Disclaimer: All the characters in this story do not belong to me but to the wonderful JK Rowling. There may be the odd one or two that I made up but I shouldn't expect you to like them, there is so much more to life.
Author's note: Damn I'm starting far too many stories lately! I think I should concentrate and finish the ones I have started already, but first I should like to give you a small three or four part story. I'm not really sure what to think of it... It's a little bazaar and looks at a time frame I've not really considered before though I think this is a little too strange to ever take place... It looks at a girl and her building relationship with a young Professor after a mistake he helps her make changes everything completely.
If there was something you wished for deep down that you got by accident would you really want it?
Higher Learning - Power of the Potion
Hizenfli Latchman was a funny little witch, a seventh year who was tall and slender, athletic you could say. She had brown hair that refused to do what she wanted it to and a boring face. She had dull lifeless eyes, brown in colour to match her hair. They were almost foggy she thought that gave her the mystical edge but the boys didn't seem to agree with her, she covered that up with her large circular glasses that stole her face from field of vision. She had teeth that remained wonky no matter what the Muggle orthodontist tried to do to make them straight. Braces didn't work and neither did oral surgery. She had no spots or freckles or any other form of marking to make her face look striking, no, she was just Hizenfli Latchman, the little witch from Slytherin that sat in the corner and watched as everyone else went by and ignored her. She hated being ignored but then what could she do? She hadn't the confidence to try to be daring or the friends to back her up; she was a loner that was how she liked it. Friends were there to stab you in the back when the world came crashing down around you and she didn't need them.
The Slytherin common room was cold, a place where she felt at home, even if the Housemaster detested the ground she stepped on. Muggle-borns in Slytherin didn't mix just like her siblings now refused to mix with her, the only witch in the family and her brother and two sisters hated her for it. Muggle-borns were frowned upon and bullied, well most were. Not Hizenfli for some reason, she didn't exist, it was a way of life for her a very good skill as well. If you didn't exist no one could tell you, you were stupid or had the worst hairstyle on the planet etc. No one could force recognition on you either; it was beyond his or her power and out of their control because they couldn't see you.
Plodding from point to point was easy for Hizenfli, since no one spoke or looked at her. It also made life very boring but then she had no special skills and was very bad at handling people.
She didn't play Quidditch or even like the sport, she'd fall asleep in the stands watching house matches, especially Slytherin vs. Gryffindor. In relation to the time that Harry Potter was enrolled at Hogwarts, Slytherin winning the Quidditch cup was almost a given. Gryffindor and all the others got stomped by the team that was under control of the youngest and yet most sinister Professor Hogwarts had to offer, Professor Severus Snape he'd just that year taken over the job of Potions Master and Housemaster of Slytherin. He'd not been there when Hizenfli became a Slytherin, the Professor before, Ordret Calmire was the Head and Potions Professor, he was often smiling and very strange. She liked him, no matter how hard he tried he always seemed distant however, no one had noticed how distant until he died unexplainably in a Potions lesson. Hizenfli had been there, no one had noticed the quiet old Professor was gone until she went to ask him a question and he never answered. He'd never been a very good leader and they continually got flattened when he was the Housemaster but this younger Professor for all his big personality faults seemed to know how to inspire the Slytherins. Hizenfli now believed herself to be the only one from her house that missed Professor Calmire. All of them liked Professor Snape far better, all but Hizenfli who thought he was a bigot for the way he treated her and others like her and would rather have bumped into a boggart in a small corridor than him. She was pretty sure he felt the same way.
Potions, that was his lesson, she hated it, she was good at it but she still detested it. The dungeons stank of death and she'd freeze up every time she went there. The dungeons however were Professor Snape's sanctuary and that was where they had their lesson, dank and cold the walls were slimy and horrible and she always thought she was going to make a mistake when he was around. The vibe around the black eyed Professor filled you with fear like a Dementor as he swooped around the room like a malevolent bat his black robes making him sinister and disturbing. His black hair hung neatly from his head to shoulder length it was as if he was urging her to fail, to make that mistake so he could laugh in her face until she one day she finally made the mistake that was to change her life forever.
