After breakfast, Dumbledore asked Tori and Snape to follow him to his office. Draco and Hagrid were already there.

He waited until they were all seated and started talking. “I’ve been awake most of the night after you’d been to see me Severus. I wanted to make sure that Draco would be as safe as possible. I gave it a lot of thought and I don’t think it would be wise to keep him in the dungeon.”

“Why is that? He would be close to me.” Snape seemed surprised.

“I’d like to visit Draco often. Now it’s common knowledge that I don’t like going to the dungeons too much and if students were to see me there once or twice a day, they’d start wondering about what I’m doing there. We are talking about Slytherin students here Severus.” This last thing he said with a twinkle in his eye, but they all realized that he was right.

“Therefore, I think it might be best if he got a room at Hagrid’s place.” All looked up in surprise, even Hagrid, who looked the most surprised. Draco seemed to not care about where he would stay. “We will go now. Everyone is still in the Great Hall having breakfast and Draco can hide under Hagrid’s cloak.”

And so they all went to Hagrid’s to install the fugitive Malfoy. Fang immediately adopted the young wizard and sat right next to him, clearly not planning to leave his side. This display of affection made them believe that Draco really was willing to change.

All but Hagrid were leaving the place, but Draco signaled Tori, he wanted to talk to her. “So, I hear you’re working as potion’s assistant this year. Must have really freaked Granger, Weasley and Potter out to hear that you’d be working with Snape.” He grinned.

“Not really, they’re not biased, unlike other people I know.” She answered snappily.

“Ouch, I guess I had that one coming! Oh, at least you don’t treat me like I’m made of glass like everyone else around here.” He smiled at her, looking a lot more relaxed than the previous night.

“I suppose I’ll have to get used to you being on our side.” Tori sighed, “Of all the shocks we’ve had over the past years, this surely is a major one.”

Smiling, she left for work. As she crossed the school grounds she met Shannon, who was carrying a load of books and was heading for Hagrid’s.

“Don’t you have a class to go to?”

“Er...not until 10 and Hagrid asked me to come by to discuss my project about Centaurs.”

“Ok, fine, just be in time for your class.”

“Will do Miss Bloom!” Shannon laughed and Tori joined in.

It was extremely happy Tori that entered the lab that morning. She immediately started her research for the weakening potion. Snape didn’t show up that morning. He had classes to teach. She would take over his first year’s class that afternoon and she was looking forward to it.

Suddenly she heard a plop, followed by hissing in the next room. Reluctant to enter Snape’s private rooms, she opened the door just a little to see Harry’s face in the fireplace.

“Severus, are you there?” he asked.

Quickly, Tori entered the room and Harry’s face lit when he saw his friend.

“Ah, finally, I was beginning to think that nobody was home!”

“He’s teaching you know.”

“Of course, I forgot. Say, any news on Malfoy? He has been sighted not far from Hogsmeade, so…”

Before he could continue, Tori filled him in on the news.

“Hmmm, interesting, well, if Fang is willing to accept him, why shouldn’t we?”

He was a bit more worried that Shannon also knew about Draco being there. “She’s just a kid Tori; I don’t want to get her involved in something this messy.”

Tori laughed. “Oh, she’s no kid, trust me on that one. You seem to be forgetting that she’s in her final year. It wouldn’t do you any harm to return one of her letters some day either, you know.” She added.

“Well, I don’t want to give her false hope. She’s a friend, that’s all.”

“Even friends write letters to each other.”

“Ok, if you say so. I might come to Hogwarts for Halloween though, so if I’m there in person, I wouldn’t need to write, would I?” And then his head disappeared.

“Boys!” Tori sighed deeply. When she came back from teaching, she found Snape deeply immersed in research.

She was still high on adrenalin from her first teaching experience. It had been great and she had found it a real thrill to pass on her knowledge to the children. They had been eager to learn and all cauldrons had stayed intact. This was what she wanted to do with her life!

She was already seated when she saw Snape looking at her. He seemed desperate. He grumbled and threw away his quill. “The good news is I found the recipe for the weakening potion we are looking for. The bad news is that it has an unexpected ingredient.” He sighed.

“It’ll take some research on the properties of this ingredient to be sure if this recipe is of any use.”

“Which ingredient are we talking about?” Tori forgot at once about her teaching aspirations.

“It’s the blood of a virgin, to counteract the unicorn blood.”

“That’s actually used as an ingredient for potions?” Tori was shocked.

“Not very often, I can assure you, and mostly it is used in the same way unicorn blood is. That’s what troubles me; it usually makes a person stronger by drinking it, not weaker.”

“You mean like a vampire?”

“Vampires do not live on virgin blood alone, you should know that, but it does make them stronger than regular blood.”

Tori couldn’t help herself and chuckled a bit, remembering Ron and Harry used to think that Snape was a vampire. Then he would have known all the properties for sure.

“Why are you laughing?” Snape didn’t seem amused at all.

For a moment she wanted to make an excuse, but feeling daring, she decided to tell him. “Well, Ron and Harry used to think that you were a vampire and I was just imagining that it would have come in handy today.” She waited for his sneer.

“Sadly I have to disappoint you, I do not drink blood, nor can I transform myself into a bat. The obscure properties of virgin blood are a mystery to me.” He did sneer, but she could also see that the right end of his mouth had curled as if he was trying very hard to not laugh.

Returning to the problem at hand, Tori stayed her practical self. “Isn’t there a book where we can find it?”

“Of course there is, I just don’t know which one it’s in. First we have to look into a reference book, which is what I’ve been doing all afternoon.” He looked exhausted and his eyes were red from browsing the book for so long. He resumed his search and Tori selected another reference book to help him. A half hour passed in silence. Suddenly he jumped up.

“Here it is. It’s in Most Obscure Ingredients Volume 3. I even have a copy of it here on my bookshelf.”

He started to get up, but Tori, noticing his fatigue, turned to the bookshelf and started looking herself. It was – of course – on the top shelf. Learning from her past experience, she took the ladder and began to climb up it.