The Molding of Minds
- 1984, Hogwarts -
Large wicker baskets full of apples were stacked along the back of the classroom. The bright green fruit were a stark contrast with the large jars full of pickled animals that lined the sides of the classroom, but they too were destined for a gruesome fate; apple after apple was chopped up, tossed into the cauldron, and repeatedly mashed. If apples had feelings, the dying shrieks of murdered fruit would fill the room. Fortunately, malus domestica was quite a mundane species, unlike, for example, malus unguicularis. The latter would also be costly to procure, whereas the former was literally growing on trees - on school grounds - and waiting to be plucked by students under detention. Finally, since everyone would have to drink their own potions at the end of the lesson, the idea of drinking apple juice would be more palatable to new students, even if it were apple juice with pulverised mealworms mixed in.
The potions instructor stalked up and down the aisles of the classroom. Where he passed, there was a noticeable increase of industriousness in fruit mashing and mash filtering. But the instructor, a thin, sallow-skinned man in black robes, appeared relaxed today; No points had been deducted yet, and nobody had been handed detention. The classroom was filled with the sharp and invigorating scent of apple. The more discerning nose would also detect other scents both sweet and earthly.
The instructor stopped beside a table. Two students, a small skinny boy and a dark-haired girl were grinding up mealworms. Unlike apples, mealworms had feelings. Fortunately, they were silent creatures and gave off no dying shrieks, though they made a plenty dying writhes.
"Mr. Smethwyck. Mr Smethwyck!" The boy looked up, startled. He had been so absorbed in his work that he had not noticed the instructor standing in front of his bench. Heads turned. Apple-mashing paused. The man gestured at the array of flasks on the bench with a predatory gleam in his eyes. "Explain this irregularity."
"Sir, it's my fault too!" the girl next to him protested. "I helped him prepare that."
"I didn't ask for your opinion, Ms. Wood," the instructor hissed. "Five points from Gryffindor for interrupting out of turn."
A collective unvoiced groan passed through half of the classroom. The girl's face flushed red.
The instructor sneered, "But since you insisted, five points from Gryffindor for disobeying instructions." He turned back to the boy. "Your explanation, Mr. Smethwyck?"
The boy quailed before the withering gaze. "Uh... um. Well, um, sir, I thought it would - would be a good idea," he stammered, glancing at the girl next to him. She glared at him. He sucked in a deep breath and said, "The potion calls for willow bark, ground mealworm and poppy seed to be added. The instructions state that it's important to add them in the correct order, so I divided my base into four and asked Maggie for two-third of hers. This gives six portions for each combination."
The instructor looked from one child to the other, and back again. He sounded surprisingly mild when he continued his questioning. "And why do you want to test every combination?"
The boy looked embarrassed. "I plan to become a Healer, sir. I thought it'd a good idea to see what kind of variations there are to a pain-relieving potion."
"Five points from Slytherin, for disobeying instructions," the instructor stated. The other half of the class whispered.
The instructor continued his pacing. "The order of willow bark and ground mealworm does not matter," he declared, "the order of these two to poppy seed matters. How many permutations are there now, Mr. Smethwyck?"
"Four, sir."
"Yes. You would have produced one pain-reliever, one soporific, two emetics and two purgatives." A cruel smile danced on the instructor's lips. "Ten points from Slytherin for trying to brew poison." Without a glance at the girl, he continued, "Five points from Gryffindor for abetting the brewing of poison."
Groans and whispers sounded through the entire classroom. The lucky day turned out not to be so lucky after all. If House points were the precious coin to buy the House Cup, both Gryffindor and Slytherin Houses would agree (though it would offend the members of the Houses to know they agreed) that Wood and Smethwyck were profligates, at least in Potions. Half the classroom almost groaned outright as the girl's hand shot up.
"Yes, you may speak, Ms. Wood." the instructor said silkily.
"Sir, it can't be poison!" The girl looked indignant. "Then you'd be trying to poison us. Anyone could have confused the order of ingredients, and we'd still have to drink the potions at the end of the lesson. "
"Five points from Gryffindor for pointless pontification," the instructor stated coolly. The girl looked furious. She opened her mouth, but shut it again when the boy next to her yanked on her sleeve.
"Mr. Smethwyck, Ms. Wood, you will refer to Woodland Wonders, Intimate Insects, and Basic Bases. Write me a ten page essay by next week on willow bark, poppy seed, ground mealworm, and the potion bases typically used with these ingredients. Include an explanation on why the order of willow bark and ground mealworm doesn't matter. If your work is satisfactory, I will award ten points to each House. If it isn't, I will take off ten more for wasting my time. And write it together, I don't want to waste my time reading the same essay twice."
