Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine at all.
A/N: Thanks for all the reads and the great reviews! I appreciate your time, and I think you will enjoy where this is headed...really anxious to get to the juicy bits. Any guesses as to what's going on?
Chapter Three: Frog's Blood
Severus Snape slammed the door shut behind him, silencing the chattering first years. He was not in the mood for their anxious tittering. He'd already had to put up with seeing Remus Lupin at breakfast, James Potter's miniature in the hall, and the damned dementors were making his mood even fouler; those, he reminded himself, were the fault of Sirius Black. It was if all of Hogwarts were going back in time, only the one person who made such a time bearable was nowhere to be found. Nowhere.
"There will be no foolish wand waving or silly incantations in this class." He announced as usual. At the conclusion of his speech, he directed their attention to the board. "You will follow these instructions exactly and you will do so silently. Stopper and name your potion and hand it to me when you are finished."
He watched them work. Several worked too fast with unsteady hands. The slower ones, the ones taking great care, those were the ones whose work was worth anything.
Standing over one Hufflepuff's shoulder, he thought the boy would do better to use the broad side of the knife. He noticed a Ravenclaw girl a moment later who had caught on to just that. He thought how she was the one who had been missing her shoes; she was wearing shoes then. When he rounded her desk and saw she was just two stirs away from being finished but that she was having trouble peeking into her cauldron. He thought she was about to spill, but she paused, climbing on top of her stool with care and finishing perfectly.
Before he could award any points even if he had wanted to, the child next to her became a sniveling wreck. His potion was swirling like a cyclone and changing from green to purple. He was trying to fix it, but was making it worse.
"You there." Snape snapped, making many of them start. "What was the first ingredient you put in?"
"I—I don't know, sir." He fumbled, tugging his short hair in a panic.
"Look at the board, you ridiculous child. Well, what is the first ingredient?"
"Powdered root of—l"
"Wrong." He said. "That was the first ingredient you were supposed to put in, and judging by this potion you did not. Now, what exactly did you put in?"
"I don't remember." He actually looked as though he might cry over one stupid potion in a controlled environment.
"Our failures are wastes if we learn nothing from them." The potions master sighed.
"I—I failed?"
"Anyone?" Snape ignored him. "You, Ravenclaw." He called out the girl next to him who was finished. She looked up with light brown eyes, plain face surrounded by red gold hair. "What did your neighbor do wrong?"
He waited patiently even for him, but the child would not answer.
"Well?" He demanded. She flinched, but continued to look him in the face without speaking. "Which ingredient did he mistakenly put in first?"
The answer was obviously frog's blood. He'd made that clear. The book made it clear. Even a glance at the board allowed the chance of a correct guess. She wasn't wavering or bursting into tears. She just was not answering. Severus felt his anger bubble.
"Which. Ingredient."
"Frog's blood!" Someone shouted, unable to take the tension anymore.
"Ten points from Ravenclaw!" He shouted, spying the speaker's blue scarf. His eyes snapped back to the calm light, brown ones of the quiet girl. They had little specks of light in them. "Now, tell us, miss, what was it again?"
She looked around a bit but remained utterly dumb. He swore they got dumber every year, but this had to be some mistake. Dumbledore would never allow a complete idiot to come to Hogwarts, and obviously she had read the board.
"Have you been spelled or something?" He whipped out his wand.
"Just answer!" The other student hissed, clearly afraid for her.
"Ten points from Ravenclaw, for your silence Miss—what's your name?"
The girl did not answer. The nerve. Mouths fell open.
"Ten more points! Now you will tell me your name."
Nothing.
"Ten more points from Ravenclaw." All eyes were fixed on them. She squirmed, eyes beginning to water. She looked at the floor.
"Twenty points!" He boomed over her.
"But sir!" Someone protested.
"Thirty!"
"What's she doing?" They whispered, glaring at her. "Why won't she answer?"
She only stared at the floor, at her shining new, black boots.
"Miss! If you don't answer me in the next three seconds, it will be forty points from Ravenclaw."
