Last week's first Potions lesson had left a lasting impression. Snape's looming, bat-like presence was now permanently burned into every first-year's nightmares.
Harriet Potter, however, didn't mind Potions at all. She actually thought Snape was… okay? I mean, he was scary and yelled a lot (way stricter than McGonagall), but he wasn't unfair or anything. Just grumpy.
Today, though? Today he looked like a thunderstorm wearing black robes.
He was already waiting at the front when the students filed in, face tighter than a drum, a dark little cloud practically hovering over his head with lightning crackling inside.
The kids sat there shivering, praying the bell would save them. Those five minutes felt like five years.
Meanwhile, out in the corridor, Draco Malfoy was swaggering toward the dungeon with Crabbe and Goyle, grinning like a cat who'd eaten the canary.
After a week and a half at Hogwarts, Draco had cooked up what he considered a flawless plan.
Look—he wasn't stupid. He'd seen Lynn snap a steel pipe like a twig. Even if that had been some kind of trick, Draco wasn't risking a fist to the face. Malfoys didn't do fistfights. Malfoys did sabotage, backstabbing, and creative "accidents." It was a family tradition.
Today's Potions lesson was going to be perfect. Snape was Slytherin's Head of House, his dad and Snape were old pals, and Draco had already gotten points in the very first lesson while Lynn got zero. Today the mudblood was going down.
Draco practically skipped into the classroom, still smirking.
Then an icy stare hit him like a bucket of freezing water.
Not from the other students—from the front of the room.
Draco froze mid-step just as the bell rang. The temperature in the dungeon plummeted another ten degrees.
"I do not tolerate tardiness in my classroom," Snape said, voice low and deadly quiet.
"Draco Malfoy."
Every Slytherin head snapped toward Draco. He swallowed hard.
"Perhaps I should teach you the respect your father clearly failed to instill."
"Slytherin loses twenty points. Stand over there."
The entire Slytherin table went dead silent. Twenty points? For being two seconds late? Even McGonagall didn't murder her own house like that!
"B-but Professor—"
"Did I give you permission to speak?" Snape's eyes narrowed to slits. He looked at Draco the way most people look at something nasty stuck to their shoe. "While you're at it, why don't you make yourself useful and prepare the slugs for today's lesson?"
Crabbe and Goyle tried to slink to the back row. Snape's glare pinned them in place.
"You two idiots—sit down before I vanish what little brains you have."
They sat.
"Open your books. Today we continue the Boil-Cure Potion. Anyone who shows no improvement will drink their own failure."
The room became a graveyard. No one dared breathe wrong for the next four hours (two double periods back-to-back that felt like two centuries).
It was a massacre.
Fifteen minutes before the end, Lynn Bell finished first. His potion glowed a perfect, jewel-bright acid green. Snape leaned over the cauldron, inspected it for a full ten seconds, and actually nodded.
"Acceptable," he said (which from Snape was basically a love letter). "Five points to… whoever you are."
He moved on to Harriet's station. Hers was a solid (if slightly dull) acid green. Not perfect, but definitely passable for a first-year.
"Improved," Snape said, the corner of his mouth twitching a millimeter. "Ten points to Gryffindor."
Gryffindors started to exhale.
Then Snape's gaze landed on Ron Weasley's cauldron.
Ron's potion had turned into a bubbling, tar-like sludge that looked (and smelled) exactly like heated dragon dung.
Snape's lip curled. "Tell me, Weasley, is that your potion or did you simply defecate in the cauldron?"
Ron turned paper-white.
"I hear you have unusual culinary preferences. Be my guest—try it."
"Gryffindor loses five points. For the smell alone."
The bloodbath continued. Anyone whose potion wasn't perfect lost at least three points. Gryffindor hemorrhaged forty-three points in ten minutes. Slytherin did even worse (Crabbe and Goyle somehow melted a hole straight through the bottom of their cauldron and got twenty points taken for "attempted arson").
Draco, who'd spent half the lesson squashing slugs with shaking hands, finally presented a watery, barely-green potion that might cure boils if you were very, very lucky.
Snape stared at it like it had personally insulted his mother.
"I asked you to prepare slugs, Malfoy, not replace your brain with one."
Draco's knees knocked together.
Snape ladled up a spoonful and let it splash back down. "What delusion makes you think you're superior to anyone in this room? The troll that clearly molested your intellect?"
He gestured toward Harriet's cauldron. "You aren't even fit to sit in the same room as that Gryffindor."
Half the Slytherins gasped. The other half pretended to be suddenly fascinated by their shoes. Being told by your own Head of House, in public, that a Gryffindor was better than you? That was a crucifixion.
"Detention with me every weekend until Halloween," Snape said coldly. "Class dismissed."
Draco slumped against the wall as everyone filed out, face burning, twenty points gone, detention for the next month, and the entire Slytherin common room now free to make his life miserable.
His perfect plan had lasted exactly four seconds.
Somewhere in the distance he was pretty sure he heard Potter snickering.
Today was not a good day to be Draco Malfoy.