Assistant

In mid-October, the commotion over the new fifth-year student at the start of term had finally died down. The friendly girl who excelled in class had fit perfectly into the student body, effortlessly winning the affection of most of the students. Many younger students even came to ask their knowledgeable and friendly senior for help with their homework.

Snape could only sneer at this.

Watching Cyberlina gently explain various points to several third-years in his office, Snape curled his upper lip and said, "Unless I've taken a wrong turn, this appears to be your Potions professor's shabby office, not the Great Hall where you show off your learning, clever—Miss Sekerei."

One Hufflepuff, two Ravenclaws, and one Gryffindor jumped at Professor Snape's voice from behind them. In perfect unison, they shuddered, and as they exchanged stiff looks, they saw the same message in one another's eyes—We're doomed!

Yet Cyberlina, whose full name had been emphasized, showed not the slightest bit of panic. She smiled sweetly at Snape and said, "Don't be such a stranger, Professor Snape. As the professor's assistant, it's only right that I help him with the simple task of answering students' questions."

—Yes, assistant.

Cyberlina was now the Potions professor's assistant, personally appointed by Dumbledore.

Every time Snape thought of it, he felt both aggrieved and furious, because it was entirely the result of his own actions backfiring on him.

Before the start of term, he had already been eyeing the materials Cyberlina had written about for Professor Sharp. He knew she probably didn't have those things on hand, but she had the ability to obtain them, and she knew where those rare and precious materials could be found. However, only a few days after the start of term, he had obtained a large bundle of unfamiliar herbs from Cyberlina, so he temporarily shelved the idea of exploiting her labor under the authority of his professorship. After all, he was indebted to her. He had even selectively forgotten Cyberlina's schemes against him and generously given her an O on her homework.

Until eleven days ago, when he had nearly finished studying those herbs and potion recipes. Cyberlina's several brazen schemes returned to his mind, and he began finding fault with her otherwise standard homework. His anger at being tricked several times, combined with his frustration at never finding an opportunity to demand the materials, built up inside Snape. Thus, during the first Potions class the previous week, Cyberlina had promptly earned a detention for "not taking her homework seriously."

Cyberlina merely smiled and assured the worried students around her that she was taking it well.

Then, during dinner in the Great Hall that very day, Cyberlina walked up to the staff table in front of every professor and student present. With an expression of friendly confusion, she asked Snape, "Professor, should I serve my detention before dinner or after dinner?"

Snape, who had just sat down and was preparing to eat: "..."

He truly hadn't expected that Sekerei—who maintained an excellent public facade, resorted to plenty of verbal jabs and private actions, and even kept her open schemes hidden—could pull something like this!

"Oh?" Dumbledore pushed up his glasses, his bright blue eyes gleaming with anticipation. "Severus, what did Miss Sekerei do wrong?"

Dumbledore actually hadn't spoken with Cyberlina for quite some time. Because of that forbidden topic, which had once again been brought up and had caused their falling-out, they would certainly argue over it again, so the two had tacitly chosen not to speak to each other for the time being.

Moreover, Dumbledore knew that Cyberlina's original motivation for researching souls had been the late Mr. Ominis. Bringing the matter up again would certainly leave Cyberlina in a poor state, so he had decided to wait until she was feeling better before inviting her to tea again. He still hadn't tasted that milk Severus had mentioned!

Snape looked expressionlessly at Dumbledore. Just as he was about to speak, Cyberlina beat him to it. "It's because I didn't take my homework seriously, Headmaster."

For a moment, every gaze at the staff table focused on Snape's face, which had darkened even further.

How should one put it...? Because they knew that Cyberlina was actually older than themselves and had once been a professor at Hogwarts for quite some time, the professors who knew the truth—including Professor Bins—hadn't initially expected her to attend classes or hand in homework properly.

But Cyberlina had submitted everything on time, and every assignment had been written exceptionally well. So when they heard her words, they were all baffled—Lockhart being the sole exception.

Taking advantage of her privilege to attend classes as she pleased, Cyberlina had only attended one of his lessons and had never handed in an assignment. Thus, Lockhart, who had already taken a strong dislike to Cyberlina, hated her even more. Seeing that Cyberlina was about to serve detention, he was delighted and spoke up with schadenfreude in his voice. "Miss Sekerei, how can you, as a student, fail to do your homework properly?"

The person drawing everyone's attention at the staff table became Lockhart.

Professor Flitwick looked at Lockhart with an indescribable expression. He truly hadn't expected that after more than a month, his student still hadn't recognized Cyberlina's identity. Weren't the portraits' constant gossip enough to help him understand?

