Not much was assigned, the greater emphasis was on practice, and at the next lesson the professor promised to set up a check of the practical completion of that very homework.
Potter, Weasley, and the other Gryffindors in the form of Dean and Seamus quickly ran off, the break after the second lesson wasn't all that long, and the desire to have a proper bite to eat doesn't just go away. The Ravenclaws turned off practically at the first corner, and my House year-mates asked whether I fancied dropping by the kitchen for a treat.
"No, lads," I smiled at Ernie, "go on without me. I'll eat with everyone in the Great Hall."
"Suit yourself…"
And so I ended up walking with the Slytherins — Draco, Daphne, and Pansy.
"I understand," I began, walking alongside Malfoy, the girls behind us whispering about their own things, "that you're currently playing the gloomy, mysterious prince of Slytherin, but only a blind man wouldn't have noticed that you know our professor. And fear her very much."
"I'd recommend you not tell anyone about this. Not about the fear — that I couldn't care less about."
"Oh?"
The spider left behind in the classroom was now broadcasting how this witch, with a single spell, on an exhale and with anger, smashed the desks apart, then immediately calmed down, breathed out, with one movement of her hand fixed her dishevelled hair, and quietly muttered:
"…I'll manage. Damned children. I hate teaching. Teaching with words… Disgusting."
Amusing. I wonder who she is?
"Fine," I nodded to Malfoy. "I'll find out anyway. Perhaps soon."
"You know far too much in general. Won't you share the secret?"
"Of course not. Resign yourself, Draco," I smiled. "Information is my weapon."
In one of the corridors we parted ways — Daphne went off with her friend, and that friend went, as a prefect, after the first-years, Malfoy a grim force standing guard over the female part of his House. Naturally, I too set off after the little ones, and a couple of minutes later, with them in tow, I entered the Great Hall, since lunch is, undeniably, an important event.
As soon as I'd seated the little ones at the table along with Hannah, sat down myself, and before I'd even managed to get to the food, I got a question from my year-mates.
"So, what do you think of DADA?" Ernie took it upon himself to ask.
"There's no such subject anymore."
"Don't be tiresome," Hannah waved me off, glancing for a second at the first-years, who'd enthusiastically begun devouring everything within reach, clattering their spoons against the crockery.
"It's too early to say anything. I can tell you that our professor is no simple matter. If you want to learn from an experienced wizard who's taken part in actual combat, then it's worth playing little soldiers in lessons, nodding and doing as you're told. There'll be experience to be had."
"Hm… Maybe we should reopen our club?"
"Potter's in charge of it," I shrugged, glancing thoughtfully at a large portion of rich soup with all sorts of goodies in it. "So go pressure him. I think the professor will set a lot of practical work, so we'll come to reviving the club's activities of our own accord. In time. And now let me eat in peace."
"Right, right, Hector must eat," Zacharias smiled. "The brain consumes a lot, a clever brain even more. Hector's clever. Be like Hector."
Having tried a spoonful of the soup, I deemed it more than worthy of my attention, but I had to respond.
"Have I offended you somehow?"
"I just really want to do someone a bad turn. Captain's thoughts about team activity are oppressing my brains."
After lunch we saw the first-years off to their next lesson, and I went to Potions, meeting McMillan on the way. The others, it seemed, either didn't much like the subject from old memory, or hadn't made the passing grade. Or thought they hadn't, since I'd heard Slughorn's was exceedingly low.
By the Potions classroom, in the very same spot where Snape taught his subject, other students already stood: four Slytherins — Malfoy, Pansy, Daphne, and, surprisingly, Nott, who didn't wish to associate with anyone; Ravenclaw appeared in full force, but I had my suspicions that a couple of people would drop out after all, and they'd come purely to "have a look" at the new professor. With the Gryffindors things were less rosy — Neville was here for some reason, Parvati was conversing with her sister, Seamus was trying to cheer Neville up, and Lavender Brown, an annoyingly vanilla girl, the typical schoolgirl of her age from American comedy films, was listening attentively to the Patil sisters' conversation. And Hermione, of course. She was sort of with the girls, and sort of together with them, yet was simply reading a small book, a reference guide.
I was about to say something to someone, just so it wouldn't be so dull, when the classroom door opened, and out from it emerged a belly. Yes, precisely a belly, and only then did we see this no-longer-young, portly wizard with a rather kindly face, but by no means a guileless gaze. A brown robe, the same Oxford hat I'd seen him in at the feast.
"Ah, students, come in, take your seats," he smiled, ushering us into the classroom.
No sooner had I entered than a combined aroma struck my nose, evoking a flurry of faint associations with what I like, or what the largest shards of memory of other beings had liked.
"Mmm, Amortentia," I smirked, and Daphne, walking beside me, took my hand with a smile.
There weren't, contrary to expectations, all that many places, their arrangement was different, and the tables were high, clearly for working while standing — no desks. On the teacher's table stood several cauldrons with finished potions, and fixed in a stand was a small flask with a transparent potion. I, of course, know several compositions requiring such fixing and care in storage — I myself still have a couple of vials lying about in a special little box in my rucksack… But could Slughorn have decided to teach us the method of brewing Felix Felicis? Nah, unlikely. The proper approach requires a very long time, and the extreme one is excessively suicidal — not everyone would dare.
