Charms and Potions Just Don't Mix (Shannah)

[Severus Snape]

The dungeons were cold, damn, dangerous, and over all unlucky for anyone who wasn't of the house of Slytherin and Severus Snape wanted to keep it that way. Ravenclaws thought they knew everything. Gryffindors were brazen idiots by nature, and Hufflepuffs...? Well Severus was of the opinion of, "What the feck is a hufflepuff?" Snape, of course, had other reasons for staying in the dungeons. He didn't, to this day, understand why Dumbledore insisted that Alastor Moody be reinstated as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor when SEverus himself could have done the dead. However, Albus had been insistent that Severus stay as Potions Master for the sake of young Delinda Malfoy and allow Moody to take the post instead. Snape had another reason for staying in the dungeons.

He had only seen her in passing, but Snape could tell he wasn't going to like the new Charms professor. Her name was Shannah, but there was something he just couldn't stand about her. She was snarky, witty, intelligent, and good at charms. The fact that she seemed a a carbon copy of Lily Evans played no impact what so ever, at leat, that is what he kept telling himself. After loosing Lily to that Potter brat, Severus had swore to never look for love again. This woman, Shannah Iggins, was making it hard to keep that promise just because she looked so much lik Lily.

Then came the knock.

How DARE someone knock on Severus Snape's personal door. HIS door. He swooped toward the door and opened it, ready to curse out who would be banging on his door to find Lily staring at him. No it wasn't Lily he had to keep reminding himelf.

"Have you lost you way?" Snape said cooly. "Surely as a Professor, you should know your way about the castle. It's good to know the future of our students is in such capable hands. Did you need something."

Snape sneered the last bit. She was making him mad by her looks and the fact that she had dared knock on his door.

[Shannah Iggins]

Shannah steeled her inner sigh behind a stern face of her own. She hadn't particularly wanted to deal with the man, but there had been no other option.

Well, okay, there were a few other choices. She could have gone to a senior professor and ask them to deal with it, but she hadn't.

And no, she would not allow herself to consider why she hadn't done it that way- she could let herself get away with thinking of it as the coward's way out.

She didn't like the Professor standing in front of her.

No. Not entirely true.

She didn't know him well enough to know whether or not she liked him.

Nor did she care to find out.

He was snarky, he was caustic, he castigated students for new good reason, he terrified them to the point that they were unable to perform the tasks he gave them, she'd heard nothing but horror stories about him since her arrival.

But there was something about him that drew her to him. She wanted to find out the inner workings of that brilliant mind. She wanted to understand why he held the world at arm's length the way he did.

He was a puzzle, and she'd never been very good at leaving puzzles alone.

Oh. Right. He was standing in the doorway, waiting for her answer.

"Is there a particular reason you have seen fit to give certain students so many detentions that if I want them to serve a detention with me, I have to wait a month?" Her voice came out cool and aloof, her arms crossed in front of her chest while her eyes met his unblinkingly.

[Severus Snape]

Snape could feel her eyes searching him over looking for something. Severus had never been one to like puzzles and the look in her eye said she was trying to solve him like one. It made him mad. He brought up every shield he could with his skills of occlumency and stared her down. She demanded to know why he had given detentions to certain students for so long and he was enraged. How dare she jump on him... Severus Snape... about his teaching habits. Who did she think she was anyway?

"Professor, what I assign my students is of no concern to you." Snape sneered. "But if my fifth years can not complete even the most basic potion by now, then they deserve what ever I deem appropriate punishment. It's not your decision to countermand my decisions. Now go on and charm something."

Snape couldn't help but be mean to the woman. It was either be mean, or get to know her. Snape was good at many things, but getting to know people wasn't one of them.

Especially if he might have to kill them one day.

[Shannah Iggins]

Shannah considered quickly the options of what would piss him off the most, the fastest.

