Draco Malfoy and his Unknown Fate:
Author's Notes: Okay… I've made Draco fairly gifted at Potions. In canon, he's the teacher's pet and I can't imagine Snape favoring him if he made substandard potions or even mediocre ones. So yes, it's a bit of a cliché, but it works for the story. And as for what they're making… um. Maybe a sort of base for future potions? It's seems like a first day of school thing to make.
Warnings for this chapter: Mild swearing. Neville looks like an idiot… but that's nothing out of the ordinary. Sorry, Neville fans. But you know it's true!
Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong to J.K. Rowling. I'm merely borrowing them for the time being. This will be slash (eventually). Don't like it? Don't read it. Otherwise, enjoy.
The first classes of the year were always the same. The teachers reviewed a bit from the previous year and went on and on (in sometimes mind numbingly boring, exhausting detail) of exactly what they were planning for that term. Thankfully, Snape was the exception to this rule. He didn't waste time with frivolous preliminaries, but dove right into his syllabus. It was refreshing.
Except of course, when it wasn't. Draco sneered over at his lab partner, the ever clumsy Longbottom. The best potions student paired up with the worst meant less explosions which was a good thing considering the fact the potions were more advanced and dangerous. It also meant, however, that Draco had to divide half his attention between actually making the potion and keeping Longbottom from blowing them up. Even with this distraction his potions always came out beautifully. Draco seemed to have an instinctive grasp of how the ingredients should be portioned and just what to combine with another ingredient to get the desired effect. It wasn't an unusual occurrence for Draco to have to improvise something to fix a potion after Longbottom bungled things up. The half wit twit had a memory like a sieve and tended to get flustered about the littlest things which meant even if he knew better he just might accidentally knock a volatile ingredient into the cauldron anyway.
Sometimes he thought Snape had paired them up just so Draco would be challenged in class. It did keep him from finishing up early which meant he couldn't spend the rest of the class flinging disgusting ingredients at oblivious Gryffindors still concentrating on their cauldrons or sabotaging others' potions. They'd been paired together ever since last year when Dumbledore had attempted to facilitate a truce between the feuding Houses. Almost all the classes were Slytherin-Gryffindor or Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw this year, just as they were the year before.
Pansy was stuck with Granger who was hogging their workspace while Zabini and Weasley were peering into their cauldron uneasily. The potion was a mild sedative and was supposed to be a dark blue at this stage. Theirs was an off white color with chunks of blue dispersed throughout the liquid. Potter and Goyle were paired up and the Boy Who Lived was almost pulling his hair out in frustration at Goyle's monosyllabic conversation and unhelpful hints. Crabbe was paired with the pretty Patil girl and was using his superior height in an attempt to peek down her robes to no avail.
Patil didn't even notice, being too busy shooting death glares at her ex-boyfriend. The Irish Gryffindor was giving her pleading looks while his lab partner, which was Bulstrode, rolled her eyes and measured a bit of bat guano into her cauldron. Snape looked up from the thick book he had been thumbing through and cast a quick glance around the class. "When all of you reach the stage where it is dark blue please take it if off the cauldron to cool and we'll pick up where we left off next time. And I want a fifteen inch report on the uses and abuses of this potion." The groans rang throughout the class from Slytherins and Gryffindors alike. "Make that twenty." Snape snapped, with a caustic look at his sullen pupils and Draco took the time to wonder why Potions was his favorite class.
Masochistic tendencies perhaps?
"Er, should I have added in the Catnip Leaves?" Oh bugger, the potion was turning green. Well, considering the amount of time he was forced to spend baby sitting Longbottom during class and he still hadn't dropped Potions yet masochistic tendencies were a definite possibility.
To be Continued
Comments and constructive criticism are more than welcome.