CH 2 ENJOY!!! :D
As soon as I entered the little room a feeling of gloom overtook me. Professor Snape stood at the front of the room, his arms crossed and his expression menacing.
"You're too early, Ms. Soran," he drawled impatiently when I attempted to put my books down on my desk. "Can't you see no one's entered the room yet? Go wait outside, and five points from Ravenclaw." I turned tail and stalked out, immediately wishing that I had kept the scribbled-on Potions book with me. Perhaps it would have a spell marked, "For Evil Teachers…"
Ten minutes later I reentered the room with Janelly and Dennis behind me, questioning me constantly about how I made such a potion with such instructions. I just grinned at them and motioned at them to shush, for Snape was watching us.
I took my position in the back of the room. No sooner had I set my textbooks down (again) than I was hit by a terrible proclamation.
"Today," simpered Snape in a deadly low voice, "We shall be practicing a defensive hex called the Impediment jinx." There were groans around the room. My brain started spinning with the confusion I usually felt upon hearing Snape talk. "Silence! Now, I know that most of you have heard of, practiced, or even been a victim of, this temporarily paralyzing hex. Judging by the low competence level of this class, I suppose the latter is more common." Heads were hung. I drew mine up straighter, laughing to myself. When it wasn't me being insulted, Snape was pretty funny.
"But today, we will be not only practicing it so that it will be at its strongest and longest-lasting, but we will also be learning to repel it. Do I have a volunteer to show the class what I mean?"
Snape hated me. I'm sure it was uncommon for Snape to hate any Ravenclaw as much as he hated me, as he usually targeted Gryffindors. I knew he would call on me anyway, however, and I was still foolishly emboldened by last period's endeavors, so I raised my hand up high and called out, "You have me!" I watched a greasy grin, very slight but obviously malicious, spread over Snape's papery face.
"Very well, Ms. Soran. Please come to the front of the class." I heard gasps and whispers as I strode to where Snape was waiting.
"I will now perform Impedimenta on you, and you will repel it with a Shield Charm. The incantation is Protego."
I snickered in my head. I knew Snape didn't know how well I knew the Shield Charm. My first Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Lupin, had taught us it, and I liked it so much I had practiced constantly since then. I was ready for Snape's hex, why wasn't it coming? I was just waiting here-
"Impedimenta!" Snape shot the hex at me and I stood, stunned, totally unprepared, then at the last second, I regained my wits and drew my wand-
"Protego!" The curse bounced off at the last second as I ducked pitifully underneath my charm. Snape looked amused.
"Well, that was less than capable." No one made a sound. "I shall give you one more try, and maybe I shall warn you this time. Ready, one, two, three-"
"PROTEGO!" My charm flew from my wand, blossoming over me rather like what I imagined a Patronus to be, blowing Snape clear off his feet and sending him stumbling into a wall. I could hear muffled chatter and giggles as Snape staggered to his feet, snarling.
"That was awful, and too soon, but who am I to-"
"Too soon?" I cried, having been rather pleased with my Shield Charm. "How could it have been too soon? Do you just expect us to stand around and wait for the bad guy to jinx us?"
I heard chuckles among my fellows as Snape's upper lip curled into a most menacing snarl. His cold, glittery eyes caught mine and, my boldness sapped, I was sure that I was going to die, but in an amused way, as I am not under any circumstances afraid of my old Potions teacher. Not a bit. I still was laughing in my head, though, thinking how I was going to be killed by my teacher for being smart (I was giddy) but then he just muttered, "Ten points from Ravenclaw for your cheek. Now everyone pair up, I expect practicing until the end of the period. For homework, a ten-inch long essay on whythe Impediment jinxis vital to your list of defenses. Everybody pair up now, if you are smart enough to do even that-"
I quickly grabbed Janelly's hand and dragged her to the front of the room. We shot spells back and forth for an hour, getting better at both casting and protecting every time. It turns out Janelly was excellent at Impedimenta, her spell often beat my shield and I flew backwards, wriggling uselessly against invisible ropes until the spell wore off. One time she even did it without talking, which made Snape, who was walking around supervising everyone, very cross indeed.
"Nonverbal spells are for sixth years," he pointed out most truthfully, but it made Janelly feel abashed all the same. "Stick to my instructions, and you won't appear nearly as slow as you are."
After Snape's class was dinner and then bed, as he was my last class of the day. As I was eating dinner, I saw that Harry had gotten his book back. When he looked over in my direction, I started staring at him until he looked away, shaking his head, then I giggled with Padma. I could tell she thought Harry rather dashing, but I thought he was a bit of a dunderhead. That's why I laughed, but I suppose he thought me infatuated. I didn't care.
As I was lying in my bed that night, Janelly's snoring rattling through my ears, I thought about everything I had learned that day. I thought about the potion I had made. Of course, Slughorn probably thought that I just had an amazing talent for potion making and that I had taken the instructions given and made Amortentia, which was a lie of sorts.
