Snape looked up from his marking and shuddered. Twenty minutes into Wednesday's Potions lesson and pockets of the classroom already resembled the remains of a badly organised wizarding war-zone. The chilly dungeon was lit by occasional flashes of green light as the majority of the class worked quietly through the instructions he had left them on the board. Some, however, were creating minor mayhem through their ineptitude and Snape felt a sense of irritated satisfaction as he observed the localised catastrophes unfolding in front of the usual suspects.
He would assume an enchantment of the most powerful kind had been placed on the lesson had Neville Longbottom managed anything remotely like what was required of him but today the student seemed to have surpassed even his regular imbecility. Far from a gently simmering green liquid, his cauldron appeared to contain something volcanic in nature; a volcanic something that kept hiccupping at dangerous intervals and was causing the fellow Gryffindors working near him to edge nervously away. The look of bewilderment on Longbottom's face sent a shiver of barely repressed repulsion through Snape's frame that he quickly modified into his usual sneer. He smiled inwardly, calculating how long he could leave Neville panicking in front of his creation before he, as Master, would have to step in to save him, and possibly the surrounding workbenches as well. He frowned as Hermione Granger busily pushed Neville aside and stared at the interior of the cauldron, as though she had any hope of correcting the horrendous mess Longbottom had made. The girl was constantly interfering, her pouting face, judgemental and pious, always accompanied by a ramrod straight hand in the air. He despised her. How could he not? Look at the company she kept…
Yes, look at it.
Snape allowed himself a quick glance in Potter's direction. For once, the boy was not making quite such a disaster of his potion, although that was probably more down to the Granger girl's assistance than his own ability. Certainly, the Weasley boy – he seemed to spend his life teaching these Weasley paupers, there were so many of them now – looked as if he had no clue what he was doing and was therefore an excellent lab partner for Potter, who seemed to regard Potions as beneath his attention. The pair of them constantly underperformed and Snape was often unsure whether this made him angry or pleased. Angry certainly: the Potter boy was arrogant just as his father had been and his arrogance affected this subject, both in his work and his attitude to its teacher. But pleased also: his failures gave Snape the chance to focus on him and recently he somehow felt compelled to focus his attention on Harry more than he would like to admit.
Snape quickly shifted his gaze as Potter suddenly looked up from his work. The look he had seen on the student's face was one of pure hatred, undiluted and raw. Certainly the boy had been through a tremendous amount during his time at the school and their relationship was undeniably complicated – Harry's resemblance to someone who had caused him such humiliation and pain had made certain of that – but Snape still felt a sense of shock at the power of Harry's expression. And power there was in it. He felt his face flush slightly and, acutely aware of how the colour would stand out on his pale skin, turned quickly to Longbottom.
"Stupid boy! Did I ask to transfigure your cauldron's contents into a detailed replica of Mount Vesuvius? No doubt you would have about as much success with that, as you have with anything I ever ask you to do. In other words, none. Stand aside, you imbecile! You too, thank you, Miss Granger! I don't think any amount of irritating interfering will rectify what is one of the worst concoctions I have ever seen in this room."
He paused as he stood over the angry cauldron, which was now starting to rock alarmingly on its base, threatening to send its contents onto the floor, where they would no doubt make swift progress through the stone. He heard, as he expected, the sniggers from Slytherin pupils; Malfoy's loudest and most obvious of all. He also heard, again expected, Granger's huffy whispering as she consoled the idiot Longbottom and complained at her mistreatment. He waved his wand over the seething cauldron, watched briefly as its contents disappeared and then turned to Hermione, smiling cruelly as he quickly came to the decision that her comments would result in a loss of house-points from Gryffindor. The injustice of it would hurt her more than the loss itself and this too sent a spark of satisfaction through him.
Just as he turned his now openly sneering face towards her, however, he met Potter's eye directly again and this time the look of animosity was such that he could not look away. He gradually became aware of a vast and growing landscape of silence in the room as he and Potter stared at each other, finally broken by an awkward, obviously staged cough by Malfoy. Snape felt another wave of irritation but not this time caused by a Gryffindor pupil.
"Perhaps you could get Madam Pomfrey to look at your throat before next lesson, Malfoy. We have enough probable contagion in this room with the horrors that Longbottom creates, without you bringing in some disgusting infection as well. Tidy away your workbenches and then class dismissed."
As the class hurried out, Snape forced himself to look down to his marking again but out of the corner of his eye he caught the looks on their faces as they rushed past: among them, Granger's usual righteous indignation and Longbottom's dejection. Malfoy paused at his desk as though he wanted to say something but Snape waved him away without even looking up – he had no interest in making peace now; there was someone else he wanted to observe as they left. Snape was to all appearances reading intently but as Potter passed him, he looked up briefly and saw something he didn't at first recognise in the young man's eyes: surprise and a sense of renewed appraisal.
Snape quickly glanced down, aware that, for the second time that lesson, his cheeks had begun to warm.