Even Hermione was unsure of how to answer the question. Snape's first step had always been to put their wands away, and he'd already contradicted their professor. Still, she raised her hand. "Um... gather the ingredients for the potion?" she asked.
"Incorrect." Some students were stunned. Hermione actually answered a question wrong. Some of the Slytherins snickered.
"What's so funny? You know the answer? Tell me," he pointed his wand at Pansy Parkinson. "Better yet, show me. Get going."
Pansy stiffened up as everyone turned to watch her. She reached out to her cauldron and lifted it towards the cauldron stand. She was petrified into position by Fleming with a modified body-bind curse as he yelled, "INCORRECT!" Evidently, Pansy could still move her head as she turned and winced.
"Well, Mr. Snape? Would you like to give it a try?" He turned to the professor with an impatient scowl on his face.
"Well, for novices such as these, some of them would need to have a full copy of the instructions in front of them," he said derisively, watching Neville as he did so.
"IN-COR-RECT!" bellowed Fleming. "The first step is to tie up your loose robes and long hair," he said, displaying his sleeves. "Unless you want to end up like your professor here. I can smell twenty different ingredients that have probably soaked into his hair over the years. It's disgusting. That hair could be a potion in and of itself."
Almost all the girls knew some kind of quick ponytail charm, so all of them had something to tie their hair back immediately. For their sleeves, most of them couldn't conjure rope or didn't know the specific spell, but they quickly figured out a partial shrinking charm worked pretty well. Ten minutes later, the class was once again ready, but Fleming had a disappointed look on his face.
"That took far too long. For future reference, the spell is Ligara Manica. The next time someone walks into this room on a brewing day with hair past their cheeks, it'll be shaved off." Turning to Snape, he said, "You may proceed."
Snape was thoroughly miffed at the fact that he was being ordered around in his own classroom. "You all know what ingredients you need for the potion. Now proceed." There was a rush of students who ran up to the front of the room. Fleming, apparently, had left the ingredients they needed out for them while he continued to inspect the rest of the jars in the cabinet.
As soon as he heard the first knife chopping, however, he turned around and shouted, "Stop! Knives down, wands out!" He pointed his wand at Hermione's desk, who had been the first one to start dicing her ingredients. He vanished the tuber she was working on. Harry was shocked. He was starting to think that this new potions master might not be much better than Snape, but there was no reason to start a three-way fight right now.
"Tell me, girl. Do you know what you were just chopping?"
"Yes, it's the kakarot root. Its juices are the primary ingredient of the visual component of the supersensory potion."
Fleming smirked. "Evidently, you know the ingredient. Are you still able to smell it?"
"Um... yes, it does have the rather pungent odour that was mentioned in the textbooks..."
"Should you be able to?"
"Sir? I don't understand."
"Should you be breathing in the ingredients you're chopping up?" His stared Hermione down for a silent second, and added, "Weren't you the one who inhaled some contaminated powder last week and ended up in the infirmary?"
"It wasn't her fault!" Harry leapt to her defence. "Snape's the one who gave her the tainted powder," he shouted accusingly at his professor.
Snape, outraged, snarled back, "Twenty points from Gryffindor for your disrespect, Potter, and I'll have you in detention for your lies!"
"Lies, Mr. Snape?" Fleming drawled out with a vicious glare. "Do you think I'm here on holiday? We've had testimony from the healer herself that your billagrut shell powder was tainted. Keep your ego in check, rookie." Speaking to both Harry and Hermione, he said, "Mr. Snape takes half the blame for giving you a substandard ingredient to work with, but you take the other half for not casting a bubble-head charm on yourself when you began working with active ingredients. I thought you would at least learn from your mistakes, girl."
"But we've never learned that spell, sir. Professor Flitwick hasn't taught it yet." Parvati told him.
"And he won't, because it's supposed to be the Potions professor's job in second year the minute you began working with stuff that was more dangerous than apple juice," Fleming told them.
"He won't even let us cast spells in this room anyways. He won't even let us take our wands out to erase our mistakes." Ron spoke up this time, causing Harry to snicker. Ron wasn't a very diligent note-taker in class, after all. Many of the other Gryffindors began protesting as well, seeing that there was another adult who would be taking their side.
"So, I guess that all the blame should lay on your professor, then?"
"Those foolish children have no idea what they're doing. They'd as soon as blow off blow up their own cauldron as cast a bubble-head charm properly. Don't tell me how to run my class, Mr. Fleming." Snape nearly spat out the man's name.
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