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Chapter Five—Classes Are Fun, Except for Potions
Harry smiles as he steps into the bedroom that he'll share with five other boys for the term. This is brilliant. Sure, it'll be something new to share a bedroom and bathroom with other people instead of having his own room the way he did at the Leaky Cauldron, but then again, he didn't have a bathroom attached to where he slept at all when he lived with the Dursleys, or a bed. So it balances out.
"Big room," Artemis hisses in approval, softly enough that only Harry can hear.
Harry smiles wider and glances around once more as he kneels at the end of his bed to take clothes out of the trunk. The walls are decorated with subdued shades of blue and the occasional splash of bronze; they form interesting patterns, like one bronze place that looks almost like someone riding a winged horse. There are a few paintings on the walls that all move, showing ocean waves curling in on a shore and trees rustling in a forest. All the beds are the same size and have four posts, canopies, and bright blue curtains. Harry approves.
"Hey." Someone stops beside him, and Harry glances up. "Michael Corner." A thin boy with pale skin and black hair thrusts a hand at him.
"Harry Potter," Harry says, and shakes his hand. Then the hands of Terry Boot, Anthony Goldstein, and Kevin Entwhistle when they introduce themselves the same way.
"What class are you most excited for?" Michael asks, sitting down on his bed. Harry heard lots of people ask each other that at the dinner table. It seems to be the Ravenclaw equivalent of "Where does your husband work?", the first question Aunt Petunia would ask a woman moving in on Privet Drive.
(Sometimes the answer was "Oh, he works at this place, and I work at that," which always made Aunt Petunia come home in huffing disapproval).
"I think Defense and Potions," Harry says, and flops down on his bed with a smile. It's bouncier and softer than the one in the Leaky Cauldron. He wonders if he can get away with jumping on it. He never dared try it with the one in the Cauldron in case Tom got upset. "What about you?"
"Transfiguration. Of course, it takes a strong will to succeed in Transfiguration, and I have—"
"Don't start bragging about what you can do before we even get into the classroom, Corner."
"I wasn't, Boot," Corner snaps, flushing, and Harry gets the sense that there's a long-standing rivalry there. "I was only answering a question."
"In the most obnoxious manner possible," Boot mutters, and digs into his trunk.
Anthony Goldstein rolls his eyes at everyone and glances at Harry. "I saw you talking with Padma Patil at dinner, Potter. Did you know her before Hogwarts?"
"Oh. no. I grew up in the Muggle world."
Goldstein blinks at him. "Did you really? I thought the Potters were an old family."
Harry half-shrugs. "I don't know much about them, really, given that my parents died when I was a baby. Do you know anything about them? Or a place where I could find out more?"
"Sorry, Potter, not really." Goldstein seems to think for a minute, then shakes his head. "I know that my mum talked about being friends with your mum in school, but I have the impression they drifted apart before their seventh year."
"Oh, well," Harry says. "I'll find out something on my own."
Goldstein smiles at him approvingly, so that must be all right, and the rest of the evening passes in idle conversation and bickering and speculation about what classes will be like. Long before he thought it would happen, Harry is lying on his bed behind his curtains with Artemis, petting her where she sprawls on his chest. She's small enough that Harry thinks she could get out of sight easily if someone suddenly opened the curtains.
"Will I have to stay out of sight of your roommates always?" Artemis asks wistfully, turning her head back and forth.
"I don't know. But I don't want to just tell them I'm a Parselmouth in case they react like Hagrid."
"Ask them about Parseltongue tomorrow," Artemis commands, wriggling up towards his shoulder and wrapping around his neck. "And Parselmouths. Pretend that you read it in a book if you must. I want to know what they think."
"Yes, O My Lady."
"You love me really."
"Of course I love you," Harry says, and spends a few minutes petting her before they both slip into a contented sleep.
"Why did you decide to attend Hogwarts, Zabini?"
Nott's voice is calm and cold, the same way that he acted at dinner last night. There wasn't much talking after they got to the Slytherin common room. The prefects lectured them a lot about rules, and then Crabbe and Goyle practically raced into bed and Malfoy locked himself in the bathroom for an hour.
But now Blaise has been sitting with his book by the fire for ten minutes this morning, and that seems to be Nott's cue to approach.
"I heard interesting things about Hogwarts," Blaise says. "The castle, the classes taught, the professors. And I heard fewer interesting things about Durmstrang."
