The House Competition
Ravenclaw, DADA
Drabble
WC: 576
(animal) toad
The Golden Snitch
You want me to take care of what?
(character) Severus Snape
Lucky Toad
Snape locked the heavy wooden door to his dungeon then he added a couple of sophisticated charms, just to make sure that he really wasn't going to be disturbed by some insolent students.
Ever since he had started his position at Hogwarts his time to experiment and refine the most complicated potions had been cut down drastically. Instead, he had to now teach children who couldn't even retain the name of the ingredients used and would grow up only to buy their potions premade. Snape couldn't fathom to begin to understand how Dumbledore didn't see his talent wasted on those dunderheads.
He placed his tool onto his workbench one by one. Next he pulled out his notebook and lit the fire underneath the cattle. Walking to his ingredient shelf, he went through the list of needed materials in his head. Dried snake skins, pickled eyeballs, and crushed sulphordioxid. Snape arranged everything on the table before reaching for the last thing on his list, a life cane toad.
Reaching underneath his desk, he pulled up the basket without raising the lit. A slimy yellow foot was lurking out from the gaps in the weave. Snape put on his trusted dragon leather gloves to protect him from the toxic animal, before reaching inside.
The cane toad was massive, noticeably bigger than his hands and struggling against his grip. He was holding the animal as tightly as he could without crushing it, as he carried it over to the scale.
Snape needed to get an accurate weight measurement to know how much of the other ingredients he needed in order to keep the ratio right, but he just couldn't get the oversized amphibia to sit still in the pan.
He was struggling. Just for a moment the cane toad seemed to calm down. He removed his hand and just in that moment the toad took the big leap, throwing the brass vessel to the ground in turn. Clanging echoed through the drafty dungeon.
While Snape levitated the pan back onto the workbench the cane toad decided it was best to hide.
With his wand out, he moved the heavy workbench aside, but just as he was getting to the spot where the toad set just moments ago, it took off again, jumping behind the massive shelves that held his collection of ingredients.
This was not how he had envisioned this day. The longer he was chasing after the most important ingredient, the less time he had to brew this complicated potion and his window of opportunity was closing. And Snape was getting frustrated.
He was so short of hexing the animal, but he just couldn't get a clear shot.
For a moment he lost sight of the toad, but just then he found the fat animal sitting in the very basket it came in. Snape covered the lid with a heavy stone, before the cane toad could get away a second time.
The dreaded look on the clock revealed what he had feared, by now it was too late to start the potion and finish before he had to teach a flock of bored fourth years. And he still had to give the dungeon a proper clean, so no first year would die from licking over the table. Not that he minded them getting a little sick.
The fat yellow toad on the other hand, was sitting happily, and still alive in the basket.