"Now, class, stop wasting time and back to your potion. It's so simple you can't not produce something usable." The smirking man twirled his wand lazily as he resumed his pacing. "Remember you will consume your products at the end. This is just a toy potion, but I assure you the effects, though mild, are quite real."
The students returned hurriedly to their work. Many stopped working on the ingredients and started looking at their recipe card again. The small, cramped scrawl on the cards was difficult to make out, and it was no surprise that many students had only given their instructions a cursory inspection. But the latest revelation of the unexpected products they might end up consuming had inspired them to new heights of industriousness.
The instructor surveyed the classroom with a look of disdain as he stalked the aisles between the worktables. After a few rounds, he stopped before the previously offensive table again, his attention on the girl this time. "Only one portion of apple juice left. You're confident you'd need just one try to get your potion correct, aren't you?" He loomed over her table, examining the prepared ingredients with a sneer on his face.
At length, the man straightened. "Five points to Gryffindor, I suppose," he said dismissively, walking off. The girl opened her mouth, but shut it again when the boy next to her stepped on her foot.
At the end of the lesson, the instructor ordered the class to drink half of their potion and leave the other half for inspection, giving prior permission for anyone to leave for the washroom if they had to. A few students yawned and fell asleep on their chairs. Some started to gag or clutch their stomachs, and rushed out of the classroom. Their fellows wince sympathetically as their teacher rolled his eyes in disgust and made marks on the class namelist. He then produced a bottle and moved to each seat with a remaining student. There, he squeezed a dropper of liquid from the bottle into the student's potion. When the colourless liquid fell into the flasks, the pale yellow liquid within turned into shades of pink. After all the flasks were tested, the two flasks on the offensive table had the deepest hues. They glowed with a full, vivid magenta.
The instructor returned to the offensive table. Immediately, the boy raised his hand.
"Yes, Mr Smethwyck. You have a question?"
"What are you dropping into the flasks, sir?" The boy asked.
"There is a limit to my patience for time-wasting digressions," the instructor said dangerously. He picked up the two flasks, held them up to the light, shook them, and then swirled them this way and that. Fine bubbles tickled the top of one flask.
"Ms. Wood wins," the instructor declared. Glancing down at the boy, he stated, "Not because you interrupted me, but because her potion is better."
He stalked to the front of the classroom. "The winner earns ten points for Gryffindor. Class dismissed."
Half of the classroom burst into cheers. Napping students woke up groggily. The girl jumped up with a whoop of victory - and promptly knocked her cauldron over. With a loud clang, muddy detritus spilled over the entire surface of her worktable. It could have been a death toll from a funeral bell; the cheers abruptly died. The high tone hummed ominously in the air, and the students watched round-eyed as the dull goop crept over the edge of the table and splashed onto the ground. The girl stared at the instructor in horror, a hand over her mouth.
"Looks like natural talent is no match for Gryffindor recklessness," the instructor commented dryly. "Five points from Gryffindor for unsafe behaviour in the laboratory. Ms Wood, you will clean up this mess manually. The rest of the class may go."
The boy was waiting patiently when his friend came out of the classroom. She made a face at him. "Gross! I had to wipe up mealworm debris!"
He tried unsuccessfully to hide his smile. "At least he didn't make you lick it up."
"You're double gross, Hippy!" She made a grab for him with her sticky hands speckled with mealworm bits. He back-peddled in alarm.
"Maggie, um, I'm sorry for getting you into trouble just now."
She shrugged. "What are friends for?"
"Thanks. I think I'll go get the books from the library. See you later."
"You're going to skip flying class? Gee, you bookworm."
An awkward expression appeared on the boy's face. "They've approved my exemption."
"Oops." his friend squeaked, her face pink.
"It's ok."
"Alright, see you around, ground-bound and hide-bound. Go and slithery squirm in your books!" The girl recovered quickly from the awkward moment. Making zipping and zooming noises, she ran off in the direction of her next class.
The boy strolled to the library, but did not pass through the ostentatious archway. Instead, he sat himself down on a worn sandstone bench outside the entrance. Tiny anthropomorphic creatures and ugly humanoids carved into the stonework crept along the whorls and fronts of the library's facade and peeked at him. The boy pulled out a sealed letter from his satchel and turned it over a few times in his hands indecisively. Finally, he tore the short edge open and pulled out a letter in grey stationery.
A shadow fell across the boy. He looked up.
"Professor Snape!" He leaped to his feet and stuffed the letter into his pocket.
The potions instructor placed a book on the bench. It was Basic Bases. "I forgot I'd checked out the last copy."
"Please keep it if you need it, sir."
"No. I just wanted to compare the sixth and eighth editions."
"What's the difference between the sixth and eighth editions?"
"Numerous." the instructor was looking at him. The boy squirmed. "Sir?"
