Pot Kettle Black

Spoilers:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Character Spoiler only).
Summary: Snape finds something in common with an unexpected student.
Rating: PG Disclaimer: Not mine, J. K. Rowling’s. Hopefully she won’t mind my visiting the characters from time to time.
Note: Plot Bunny from R. J. Anderson, written the next day.

Although the classroom was nearly empty, she sat quietly, back hunched over her book, wand stuck haphazardly behind her ear, the potion in the cauldron in front of her cooling to an even less palatable paste than it was intended to be. He had not noticed her at first throughout the endless drivel of students putting away ingredients, bottling potion samples. Each student squeezing their sample carefully on the scratched desktop between two other bottles of drab green potion with the hope that theirs would not be the bottle that fell to the ground and shattered, in so doing ensuring them a failing grade for that day’s work. The last student had left the room, dark robes trailing behind them and Severus Snape, the Potions Master, had begun to move the bottles carefully to the shelf reserved for fourth year Ravenclaw students so that his desk would be clear when his Slytherin and Gryffindor double potions class arrived. It was as he turned from picking up yet another set of bottles that he noticed the lone figure in the back of the classroom.

He paused mid-movement, the half a dozen glass bottles clinking slightly against one another in his hands. She was intent upon her book, seemingly unaware that the class around her had finished, cleaned up, and left her behind. He opened his mouth, on the tip of his tongue the poisonous string of words to tell her she was a silly girl: her class had left her: did she not pay attention? But he halted that as well when her hand reached up and pushed a strand of the limp blonde hair behind her ear, her eyes never leaving the text in front of her. His stomach gave an unsettling lurch, a far too familiar scene suddenly clear in his mind’s eye.

The boy, small for his age, sat in the corner of the dungeons, the cauldron in front of him had been brought to a boil and now had to sit for twenty minutes, cooling. They were beginning to study the methods of wit-sharpening potions this week and next week they would get to make them. The cauldron in front of him would be full of toads eyes and ginger root, and he was determined to have a perfect potion. Around him his fellow Slytherins and the Gryffindor students laughed and joked while waiting for their potions to cool, but his nose was in the potions text mentally listing the ingredients he would need, the effects each one would have when it was added to the potion, how long it would take to make, and what steps in the process would need special attention. His hair, dark as the iron cauldron in front of him, hung limply around his face and he pushed it back impatiently when a strand fell in front of his eyes, obscuring the words from view.

He had read through the ingredients three times, checking the unknown ones against the glossary of ingredients and their properties in the back of the book. He had been in the process of moving forward to the descriptions of how and why a wit-sharpening potion might be used when a sneering voice brought his head up.

‘Going to give Professor McClaugh your entire cauldron?’

He had known the voice without looking, but his eyes flew up anyway taking in Sirius Black standing in front of him, arms crossed over his chest, an impossible smirk on his face. James Potter and Peter Pettigrew snickered behind him while Remus Lupin ran a cloth across the work station he and Pettigrew had been at only a moment before, apparently ignoring the laughter of his friends.

Severus’ slammed his book shut, his jaw setting as he jumped immediately to his feet, feeling his face betray him as it flushed with the embarrassment of not having realized, in his quest for knowledge, that the class was over and the students were leaving.

‘None of your business what I do with my potion, is it, Black?’ he snapped back, his embarrassment coming forth in anger at Black for pointing out his mistake and laughing at it. He thrust his books into his bag and pulled out a small bottle that he uncorked and dipped into the potion, drawing it out with potion still running down the sides of the bottle as he corked it.

‘Watch your temper, Snivelus,’ Black said, his voice low so that Professor McClaugh would not catch the taunts. Severus froze, hatred swelling in his heart, his hand on his wand, and his mind running through each and every curse he wanted to do to Sirius Black when he was only old enough and powerful enough to make them work. He would catch the arrogant git when he was least suspecting it, in the back if it was the only way to do so. But each curse given a name in his mind, was left there to steep and grow stronger, as he could not even respond with the angry words he’d like to in Professor McClaugh’s classroom. Professor McClaugh, who was making notations in a book in the front of the room, clearly intent upon what was in front of him, had not noticed Black’s taunts. Professor McClaugh would see Severus as the person who struck first, not realizing that it was Black and his friends who had not minded their own business and who had, in their own non-violent way, cursed him just as surely as any hex he could perform with his wand.

The two boys sized each other up, James Potter stepping up to Sirius Black’s side and grinning at Severus.

‘What Sirius said,’ Potter smirked. ‘I’d hate for your temper to cause damage to someone…’ Potter nodded to Black and Pettigrew and turned away. ‘Or something.’ He winked at Severus, placing his hand inside his robes and as he passed the desk, he muttered something under his breath and the bottle of potion Severus had carefully corked whirled towards the edge of the desk, crashing to the ground, and shattering into a million pieces. Potter, Black, and Pettigrew could be heard laughing down the hall and only Lupin, his hand resting on the textbook he had yet to put away, and Professor McClaugh remained to look at the broken glass and see Severus step around the desk, his face flushing, pulling out his wand angrily, and hissing ‘reparo’.