Lockhart was somewhat confused, but he was used to being watched. He felt no discomfort and gave the matter no further thought.

Cyberlina ignored Lockhart completely and smiled at Dumbledore. "Headmaster, I wasn't being careless. It's just—"

It was rare for Dumbledore to see Cyberlina abandon even her public facade. He looked at her, gauged the degree of her smile, and then silently offered Lockhart a trace of sympathy.

"—I'm really not very good at Potions." Cyberlina wore a troubled, bitter smile. "So the latest Potions assignment was somewhat difficult for me. That's why I didn't do very well."

"Oh, if that's the case—" Dumbledore raised his eyebrows slightly and looked up at Cyberlina. "Then you should learn more from Severus. He's a very skilled Potions Master."

Snape frowned and looked suspiciously at Dumbledore. He felt that this Old Bee was plotting something.

"Yes, I thought so too. So I was thinking that perhaps I could come to you more often—"

"No!" Snape immediately cut her off with a dark expression, having realized where Cyberlina intended to use her facade of politeness. "You don't want to!"

"Severus..." Dumbledore looked helplessly at Snape. "You mustn't discourage a student's desire to learn."

"?" Snape had already noticed the furtive attention of the students pretending to eat. He also understood the intentions of this teacher and student whose combined ages exceeded two centuries. He sneered. "How am I discouraging Miss Sekerei? If anything, Miss Sekerei's talent is enough to discourage this old, unpopular professor. Apparently, demanding a little more of exceptionally talented students is another unforgivable offense."

"Oh? Miss Sekerei has a great talent for Potions?" Dumbledore's eyebrows rose high, and he looked extremely surprised.

"Yes. An extremely great talent." Snape glanced at Cyberlina and gave her a malicious smile. "The kind, lovable, hardworking Miss Sekerei is almost qualified to replace me."

Praise her! I have to praise her! Let's see how she gets out of this!

His lazy tone carried a trace of smugness. How could he let this pair force him into having an annoying old woman constantly appear in his office? He had only intended to give her a night or two of detention as revenge!

Dumbledore thought for a few seconds, then sighed at Cyberlina. "Miss Sekerei, Severus has a lot of work to do every day and is very busy, so—"

Smugness shone in Snape's eyes, while Cyberlina maintained her smile.

"—Miss Sekerei, I appoint you as Severus's assistant."

Snape's expression froze. Cyberlina kept smiling, but her gaze shifted from Snape to Dumbledore.

"Dumbledore!"

The smug satisfaction of having outmaneuvered Snape shifted to Dumbledore.

"No need to thank me, Severus." Dumbledore raised the sweet corn juice in his hand toward Snape. "You've complained to me many times about being busy, and now you've recommended Miss Sekerei to me. I understand what you meant."

"?" Snape glared viciously at Dumbledore, thinking that this corn juice should be sweet enough to kill the Old Bee.

Most of the professors watched with smiles. After all, Snape was the student they had watched grow up, Dumbledore was the one who had watched them grow up, and Cyberlina was practically Dumbledore's elder.

The three of them appeared to be trading barbs and defending themselves, but the professors could all see that there was no real sharpness behind it. Without realizing it, they found themselves smiling warmly as they watched.

Although the three of them seemed to be fooling around, Dumbledore was the headmaster, and once he had spoken the appointment of an assistant aloud, there was no taking it back. After dinner that day, Cyberlina followed Snape to his office to help him.

The moment they entered the office, Snape began making pointedly sarcastic remarks. Cyberlina stood by the door and watched him for a while before suddenly sighing. "So you and Albus didn't plan this together?"

"?" Snape stopped spraying venom. "You and Dumbledore weren't setting a trap for me?"

Cyberlina looked puzzled. "Weren't you the one who wanted to give me detention first?"

Snape fell silent.

Snape felt guilty.

Snape didn't want to admit that he had simply thought of Cyberlina's schemes while seeing her in class, remembered that he had never managed to retaliate, and figured that, given her desire to play the part of a good senior, she wouldn't argue much with him. If she obediently came to serve detention, he could vent a little. Although Cyberlina would certainly find another opportunity to scheme against him afterward, at least he would have managed to make her swallow one loss in silence.

Cyberlina had no idea about the childish twists and turns in his mind, but she saw his guilt and smiled knowingly. "Using public office to settle a private grudge."

Snape became enraged out of embarrassment. He took out the unprocessed materials, pointed at them, and ground out through clenched teeth, "Dumbledore said you're an assistant. You have to help."

"All right, all right." Cyberlina smiled, rolled up her sleeves, and walked over. "Help, help."