"I want you to mix in a little bit of that powder; it is very potent stuff!" Was the cold clear but stern voice of the Potions Professor. He swept around the room his black robes billowing, meticulously scanning the student's potions like they were all stupid.
Hizenfli took a little bit of the powder and placed in the incredible steaming mixture, she held the pot of searing powder over the cauldron and allowed small drops to fall into the mixture before stirring it again and repeating the action until she got it right.
"What are you doing Miss Latchman?" Snape said suddenly leering over her shoulder, she jumped and the pot of powder flew out of her hand and into the cauldron. "Idiot girl!" Snape spat, her eyes began to well up and sting but she wasn't going to cry no matter how off guard she was feeling. She looked at the mixture as it began to change colour, the wooden pot dissolved and the powder was no where to be seen. Snape swept off to the front of the class and picked up a small silver ladle. "Let us see what you have created," he said dangerously scooping some of the mixture out of her cauldron. "Open up." He said pushing the spoon to her face. Her eyes began to stream, "Open up!" He shouted and she did as she was told. Though she was unsure what he was trying to achieve, they were making something harmless, hope, and she had plenty of that but he was so insistent.
As a couple of drops hit her tongue cloud of smoke erupted from her mouth and Snape's expression changed to worry as she began hacking and coughing the wafts of silver smoke as the began to cover her. She crumbled to the floor until the smoke surrounded her surrendering to whatever it was going to do to her. She was completely engulfed by it, she could hear the voices of panicking students but see nothing. Eventually the smoke stopped and she stopped coughing, the engulfing smog disappeared and she was led on her stomach hands over her head trying not to think about what Snape's reaction was going to be. She curled up to shelter herself from the prying eyes, as her body burned from the attention as the onlookers gazed.
"Hizenfli?" Another Slytherin girl's voice called, she could hear footsteps coming closer to her, she looked at the feet of the people surrounding her. The girl's voice was shocked and impressed, Hizenfli couldn't remember the girl's name, they had never spoken before, because no one had ever bothered to ask her what her name was she'd never bothered with them. It amazed her however that all of a sudden this girl knew her name.
"Miss Latchman, are you alright?" She heard Snape's voice ask calmly, she could hear the ripple of the fabric of his robes he knelt by her side to get a better look. He placed a hand on her back and looked at her strangely, she felt strange under his touch as if under his control. She uncurled herself and moved away from him as if it was inbuilt to do so.
"Fine!" She said getting to her feet and sitting behind her desk again. Then it reached her attention, everyone was looking at her strangely, but the way Snape was looking at her from the crouched position made her think something was seriously wrong. "What?" She asked and Snape found a mirror in a deep pocket of his robes, stood up properly, walked in front of her and held it in front of her at arms length as if afraid of her reaction.
"I'm very sorry, that was a little cruel of me." He said looking into her now sparkling eyes her hair
hung like silk down her back like a cascade of wavy chestnut and her teeth were so straight and white giving her a very attractive smile, she wanted to die as she caught sight of what she had become.
"Where's the antidote?" She asked desperately looking at the numerous tubes of Potion on the front desk and shelves - there had to be a solution somewhere.
"There isn't one." Snape said sounding rather surprised she'd asked for one.
"I can't pretend to be something I'm not!" She snapped looking at her now pretty face with distain. "I'm not this person, I can't look like this, it isn't me!" She stammered the boys in the class were down drooling over her, she hated it.
"I think you're over reacting. It doesn't look bad." Snape said smiling shyly realising he'd done something pretty stupid.
"And you made me take a Potion knowing there was no antidote! What if it had killed me?! You didn't know what it was going to do! You're going to find me an antidote! " She snapped at him packing up her equipment. "Find me an Antidote!" She yelled in hysterics. "Or I'll have you fired!" She shouted storming out of the classroom.
She ran to the girl's bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, she disliked what she saw. It wasn't real, she knew it wasn't real and she couldn't live with that, it would have been easier if she was really like that, if she really was that pretty, the only problem was that she wouldn't look like that even if she wanted to. Her teeth were straight, something-even orthodontics couldn't fix, what would her mother say? She didn't believe that you should change the way you look using magic and neither did she, it was wrong and just not real... she cried herself to sleep on the cold stone floor.