Of course, a large part of the reason is that he would be under the continual scrutiny of his mother's allies if he went to Durmstrang, and if he ever wants to somewhat escape her reach and earn his own reputation, he needed to be further away. Plus Hogwarts can teach him a few specific things that will help him with his duties in the future. But he isn't about to expose those facts to a stranger.
It'll be some time before he can even explain them to Harry, Blaise thinks.
"What interesting things could you possibly have heard? The Divination class is a joke, the History class is worse, Professor Snape is a miserable bastard—"
"Has it occurred to you, Nott, that I might have different interests?"
"Just wondering, is all," Nott says, and puts his hands up, and smiles a little as he goes to take a different chair next to an older girl who might be a cousin of his. They look a bit alike, something about the nose and mouths.
Blaise snorts as he goes back to his own book. "Just wondering," his arse. Nott has the look of someone who will come back again, and again, and again, until he either figures out what Blaise wants from Hogwarts or satisfies himself that it's nothing particularly important.
But Blaise can deal with that.
He feels a small smile playing about his lips, in fact. Time to see what he can do on his own, with only his mother's reputation behind him instead of her standing at his shoulder.
"What do you think of Neville Longbottom?" Patil asks Harry abruptly when they're in Herbology. They're just learning to care for a patch of apparently magical lavender in this first lesson, which they share with Hufflepuff.
"I feel sorry for him," Harry says, staring intently at the lavender. He thought it was moving a moment ago. Now it's not, and he doesn't know if it was the wind or magic or his imagination.
"What? You do? Why?"
Harry turns to Patil. He looks for any signs that she's mocking him, the way one of Dudley's friends would, but she seems astonished and sincere. Harry shrugs as he reaches for the little watering can that stands nearby. Apparently you have to sprinkle it in particular patterns when you're tending magical lavender. "Because everyone is telling him that he has to save the world. I would be terrified of messing it up. And did you see his face at the Sorting? He was scared."
"I never thought of it that way," Patil says, and jumps back as a clump of lavender reaches for her. This time, Harry is sure that he saw it move on its own, and by magic. "I just thought—well, he's Neville Longbottom. He defeated You-Know-Who when he was one year old! Why would he be scared?"
"Didn't his mum defeat You-Know-Who?"
Patil gives Harry a very strange look. "No. Why would she have?"
"I just thought—the books said she died to save him, and it made more sense to me that she would have worked some magic to save her baby than a one-year-old doing it."
"You're new to the magical world, right, Harry?" Patil asks kindly. She waits until Harry nods. "That's right, Anthony told me that you grew up in the Muggle world. Well, one thing you need to understand is that there's no ordinary magic that could have stopped You-Know-Who. And lots of mums died for their children." She shivers a little. "If it was just that, someone would have figured out a way to defeat him before Longbottom did."
Harry kind of doubts that, but he holds his tongue. It's true that he is new here, and he doesn't want to appear ignorant.
Besides, feeling Artemis stir in his robe pocket gives him something else to ask about. "I read a reference to something in a book I didn't understand," he says as casually as he can, pruning a spiky vine that reaches towards him and doesn't really look like it belongs with the lavender at all. "Salazar Slytherin and something about him talking to snakes? He was something called a Parseltongue?'
"Parselmouth. Parseltongue is the language. A Parselmouth is a wizard or witch who can speak it."
"Wow, brilliant! We can really talk to animals?"
Patil doesn't smile back. "Unfortunately, it's a sign of a Dark wizard."
"Really?"
"Really. You-Know-Who was one, too." Patil shakes her head, and her hair shivers in the long braid she has it tied up in. "And there are others in history, like Salazar Slytherin and Herpo the Foul. There's just—no records of a good wizard being a Parselmouth, really."
"Oh."
"Did someone tell you a Parselmouth was a good wizard, Potter?"
"No," Harry says, with a sigh, because it's not like even Blaise did that. He simply accepted it as part of Harry and not something to argue with. "It just seems so unfair that a cool thing like talking to animals should be associated with Dark wizards and witches."
"I know it seems wonderful, but if you could hear some of the stories I've heard about Dark wizards and witches…"
Harry listens as Patil talks, but he keeps one hand poised beneath the robe pocket where Artemis curls, and nudges up against her every now and then. No matter what other people say, he's never going to think that Parseltongue is terrible, or he should give his first friend up.
But it does mean that he might not be able to make many friends in Ravenclaw, depending on how many of them think like Patil.
"Hi, Blaise!"
