first day.”
“No promises.”
They walked together toward the staff entrance behind the High Table. Alandrea felt the prickle of a hundred stares—whispers rippling outward like spell-shockwaves.
“That’s her—the one who dueled the Bulgarian strike-team single-handed—”
“I heard she took down a dragon with a disarming charm—”
“—teaches at Durmstrang, Beauxbatons, and some secret school in the Sahara—”
She let them talk. Reputation was a blade; best to keep it sharp.
The Great Hall fell into a hush as she stepped through the side door and onto the dais. Four long tables of upturned faces, the ceiling reflecting a sky full of stars, the Sorting Hat mid-song—she took it all in with the quick, sweeping assessment of someone who had spent years walking into rooms where people wanted her dead.
Dumbledore rose, beard glittering like moonlight on snow.
“Professors, students—may I present your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Alandrea Thorne.”
Polite applause swelled into something nearer to thunder. She inclined her head—not a bow, never a bow—and took the empty seat Dumbledore indicated near the center of the table. To her left sat Pomona Sprout, beaming; to her right, an empty chair with a high carved back.
She didn’t think anything of it until the applause began to die and the seat’s occupant finally arrived.
Black robes billowing like living shadow, pale face half-hidden beneath curtains of lank dark hair, Severus Snape swept in five minutes late and looking as though the entire world had personally offended him that morning.
He stopped dead when he saw her.
For one heartbeat the Great Hall seemed to hold its breath. A fork clattered somewhere far below. Somewhere else, a first-year squeaked.
Snape’s eyes—black, unreadable, cutting—locked on hers across the three feet of polished oak that separated them. Something flickered there, too fast to name. Recognition. Fury. Memory. Pain.
Alandrea felt it like a Bludger to the sternum.
Severus.
Here.
Still beautiful in the way a storm cloud is beautiful—terrifying and untouchable.
She hadn’t known. Dumbledore’s letter had been coy, mentioning only that the previous professor had taken an unexpected sabbatical. She had assumed some Ministry toady or a retired Auror.
Not him.
Never him.
Snape’s lip curled—whether in disdain or self-defense, she couldn’t tell—and he dropped into the chair beside her with the fluid menace of a falling knife. The temperature within a three-foot radius seemed to plummet ten degrees.
“Severus,” Dumbledore said mildly, as though introducing two people who had never met, “Professor Thorne will be taking over Defense this year.”
“I gathered,” Snape said, voice low enough to curdled milk.
Alandrea turned her head slowly, meeting his gaze head-on. Fifteen years since they had last spoken—really spoken—and still the air between them crackled like a poorly grounded wand.
“Severus,” she said, polite and cool. “Still allergic to punctuality, I see.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “Still allergic to silence, I see.”
McGonagall made a small, strangled sound that might have been outrage or laughter.
Dumbledore merely twinkled harder and clapped his hands. “Excellent! Now that we are all acquainted—or reacquainted—let the feast begin!”
Food appeared. Conversation exploded back into life. Students stared openly now, sensing blood in the water.
Alandrea filled her plate without tasting anything. Beside her, Snape sat rigid as a gargoyle, cutting his chicken with surgical precision and refusing to so much as glance her direction again.
She felt the weight of his presence like a hex—familiar, unwelcome, impossible to ignore.
This was going to be a very long year.