~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~
Severus began to feel incredibly guilty, and he didn't feel guilty very often. He was haunted in his sleep by visions of this girl almost dying on the dungeon floor, he couldn't sleep, even time he tried that was all he saw, he would try to make an antidote but the only way to see if worked was to test it upon himself. The problem was he would turn himself into many of the wrong thing in order to find the right solution to her problem.
He didn't want to do that, but for some reason the twenty-five year old Professor didn't want this girl to be upset. He'd been so horrible and it was his fault she made the mistake in the first place. He hit his head on the cold stone wall in his chamber. He wandered out to the Potions classroom and looked at the mess on the floor that he hadn't bothered to clean up, after that class he'd just walked away and left it. He scooped up some of the potion and placed it in a bottle. He noticed in the place where she had fallen she had left her glasses, he picked them up and placed them on his desk. He'd given her the chance to see things without the ridiculous lenses but she wouldn't thank him for it. It was stupid to think that she would.
Miss Hizenfli Latchman, it was a strange name he mused, but he'd never noticed her until today. He couldn't think why, there was something very wrong about her being pretty and he couldn't think why, but then he also knew what it was like to live a lie.
He wandered aimlessly into the main part of the castle, past the Entrance Hall and it's masterful grace as the four flags of the different houses rippled in a wind that wasn't there and the school coat of arms adorned the walls before heading down some of the corridors.
He sat behind his desk and thought about what his next actions were to be, but he didn't know, his actions now were a mystery even to him. This girl was interesting; a sudden new beauty at her finger tips but not the desire to use its power. Beauty was definitely a power as he saw it, it could make members of the opposite sex crumble and enrage members of the same because they would never have the same kind of strength. But she was young and didn't understand he guessed. She was not what he saw as naive however, had she been naive she would have been happy about it but what she had was a maturity beyond her years and it even surpassed his.
A cold breeze brushed around him and he retracted his hands back up his sleeves. Was there to be a night this cold for anyone, even in the dungeons, the main castle seemed even more hostile to him than before. There was a point he had reached with his self esteem that he believed there would be no way it could get any colder. One look; on tiny threat from her made his world turn upside down. His stomach twisted, what if there was no antidote what if she'd died? And she would have to look that way forever; a bonus for the men of the world but wrong in every way. He looked out of the window to see the sunrise, the light filled his hollow black eyes with hope, it flicked in his mind and out of the life he thought he into a new. He smiled as the light hit his face, it had been a while since he had watched the crisp golden light of dawn hit the castle and was sad to think it was something he missed.
He hadn't slept but he felt better than he had done in years, rays of sunshine were all he needed but after watching them saw things differently like they had contorted his perception of everything and polluted his mind with imagination. He started to see everything in a different light even though his behaviour didn't change towards it. Was this the beginning of something he wasn't going to be able to control? This girl - she was his student but he no longer cared about that, with this antidote she was going to get more than she bargained for.
~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~
Hizenfli woke up from the cold marble floor and couldn't think for the life of her why she had chosen there of all places to sleep. She got to her feet clumsily and looked in the mirror again hoping it all to have been just a dream. But her worst nightmare was a reality, she was beautiful and eye catching, she smashed the mirror with her fist in a rage, the blood trickled down her knuckles as a piece of glass fell to the floor. She looked at it and a crazy life threatening thought went through her head, she didn't want to look like this so she would mould herself a new face. She picked up the sharp implement and pointed it at her gorgeous face, drove the edge into the tender flesh of her right cheek driving it upwards towards her eye. It was only then that she realised that she wasn't wearing her glasses. The blood from her face had drenched the floor and was trickling into a large pool at her feet.
