I have spent several lifetimes as a teacher. Each time I die another agonizing death, I am reincarnated and sent back to this same place, this purgatory of pubescence. My students flatter themselves that I hate them personally, but in truth, mine is a general hatred, and very few of them stand out in my mind. I usually manage to remember their surnames, at least, for the period of time that I am forced to endure their presence, but after they cross my threshold for the last time they are quickly banished from my memory. Dumbledore remembers them all, knows where they find employment, and attends so many weddings that he frequently needs to use a time-turner to get through the month of June. I’m not sure if Dumbledore is a saint or a fool, but I know that I am neither, and for me, students are little more than ever-changing props in this ridiculous farce I am living.

Except.

There are, of course, a few exceptions. Occasionally, my hatred runs a little deeper, for one reason or another. Usually it’s to do with a grudge against one of the parents rather than anything the child has actually done. And sometimes the child really does stand out as being worthy of my focussed hostility. Potter fits into both of these categories. He’ll not be forgotten…though God knows I’ll try.

Once or twice, there have been students who have actually excelled at the making of potions. I remember these students a little longer, less because of any personal pride in their accomplishment than because that accomplishment makes them so unusual. An attentive, intelligent student shines like a torch in the dim, disinterested morass of overactive hormones. So I am more apt to remember a student like that. I might even gravitate toward such a student…might take an actual interest. Surely no one would question such an interest? Would wonder why that student often stayed after class to ask a question or gradually began stopping by during my free period, just to talk.

Gradually. That’s the key word here. Things don’t happen gradually in my life. I have no experience of ‘gradually.’ In my life, you’re a student one day and a Death Eater the next. And then you’re a heap of flesh rotting in Azkaban, and just as suddenly, you’re a spy. And a teacher. And you hate it all, but you aren’t allowed the luxury of ‘gradually.’ ‘Gradually’ is for people who don’t fuck up their lives before their eighteenth birthday.

So when something does happen ‘gradually,’ I miss it completely until it has crept all the way up and she is suddenly so close that I can smell the faint scent of chamomile in her hair, and I realize that the scent has become a familiar part of each day and that when I caught a whiff of chamomile in my storage room that morning I actually smiled, for a moment, as I thought of her. I am oblivious until the day comes when she can pull her chair up to my desk without fear and put one hand lightly on my arm as she discusses a single point in the book lying open before us. The hand is lightly stained with the juice of the Arnox berries she crushed in my class that day. The arm is stained with my blackest regrets. Under her soft touch it tingles slightly, for once with pleasure rather than pain.

The serpent hidden there sleeps, but something even more frightening stirs to life, and I realize with a shock that I am hovering at a line I have never even considered crossing. She has let her hair down since class ended, and now it tumbles over her shoulders in endless spirals. I am desperate to touch one of those curls, to twine it around my finger, but I know that even that small gesture will constitute a decision on my part, a decision I have no right to make.

Does she know what she is doing here, or has this crept up on her as well? If I reached for her, would she pull away in shock, or would she willingly close the few centimetres that lie between us?

It doesn’t matter. I have no right to her for so many reasons that I can’t even be bothered with counting them, but if I were to make a list, it would begin with the mark on my arm and end with the debt I owe Dumbledore, who certainly did not rescue my heap of rotting flesh from Azkaban so that I might molest his pupils. What I want ceased to matter on the day that I exchanged that prison for this one.

She stares at me, and I am sure. I am sure that if I reached for her, she wouldn’t push me away, and that certainty fills me with a churning blend of ecstasy and regret.

I find the words I know I should say. Words that were written for me the day I transferred from Azkaban to Hogwarts and learned that teaching would be a part of my penance.

"You should go."

I speak quietly, but still she jumps at the sound. It interrupts our moment of understanding, and she looks at me with something like betrayal in her eyes.

"Why?"

It occurs to me that I am a coward. I can look into Voldemort’s repulsive face and lie without flinching, but I cannot tell the truth to a seventeen-year-old school girl. "I’m busy. I have no time for this today." My voice is cold – and apparently unconvincing.

"I want to stay." Hers is a woman’s voice, ringing with certainty, yet she is not a woman. She has not seen what I’ve seen or experienced enough of life to know why it is necessary for me to send her away. The years between us form a larger gulf than even our relative positions. Our positions will change in a few months, but the chasm between us will remain. For her sake, I am glad of it.

"No." I watch the various expressions parade across her face, and it occurs to me that I have gotten to know her much too well if I am able to read the exact second she goes from bewildered to hurt, from hurt to angered.

She does not argue with me; she gathers her things, a little awkwardly, and pushes away from my desk. She leaves without a backward glance, but I can’t resist rising and moving to the doorway to watch her go.

Every cell in my body screams for me to call her name, to stop her, to find out just this once what it would be like to have something develop gradually, gracefully, rather than continuing to move from one cataclysmic event to another.

But I say nothing.

And I know that she will not be back.