Looking around more attentively, I noticed high stools on which one could sit at the high tables, as though at a bar counter. Hm, so we wouldn't have to stand for both lessons. That's good.
"Come on," Daphne deftly dragged me by the hand to one of the tables, provoking in the process an overly emotional reaction from Lavender Brown — she even bit her lip.
Eh, no, blondie, you've got Witch Weekly on the brain combined with Gryffindor.
"You've been very demonstrative in your actions lately," I whispered quietly, taking my place at a table beside Daphne and laying out my textbook, notebooks, and my personal set of instruments.
Daphne was doing the same. We were, I noticed, the only ones with personal sets. No, actually, Malfoy had one too, but there it was more for pomp and show than out of professionalism. At least I wouldn't go excessively decorating a working instrument to the detriment of convenience.
"People look your way too often. Nothing to look at."
"It's not as though I try to kill everyone who looks your way."
"Oh?" Daphne arched an eyebrow. "Though, true. You have other methods."
And she nodded barely perceptibly in Nott's direction. So what? I didn't start it. Looking at the other students, I smiled understandingly — they'd begun to take in the aromas of the Amortentia, blissfully melting into formless little puddles.
"Now then, now then," Slughorn began good-naturedly, approaching his table, standing against a backdrop of slightly multicoloured faint vapours over the Amortentia cauldron. "Everyone get out your scales and sets, and don't forget your textbooks, 'Advanced Potion-Making.' I see you've all already noticed the somewhat unusual potions in the cauldrons on my table. I prepared a couple for you, just out of interest, you know. Have you guessed which ones?"
Slughorn glanced at me, as if to say: "Stay quiet, I've heard your answer."
"No? And yet one of them we'll have to brew according to plan. Remember, attention to detail is the chief condition of all planning."
At that point the door opened, presenting us with Potter and Weasley. The professor turned to them.
"Ah… Mr Potter! Harry, you had me worried," good nature fairly oozed from this old fellow. "Have you brought us a friend?"
"Ron Weasley, sir," Ron smiled openly. "But I don't understand the first thing about potions, it's a real disaster. So I'd better just…"
Potter deftly positioned himself behind Weasley, blocking his routes of retreat.
"Nonsense," Slughorn waved it off. "We'll fix that. Harry's friends are my friends. Get out your textbooks."
"Sorry, sir," Potter apologised, by all appearances on his friend's behalf too. "I haven't got my textbook yet. Neither has Ron."
"Take everything you need from the cupboard," Slughorn indicated with his hand one of the cupboards by the classroom entrance, and his gaze hardened a touch.
The lads moved towards the cupboard, and I was puzzled, I think, as were the others. How had it come about that Potter and Weasley had turned up to Potions but had no textbooks, and judging by the slip, didn't yet?
While the lads created some bustle by the cupboard, Slughorn again addressed us.
"As I was saying, today I've prepared several mixtures. So who can tell me what potions these are?"
Hermione raised her hand, but it was evident she didn't especially want to answer, which was strange.
"Hm, anyone besides this young lady?" Slughorn cast his gaze over us. "Perhaps you, the bored young man who's decided to devote more attention to the lovely lady beside him than to my subject?"
The professor was looking at me. Attention? Ah, he probably meant that Daphne and I really had been paying more attention to each other's presence nearby. Well, Amortentia is like that, and besides, for us this is, as it were, a stage already passed.
"Me?" I feigned surprise.
"Yes, yes, you."
"Erm…" I'd made out the potions while still on my way to my place, and noted the characteristic details. "Amortentia, Polyjuice, Veritaserum, and Felix Felicis."
The professor was surprised, and surprised greatly.
"You worked that out without even approaching the cauldrons?"
"I saw the contents as I walked from the door to my place, sir," I smiled. "And Felix Felicis needs to be stored in special vessels, preferably on a stand. Of course, there are three other compositions with the same requirements, but only Felix Felicis is transparent."
"Unexpected," the professor nodded. "Very unexpected, Mr…"
"Granger. Hector Granger."
"Ah! So that's it!" the professor exhaled with relief and was clearly pleased about something. "That explains a great deal. Then, I'll venture to suppose your companion is Miss Greengrass?"
"Daphne Greengrass," Daphne nodded slightly, smiling politely purely for form's sake — Slughorn was awfully saccharine.
"I'm glad, glad, my dears, to see in my class accomplished journeyman potioneers, so young," the slippery old fellow immediately started warbling like a nightingale. "But I fear the sixth year isn't designed to teach you anything new."
"Allow me, but that's for us to decide, whether there's something new for us here or not," now it was I who smiled politely.
"Of course, of course!"
The professor began questioning the other students about the features of the potions presented, since I'd named them, and then gave out the aim of the lesson too:
"Today I propose the following… A vial of Felix Felicis to whoever brews a decent-looking Draught of Living Death. You'll find the recipe on page ten of the textbook."
