Hemione bit her lip and ran an unsteady hand through her wild hair. The humidity caused by the twenty burning cauldrons in the room had wreaked havoc on her already bushy hair and she hurridly scraped it back into a messy pony tail before returning to her potion.
Why didn't it look right? She re-read the instructions that she'd transcribed as Snape had read them out. By now her binding solution should be a deep, clear purple. However, hers was much closer to a lilac shade. Granted, Harry's happened to be yellow and Ron's had congealed into a murky brown lump and had actually crawled out of his cauldron. Indeed, he was still chasing the rubbery concoction around the room jabbing at it with his wand much to the delight of the slytherins in the room. Even some of the Gryffindors were laughing at him. But Hermione paid little attention, her potions were usually always right but this one...was wrong.
Before she could dwell on this much further however, a shadow descended over her cauldron and she gulped. "Well well miss Granger, what have we here?" Snape's drawl washed over her and her stomach twisted painfully. Oh no.
"Oh, it's uh a binding solution sir."
"And I trust you added the lacewig larvae before bringing the solution to the boil?"
Damnit.
"No...no I didn't sir" She clenched her teeth, her temples twitching with the effort not to say anything else. Of course, he knew she hadn't - why was he bothering to ask her? Not to mention the injustice of the fact that he was picking on her when a great many people in the room had done a lot worse than she had. Ron's potion had actually made it out of the window before he'd returned to his seat, a little bewildered, trying to ignore his now empty cauldron.
Of course, Hermione wasn't about to betray Ron, no matter how unfair Snape was being.
"Well" said Snape with a graceful wave of his wand "It will behoove you to pay more attention in future then won't it? 10 points from Gryffindor, I think." And the potion disappeared with a gentle 'pop' while she gawped at her suddenly potion-free cauldron, stunned.
Ignoring her splutters of protest and shock Snape surveryed the room with a smirk. "Draco has made a passable solution, you will spend the rest of the lesson with him - perhaps you will lean something." She looked at him without moving, barely comprehending what he'd said. He grinned inwardly at her hesitation but his face betrayed nothing of his amusement. Instead he simply raised an eyebrow and said "Go."
Slowly and with shaking hands she scraped her stool backwards and retrived her battered leather satchel off of the floor. As she did so, however, three male voices exclaimed, seemingly in unison "But sir!" And she stopped.
Snape growled, almost imperceptibly but Hermione shuddered. "Can I help you?" his eyes glittered menacingly and Hermione glanced at Harry and Ron imploringly, "please" she mouthed at them with a slight shake of her head. Draco glared at his head of house with fire in his eyes but Snape met his gaze, daring the boy to challenge him. With a groan, all three boys sullenly returned to their seats while Hermione took her new place at the back of the classroom.
Smilingly weakly at her former deskmates who were shooting her sympathetic looks over their shoulders and glaring daggers at Malfoy, who returned the gestures with a derisive sneer of his own, she unpacked her bag at her new desk, trying fastidiously to ignore the boy next to her who was simply radiating anger at his new potions partner.
Draco was livid. He scraped his chair away from Hermione who sat straight backed next to him, trying to ignore him. "If you think for one second that I'm going to help you Granger..." be began viciously, but she cut him off "Just shut up Malfoy, I'll pretend I'm not here okay?"
He snorted in response and went back to work, chopping his daisy roots with venom and tossing them into the potion. Hermione rolled her eyes and went back to stoically ignoring the blond Slytherin.
Draco peered at Hermione through his blond fringe. She was straight backed and proud, now flicking through her potions book - no doubt to memorise the correct way to brew the solution for future reference. She was pathetic. Such an intolerable know-it-all, but Draco wasn't fooled. She was clearly compensating for her lack of innate magical heritage with book smarts, it was obvious. He could barely fathom why no-one else had spotted it. Stupid Mudblood.
He was in the middle of this thought when he added the final ingredient, dried goat kidneys, to his solution with a little too much force. The small, shrivelled organs barely broke the surface of the bubbling liquid when the entire desk was consumed with a loud crack and a thick plume of violet and emerald smoke.
The ensuring havoc saw Harry and Ron running hopelessly towards their friend, held back by an invisible force just before they could penetrate the smoke. Conversely Crabbe and Goyle who were at the closest desk to Draco and Hermione practically fell over themselves in their attempts to move away from them. Pansy shrieked in horror and the rest of the students began exclaiming and chattering amongst themselves. Yet, Severus Snape found himself as close to laughter has he had ever been in the past 16 years of his life. Now THIS was going to be interesting.
"Everyone, in your seats." He raised his voice above the rabble, "NOW!" Reluctantly, even Harry and Ron made their way back, though without tearing their eyes away from the smoke which was still enveloping their friend and their enemy without dissipating.
Satisfied that everyone had settled down sufficiently Snape waved his wand in the direction of the pair muttering an incantation under his breath.
And there they stood, seemingly unscathed. The entire classroom gawped at the pair, and Snape was smirking evilly at them. What was the matter with him? Hermione looked at Draco while he scowled at the rest of the class. Realisation dawned and she gaped in horror. The binding solution... her left arm... she tugged it towards herself experimentally and Draco's right arm followed the movement. Draco was drawn out of his reverie with the action and he stared at his arm...their arms, confusion blossoming on his features.
"Looks like Mr Malfoy was the first person in the classroom to successfully brew his potion doesn't it?" drawled Snape. "Well done, Draco."
To be continued.