Chapter Text
Severus Snape felt completely ridiculous.
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It was the summer holidays, so the school was out for two months. And although he didn't exactly love teaching the incompetent little wizards at Hogwarts, when there were no students to beat knowledge into around, he didn't really have anywhere to be or anything to do.
He usually wasted the first days of the summer break restocking all of the potion suplies and cleaning and putting away the beakers and vials haphazardly scattered around the potions classroom by his very careless students. And that's exactly what he was doing now.
Looking around the room Severus could see how little his students respect the school building. Though he did, begrudgingly, admit that some of the mess was to be expected, and maybe just a tiny bit his fault.
On the last day of the school year Severus decided to teach his third year students the erumpent potion. Well, maybe not so much teach, as show them the ropes once and assign them to recreate the mixture. He usually taught it to fifth years, and gave them more time to get used to the complicated brewing mechanics, but Potter had been particularly annoying at the time, and the Finnigan kid couldn't seem to stop prattling away, so he decided to punish the entire class by forcing them to attempt making the difficult potion. He also promised to quiz them on the brewing process during their first class next year and make the test worth one fourth of their final grade. Ha. He wasn't planning on holding true to his word, of course, he was pretty certain that wasn't even allowed, but it still improved his mood immensely. The memory of their terrified-looking faces put a small smirk on his face.
It fell pretty quickly when he thought about how he now had to clean up the ash-coloured smudges spread all over the room, get rid of the smell of sulfur, and fix the singed, and in one case, exploded, desks. He would usually leave this type of problem for Filch to take care of, but he preferred not to be scolded for the state of the classroom, thank you very much. Especially since he was the reason it looked like this.
The rest of the mess left behind by the teenagers was completely their fault, though. There were crumpled pieces of parchment on the floor, ink blotches on desks, and some unidentifiable crumbs scattered all around. It was disgusting. And it wasn't like this dirt was accumulated in the span of the whole school year - the classes were cleaned by Filch every few days, so all this filth was recent.
Merlin, he hated teenagers.
Of course, Severus wasn't going to tidy the space by himself, he was just taking care of the parts he was indirectly responsible for. And the potion-making tools he thought were too delicate to be entrusted to the Hogwarts caretaker, of course. He found putting them in their rightful place soothing enough, so he supposed it wasn't the worst task to do.
He was just about to grab a few empty glass bottles from a table in the far back of the classroom when something jarringly colorful caught his eye. He bent down to pick it up from under one of the table legs and found himself holding a bright piece of laminated paper.
He was about to throw it away when his curiosity won over and he decided to take a look at what seemed to be a muggle pamphlet.
To his surprise, it turned out to be a flyer for a bi-weekly chemistry lecture at some muggle university available for anyone interested, professionals and amateurs alike, probably accidentally left behind by one of the muggleborn ravenclaw students. It was said to take place at King's Univeristy and started on the first week of July.
He entertained the thought of tossing the paper into the garbage can, but instead slowly slid it into his pocket.
It's not like he had any other plans... so maybe he could just- pop in for a second, sneer at the primitve muggle teaching methods (he was, of course, entirely convinced that the wizarding techniques must be better than muggle ones, his status as a half-blood notwithstanding) and come right back to Hogwarts.
Yes, that's what he'd do. There was nothing better he could spend his time doing, anyway.
Especially considering that he has wanted to learn muggle chemistry for as long as he could remember, but he wasn't ready to admit that just yet.
So on the second of July, he packed a briefcase full of parchment, quills - don't get him wrong, he wasn't planning on taking any notes of course. It was just a- precaution, if he simply had to write something down - and a detailed map of London, and begrudgingly headed out into the muggle world.
He found himself lost on three separate occasions. Now he could understand why muggles were so much denser than wizards, if they had to full their minds with useless information, like the numbers of train lines and names of various unimportant streets.
He was just glad he had left an hour earlier than he should have, because otherwise he would have completely missed the lecture.
Which, wasn't a problem, of course. It just would have been a shame to go out of his way to try to navigate around London, and not even get to laugh at the expense of muggles.
Yes, that was all.
But alas, after having travelled for a good fifty minutes longer than he should've, he was now standing in front of the front door of the surprisingly sophisticated muggle school feeling slightly... nervous.
That was the factor that cemented him in the fact that he was, as previously stated, ridiculous.
It was just a stupid lecture. He should just- come in. And take a seat. And make fun of the so-called-professors.