Blaise grins at Harry as he sits down at the desk next to him in Defense. The room stinks of garlic and Quirrell is one of those professors who's a joke as far as Blaise is concerned. Then again, all the professors for decades have been, with some kind of curse on the Defense job.
"How have you been?" Blaise asks, noticing with amusement that the Ravenclaws are gaping at him and Harry with a total want of dignity. Most of them this year must be wizard-raised, he thinks. They would have heard about the infamous Black Widow and assume the same things must be true of her son, and it's blowing their minds to see Harry sitting with Blaise without a care in the world.
"I've been good," Harry says. "Asking about some things and understanding some misconceptions people have."
The way his knuckles brush a robe pocket as he takes out parchment and quills tells Blaise what he means. "Misconceptions?" Blaise asks lightly as he watches Quirrell shuffle to the front of the room.
He will have an interesting time with the rest of the Ravenclaws in their year if they've been saying certain things to Harry.
"Just that what I thought was a wonderful ability to talk to animals is the mark of a Dark wizard."
Blaise knows Harry has no experience of double-talking in front of other magical people, but he's doing remarkably well at it. Blaise grins at him before he can stop himself, and Harry blushes bright red. Blaise nods at him and whispers as Quirrell opens his mouth, which means they have to stop talking aloud, "Well, some people are just idiots."
Harry muffles his laughter, because they're already drawing enough attention, but he grins at Blaise with an appreciation that makes something coiled tight inside Blaise relax. He didn't know that he was afraid of Harry turning against him as he heard more stories about the infamous Mrs. Zabini, but he's beyond glad to know that's not going to happen.
Severus stands still, with his hands clasped behind his back, staring, while the first-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs file into the room.
Potter walks near the middle of the pack, gossiping with one of the Patil twins. A pale boy Severus doesn't know is behind them, leaning over now and then to interject into the conversation. Severus sneers. So Potter, although not in Gryffindor, has started building his own little pack of Marauders already.
Severus does not have to tolerate that. He might have to set limits on what he does to Gryffindor's House points now that Neville Longbottom, darling of all and sundry, has been Sorted there, but Albus has never cared one way or the other about the House of the eagles. Severus can do many things to them.
And to Potter. He can make him an outcast in his own House for not knowing the right answers, something Ravenclaws care far more about than anyone else.
Severus smiles in a way that makes some of the Hufflepuffs turn pale, and reaches for the scroll that contains their names.
"Mr. Potter."
Harry looks up at Snape from under his fringe. He's heard that Professor Snape hates Gryffindors, and that he's a strict and menacing teacher. But Harry thought that he would be safe enough, since he isn't a Gryffindor, and he really is excited about Potions and wants to do well in this class.
"Tell me," Professor Snape says, and prowls forwards. He isn't calling the rest of the roll. That makes some of the Hufflepuffs, whose names haven't been called yet, look nervous. "Tell me what a bezoar is."
"It's a kind of stone, I think," Harry says. "From the stomach of a goat." The word stuck in his head while he read one of his books, but he has to admit right now that he doesn't remember which one.
"You think."
"Yes, sir. I'm not sure."
Professor Snape pauses as if that isn't the answer he expected. But he doesn't say whether Harry was right or wrong. Instead, he snaps, "What are the two main ingredients for the Draught of Living Death?"
Harry blinks. "Sorry, sir. I don't know. I think that's a seventh-year potion. I saw it in the table of contents, but I only read about the first-year ones."
"Ten points from Ravenclaw for your insolence."
A gasp sweeps the room. Harry winces. It's the most points that anyone in his year has lost for Ravenclaw so far. Su Li did get two taken off in Professor McGonagall's class the other day for looking at a book on Arithmancy under the desk instead of paying attention to the class.
Harry stares at Snape and sees a gleam in his eyes that is mostly familiar from Uncle Vernon's. Harry can feel his stomach sinking.
He liked Potions when he read his books during the summer. He was looking forward to the class, even when other people said the teacher was strict. He hoped he could learn a lot, and it doesn't depend on wand magic. For some reason, Harry's wand has been slow and stubborn in his hand when he's practiced spells in other classes or their dormitory.
But if Professor Snape is like Uncle Vernon…
Well, then it won't matter what Harry does, or why Snape hates him. The important thing is that he won't learn anything in this class, and no matter what he does, it's not going to be seen as right.
Harry gives up his dream of being good at this class quietly. He does still intend to learn Potions, but he'll have to do it on his own. There are lots of empty rooms that Harry passes on his way up to Ravenclaw Tower every day. Maybe he can find one of them and brew in there. He'll have to buy some more ingredients.
