Unfortunately, these characters do not belong to me. I'm just playing in J.K.R.'s sandbox.

This universe is canon until the end of Goblet of Fire.

M rating for sexual imagery.

There will be 3 chapters.


The Potions Master's Mistake

By Louise Hilton


Chapter 1 - Private Thoughts

"I have the same problems with my house, Filius," Minerva McGonagall was saying, "but it's nothing new. The longer I teach, the more I realize that teenagers are dealing with the same emotions generation after generation."

The head of Ravenclaw House gave a sigh. "You're right, of course. I think we forget how complicated life seemed when we were that age."

"Severus has the advantage over us, there," Minerva commented. "It's not quite so many years for him to look back."

Filius smiled. "I'm sure that young Severus saw us as ancients when we taught him in his teen years."

Minerva looked over at Severus Snape, sitting a few feet away from them in the staffroom. A copy of the Daily Prophet was in front of his face, but the conversation was loud enough that he could hardly have not heard. "Feel free to disagree about our advanced age, 'young Severus'," she said, wryly.

Severus lowered a corner of his newspaper to regard her for a moment, then raised it again with no comment.

Minerva knew him well enough to have recognized the faintest hint of amusement on his lips.

She went back to the subject of the students. "Between their increasing magical powers and their hormones, it's not surprising that some of them struggle with friendships, missing their families, and schoolwork. Not to mention the effects of everything that happened last year with finally defeating Voldemort."

Filius visibly flinched, then shook himself. "Well, all we can do is try to understand them and guide them as best we can," he continued. "Don't you agree, Severus?"

Severus finally lowered his newspaper all the way.

"I don't need to understand them," he said, matter-of-factly. "My job is to teach them. I impart knowledge in the faint hope that one or two of the less ignorant ones might appreciate my efforts and have the intellect to retain it. I have no wish and make no attempt to understand their feelings."

The Gryffindor witch smiled and shook her head. "Have you ever considered that maybe they wouldn't seem quite so ignorant if you got to know them a little?"

"I have not." He folded his newspaper neatly and placed it on the coffee table, standing to head towards his classroom.

"I think you might find it worthwhile to try to understand them more," she insisted. "Consider it a challenge - you might be surprised."

"Good morning, Minerva. Filius," he said, deliberately choosing to ignore her words. He billowed from the staffroom.

Minerva and Filius exchanged glances of amused exasperation.

"Young people are so stubborn," Minerva remarked. "Now, if we can manage to drag our old bones out of these chairs, we should go and teach our classes."

~~~ SS ~~~ SS ~~~ SS ~~~

Severus prowled his classroom.

"Eye of newt, Miss Huckleton," he snapped. "You will get entirely the wrong result if you use that part of a newt's anatomy in this potion!"

Didn't these fools know how to read?

"Ten points from Hufflepuff, O'Neill! I understand why you might wish to hex your incompetent partner, but do not do it in my classroom."

"Warley, assist Miss Crane before she melts another cauldron." He had been about to terrify Crane with a more aggressive reprimand but she already looked close to tears and he really wasn't in the mood to deal with histrionics today.

And Minerva wanted him to try to understand them! He gave an irritable snort and continued prowling.

~~~ SS ~~~ SS ~~~ SS ~~~

It took a week before Severus grudgingly decided to give Minerva's idea a try. He had no confidence in it being anything other than a waste of his time, but his second- and third-years did seem particularly restless and annoying so he decided that investigating their feelings could be diverting for him, if nothing else. At the very least, he would have ammunition against any further attempts by Minerva and Filius to get him to adopt a more 'understanding' approach to his teaching.

He looked around his classroom at the sixth-year N.E.W.T. students. He liked a class this size - much smaller than those of the younger students. The total incompetents like Longbottom had been weeded out and had dropped the subject after their compulsory O.W.L.s, and what remained was a group who had both interest and some aptitude in the subject.

His eyes wandered over various students around the classroom. It was unfortunate that Potter and Weasley had the aim of becoming aurors and needed to continue their potions classes; he had hoped not to have to teach them this year. He didn't mind Miss Granger too much these days: he had finally had to concede that her more irritating qualities were outweighed by her considerable abilities. The same thing with Malfoy. Now that his double life as Dumbledore's spy was over, he no longer had to pretend to welcome the boy's sycophantic attentions. He had initially hoped to be rid of him, but his growing aptitude for potions had made him bearable.