She had managed to make a large gash down her right cheek before a girl from the fifth year walked in on all the blood on the floor; as she had stumbled around she must have caused more of a mess than she had imagined. Hizenfli could hear the screams echo down the corridor as she fell to the floor still trying to maim herself. She looked at the ceiling and smiled, her eyes were waning on being open and closed, she stood up slowly, unsteadily, and looked in the mirror, the perfect face, it was gone. An enormous tare down her eye though not actually harming the eye itself. Her hair was dripping from the blood she had fallen into but she was still alive and she still had the mirror with which to do more damage, what other harm could she inflict before a teacher caught her. She pointed it at her head again when she heard another gut wrenching scream and the door slamming, it sounded like McGonagall. The deputy headmistress was not even going to attempt to deal with her as no one had entered the room. She laughed wielding the sharp cutting mirror at her face like a maniac.
She looked into the mirror an insane glint in her eyes specifically shouting at the face that stole her life away in seconds. If she had to she would make her face macabre in order to have people look away from her instead of at her.
"I'll get you before the day is out!" She shouted bringing the knife back again before seeing like a flash the dagger disappear and smash into tiny pieces on the floor. She screamed and pulled at her face, at the rip in her features in order to make them bigger. Strong fingers prized her fingers from her face and yanked them to her side before she could feel a tall man standing behind her, she could tell it was a man, it smelt like a man. A musky sensual smell that drifted up her nostrils like fire ensnaring her senses with what felt like lust for the first time in her life.
He pulled her hands behind her back before gripping them in one of his hands with slender fingers entwining her wrists, she closed her eyes as he pushed her to the sinks in front of the mirror that she'd broken in one corner. She hung her head and looked at the floor not wanting to face what she had done to herself or who was standing behind her.
"Look at what you've done!" He whispered in her ear, his voice was a mixture of softness concern and rage - she liked it, but then she also recognised it as someone that she didn't like.
"No." She said allowing a tear to fall, it was crimson - like her face picking up the blood as it continued to flow down her face. The was a strong tug on her hair, it pulled her head back and forced her eye level to meet the mirror though she refused to return its glance by keeping her eyes closed.
"Look!" He said more desperately - it was dark - the voice, robbing the light from within her and making her wish more than anything he'd keep that grip there forever. "You're destroying yourself, and why? Because you finally look the way you know you've always wanted to and it frightens you!" She began to shudder with pleasure every time a word escaped his thin lips, he was pressed completely up against her back. She could feel his legs against hers even though they were wearing heavy robes she knew he was so close you wouldn't be able to see light between them. It was a fraction of something she never believed she would feel under his grip or anyone's, it was as if the Potion had awoken her desires and that was beginning to scare her. "I understand fear, no matter what you think of me or what I understand of human nature believe me, I know fear. It stalks me like a cat as I walk the path to my doom. You cannot do this to yourself because you believe you will be living a lie." He said loosening the grip on her hair then her wrist. She fell to the floor as he let go completely sliding down him like water her arms following slowly as she slumped to the floor at his heals.
His form was powerful and proud, he was lean and as she had allowed her hands to creep down him she could feel the heat radiate from him like a blue flame. There was untold power locked within this man and now she was beginning to see why the other members of her house liked him. There was a secret source of inspiration in his soul and buried deep within his cold black eyes that flickered with something she sensed now as fire ripping it's way out of him in tiny sparks of electricity unable to remain within the wire.
"You don't understand! You'll never understand because it was you're fault!" She cried going for her face again before he knelt down on the floor placing his arms firmly around her and pulling her arms back againt his body his head next to hers looking over her shoulder. Their cheeks touched; she could make out the jaw line on his well-structured face, it frightened her he was so close. Two days ago he wouldn't have even looked at her twice and now he was in actual contact with her - she quivered.