"Well? Nothing to say for yourself, Mr. Potter?"
Snape spits his name as if it tastes bad. Harry wonders if it has something to do with his family, who he still hasn't been able to find anything about, but it's not like he can ask.
"Sorry, sir," he says quietly.
Snape sneers at him and whirls away. "You will be brewing the Boil Cure today," he snaps, and waves his wand to make the instructions melt into being on the board. "Pay attention to the instructions, and begin."
"What did you do to make him hate you that way?" Goldstein whispers over his shoulder when he and Harry arrive at the supply cupboard at the same time.
Harry shakes his head. "I really don't know."
"Well, you'd better study ahead, that's all."
Harry turns around and fixes Goldstein with a level look. "And could you have answered those questions? Did you already know what a bezoar is? Did you read ahead to learn about the Draught of Living Death and other seventh-year potions?" He might not be able to do anything about Snape bullying him, but he won't put up with it from his Housemates.
Goldstein blushes. "Um.'
"You didn't," Harry says. "And you wouldn't know even now if he asked you, because he didn't actually give the answers." Harry is pretty sure that a bezoar is a stone in a goat's stomach, but Snape didn't say so.
"Huh."
Harry nods and picks up porcupine quills from the shelf, then carries them back to the main part of the classroom.
Brewing doesn't go very well, mainly because Snape is swooping around the room like a bat and snapping at everybody. He seems to glare at Harry most hatefully of all, but he gets after Macmillan from Hufflepuff, too, so that he turns his potion into sludge, and Harry can see tears gleaming on Susan Bones's cheeks.
Harry glares at Snape's back. He wishes he could do something. He'd like to cast a spell that would tie Snape's shoelaces together and trip him or something.
But that kind of thing never made Uncle Vernon act any better. And Harry knows that standing up to him won't do any good, either. Uncle Vernon could shut Harry in the cupboard. Snape can take away points and assign him detentions.
Harry turns in a potion that he knows isn't the right color and ignores the way Snape glares at him. He's going to be studying ahead for Potions, all right, the way Goldstein suggested, but he'll be doing it on his own, and to make sure that nothing goes wrong with the brewing he does outside of class. Doing it in class is out of the question.
"I don't like him," Artemis hisses when they leave the classroom and Harry finds a deserted room on the first floor where they can be alone.
"I don't like him, either," Harry says, and runs a hand down her back. "But you know how we couldn't stand up to Uncle Vernon?"
"Yes."
"We just had to go around him. We'll do the same thing here. We'll study in the library, and spend time with Blaise, and brew on our own. We'll learn things in spite of him."
"Are we going to invite Blaise to the brewing?"
"I'll ask him," Harry agrees. "But who knows? Snape is the Head of Slytherin House, so maybe he's nicer to them. Maybe Blaise learns lots of things from him."
"And you have no idea why Snape went after you that way?"
Blaise keeps his voice low. He knows that he doesn't want to shout and draw attention to the classroom where Harry is setting up his cauldron and a brewing table. He already has a small supply cupboard that he found Merlin knows where, and which has some ingredients Harry must have plucked from the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
"From the way he said my last name, maybe it has to do with my family," Harry says, and shrugs, and shakes his head. "But I don't know for sure. He never said anything about it to me. He just right away glared at me and started attacking me. I already know that I won't learn anything in that class, so we'll do it this way."
Blaise breathes out slowly. He knows that Harry's right. Blaise doesn't know why Professor Snape might randomly hate a first-year Ravenclaw student, either, and neither of them have the power to take on the Head of Slytherin House and win.
So they'll brew on their own. And while Harry might think that's the end of it, Blaise is determined to find a road to revenge someday.
Leading somewhere.
"Do you have any deaths-head moth fluff?" Harry asks, digging through his Potions kit. "I think I used up all mine."
Blaise nods and gets some of his out. Artemis, watching from the top of the table, hisses in something Blaise hopes is approval.
"Thanks," Harry says, and smiles at Blaise as he takes the moth fluff.
Blaise smiles back, and wonders whether writing to his mother about Professor Snape's apparent grudge against Potters will produce any results.
He would prefer not to appeal to her so soon. He knows that he'll have a limited number of favors when it comes to her, and also that she might not like his using one of them up on discovering ancient gossip.
But Blaise will pay the favor back in full someday.
And pay back, too, what Professor Snape has said to Harry.