He'd be fine. Of course he'd be fine. He's probably smarter than every single person sitting on the other side of the door. And even if he isn't, it's not like he knows any muggles. So in the very unlikely eventually that he embarrasses himself, no one, maybe except that one muggleborn ravenclaw, would recognize him anyway.
This will just be him and a bunch of dull-witted and simple-minded muggles.
Feeling much more sure of himself, Severus pushed the door open and was immediately met with the overwhelming noise of over a hundred chattering adults. They were obviously excited about the upcoming lecture, and very eager to talk to anyone in their close vicinity, so Severus decided to choose a table near the back of the gigantic room, where there were less people.
Now, completely dumbfounded by the racket taking over the class, Snape regretted coming in early. He'd have been better off waiting until the very last moment to enter, but at this point it would just be awkward to leave and come back in less than five minutes.
So he stayed, and tried to look as unapproachable as possible. It must have worked, because through the entire time not a single person attempted to start any pointless chats with him.
Although the woman sitting three seats from him kept glancing at him, as if gathering the courage to say something, which unnerved him quite a bit. To discourage her from making her move, he scowled even harder and imagined the strange lady was actually that Potter brat. She got extremely tense all of a sudden, and finally turned away from him.
Ha, yes, he should do that more often.
He spent the next few minutes burning holes in the dark wood of the old desk in front of him. Sitting around with an angry expression was what Severus usually did anyway, so the time passed more quickly than he had expected. He raised his head when he heard tapping footsteps coming from the center of the class. The murmuring stopped and suddenly all of the people went surprisingly quiet, and onto the platform at the front of a class stepped a short bearded man.
"Hello everyone!" - he started in a booming voice, obviously used to having to speak louder than others - "Welcome to the summer chemistry course organised by yours truly. My name is Matthew Anderson and I, among a few other people, will be your lecturer during these next few weeks."
The man then spent the next seven minutes basically repeating everything that one could find on the course's disgustingly coloured pamphlet, and Severus was starting to lose his patience, which wasn't that big to begin with. He didn't come here to learn much, of course, but he also didn't attend the meeting to be slowly bored to death surrounded by pathetic mudbloods.
Fortunately, the bloke seemed to notice that even the most enthusiastic students were staring at him blankly, he promptly finished his intro and took some sort of chemistry book out of his muggle rucksack. (MAN STARYS TALKIN AB CHEM) To Severus's annoyance, the man's quick way of talking and elaborate hand movements grabbed his attention. After a good fifteen minutes of sitting with his arms crossed tightly in front of him - sulking, some would say - he took out the parchment and quills he hid in his briefcase and found himself taking meticulous notes on what the lecturer was saying.
He started from the basics, talked about atoms and acids, and Severus knew some of those things already, but most of them had him rushing to try to understand and remember as much as possible from the class. He felt slightly embarrassed by his eagerness to learn from muggles, especially since the man obviously knew much more on the topic than Severus could even dream of.
So he sat there, listened carefully, and wrote down anything he thought to be important.
The lecture ran for almost two hours, and when the time passed, Severus felt dizzy from the amount of new information he acquired. He started packing his bag and leaving, when someone, or something, grabbed his attention.
From the corner of his eye he caught some hair. And, yes, of course there was a lot of people here. They had hair. Nothing weird about that.
But this hair, there was something different about it. Or actually, no. The issue wasn't the uniqueness of the hair.
It was the familiarity that caught him off guard.
Because this hair was ginger, so evidently Weasley ginger, Severus found himself snapping his neck to look at the hair's owner, expecting to see one of the Weasley kids, probably the one that left the pamphlet at Howgarts. But when he turned around he found himself staring at none other than Arthur Weasley.
Having noticed him, Severus tried to hide the fact that he had been, in fact, staring, hide himself, when the red-haired man caught his gaze. Severus could see his eyes widening, mouth dropping open and entire body freezing in shock. He knew there was no way to get out of this now, not unless he used some sort of magic or concoction on the man, which, well it wasn't an option, exactly, but the thought did cross his mind. But that would be illegal and just wrong, no matter how very tempting.
So Severus looked at the Weasley father with all the pride he could muster, and gracefully nodded his head in a form of greeting. The man didn't move for a few more seconds, and then apparently realised that he was blocking half of the path and shook himself out of his stupor. He blinked a few times and finally seemed to undertand that he should probably react in some way, so he quickly nodded back in one neck-breaking move and promptly walked off. He soon disappeared in the crowd of people and Severus felt his thougts catch up to him and heartbeat speed up. He had been seen attending a muggle convention. And by quite an important wizard, as well, he begrudgingly admitted.
Well, this has been embarrassing. Merlin's ass.