"I also live a lie," he said sadly but with some honesty - she could sense it. "I am indeed the wreck you see before you but before I was so much less, in order to get out of the rut I knew that I must lie. So I do - I earned trust of everyone the way I am now but trust at what cost, I'm so deceitful trust comes with a warning and will not be restored at all if lost because of things I have done. They seem sure of my side but I'm unsure of where I should be. I know what is right and wrong and I know where I want to be whole-heartedly only they won't let me. How I should live, the way things look right now you'll steal them from me from one mistake that stole what you believed you would be as a person forever and now your sense of identity is gone. But I don't understand you. You'd kill yourself to try and get back what you had. If I could turn back the clock I'd rethink things, only it doesn't work that way." He whispered. "If you wish to regain that face you called your life you must meet me in the Potions room after school hours and we will find your cure. The magic that will piece together your former lustre if I can call it that and restore what you to the way you wish to be." Her eyes flickered to his face, they were setting a gaze on the floor, he looked sad. "I'm really - very sorry, Miss Latchman." He said sorrowfully looking at the blood on his fingers, that had come from her hair they glistened with what looked like remorse for what he had done to her; her heart pounded beneath her breast. She felt like she was being pulled around in circles and she didn't know what to do.
"Hizenfli, my name is Hizenfli." She said suddenly forcing it out of her lungs in order for the first time to be heard as she really was, turning her slashed face to his. He turned to face her feeling her nose on his cheek and a small trickle of what was either blood or a tear rip his face apart, a confused look on his face as he looked into her sparkling brown eyes. "Please address me by my first name Professor Snape, and I will accept your help if you can agree to be civil." She whispered as their noses touched, all she wanted was to kiss him, she had no idea why, her mind was becoming contorted, her thoughts perforating the gaps in the reality she was experiencing - she was getting dizzy. It was as if looking through a fast lens spinning around the scene of the student in the Professor's strong embrace as she looked into what appeared to be an abyss waiting to swallow her. Severus Snape, was not the same man she had hated only moments before, in her eyes as the camera moved everything changed the slash down her face had opened a new world to her. One where she didn't want to remain alone, where she wanted someone to like her in return and this man was all she now felt that she wanted. She wanted him to like her and as he held her within his arms the breaths escaped her more and more rapidly as the blackness began to steal the vision from her eyes.
"Of course Hizenfli," he said getting to his feet pulling her from the floor a firm grip around her chest, her legs went limp and she passed out as she was pulled effortlessly from the bathroom and to the hospital wing. He didn't like to admit it but she was beautiful and he knew why, the guilt washed up his spine and punished his mind for his behaviour. He was her teacher and there was no way he'd keep his job if he allowed these thoughts to continue, but it wasn't just her face he found attractive, when she'd slashed it he knew it was more than skin deep. Hizenfli Latchman was an unbelievable young woman, set out to do what she wanted and desperate to be what she was and not what she had always dreamed - a strength he didn't have. The Potion must have brought her hope to life, that one day she would be pretty the problem was the cost and he didn't know the cost yet, were there any side affects? This was a new Potion and he'd been an idiot. An effort to be cruel at any cost was the biggest mistake he'd ever made and it was changing his perception of what he believed and the way everything should be. He wanted the world to be different, he wished he hadn't made choices in his youth that made everything so difficult. If he'd have been stronger... If.... A word with so many possibilities, it wouldn't save him now if was already gone and now was something he could affect, would he though... Would he?
~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~
Around her she could hear voices but see nothing, what had she done to herself. Was it so wrong to look attractive after years of non-existence to finally be noticed? But then she remembered the lies, it was all lies and she could never recover her life from the lies they had now gained like a stone around the neck.
Author's Note: End of Part One... What did you think? Was that good/bad? Over the top? Hizenfli, she's a peculiar girl and I'm unsure if she's a bit Mary-Sue... She probably is but then if I want to write something this short I don't have too much time to develop her character and give you a different opinion of her. Severus is twenty-five! Yes! Sorry only I imagine him to be quite handsome there for all his faults. I wrote this at two different times of the day.. One in the afternoon and then twelve at night the second half that I think you'll agree is a bit too psychotic. I get that way at twelve or two or whatever the time is now. ~_~ Yes it's true, I'm mucho tired now and need sleep big style in order to start writing chapter thirteen of Natural Veritaserum, I like that story, it's fun to write, if you haven't already have a look if you want to, it's far better than this and the female character in it is definitely not a Mary-Sue... She's just... Have a read and you'll understand plus it has a lot more depth to it.
I hope you like it because I am going to finish this one quickly.
I.C. Fire
Next Part: Command of the Potion's Master
silver_shadow54@hotmail.com