Another school day—soon I will finally get into the schedule and stop counting them.
Standard procedures with morning exercises and washing passed without problems, and as soon as I returned to our room, the guys were already quite awake—the alarm clock works wonders.
Breakfast in the Great Hall in friendly company was diluted with conversations about upcoming classes, along with the impatience of classmates to return to club activities as soon as possible.
"And what clubs are there at Hogwarts anyway?" I asked, simultaneously surprising everyone with my enthusiasm regarding eating oatmeal with raisins.
"Well, not particularly many," Justin shrugged immediately, causing feigned indignation from the girls.
"Hey, what do you mean 'not many'?"
"Isn't that right, Hannah?"
"Of course! Besides clubs for every subject except Potions, there is a choir supervised by Professor Flitwick, there is a dance club, though only classical. There is a Chess Club. Do you know about wizard chess?"
"Saw them playing in the common room," I nodded. "But didn't attach importance. And chess as such is known and understandable to me."
"The rules are the same," Hannah nodded with a smile. "Only the pieces are enchanted, animated. The particularly fancy ones even have a behavioral model, sometimes very advanced. Of course, chess sets come from different materials, different designs, and richness of the behavioral matrix."
"You speak so competently, it's a pleasure to listen," Ernie's friendly teasing caused a no less friendly smile from Hannah in return.
"It gets remembered by itself when you read descriptions in store catalogs, looking at pictures."
"Do they move themselves, or what?" I continued the topic of conversation, finishing the juice from the glass.
"Well, yes," the girl nodded. "They can, if they consider the player too incompetent or not confident enough in himself. They can give advice, talk, plot all sorts of intrigues."
"And there are various handicrafts," a slightly embarrassed Susan said inspiredly.
"You should mention the Gobstones Club too," Ernie smirked.
"So what? I like making things with my hands. It relaxes."
"Gobstones?" the ridiculous name aroused natural curiosity in me.
"Ah," Justin waved it off. "A stupid game, in my opinion."
"Now, now," Zacharias, who hadn't participated much in the conversation, was indignant. "It's an excellent game, and most importantly—useful."
"And smelly," the girls grimaced simultaneously.
"Stimulation for success," Zacharias nodded importantly. "My uncle loves Gobstones and can't stand Quidditch players."
"And what are you thinking of doing yourself?" I looked at the guy.
"Quidditch, of course."
Zacharias's answer amused the guys, and after laughing, we grabbed our things and went to the dungeons for the Potions lesson. Morning. Were my colleagues indignant? Undoubtedly. Not by Potions themselves, but by the fact that due to Dementors, classes are held together with Gryffindor including, and Snape has some kind of unhealthy reaction to them, and the lesson becomes tense and morally heavy—Snape flutters around the students like a black raven, inspiring fears with his very appearance. With their minds, the guys understand that nothing threatens them except a verbal dressing down, but they still worry and are afraid.
To the relief of many, Snape decided not to demonstrate his bad temper in the morning—the recipe on the board, there also references to useful material in the textbook and additional literature, which, surprisingly, almost no one had. That's it—brew.
What could be simpler than preparing ingredients according to instructions, and with its help throwing these ingredients into the cauldron, performing all necessary actions? Undoubtedly, this is not very difficult, although it requires attention and concentration—precisely these I showed, cutting, crushing, and squeezing various roots, leaves, skins, and other insides. But even in such a simple matter, there were those who either couldn't cope or intentionally spoiled everything, and it didn't matter whether for the sake of experiment or mischief.
"This is unbearable…" Daphne muttered on the edge of audibility, looking at the ingredients received from my hands.
"Very bad?"
"Better than average, but not enough."
I understand why it is highly desirable to brew a potion together—alone you simply won't have enough time to linearly, in order, prepare ingredients, and then brew the potion. You can do it in parallel, but here you need much more experience.
"I haven't figured out yet how to practice potions not in class."
"Conversations, Mr. Granger," Snape's quiet voice sounded from the side, moving like a silent shadow around the classroom.
Of course, I decided not to provoke him—a pointless activity, and therefore returned to the quiet and measured preparation of ingredients, which the no less quiet and calm Daphne used for the potion.
"Should turn out magnificent," she nodded, looking at the quietly bubbling liquid.
"Longbottom!" Snape's quiet but harsh voice attracted the attention of most students. "It seems even the vigilant control over your actions by Miss Granger is unable to correct your phenomenal ability. The ability to turn a decent-looking potion into a substance of mass destruction with one deft movement."
Waving his wand, Snape cleaned Longbottom's cauldron of contents, which began to show suspicious activity, trying to get out of this very cauldron and crawl away somewhere far.
"Mr. Finnigan," having walked only a couple of steps, Snape found something else to pick on. "Why do I see you at the cauldron, and not at the cutting board?"
Seamus Finnigan, it seems, is the name of this young Irishman with short and somewhat unruly brown hair. He looked at the Professor with indignation.
"It seems, Mr. Finnigan, I clearly made it understood that you shouldn't even approach the cauldron in the active phase of preparation. What part of the phrase 'do not approach the cauldron' escapes your understanding?"
