Chapter: One
Title: The Unlikely Side Effects of Floo Powder
By Miss Augurey
Invented in the late 1200's by Ignatia Wildsmith, Floo powder has been used as a common means of transportation for over 700 years. By simply throwing the silvery powder into one's fireplace, stepping into the harmless flames, and speaking the name of the desired location, any person (young or old) may travel to most any place in the wizarding world. Floo Powder can be purchased at any Dervish and Banges for 2 galleons a cauldron-full (a good buy, says last month issue of Witch Weekly).
~Advertisement for the Ministry of Magic's own brand of Floo Powder
It was only 8 o'clock in the morning and Potions Professor Severus Snape was already having a bad day.
As he had been eating his breakfast, some idiotic owl (what was it those Weasley brats had called it? Errol?) weighed down by an overly large package had temporarily lost its ability to fly and had landed in the plate of eggs in front of him, spilling Snape's morning coffee on the surprised professor as well as Minerva—who was always extremely irritable in the mornings.
Then, robes wet from the spilled coffee in the worst place possible, he had the pleasure of having to walk through the hall to change them before his first (and very early) class. Trying to ignore the stifled giggles of the students, he had miscalculated a step, caught himself on his robe and had landed, face up, on the cold marble of the floor.
The whole hall had broken into a roar of laughter, Snape fleeing quickly away from the embarrassing, migraine-inducing din.
Now, he stood in front of his Advanced Potions class, malevolently eyeing the drowsy seventh-years and wishing that he had spoken to Dumbledore about evading this certain lesson (which he thought would fit better in the remedial potions class).
To top it all off, the coffee spill had caused an immediate need for a shower, and his hair was now a thick and frizzy (and people wondered why he kept it so oily).
Sighing and wishing that he had Longbottom or the Weasley in the class to bark at for doing something stupid Snape held up a small vial of silvery powder and glared at his students.
"Potter! Tell me, what is this potion called and what is its use?
Harry Potter stared at him for a moment, wishing that he was anywhere but in this dungeon classroom. He looked a bit puzzled as he turned his gaze upon the small vial and some of the class claimed they saw Snape roll his eyes.
"I didn't expect even you to be this daft, Potter," he said, putting the vial down in front of him. "Miss Granger, put your hand down; I am not going to call on you." He sighed, rubbed his temples with his long, pale fingers and looked back up at the class. "This is Floo Powder, something that I expect all of you have used at one point or another and something that I expected all of you--" he looked pointedly at Harry "—to have known about. I was obviously wrong."
Harry looked indignant.
"You called it a potion. Floo powder isn't a potion," he said quite snappishly. Hermione and Snape sighed and almost the exact same time.
"Once more, you have proven your intellect Potter," the professor declared sarcastically. "Not all potions are liquid, for those of you that are under that impression," he continued, scanning the eyes of the class before him. "Well?" he barked. "Why aren't you writing this down?"
There was a scramble for quills and parchment, but Snape didn't wait. He began dictating quickly the history and the global uses for what he called "a mode of transportation for blithering idiots."
"The only intelligent way to travel is by Apparation or Portkeys," he finished, feeling much better after his rant about the idiots that ran the Department for Magical Transportation. "Now, could I have two students that--" he stopped as a hand shot up in the air.
"Of course. Miss Granger, do you think it wise to volunteer without first knowing exactly what you are volunteering for?" he asked, he voice dripping with false politeness.
Hermione, who sat next to Harry in a row near the back, turned slightly red in the cheeks but made no move to put her hand down.
Snape sighed. "Fine Miss Granger, please come up to the front of the classroom." He looked up, waiting for another student to raise their hand.
In the few moments that Snape had been speaking to Hermione, the level of chatting in the classroom had risen from none to enough to set off the pain in Snape's head again, and the professor ground his teeth.
"Malfoy!" he ground out, "to the front of the classroom immediately."
Draco Malfoy turned from his place between Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott, quite irritated and mentally kicking himself for letting Snape overhear him call him a "slimy, Dumbledore-loving kiss-ass." His status as class pet had suddenly disappeared and Draco quickly learned that he would have to study to do well in Potions (something that he certainly didn't like).
He shot a quick glance at Snape before deciding it would be wise to finish the conversation with Zabini and Nott later—how disappointed the two must be, not being able to hear every detail about Draco's new Nimbus 3000.
Hermione visibly blanched as she watched Draco move to the front of the classroom.
"Bloody hell," she muttered under her breath, before regaining her composure and adopting the snootiest and better-than-thou look on her face that she could muster.
'I won't even say a word to him,' Hermione thought, turning away from Malfoy, 'he isn't worth a syllable from me.'
Draco didn't even acknowledge her existence. He had better things to do than pay any sort of attention to such a short, bushy-haired beaver like the girl that stood next to him. He decided that he wouldn't even deign to talk to her and immediately stuck his nose in the air (the resemblance between him and his mother was now uncanny).
Draco, preoccupied with looking as condescending and snobbish as possible, knocked Hermione's shoulders as he turned around.
"Watch it Granger!" he snapped, mentally cursing himself for already breaking his inner oath.
"It was your fault Malfoy—you were the one who bumped into me," she spat back, the high-and-mighty routine disappearing instantly.