"So." The man sat himself on the bench. He glared up at the throng of stone carvings, and they scampered back into their original poses. He turned his attention back to the boy, but did not say anything. There was a long and awkward silence. The boy shifted from foot to foot. The professor's strange moods were well-known in the House, and the older students had warned the first years not to cross the Head of Slytherin when he was "acting weird". The man had seemed quite reasonable the few times the boy saw him in the common room, but the man turned into a demon in the classroom.
"Because there is a fixed curriculum and two hours a week isn't a long time." The instructor said.
The boy blinked. Where did that come from? "I'm sorry, sir?"
"I don't disapprove of your interest in Potions," explained the instructor, "but I can't spend time sidetracking during every lesson because it takes my attention away from the weakest students, who need it the most. You don't want your friends to fail, do you?"
"No! I didn't realise. I'm sorry, sir."
"Page two-hundred and sixteen contains the answer to your earlier question." The instructor pointed at the book.
"Thanks, sir." His teacher was in reasonable mode then, although with the man's intent look it could also be a weird mode, just a nice weird mode. It was best that he refrained from provoking the man in any way.
"So you want to be a Healer." The potions instructor switched topic without preamble.
"Yes, sir."
"Sola dosis facit venenum." the instructor looked at him expectantly.
The boy realised that he was being tested. "Similia similibus curantur," he replied.
"What do you get when you mix a drop of pit viper's venom with a mash of sage in the tears of a newborn?
"Heart Restart. All Wizarding households keep a lump in their medicine closets, especially when there are elderly in the family. The mash must also be dried midday during summer solstice."
The instructor nodded slowly. "Why do you want to be a Healer?"
"I'm sorry. I know it isn't a proper job..."
"Nonsense. Healing is proper."
"Er. Thanks. What I meant, um ..."
"Most Healers are Slytherin."
"Really? I thought -"
"Dark Wizarding has poor job prospects. Better be a Healer."
"Oh." The boy's nervousness and embarrassment increased. It seemed as if his silly ideas were being read aloud like from pages in an open book. He wanted to stand up and run away screaming, but that would be improper. He carefully maintained a neutral and attentive expression on his face as he contemplated the possible ways he might escape.
The instructor frowned. "Life and death are but two sides of the same coin," he said. "Have you ever wondered why Healers raise the Asklepian as their standard?"
"I didn't, but it makes sense now."
"But remember, Mr. Smethwyck: the serpent encircles the staff. See to it that you are the master of the serpent, and not the other way around. Do you understand me?"
"Maybe. I think so." He didn't, but best to give a neutral answer.
"Then why are you not at flying class?" Did his teacher suddenly switch the topic again? This time, it was an awkward topic.
"I'm exempted, sir. I had a bad fall long ago and can't balance on a broom."
His teacher frowned and remained silent.
"A Death Eater, uh, threw me out of the window when I was young," the boy offered.
The instructor continued to frown. The boy chewed on his lip and waited, but no response came. He wondered if reasonable mode was about to switch into demonic mode.
"Um... sir?"
His teacher snorted and finally responded. "Is that so. Then might I suggest a useful way to spend your time?"
"Of course, sir."
"To quote the great Paracelsus, 'the patients are your textbook, the sickbed is your study'. We have a hospital wing at Hogwarts."
"I understand, sir."
"Good. Ten page essay by next week." The instructor rapped the cover of the book and left.
The boy breathed a sigh of relief. He was not sure what to make of the incident, but he felt better than before the conversation. The unnamed worries that lurked anxiously at the back of his mind had been brought out into the open, and they had evaporated like the silly fancies they were when examined beneath the intense scrutiny of his teacher. Then he remembered the letter, and his mood deflated again. He took the slightly crumpled paper out of his pocket and opened it. He sat down on the bench and began reading.
Dear Hippy,
Are you enjoying school? Since you didn't write, I took the liberty writing to you, at the risk of appearing like an overprotective parent. It doesn't matter to me what House you're in, but I'm curious how you're adjusting to school.
So you're in Slytherin. Maggie wrote to her father and Uncle Wood told me. He was quite agitated. I asked him about Maggie's House, and he was quite proud to report that she's in his House. At that point, I asked if he had forgotten that both your mother and I had been in Slytherin. (This is something I've neglected to mention to you before, but not because I was trying to hide something. I've just never thought much of the House system.)
In fact, there are quite a few of us snakes in Enforcement. Uncle Wood insisted that we are different. I told him that he sounded like how certain people talk about new-bloods, and that shut him up.
So there you have it. Being of old-blood and in Slytherin doesn't mean being a Dark Wizard. But there are plenty of those Dark Wizard wannabes in Slytherin. Stay on their good side, but pick your friends carefully.
With Love, your father
The boy leaped to his feet, a huge smile on his face. The day could not get better. He did not realise it then, but it was be the last letter he would receive from his father. The next letter would be in a black envelope, from the Ministry of Magic.