She gave a sneer of her own, stepping in close. "Listen, Grouchy McAngstpants, it becomes my concern when I can't discipline my students because they're too busy being punished by you. The fifth years that can't do basic potions are also unable to do basic charms, and I am tired of my students causing explosions when they try to do simple things."

[Severus Snape]

Severus pulled himself up to his maximum height and sneered down at the woman. She looked so much like Lily...acted like her too... but that was besides the point. How dare she mock his teaching skills and complaining about her pitiful life.

"Just because you find the need to not teach your students right the first time does not give you the right to come barging to my office, banging on my door, demanding my punishments be dismissed so you may offer your own. One of my students, a Weasley I should have known, couldn't brew a potion if her mother's life depended on it. She nearly set the whole dungeon a flame by adding caterpillars to a confusing draught. Do you have ANY idea what that would have done? Complete and utter memory lose. Just like that. If I hadn't caused that, no one would know who they were right now in your fifth year class and so you wouldn't have to worry about teaching them magic, you'd be teaching them their numbers. Hopfully you know them. If you turn around, there's only one step out of my door frame which is where I'd like you to go now.

"Away."

[Shannah Iggins]

Shannah couldn't help it.

She laughed.

What? She was only human, and the guy was funny, in a deadpan snarky sort of way.

"Has anyone ever told you that you take yourself entirely too seriously? The plain fact of the matter is that you're simply not as scary as you think you are." Shannah shrugged. "Or at least, not to me. Maybe I'm one of the few who's simply unaffected by your scary vampire impersonation."

She sobered. "At any rate. I'm not demanding that you dismiss your punishment. I was hoping that we could establish a system that both of us find satisfactory. Such as, you get Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and I get Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and we can split Sundays. Or you get one week, and I get the other, and good god, I feel like a parent trying to work out custody for their spawn."

[Severus Snape]

Snape couldn't help but think about Lily when Shannah was talking. Always the mediator in arguments between him and Potter. Always the one who wasn't afraid of Snape's past or his attitude. She saw him for what he truly was. She was one of the few, Dumbledore included, who ever had the honor of knowing the real Severus Snape. And now, so it seemed, this professor, though snape used the term loosely, was going to try to act like she knew him? To hell with being nice about it.

"They will serve the remainder of my detentions with me until they are done." Snape sneered once more. "When they are done, I'll send you whats left of them to serve their detentions with you but don't ever come to my chambers, bang on my door, and try to worm my students out of detention because they came whining to you about it being hard and unfair. Let me give you a little hint. Life is hard and unfair. Don't like it? Tough. Give up or do something about it. Either way, get out of my door."

[Shannah Iggins]

Shannah drew herself up to her full height, which admittedly, wasn't very tall, and stepped in even closer. Her eyes flashed dangerously, and if her friends back home had been there to see, they would have stepped back and tried to find cover for the ensuing explosion. Since there was no one there to warn Severus Snape, she tried harder to keep her temper under control.

Her chin was set at a stubborn line as each word she said came out low, slow, and oh-so-very-precise. "I am not trying to wrangle them out of your detentions. I want to give them detentions of my own, but you already have the monopoly on their free time that I can not do so. If we do not work out a system now that we are both happy with, you are going to stack more detentions on them for unsatisfactory work in the detentions they are already serving with you that I will never be able to punish them, and if I do, they will have forgotten what it is actually for, which, for me, is an unacceptable teaching method. The best I will be able to do is subject them to lines, but I think we both know how effective those are with the thick-skulled fifth years that are too busy making goo-goo eyes at the other gender to pay attention to whether they are doing a simple Wingardium Leviosa, or if they are setting my clothes on fire instead."

[Severus Snape]

Severus watched as the short little witch tried to become intimidating. It wasn't working int the slightest on him though. How could one little witch scare Severus Snape when he had faced down the Dark Lord, lied blatantly to him, and escaped alive time and time again? How could a short little number scare him when he had to endure the tortures of Potter and his friends for so many years and never kill them when it could have been so easy? How could this charms professor (if Severus could even start to call this dunderhead a professor) scare him when he'd worked side by side with none other then Bellatrix Lestrange? No, there was only two people who could Scare Severus Snape, and they were both dead. Albus Dumbledore and Lily Evans were the only two who ever scared Snape and this woman was neither, no matter how much she looked like Lily.