Draco stared back at her coldly. "Oh right. The little mudblood can't ever do anything wrong, now can she?" he remarked softly enough that only she could hear.
Hermione flinched at the name but only stepped closer to Draco, her eyes never leaving his.
"Don't you think that your insults are getting a little old, Malfoy?"
"Don't you think your magical skills are getting a little off, Granger?" he challenged, mimicking her.
Hermione only stared back at him. How he knew, she didn't know, but her grades had been slipping just enough so that she had to work terribly hard to keep on top of all of her classes. Between Advanced Transfiguration, Potions, Arithmancy, DADA, History, Runes and Charms (and the ever looming NEWTS) Hermione finally learned what being tired of school felt like.
The day before, in Runes, she had gotten a less-than-perfect score on her test. The fresh wounds from that nightmare were only beginning to heal.
Hermione opened her mouth, surely to say something quite intelligent and biting back to Malfoy, but Snape cut her off as he began to list the experiments that they would be using to make their own Floo powder in class. Hermione resigned herself to staring viciously at Draco as they scurried in and out of the Snape's storage room adjacent to the class.
When most of the ingredients had been mixed into the cauldron in the middle of the room, Snape beckoned for Draco and Hermione to carry the last to ingredients to the center.
"What makes Floo Powder worthy of this class's time is the temper of the potion itself. If these last two ingredients--" he motioned to the black beetle eyes and monkshood that Draco and Hermione were holding "—are not added at the exact same time, then the potion will either be worthless or will explode." Some of the class gulped, praying that Draco and Hermione's feud would stop long enough for them to complete their jobs correctly.
Snape turned to watch as the two students carefully added the last ingredients. Perhaps he had been right to choose these two for such a potion—Granger had easily the best marks out of all of the students in the entire school, and Draco was never far behind. He had little to worry about even when they helped make the more complicated of his potions
As the potion in the cauldron suddenly solidified, the class gasped. Hermione rolled her eyes (hadn't anyone else read about Floo powder in this years Potions book?) and glimpsed Draco yawning. Evidently he wasn't that impressed either.
"Now, if one of you would like to test it," Snape said, gesturing towards the fireplace in which a fire was already blazing. The professor turned towards them. "Throw the powder in, step inside the flame and ask to be taken back to this exact fireplace." He turned back towards the class, trying to inconspicuously flatten out his hair with his hands.
"The different philosophies that accompanied the creation of Floo powder are even simple enough for all of you to comprehend." He looked pointedly at Harry and received only a cold stare back. "Say you ask to be taken to the same fireplace you are traveling from—what then? This will be illustrated by one of our volunteers in a few moments, but first, I need to explain the simpler arithmancy of the Floo Network—"
As Snape talked on to the class, Hermione collected a small bit of the powder into a vial and began to head towards the fire.
"Move Granger," said Draco pompously, grabbing the vial out of her hands. "You'll only mess this up."
If at any time in the future anyone would have asked Hermione Granger how much demonstrating the use of Floo Powder in Potions meant to her, she probably would have laughed. Truly, she couldn't have cared much less. But the way that Malfoy had so suddenly taken the vial from her—the way his stupid hair was always gelled, his robes always spotless and perfectly ironed, the way he had teased her from the beginning of their first year at Hogwarts—had for some reason compelled her to try and grab the potion back from him.
"Give it back," she snapped under her breath, eying the back of Snape's head to make sure that he wasn't witnessing her childish behaviour.
"I will not," Draco said indignantly, only tightening his grip on the Floo powder. The tug of war that ensued only ended with a final yank from Malfoy, sending him hurtling towards the fireplace and Hermione nearly falling back onto the counter.
Quickly, Draco added the powder to the flames and watched them turned green, looking back to smirk at Hermione.
Instead, he felt a tug on his robes that made him step a few steps away from the fire. He glared at the small girl who was now clinging to his arm, panting and nearly blowing smoke from her ears.
Snape was now traveling backwards, closer to the counter and the fireplace so he could demonstrate what he was dictating, never once turning around to see what exactly some of his pupils were gaping at.
Hermione tried to turn Draco around in a circle so that she would be the one closer to the fire, but that only led to a small scuffle and her almost falling off her balance. Squeaking, she tried to right herself, using Draco as support.
Snape, now finally irritated to the point that he felt he should stop his lecture, turned around to see exactly what was going on between the two students behind him.
He caught the edge of Hermione's shoulder, which sent her crashing on top of Draco.
Perhaps Draco had gained some muscles throughout the years, and perhaps he was tall enough to withstand a blow or two. But the full weight of Gryffindor's Head Girl was enough to send him backwards.
"Mufrohgr--!"
"Thrunph--!"
In a moment, both of them fell into the green flames, muffled obscenities flying from their mouths.
There was a flash of light and Snape turned to look at the green flames that were the only thing that filled the fireplace in front of him. He heard a few gasps from the nearly silent Potions class behind him and resisted the urge to scream.
This wasn't going to be a good day.
Author's Note: Hoped you liked it. This is my first fic, so I'm hoping it isn't really as bad as I think it is. I'd love to hear if you (for some reason) liked it so reviews are hoped for, dreamed about, all I want for Christmas, etc etc. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read all of this—makes me all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it. (Please excuse the fluffy-bunnies and rainbows-ish feel of this AN. I didn't mean to, I'm sorry.)