A/N: I took some liberties here with the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but the potions class is scripted directly from the book.
My first lesson was potions, I soon saw as I looked at my timetable. It too, like our common room, found its place in the dungeons, underneath the main school building. As we ran down so as not to be late, Blaise gave me a rundown.
"Professor Snape, he'll like you enough, you're a Slytherin and from what you've told me about your summer, he'll appreciate your hard work. He's not a bad guy just... dull. You'll see him be pretty harsh, but that's just the way he teaches. Snape is one of the best potions professors in England, most of his pupils get OWLs, Longbottom probably won't." I chuckled, Neville Longbottom was a house joke, and I had soon learnt to laugh in good fun, no matter what my personal feelings were. "Finally, listen. Carefully. Do everything Snape tells you. To. The. Letter."
As me and Blaise entered the classroom, I was immediately confronted by a dilemma. Blaise and Stella immediately flounced off to sit down on one bench, Pansy and Millicent together, Crabbe and Goyle, and as my eyes swept over the room, it was clear that only one space in the front row was empty, and of course, that one space was-sod's law-next to Malfoy. I sighed and sat down next to him. He gave me a smug smile, I stuck my tongue out in return. We all settled into the classroom, and immediately fell silent as the tall, commanding frame of Professor Snape swept into the room, and cold gust of air suddenly ghosting over the students. He began in a drone I recognized, the one which had told us to sleep the night before. It made sense, since Snape was the head of Slytherin house.
"Today we begin the year with the Draught of Peace. A potion to calm anxiety and to soothe agitation Be warned: if you are too heavy handed with the ingredients you will put the drinker into a heavy and sometimes irreversible sleep, so you will need to pay close attention to what we're doing." Snape carried on with his monotone murmur for a bit, and then instructions appeared on the board and we were told to begin.
I lowered my head to my cauldron and began to follow the instructions, to the letter as Blaise had advised me to. I found myself somewhat worried. I had never even been able to cook before, now I had to make a potion, and a complicated one at that. As I stirred three times clockwise, two anti-clockwise, and left it to simmer for another two minutes, I looked up to find Malfoy, his powerful figure looming over me, looking down.
"Not bad," he remarked, "for a squib-girl."I looked into my potion, so far all seemed to be going as planned.
"Muggles mix ingredients too," I retorted.
"I wasn't talking about the potion." He said, smiling down into his cauldron.I glared at him for the few seconds I had left, but then I turned back to carry on. I'm not sure if my face was flushed with anger or something else; something girlish and embarrassing.
With ten minutes left, Snape announced; "A light silver vapour should now be rising from your potion," mine was doing just that, but as I looked around I saw that I was one of few, most of the class having much difficulty with the potion. Even Malfoy next to me was choking on the thick black smoke that was billowing up and staining his hair.
"Potter, what is that supposed to be?" I heard from behind me, I hadn't even realised Harry was in this class. I turned, realising that although nobody had been talking before, the room had gone silent.
"The Draught of Peace."
"Tell me Potter," said Snape sneeringly, "can you read?"
Malfoy laughed next to me.
"Yes, I can."
"Read the third line of the instructions for me, Potter." I read them with him, add powdered moonstone, stir three times counter clockwise, allow to simmer for seven minutes then add two drops of syrup of hellbore. He must have forgotten the hellbore, which made the vapour silver I had learnt. His looked black.
"Did you do everything on the third line, Potter?"
"No," I barely heard it.
"I beg your pardon?"
"No, I forgot the hellbore."
"I know you did, Potter, which means this mess is utterly worthless. Evanesco." I knew that spell, the potion must have disappeared. Just then, Snape proceeded to tell us to hand in our potions. How unfair, I thought, but I had little time to think as I wrote down the essay assignment and moved packed up my supplies, dropping off my vial of potion on the way out, altogether pleased with myself and off to lunch.
"How did you do?" asked Stella as we mounted the stairs. I saw that he normally straight black hair was now frizzed and her eyebrows were scorched. She had obviously not done very well, so, being a good friend, I decided to give her a confidence boost. "Yours must have been better than you, I don' think my first potion was a huge success." In order to exaggerate my point, I began to pat down my robes, getting rid of non-existent dust.
The last lesson of the day was Defense Against the Dark Arts, taught by a teacher who was new to the school and who apparently came out of Cornelius Fudge's pocket. I didn't like the look of her, a middle aged, plump woman dressed like a five-year-old, complete with a fluffy pink cardigan. It seemed nobody liked her, as she soon began handing out textbooks that was certain, except for Malfoy and his cronies who accepted the books with impressive 'thank-you's and puffing out their chests. It was obvious what they were doing, trying to get into a more important position. Professor Umbridge= Ministry= Power.
"We will begin today's class with a brief reading of the most important laws in the Wizarding World, and they are those which ban the Unforgivable curses," Umbridge moved away from behind her desk and began to pace around the room.
"The first curse is Imperio, which will cause the subject to do whatever the wizard wants. It is a highly dangerous curse and is, in the mind of the Ministry, simply against nature. Man should exist to do whatever he pleases within the bounds of the law, and no-one should have the power to tamper that balance, hence the Imperius curse is unforgivable.
"The next curse is Crucio, which causes the subject immense agony without killing them. It is perhaps the cruelest of the three. We do have a young boy in here whose parents were both driven mad by it." she gestured to Neville, who shrank in his chair. "The Cruciatus curse is a truly evil and heinous form of torture, hence it too is illegal.
"The third, and worst of all curses is of course Avarda Kedavra, the killing curse, immediately killing anybody on the other side. There is only one case of a person having survived." There was no need for a gesture, we all knew all too well that Harry Potter, the boy who lived sat here, in this very room. "One had no right to take the life of another, so the killing curse is also unforgivable."
The room was silent in agreement, but in my own stupidity I felt compelled to raise my hand. "Surely it's not completely unforgivable..." I said, knowing I was already stirring a few students from their boredom-induced comas. Umbridge's head snapped up.
"What ever could you mean by that?"
"Well, surely if someone were out to kill you, you could kill them before they had the chance. If you knew that one of you would have to die for it all to be over, if you knew that they were truly evil and the world would be better without them?" I could have sworn that Umbridge's face at that point was the exact same shade of magenta as her cardigan.
"Do you seriously mean to tell me that you could condone the killing of another human being?" "That's not what I mean, only that in the muggle world..." "This is not the muggle world!" she shouted, frantic, "We do not kill people out of good fun here, we are not such animals as the muggles are! How dare you put us on the same level as them?" she stood silent for a few moments, fuming, and then, in a gesture far more unsettling, she calmed down. "Perhaps you would like to see me at the end of the lesson to discuss the matter further, hmm?" She then turned back to the class, telling them all to open their textbooks and begin answering questions. Although there was no talking, there was an immediate eruption of quills scratching on paper. Note writing, and about me no doubt. Shaky and nervous, I decided to look down at the book and begin my work. I paled at the chapter title.
THE WITCH TRIALS AND SEPARATION FROM THE MUGGLE WORLD.