The youngsters at once hurried to open their textbooks to the right page.
"Only once," the professor continued, "has a student managed to brew the potion to a high enough quality to win this prize. I wish you luck. Begin!"
Daphne and I exchanged a glance.
"Will you brew it?"
"Well, we know this potion, even if we haven't brewed it…" Daphne pondered. "We went straight to the more complex ones."
"Yes. This one specifically we haven't brewed. Snape ran us through far more complex compositions. A sadist, he is, after all."
"A little bit," Daphne touched my hand.
"Pack it in already, won't you?" hissed Pansy, walking past us, probably for ingredients. "Right at this moment you're properly getting on my nerves."
"Seconded," nodded Malfoy, walking after Pansy and smiling at us sardonically. "I'd ask you not to distract the less fortunate, the lonely and the miserable."
"I see. They've got a competition for the vial," I nodded.
The professor came over to us.
"You two won't be participating, I presume?"
"Why not, but not for the prize," I nodded.
"That would be too unfair," Daphne confirmed. "We brewed liquid luck for the exam."
"By the quick method," I added.
"Oh, Merlin's beard!" Slughorn exclaimed indignantly. "That was very risky… But I understand. You want to brew it, but outside the competition. Just to broaden your horizons?"
"Purely for scientific purposes."
"Well then, in that case, get to it."
I think as a professor he's more interesting than Snape. Perhaps it's worth attending, having a look — maybe we really will learn something new.
Time passed, the potion brewed, sopophorous beans flew ricocheting all over the classroom, slipping out like bullets from under the students' knives, and this drew a smile from Daphne and me — we, after all, crushed ours. And Malfoy kept peeking at us, comparing what we did with what was written in his textbook. And the two didn't always match.
"Potions textbooks irritate me sometimes," I said quietly to Daphne, crushing a bean on a special little board.
"Standardised potions," she shrugged. "They require less precision of action and magic when brewing, but it's also exceedingly hard to wring perfection out of them. On the other hand, simply following the recipe…"
"…gives a guaranteed acceptable result," I finished the thought, heard more than once before.
Sharply raising my hand, I caught a bean flying straight at Daphne's forehead.
"Thanks."
Looking around, I saw Seamus looking at me sheepishly, his hand raised. The lad smiled and shrugged, as if to say: "I didn't mean to." Nodding understandingly, I tossed him his ingredient.
So the lesson went, essentially. Some managed at least something, others managed nothing, and Seamus nearly blew up his cauldron, though even Neville managed to avoid such a thing. True, his potion, by the look of it, hadn't worked out either, but progress all the same.
"And why—?" Draco wanted to ask something, standing not far off, but then noticed that he was already being watched closely, secrets being sought out, mysteries listened in on. "Ah, forget it."
When time was up, Slughorn went to check the results, and they weren't dazzling for many.
"No… No… Not at all… What an interesting composition, Mr…?"
"Longbottom," the lad nodded sheepishly. "Neville Longbottom."
"Well now… This is not at all what I asked for. Yes," Slughorn pondered, peering into the cauldron. "And I'd be hard-pressed to say how this came out of these ingredients."
"Sorry, sir," the lad apologised. "I'm very bad at potions. Something's always off."
"Come now, come now!" the professor reassured him, smiling. "A negative result is also a result. I wouldn't say no to a sample of your potion. Purely for scientific purposes."
"Yes, of course."
Neville began taking this sample, and the professor moved on. He stopped by Daphne's and my table.
"Wonderful," he smiled. "Let's just see…"
Taking an indicator sprig of grass, he carefully dropped one into my cauldron, one into Daphne's. The sprigs instantly smouldered away, like coals, vanishing.
"Simply splendid!"
The others grew despondent.
"You were right, you two, in saying you'd manage without any trouble. Good for the rest that you're not taking part in our little competition…"
And these words cheered the rest up.
"…I hope you found use and experience for yourselves in the process too."
"In a certain quantity."
"Good, good. Now," the professor looked into the next student's cauldron. "Very nice, but I haven't checked everyone yet."
Reaching Potter's cauldron, the professor was surprised, as he had been at the sight of our work.
"Merlin's beard! Work no worse than your colleagues'," the professor nodded at us, then checked the potion with a sprig. "Yes, perfect!"
"Someone's clearly swapped Potter out," I whispered with a smile.
"Definitely," Daphne nodded.
"Seriously?" and where had Brown come from beside us. "Someone's swapped Harry out."
"Yes," I nodded, and Daphne backed me up: "It's Severus Snape under Polyjuice."
"And Harry himself," picking up the baton, I continued the thought, "is lying bound in a niche under the Headmaster's desk…"
"…where the Headmaster's loyal house-elves are torturing him with terrible tortures."
"Incredible!" the blonde dashed off somewhere, and on her face there fairly glowed a sign reading "Breaking News."
"You know, Daphne, I even missed this theatre of the absurd a little."
An interesting Potions professor we've got, no doubt about it.
---------------
Give me Powerstones if you like the story.
If you want to read 60+ advance chapters, you can do so on my Patreon.
Patreon(.)com/TheRedSpell