It was Professor McClaugh’s voice now: ‘Good day, Mr Lupin.’

Lupin closed his bag and nodded at Professor McClaugh with a ‘Good day, sir,’ and he left the room, hesitating only a brief moment to look over his shoulder at Severus bent over the mess on the floor. Severus stared at the spilled potion, his shoulders shaking, hating Sirius Black and James Potter with every fiber of his being: Their good looks and easy posture, the way they got by with murder. Someday they wouldn’t. Someday he’d make certain they paid for every taunt, every embarrassment, every humiliation, and he would be the one to do it: and he would enjoy every minute. He had picked up the now complete bottle once more and was reaching for a cork when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Here we are, Severus,’ Professor McClaugh said quietly pulling his wand out of his pocket. ‘Evanesco,’ he said quietly and the spilled potion vanished as if it had not been there. ‘Accidents happen,’ he said mildly, picking up the cork and pocketing his wand in almost one motion. ‘It’s a good thing you hadn’t emptied your cauldron yet.’

Severus had straightened at this point, and Professor McClaugh pressed the stopper into his hand, a partial smile on his face. ‘You’d best get another sample before we clean up.’

Setting his jaw and refusing to meet the Potion Master’s eyes, Severus dipped the repaired bottle into his cauldron a second time and recorked the bottle, handing it over to Professor McClaugh as he did so.

‘Severus, you’ve done very well in this class,’ Professor McClaugh said kindly, taking the bottle from Severus’s hand. ‘I appreciate your hard study.’

‘Thank you, Sir,’ Severus said trying to keep his voice even, despite the rage that had filled his entire being, threatening to break through the walls he’d placed up for both his own protection and that of those around him.

‘You are welcome,’ McClaugh seemed to regard him for a moment and then turned back towards the front of the classroom. ‘I will see you next week then.’

Severus pushed his textbook down in his bag and slung it over his shoulder, moving rapidly towards the door and away from Professor McClaugh’s eyes.

The day faded in his memory from there, and now as Severus stared at the small girl with mousy blonde hair as she ran the feathered end of her quill back and forth across her cheek when she worked, the harsh words that had been on the tip of his tongue faded away with the memory of the moment.

‘Miss Lovegood,’ he said, his voice curt, but without bite. ‘Your classmates have left already, you should turn in your potion and follow them.’

She glanced up at him, her head still tilted towards her book, her eyes looking a bit as if they were hearing his words through a great fog. Finally, as if the words had penetrated her mind, she tilted her head, put her finger in the book, and closed it.

‘I’ve been reading about the effects of powdered horned snork horn in potions,’ she said, unblinkingly, without acknowledging his request at all. ‘I think it would have an interesting effect on the Truth Serums we’ve been working on the last few weeks.’

Snape’s eyebrow raised slightly, and he reminded himself that every student in school thought Miss Lovegood was insane, and he curbed the tirade he’d liked to have let loose. A lecture on the invalidity of such theories in the face of the imaginary qualities of horned snork horn was probably not the best route, nor was it likely to be at all considered. ‘I believe, Miss Lovegood, that you’d find your time better served to read through the text, as assigned.’

She stared at him a moment, and frowned slightly. ‘But don’t you research odd things? Experiment with different potions?’

‘Yes,’ the words came out more clipped than he’d intended. ‘But I do so with actual ingredients.’

‘But the Horned Snork has been sighted throughout Eastern Europe with confirmed sightings beginning in the early parts of this century-’

‘Miss Lovegood,’ Snape interrupted, the girl’s speech, knowing that he’d heard one similar many times, and read them often in her essays. It was incredible to him that she could find a way to tie an imaginary creature or ingredient to every potion known to wizard-kind. ‘If you spent half so much time or imagination on actual potion ingredients, you’d soon be one of the best potions researchers in the school. Consider that, if you will. And turn in your potion now so I can prepare for my next class.’

She shrugged, pulled a piece of parchment from her bag and stuck it in the book in lieu of her finger, and then dipped a sample of the potion from her cauldron. He turned away, placing the potion samples on the shelf and turning to put another set away before she finally trudged towards the desk. He raised his eyebrows as she approached and sat a bottle down on the desk. She shifted the bag over her shoulder and he inwardly marveled a moment at how unnerved she seemed both by the fact she had not noticed the end of the class and also by his minor lecture.

She turned at the door, her hand on the doorframe, her eyes turning to take him in. ‘When Daddy finds the Horned Snork, I’ll bring you some horn to experiment with, Professor Snape.’

He raised his eyebrows slightly, ‘Good day, Miss Lovegood.’

She shrugged and was out the door and he could hear her footsteps echoing down the hall. With a sigh, he picked up the bottle she’d corked and left on his desk and turned to place it on the shelf with the other samples; somewhere in his mind images blurred, a blonde haired girl in Ravenclaw colours and a pale, dark haired boy in Slytherin colours: a collage of misunderstanding, oddity, and obsession.

By Sabrina