The was a gasp, then silence—save the popping sound of nails bitten to their beds and the creak of wooden stools as student about to fall from their seats. Snape loomed over her darkly, waiting for her to break. Her mouth seemed to struggle to open, breaths working up, but when she looked up, her eyes glistened, overflowing with tears. It shook him a moment. It looked like someone had melted down the gold.
The eyes were kind, but old and bit sad, as if trapped inside a tiny body. But it was none of this that stopped him; it was their expression. Help, they said. Her mouth opened, and closed and her eyes stayed wide.
"For Merlin's sake! Finish your potions and get out!" He spat at them, pivoting, robes whipping behind him.
There was only one way to sort such a thing.
"Headmaster, I need to talk to you about a first year." Severus demanded as he strode into the office, the shoulder of said first year's coat in his fist. "Forgive me, I did not realize—"
Professor McGonagall cut him off, "You needn't leave us, Severus." They weren't the only ones concerned; other professors had arrived already. They eyed the Ravenclaw girl knowingly.
Severus released her as he hissed, "I have one first year that refuses to answer questions pointedly put to her. The simplest question, headmaster. Will not even answer so much as her name. She's not been spelled."
"Miss Green," Dumbledore's voice interrupted softly, one hand hovering over his desk silenced Snape. "Does not speak, Professor."
"What?"
He glanced at the other teachers who seem perturbed but not surprised.
"She does not speak." Dumbledore repeated. "You may be dismissed, Miss Green." She hurried away. Severus took a moment to recover.
"You mean I just took away 120 points from Ravenclaw because no one bothered to mention the girl was MUTE!"
"Oh, she isn't mute, Severus." The headmaster explained simply. "I have no reason to think she cannot speak. I said she does not speak."
"Preposterous! How is she to go her entire magical education without speaking?"
"I would have thought that would be more of a blessing than a burden in your classroom." His eyes twinkled over his spectacles.
"But it is my concern." Minerva confessed.
"Indeed." Someone echoed.
"And then there's the matter of her lack of care. Sending a child to school with no shoes!" The transfiguration professor began.
"Miss Green," Dumbledore said sadly. "Has no family, and she has not spoken since her family was murdered." The room fell silent. "But she is very clever, and she does have magically ability she will need to learn how to use. She will find a way to manage in all your classes, I assure you. In the meantime, do your utmost to ignore it entirely. Treat her no different than you would anyone else."
He began to scribble something, which meant that conversation was over. The teachers exchanged uneasy glances.
"But Albus," Professor McGonagall began. "How on earth am I to do that?"
He took a thoughtful moment to answer. "If we received a student with magical ability who was blind, would we not do our best to help them become a young witch or wizard?'
"Well yes, but—"
"And if that child had wilfully blinded themselves, would we be any less willing to teach them whatever we could?"
She fell silent.
"But what's the point, headmaster?" Snape asked gently, but in earnest. "She'll never be able to finish."
"Then perhaps you're right Severus. Shall I just return her to orphanage where I found her then?"
He had no reply.
In the weeks that followed, Miss Green turned in all her homework. Her essay responses were correct and well written, her potions well above average. She would nod yes or no if a question was put directly to her, or even indicate which ingredient or utensil was required if asked and it was on hand. Since she was probably failing every lesson besides potions and astronomy, Snape felt no hesitancy in giving her the grades she had earned in potions.
The class had clearly not forgiven her for losing them so many house points, but Ravenclaws were even less forgiving of her out-performance of them. He could do nothing about it, even when he was fairly certain Mr. Sallis had poured vinegar into her cauldron to ruin what would have been a simple draft.
Particularly annoyed at the chattering and ineptness of his class, he informed them, "I would greatly appreciate it if all of you would study carefully the great skill which Miss Green has in the art of silence and dedicate yourself to the study of mastering it. Since none of you can manage a simple anecdote that way hopefully no one will want to poison you."
And for that, he got a brief but bright smile amongst the scowls. He caught it in the glance up from his work. It was gone as quickly, but it had been there.
A/N: Thanks for reading. Please, please take just a second to review!