"None, sir."
"Then step away from it before you blow up half the class. And by the next lesson, Mr. Finnigan, I would like to see one standard large scroll on my desk with a detailed description of all stages of preparing today's potion, revealing the nuances of heat treatment."
Snape headed further, leaving behind disgruntledly grumbling students. But no one noticed that not a single point had been deducted yet. Here Snape reached us again, leaned over the cauldron, sniffed, peered.
"It seems, Miss Greengrass, even such an assistant, who literally only yesterday saw a cauldron along with ingredients, is capable of raising the bar of your final product."
Nodding satisfied, the Professor headed further, looking for something to pick on, leaving us to "suffer" over the almost ready potion.
"No, Greengrass, there is definitely a conflict here."
The girl tried to burn a hole in me for a brief moment with a stern gaze of blue eyes, which should have discouraged me from bothering her, but it did not achieve its goal.
"Why do you think so?"
"His phrase can be understood ambiguously," I smiled slightly, starting to clean knives and other tools. "I don't think a person capable of subtle barbs and verified phrases can allow accidental double interpretation in his speech."
"And what, in your opinion, did he mean?" Daphne asked with interest, controlling the process of finishing the potion brewing.
"His phrase implies the question: 'And what were you doing, Miss, all these years, that the help of an absolute beginner is capable of greatly raising the quality of your work? Maybe you aren't that talented?'."
"Hmm," Daphne proudly turned up her nose. "You won't just leave it alone, will you?"
"I wasn't planning to pester. Just one of the topics to maintain the thread of dialogue. But I won't refuse to listen if you decide to tell."
"There is no secret or intrigue here. While a teacher works at Hogwarts, and especially with the title of Master, he can take a personal apprentice, but completely free of charge. This is compensated by the school and the Ministry, saying, a young talent raises the prestige, rating, international authority of the school, and this is all important. The country where the best school of the year is located, as well as the school itself, receives subsidies from the ICW."
The conversation was very quiet, on the verge of a whisper—those sitting nearby were unlikely to distinguish a word. Daphne looked at me for a moment, but seeing no special understanding, returned to the cauldron again, adjusting the fire under it, guided by signs known only to her.
"Personal apprenticeship is a way to obtain rich practice, experience, and knowledge of a master. But masters do not need money, otherwise, this would not be a problem. In exchange, they conclude various agreements to expand connections, influence, or obtain things invaluable in monetary equivalent."
"Logical," I nodded, having almost finished cleaning the tools and laying them out on a special cloth.
"My family is not interested in potion-making and everything connected with it. But I am interested."
"Clear. They won't invest for a whim, and here is a chance specifically for you."
Turning around to see the stern and disgruntled face of the Professor, I turned to Daphne.
"He doesn't look like someone who loves students and teaching. It seems to me that he will accept as an apprentice someone only slightly worse than him, show a couple of subtleties and nuances, and kick them out the door, securely barricading it from intrusions."
Daphne chuckled, turned off the burner fire under the cauldron, took her wand in hand, and tapped the cauldron a couple of times. Inside, in the translucent purple liquid, circles went from the walls to the center and back. This repeated a couple of times, after which the potion became transparent, but still purple—as it should be.
"You caught the essence of Professor Snape quite quickly," Daphne nodded. "Sometimes it seems he is here by no means of his own free will."
"Quite possibly…"
"The inability to understand from the first time…" the Professor appeared on the side again, "…the meaning of words forces me to doubt the presence of those germs of intellect in you, Mr. Granger. Once again I am convinced of the deceptiveness of the first impression."
He didn't deduct points, leaned over our cauldron again, sniffed, peered, nodded, and went on walking around the class.
"Mr. Finnigan, step away from the cauldron. And no, don't worry, I am by no means disappointed by the depth of your hopeless stubbornness. If you hope that the explosion of your cauldron will be strong enough to keep you in the Hospital Wing for a week, then note, loss of limbs will not be an excuse. From you additionally a standard large scroll with a description of the ingredients studied today and the nuances of their preparation."
Gryffindors resented quietly, Slytherins gloated no louder. Snape reached his desk and turned sharply to face us.
"Time," he dryly informed the whole class, causing waves of dissatisfaction. "Hand over potion samples and pack your things. The lesson is over."
No one had to be asked twice, and soon the entire third year was briskly marching towards the Transfiguration classroom. Almost all—Gryffindors are too hyperactive, it seems to me. With their cheerful crowd, they promptly screwed off in an unknown direction. The Ravens broke far ahead with an almost athletic pace, the Slytherins—walked leisurely behind.
"Snape is surprisingly calm today," Justin noted thoughtfully. "Didn't even deduct points from the Griffs."
"Does he deduct often?"
"If rumors are to be believed, before it was standard practice—deduct points from them for any reason," expressing universal boredom with his face, Zacharias answered instead of Justin. "You should have noticed from the first lesson."
"That's true…"
---------------
Read advance +60 chapters on my Patreon
Patreon(.)com/TheRedSpell