Thanks, Dracoisbetter0. I appreciate the review. Yet another chapter. I am becoming obsessed with this thing now... becoming the sensitive writer type, and spening time in class writng chapters that are about 5 or 6 chapters beyond where I am now. Does anybody know a good psychotherapist? I could use one right now. R&R, please.

The Potions Master



Amanda found the door to the dungeon ajar, and could hear a greasy voice coming from within. "Potter! You obviously weren't paying any attention when I told you not to leave the cauldron on while you added the Wolf's Bane!"

She quickly moved through the opening and slid into a seat in the back, hidden by a large cauldron. "Did somebody just walk out of here?" the potions master snapped at a rather round, frightened looking boy in the front row.

"N-No Sir," the professor seemed unmoved so he added, "B-But a girl came in."

Professor Snape whirled around and immediately stopped as he spotted Amanda. "You! You're not supposed to be here!"

"Sorry, Professor Snape, sir, but this is my first class here," she wasn't quite sure of what to do, "I need a little help."

A glimmer of some emotion flashed across the professors face, and as he paired her up with Neville Longbottom, Amanda knew it wasn't a good one. "No, Neville, you add the unicorn hairs after you put the cauldron over the fire," she sighed, "honestly man, can't you do anything? I was doing this when I was nine at Salem!"

The professor jumped a little bit, then glided to just behind Amanda's left shoulder. "When you were nine, you say?"

"Yessir."

"At Salem."

"Yessir."

"That school uses the same book?"

Amanda looked down at her open book, then back at the professor, "Yessir."

He seemed disappointed. "And just what was the last potion you practiced with last year?" he asked murderously.

"The mind restorative with unicorn tails and phoenix blood, sir."

Snape thought quickly to himself, that's the last potion in our seventh year books! he put on a smile and asked her to wait out in the corridor for the rest of the class. Stunned, Amanda scooped up her things and walked quickly out of the room. Were they demoting her?

It was an excutiatingly long hour in the cold stone hallway before the students started to pour out of the classroom. When she thought that the rest of the class was out, she walked in to find Harry, Ron, and the brown haired girl who turned out to be Hermione the snorer, helping Neville mop up a mess of some sort of boil causing potion off the floor. "Amanda. In here," professor Snape motioned to an office full of jars of pickled things, and Amanda tore her eyes away from the scene of the four students breaking out in boils to follow him inside.

"So. You are beyond even our most advanced level of potions here. Were you aware of that?" Amanda shook her head, and he continued, "I would say to throw you out of the school completely, since you obviously think you're so much better than us... but unfortunately, the headmaster thinks that you should just not take the course," he paused to run his hand through his greasy black hair, and scratch his hooked nose, "You could serve as a secondary potions teacher for the first and second years," he grimaced, "or you could go see professor McGonagall, the head of your house, about taking an elective class."

"I think," she paused and looked up a jar with a human hand in it, "that I will go see about taking another class."

"Fine. Get to your next class, Miss Gallins. Now!" he said as she took her time to get her bookbag onto her shoulder and stood up.

Amanda hurried out of the office and out to the hallway. It is definitely time for a nap, she thought as she headed on her way to Transfiguration.