He wandered around the room, regarding his students. They were 16- and 17-year-olds: there was no difficulty in understanding their emotions. Miss Parkinson could barely keep her eyes or her hands off Malfoy. Malfoy accepted her attentions without seeming to reciprocate her giggly enthusiasm. He could hardly blame him. While all the sixth-year girls were developed to the point of womanhood, Parkinson was no beauty. Still, a sixteen-year-old boy was hardly likely to turn down a willing and enthusiastic girl.

The same obviously did not hold true the other way around. Weasley was practically drooling over Miss Granger while she ignored his advances completely. She seemed indifferent to him, and regularly irritable with him in classes. He observed as Weasley took advantage of her focus on her cauldron to take a long stare at her. The boy wasn't the only one that had noticed Miss Granger's development over the last year - he had spotted many of the other boys watching her with the same expression on their faces. He stepped between the two, making them both jump.

"Passable, Weasley," he told him, "though a little heavy-handed with the armadillo bile." He turned to the girl. "A reasonable result, Miss Granger, but stirring for longer before adding each ingredient would improve it." Her back had stiffened at his sudden appearance, and she merely nodded. She really didn't like to be criticized. "I told you about the armadillo bile," she told Weasley in irritation. He looked forlorn at her words.

There you are, Minerva, he thought smugly. It's all about tangled love lives and hormones with the sixth-years. And you think I don't understand them!

~~~ SS ~~~ SS ~~~ SS ~~~

For Severus, more than any other teacher, finding out the exact thoughts and feelings of the students would have been easy. As a skilled Legilimens, he had the ability simply to open up the mind of almost anyone he wished. With miscreants, he could often get a glimpse at their transgressions without intentionally even using legilimency, unless he deliberately suppressed it. Weak-minded children.

He chose not to do that wherever possible, though. Invading the mind of a Death Eater was one thing; doing it to others without real cause was a violation. Dumbledore felt strongly about that, and he and Severus had agreed that it should never be done.

A superficial look at the students' emotions, however, presented no such ethical difficulties, he decided.

He held up the small vial of Empathia he had brewed overnight and drank it. It should last for about two days: plenty of time to prove that understanding the students was a waste of time and put this nonsense behind him.

His first class were second-years. He knew the potion was working as soon as they began coming into his classroom. He could sense confused waves of emotion coming from them, but nothing specific. It was like hearing many instruments playing at once, but not being able to pick out individual tunes. But it was quiet music, not overwhelming; he could sense the emotions but not feel them. He was not affected by them.

Severus explained the work that the class was to perform, then stepped back to supervise and to examine the effects of the Empathia.

At first, it was difficult even to determine what emotions he was sensing amongst the chaos, but he gradually began to distinguish them. Frustration, friendship, annoyance, jealousy, fear. He smirked inwardly at this: he didn't need Empathia to recognize the effects of an angry word to a second-year. Often, the slightest glare could do the job.

As he became accustomed to the sensation, he found his perception improving. He could tell from whom an emotion was coming.

Amusement.

"I do not award a prize for 'class clown', Jacobs. If you do that again you will be in detention."

Pride.

"No need to look so pleased with yourself, Brearley, but I suppose brewing a potion without setting fire to the classroom is something of an achievement for you."

Boredom.

"Miss Falkner, if you appear bored in my classroom, then you clearly do not have enough work to do."

Loneliness.

He found that he had no response for Parker. Perhaps he would mention it to the boy's head of house. Pomona could deal with him.

But there were more: Tension, anxiety, love, anger, hatred, unease, worry, despair. Too many for him to focus on at once. He cleared his mind and allowed them to wash over him, then carefully practiced filtering and selecting as he chose.

Instead of heading to the Great Hall at lunchtime, he opted for a sandwich brought to him in his office by a house elf. He had no wish to be bombarded with the emotions of the whole school, and he was not surprised to sense no emotion from the elf.

He did, however, feel the need to stretch his legs and, knowing most of the school to still be eating lunch, he headed for the staffroom. He passed a few students in the halls, and allowed himself to be vaguely aware of their emotions as he passed them. Of course, his own presence influenced what some of them were feeling, and he noticed fear and anxiety in many of them. He found it interesting, though, that he detected little in the way of hatred. He had expected it, but a more common response to him, apart from the fear he often intentionally created in them, seemed to be respect. Either his students appreciated his disciplinarian approach to teaching, or his involvement in last year's dealings with the Dark Lord was more widely-known than he had thought. He shrugged inwardly. It made little difference to him.