But actually, I reasoned with myself, I must have at least some talent, as I had never done too badly in Potions, not even with Snape, and Amortentia is wildly hard. I confirmed this not only by its appearance in Advanced Potion-Making, but by asking Snape if it was when I saw him at dinner. His answer ("Of course it is, difficult to a high degree. Why, were you thinking of making one?") was not as mean as it should have been, probably because Professor Dumbledore was right there, but still gave me the answer I needed. And I, in all my bigheadedness, convinced myself that I, Kinna Soran, pureblood witch, was good at Potions.
But was I ever wrong.
The next morning I woke up half asleep, and so I stayed for the rest of the day. I actually dozed off for a minute in History of Magic (Goblin rebellions are so boring. Why do we have to learn about them every single year?) Of course Professor Binns didn't notice, he doesn't notice anything. I would have stayed asleep longer but Janelly, who sits next to me, grabbed my arm in fear when a large spider crawled onto her desk. I awoke to needles shooting through my hand, and gave Janelly a horrible look after blowing the spider off the table.
In Divination, Professor Trelawney, who I have instead of Firenze the centaur, predicted Dennis' death again, causing him to nearly faint, but all I could think about was the hypnotic swirling of the mist inside my crystal ball, our lesson for that day. Herbology and even Charms, my favorite subject, were disastrous that day. When it came time for Transfiguration, I accidentally turned a rat into a bigger rat instead of a teacup, and then lost it when it ran out the door. I saw it again on the way to Potions, running away from a group of loudly screaming girls.
Potions was even worse than the way there. First off, when Slughorn announced that we would be making sleeping draughts, he made quite a show of asking me to make one without the book.
"No… I don't really think I want to, thanks…"
"Oh, come on, Kinna! I know you can do it- a potion maker of your expertise…"
"But," I pleaded, wondering what kind of trouble I had gotten myself into by goofing off the day before, "Isn't it dangerous? I mean, I've never made one before, even if I knew how I couldn't really remember, right?"
Slughorn looked at me seriously. "You didn't seem to feel that way when you made Amortentia yesterday from instinct alone." I opened my mouth to protest when I remembered that it had indeed appeared that I had not used instructions to make my potion before, so I just shrugged. If nothing had gone wrong yesterday, why would it go wrong today?
"Okay," I said, raising my eyebrows and watching as the entire class looked up at me. "Well, to make a sleeping draught, first, you… Um…" I could see the students around me taking out their books to check my answers. Janelly happened to take out hers too, and laid it on the table in plain sight of me. "Um… You…" my eyes swept her book, reading the instructions as fast as I could without being noticed by Slughorn, who was no longer standing over my desk in front of me but had moved behind me and was staring into my empty cauldron. "You take a bottle of powdered Flobberworm mucus, and you mix it with some… Mandrake leaves," I stammered nervously, dumping a huge amount of leaves into the cauldron, "and stir for… eightee- no, thirteen minutes, like that, see, counterclockwise." I shot Janelly a questioning look and she gave me a tiny, crooked, half smile half scowl, and pushed her book closer to me. I followed the instructions as best as I could, and by the end of the whole ordeal I had a medium-grade sleeping potion. Slughorn clapped and took a flask of it back to his desk, but I could tell he wasn't as impressed anymore. He didn't see, but I took some of it with me too, bottling in it my own mini vial. The second we were out of the dungeon I ran up and grabbed Janelly's arm.
"How did you know I needed help?" I asked, and Janelly snorted.
"Oh please. Did you really think I didn't know you were cheating off something that day? You can't make a potion for your life, Kinna." And she walked ahead to her next class, which, I realized, was my next class too. "Well… thanks," I called after her, slightly insulted, but of course I, too, knew that I really wasn't that good at Potions. I knew it had been a lie.
When I got back to the common room that night after a long, essay writing class with Snape, I piled my tons of homework on my bed and pulled out my flask of sleeping draught. I wondered what would happen if I drank it. Was it that badly made? Would I die? I decided to experiment by making it slightly less potent with essence of Murtlap and shaking the flask. Then I poured it into a muffin left by the house-elves, made hollow by my finger, and added sugar. I have absolutely no idea why.
I stuck the muffin in my robes for later.
The next morning in History of Magic, I ate the muffin.
Another moronic thing I did that I have absolutely no reason for.
It was a weird sensation, like I had all of a sudden become very sleepy. It was at this moment that I seriously wished I had not experimented with an already unstable concoction. The muffin tasted good, but my head started to spin the second I had downed the entire thing, and suddenly I found that the arm that had so tediously been taking notes could no longer move. I lost feeling slowly all the way down to my feet, which felt like lead, and when I turned my head to see if Janelly noticed anything (because of course, Professor Binns wouldn't) it stuck that way, and then I blacked out. I was vaguely aware of sliding down my chair and into blackness, a dull thud and a girl's scream…
