Author's Note: The following is a short that I'm tossing out. For a while I considered this as a possible start to a particular story, but after due consideration, went another way. Looking at the discarded scene file, afterwards, though, I thought it was something I had to share. It is not a complete story. Consider this the start of a collection of tossed out scenes and scene fragments that just didn't fit when I was writing something else. There are a couple more short scenes of the like that I might toss out with this one. Originally I posted this with the first fragment's title, but I've decided that my original description of what this is the best. This is the Dartboard of Discards
Worst School Best Results
"It's a travesty, I tell you, Griselda," an old man with a gray streaked brown beard said from his portrait. "Hogwarts employs some of the worst teachers, and is by far the worst boarding school in all of Europe, if not the world, yet somehow manages to keep turning out the results. Snape has to be the worst Potions professor I've ever had the displeasure of observing, yet somehow his NEWT class turned out two thirds Outstandings, and the highest amount of them adjusted to student body ever, this year."
"Oh Soterios, it can't be that bad," Griselda said, looking up from where she was taking her tea. It was a special blend that she had recently discovered during a rare foray into the muggle world. It was a shame that so many of those bookstores had gone to add coffee shops instead of good old fashion tea. "Snape was taught by Professor Slughorn, and he was quite the professor."
"Snape is nothing like Slughorn," Soterios said. "I've been watching both since they started their careers at Hogwarts. Slughorn was always a bit cloying, but Snape lives up to his first name instead. In one would I'd describe his teaching methods as severe. He rarely explains himself. Quite often his classes are little better than lab watched over by an overseer with a tongue that is a sharp verbal replacement for a whip.
"It was just past December that I witnessed him berate a first year for his potion being just barely past ripe when he added the lacewings. The poor girl was in tears. Judging from the tests, the potion may have actually turned out better than usual, not that the Gryffindor will ever find out!
"That man also has a regrettable tendency to favor his own house in the worst of fashions. The worst part of it comes with his public fawning of his Slytherins. I've yet to see him say that they've done anything wrong, sort of when they manage to blow up the lab. And Merlin help any Gryffindor. They won't get any assistance from him."
"That's strange. Last year the entire Gryffindor class got Outstandings on their NEWTs," Griselda remarked.
"Well, it was certainly not due to Snape!"