He poured himself a coffee from the pot in the staffroom and turned to head back towards the dungeon. Stepping aside to allow Minerva through the door, he paused. Irritation. Friendship. Respect. Affection. Interesting. He nodded to her, wondering which of those emotions were for him and which were already on her mind, but said nothing and continued on his way.

The halls were getting more crowded as lunch came to an end. Among others, he spotted Potter and Granger, laughing as they walked, and took a vague interest in their emotions as they passed. Potter's main feelings seemed to be amusement and friendship, but he also sensed irritation and dislike. From Miss Granger, the same amusement but also strong feelings of nervousness and attraction. Poor Weasley, the sarcastic voice inside his head smirked. Hardly surprising that she would prefer the Golden Boy over his insignificant sidekick, although what either of them could offer someone with her talents and intellect he could not fathom.

Not that it mattered. He was not interested in their private lives. He had sensed enough of the feelings from his students to realize that Minerva and Filius were right: the students' feelings were complex and overwhelming. But they were also wrong: trying to understand them was a waste of effort. Severus was here to teach them, not to help them solve their problems. He provided structure and discipline, and he had no need or wish to know what they felt about it.

He thought about brewing an antidote to the Empathia at the end of the day; it was a simple process of adding a couple of ingredients to the original potion, letting it simmer for twenty minutes, then drinking it immediately. There was no purpose in continuing this little experiment for much longer. On reflection, however, he decided that he might as well wait for the potion to wear off naturally. At least that way, Minerva and Filius could not accuse him of not taking the idea seriously.

By the next afternoon, his control over his ability was getting to the point where he was easily able to filter out extraneous feelings and focus just on what he wanted. Although he had decided not to deliberately read the emotions from his sixth-years, he couldn't help but notice some of them as he supervised their work.

In most students he sensed anxiety about the complex potion they were brewing, and a sort of general stress that seemed disconnected with his class. He supposed that all their classes were difficult this year, and their homework load was probably stressful. The situation between Malfoy and Miss Parkinson was exactly as he had expected, and they were not the only ones with the opposite sex on their minds. With the number of students whose emotions seemed to be centered on attraction (and in one or two cases, outright lust), he wondered how they managed to get any work done at all.

Weasley's emotions were a mix of nervousness and adoration that Severus found sickening. He stood behind him, unobserved, then spoke in a low but firm voice. "Weasley! Concentrate on your work."

That's when he felt it - a sudden wave of emotion from Miss Granger. Her shoulders twitched and she felt not just attraction but arousal. He felt a moment of satisfaction that he had correctly assessed the situation between Miss Granger and Potter, but then stopped in disbelief. The abilities given to him by the Empathia were becoming more finely-tuned, and he realized he could sense both the emotions and on whom they were centered. Miss Granger's feelings were not focused on Potter - she was attracted to and aroused by Severus himself.

He stepped away, confused and astounded. There was nothing in the way she acted or spoke that would have given him the slightest clue about her feelings. He must be wrong. He must have misinterpreted what the potion was telling him.

Without stopping to think, he said sharply "Miss Granger." Her eyes snapped up to meet his in surprise at his tone.

Quickly but carefully, he skimmed the surface of her mind, making certain that she would be unaware of his intrusion.

The images came quickly into his mind from hers - images that were not memories but thoughts ... fantasies ...

... She was in his classroom, focusing on her cauldron, and he was stepping up behind her, gently running his hand down her back, causing her to shiver with pleasure ...

... They were in his office and they were kissing deeply. One of his hands was in her hair and the other pulling her body firmly against his ...

... He was sitting on a comfortable couch with a book in his hand. She lay with her head on his lap, absorbed in the pages of her own book ...

... She was naked in his arms and his hands were exploring the smooth skin of her breasts ...

... She was in her bed in the dark, touching herself and whispering his name. 'Professor Snape,' she breathed. 'Severus'...

Abruptly, he pulled out of her mind. It had taken only a second to see everything, and her eyes were still on his, expectantly.

"Your potion requires more ground unicorn horn," he said.

He turned and strode to his desk.


Notes: I love writing about Minerva McGonagall. She's so much fun! But not as much as Severus, of course.

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