Severus pulled himself up to his tallest and looked down at Shannah down his pointed nose. He sneered an almost laughing sneer and said, "If you can't give your students detention around my schedule then you'll just have to clear up some of your own free time. Surely you most know that the students always come first and that the professor's life ends when the school year starts. Either way, you will have to make time for your detentions though I will ease up on giving so many as to avoid this confrontation from now on.

"Be warned." Severus said, glaring down at her. "If you ever come down here again and bang on MY door, you'll be lucky if your only missing two limbs. Good day professor." And with that Severus slammed the door in Shannah's face and walked back to his office within his room. He had sixth year tests to fail and he didn't need to be wasting any more time on the likes Shannah Iggins.

[Shannah Iggins]

Shannah's mouth thinned even more, her upper lip all but disappearing. If he had a modicum of intelligence- which, it was obvious that he did- he would have guarded his quarters against various manners of magical invasion.

Honestly, she was rather surprised that he hadn't requested a Fidelius Charm be placed on them.

Alohamora wouldn't work, she was sure.

She smiled to herself. Yes, now that was an idea.

She drew a hairpin out of her hair, and transfigured it into a car battery. Using a combination of a Summoning Charm and a basic levitation charm, she managed to place the battery acid directly on the door hinges. After that, it was a small matter to levitate the pins out of the hinges and onto the floor (she wasn't about to touch them after dripping battery acid on them), and manuevred the door against the wall.

Shannah considered that she might be crossing boundaries here that were really not good to be passing, but at this point, she was rather committed to her course of action.

Once she found him, she cleared her throat. "There's this thing that I deserve that you're not bestowing. It's called respect? I don't care what issues you have. I don't care that you've dealt with scarier things than me. I do care that we're supposed to be colleagues, and you're treating me like an idiotic underling only fit to fetch you coffee."

[Severus Snape]

Severus had just placed the fired "T" on an report when 'it' walked in his office, clearing removing the door and standing as if she were about to kill someone and if Severus was being truthful with himself, it looked as if she didn't care who she killed just then, as long as it was a greasy haired git. It took every ounce of Occlumency he had not to burst out of his calm shell and kill the witch where she stood. No matter who she looked like, what she did, or who she worked for, NOBODY broke into Severus Snape's office.

Before he could loose his temper any more, he looked up at Shannah and sneered his worse sneer yet. "I'm sure you had a perfectly good reason to destroying school property which I feel sure that you will report your destruction to Headmistress McGonagall and beg her not to make you leave school. Shame really, only three weeks in and you've reverted to the mentality of the students you are supposed to teach. Leave my offices now or I'll be forced to escort you out. Trust me when I say, you wouldn't like that. Get out now. I'm sure you remember where you left my door?"

Severus wasn't sure just how that witch had gotten over his protective charms, since most he had learned from a notebook of Lily's that he had found when going to their house after Riddle killed them. No one should have been able to get through that door. Not even Riddle could break those charms with magic. What ever she had done, had been done the only other way that Snape couldn't defend against.

The muggle way. It was a shame to admit, but she had out foxed him and Severus didn't like being out done in anything. If she wasn't carful, he would have to show her up and call her bluff. Shannah wasn't going to like that.

[Shannah Iggins]

Shannah rolled her eyes, her hand still on her hip. "Oh, relax, Fussybritches. I didn't destroy anything that's not easily replaceable. There's no reason she has to know, unless you see the need to inform her. Maybe you're right, and I shouldn't have come forced my way in. But I'm here, and the fact still remains that you're not giving me the respect due to a colleague. I may not be the dab hand at potions that you are, but that doesn't mean that my job isn't equally as difficult."