From that day onward, Cyberlina became the Potions assistant in name and in fact. With the attitude that one might as well use free labor, Snape pushed all the young Ravenclaws who came to ask questions onto Cyberlina. He knew that she was more than capable of handling them.

What he hadn't expected was that after sending students to Cyberlina once or twice, all the remaining younger students came to find her instead! Some even specifically came when Snape was absent and Cyberlina was there. It truly fulfilled his own sarcastic words—the old and unpopular Professor Snape, and the kind and lovable Miss Sekerei.

And whenever the younger students were discovered, they would flee the office at full speed under Snape's murderous stare, just like the one Hufflepuff, two Ravenclaws, and one Gryffindor currently were.

"You obviously like them." Cyberlina looked at Snape's dark face and smiled.

"It seems Miss Sekerei has grown so old that her eyesight has become cloudy." Snape slammed the textbook in his hand heavily onto the desk.

Cyberlina smiled without answering. She had seen it clearly these past few days. Snape rarely gave an O on the assignments beneath his hand, but he read every single one with great seriousness, and his comments were extremely detailed. When it came to the older students' assignments, he was even more conscientious. He could remember exactly what they had written in their previous assignments.

He's a serious and responsible professor.

Cyberlina thought.

Snape felt his scalp prickle beneath the way Cyberlina looked at him, like an elder looking at a younger generation. He bristled and snapped, "Take back that disgusting look! Who knows what Dumbledore was thinking when he put you here with me!"

"Perhaps he wanted you to keep an eye on me." Cyberlina shrugged and walked over as usual to the "teaching materials" Snape needed to process for class.

"Keep an eye on you?" Snape looked up at her, his mind filled with Dumbledore's initial warning to him.

"I think so. Of course, it's more likely that he wanted me to find something useful to do."

"...Why?"

Cyberlina put on dragon-hide gloves, raised her eyes, and met Snape's gaze with a sweet smile. "He's afraid I'll do something bad if I have too much free time."

Snape was silent for several seconds before shifting his gaze away. He didn't want to know how "bad" the so-called "bad things" could be when it came to Cyberlina and Dumbledore's age and level of ability.

Judging by how little Cyberlina seemed to care about the Chamber of Secrets, the Dark Lord was probably nothing more than a minor nuisance to her.

Thinking of the Chamber of Secrets, Snape felt that he could be considered an insider, so he asked, "You and Dumbledore don't seem to be in any hurry about the Chamber of Secrets."

"It might be dealt with soon." Cyberlina answered while processing the ingredients. "Before hibernating, Voldemort will probably let that thing out to move around once more. Albus thinks it won't be too late to deal with it then."

"You're actually planning to let it out again?! Do you want it to help deal with those thick-headed trolls and reduce your teaching burden?"

"Not quite..." Cyberlina pursed her lips, a trace of disapproval in her tone. "I think you can guess why. After all, this is an opportunity to face Voldemort directly."

Snape's hand paused as he flipped through the homework.

"Don't tell me it's for Potter."

Cyberlina gave him a helpless smile, confirming it.

"Has that Old Bee eaten so much sugar that it rotted his brain??" Snape's gloomy face grew even darker. "He's releasing some monster that nobody even knows the nature of inside the school—just to train Harry Potter!? I hope that monster eats his useless brain first, then gets killed by the sugar. Two birds with one stone! How convenient!"

Cyberlina set down the ingredients in her hands and applauded Snape with her dragon-hide gloves. This child really knew how to put things into words!

Watching Cyberlina look as though she were enjoying a show, Snape narrowed his eyes slightly. He suddenly felt that her indifference toward the Chamber of Secrets might not stem from confidence in her own strength. Her relaxed attitude seemed more like it came from—understanding the Chamber of Secrets.

"How do you know that monster will hibernate?"

"Don't snakes hibernate?"

"You said last time that it might be a monster that could speak Parseltongue."

"...Oh, right." Cyberlina lowered her head to look at the ingredients. "Actually, I only inferred that it might hibernate because that monster sleeps a lot."

"How do you know it sleeps a lo—" Snape suddenly stopped. He studied Cyberlina's movements as she processed the ingredients, then gave a mocking laugh. "Madam Sekerei, what are you trying to trick me into doing this time?"

Snape felt that he understood Dumbledore's intentions now. At the very least, after spending several days with Cyberlina, he no longer fell into her traps at the first opportunity.

"Ah, can't you just pretend to be stupid and keep asking?" Cyberlina smiled helplessly, then invited Snape, "Professor Snape, would you like to return to your student days tonight and go on a little night walk?"