Professor McGonagall came into the Gryffindor common room after they were finished their supper. She handed Dawn a roll of parchment. "Here is your schedule for the Professors you are going to meet with tomorrow. Any questions?"
Dawn unrolled the parchment and looked at it. "Um, I seem to be spending a lot more time with some Professors than with others. I'm only spending half an hour with you, and two hours with Professor Vector."
"Yes, well, we know you have had a Muggle education up until now, and very little Magical training, so we have apportioned time accordingly," said McGonagall. "I don't expect it to take long to learn all you know about Transfiguration. Arithmancy on the other hand is very close to Mathematics, so Professor Vector will no doubt have to spend some time evaluating you. Anything else?"
"No, Professor." Dawn glanced down at her schedule. "I guess I'll see you at nine tomorrow."
"Very well." McGonagall looked at Harry and Hermione. "I expect you two to make sure she doesn't get lost, and reaches all her appointments on time."
"Yes Professor," said Harry. McGonagall turned to leave.
"Oh Professor?" asked Hermione.
McGonagall looked back at her. "Yes Granger?"
"I was wondering if you could tell us what's holding up our OWL marks," said Hermione. "We were supposed to get them in mid-July. They're almost a month late."
"Aw, yes," said McGonagall. "Well, there were a few…irregularities, caused by that Umbridge woman. It took some time to get sorted out. The Astronomy marks in particular. Apparently there was a…distraction, which brought everyone's marks down, and there was some debate about how to compensate fairly. You will be receiving your marks next week. Good night." McGonagall swept out of the common room.
Dawn looked at Harry and Hermione, and saw they were grinning. "What happened during the Astronomy exam?"
"Oh, Umbridge tried to arrest Hagrid on some trumped up charge," said Harry. "There was a battle on the lawn between him, her, and half a dozen of her lackies. McGonagall tried to help him and got hit by four stunning spells. Damn near killed her. We could see the whole thing from on top of the Astronomy tower during the test. Needless to say once it started, no one was paying much attention to the stars or planets."
Dawn took another look at her schedule. It was going to be a busy day for her tomorrow, starting at eight o'clock when she was supposed to see Professor Snape for an hour. Dawn figured that meant that they must think she knew something about potion making. She had done a few on her own, and helped Willow prepare others.
They sat around in the common room for a while with Harry and Hermione telling horror stories about Professor Snape, and how he treated Gryffindors in general, and Harry in particular. Buffy sat off to the side reading a book, and listening in. Professor Snape sounded like he would have gotten along fine with Principal Snyder at Sunnydale High. She guessed that every school had to have one. She wondered if she should have a word with this Snape guy. Let him know what had happened to Snyder.
Harry and Hermione escorted Dawn down to the Potions dungeon the next morning. Harry stopped at the top of the stairs. "You better go the rest of the way without me. The less Snape sees of me, the better his mood will be."
"What are you guys going to be doing while I'm with Snape?" asked Dawn.
"Oh, don't worry. We'll think of something. You better get going. Snape hates it when students are late."
Hermione took Dawn the rest of the way down to the Potions dungeon. They entered the classroom and saw that Professor Snape was there ahead of them. He had a table set up at the front of the dungeon, covered with apparatus, and bottles and jars of ingredients.
Snape looked up at them. "Well, I see you managed to find your way back, at least your guide did. That will be all Miss Granger. You may leave us."
"Yes Professor," said Hermione. "Good luck!" she whispered to Dawn as she turned and left.
"Well, don't just stand there!" said Snape. "We don't have all day, get down here!"
"Yes, Professor," said Dawn, and she came quickly down the stone steps to the front of the dungeon. She looked over the items on the table curiously.
Snape picked up a bottle, and handed it to her. "Tell me about this."
Dawn looked at the bottle. "Um, it's Asphondel Root."
"Congratulations Miss Summers. You can read the label. Can you tell me anything else about it?"
Dawn put the bottle down. "Nope."
Snape scowled at her. He picked up another bottle. "This?"
"Oh, Mandrake Root!" said Dawn. She knew this one, they used to sell it in the Magic Box. "Used in lots of curative potions. Um…you can't pack it too tight or it tends to go all wonky."
Snape raised an eyebrow. "Wonky, Miss Summers?"
"Bad. Off. Spoils. You know, wonky."
Snape frowned, and handed her another bottle of something Dawn didn't have a clue about. He kept going, and she figured she managed to say something about one item in three, beyond the name on the bottle. She knew she surprised him a time or two when she identified some of the items. Especially when she started into all the different uses of Lethe's Bramble. He cut her off when she was only about half way done telling him some of the mind control and memory erasure spells you could do with it.
Her comment about the Burba Weed surprised him most though. "Um, this vampire I used to know would crush it up and add it to his blood. He said it spiced it up."
"You knew a vampire?" asked Snape.
"Yeah, Spike," said Dawn. "Actually I've known a couple, but I knew Spike best. He's dead now. I miss him." Snape looked at Dawn like she had suddenly sprouted horns or something. "You don't believe me, ask my sister. Spike was a very unusual vampire."
Snape stopped quizzing her about the various ingredients he had on his table, and went on to the apparatus. Dawn did much better there. She was familiar with many of the items from Chemistry classes. He had her demonstrate how to use the scales to weigh both solids and liquids, and the use of a pipette for measuring liquids.
Professor Snape's mood seemed to worsen, the more Dawn showed that she knew. There were twenty minutes left in their allotted hour when he turned away and slapped his wand against the blackboard at the front of the class. "Prepare this!" Writing appeared on the board.
Dawn read over the directions. They weren't exactly in a form she was used to, but the same general information was present that she would expect to see in a Chemistry lab procedure. A list of ingredients, a list of apparatus, and instructions for what to do. She glanced at her watch. "Um, I don't think I'll have time to do all this before I'm supposed to see Professor McGonagall."
"Do as much as you have time for," said Professor Snape.
"Okay." Dawn started gathering the ingredients she'd need. Most of them were items that were already out on the table. "Um, we don't have any powered Bicorn Horn here. Where do I find it?"
Snape pointed toward a cabinet by the wall. "Anything not already out can be found in there."
Dawn smiled at him, which only made his scowl get worse. "Thanks." She went to the cabinet and got the Bicorn Horn and took another look over her shoulder at the blackboard to make sure she had everything. She was still missing the crushed Scarab Beetles so she got some of those too.
She took them back to the table and got the scale ready to start measuring her ingredients. "So, how precise do these quantities have to be?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" asked Professor Snape.
"Well, it says I need 1/4 ounce of the Bicorn Horn," said Dawn. "I could spend a lot of time measuring out exactly .250 ounces, but it would be a waste of time if anything from .24 to .26 ounces is good enough."
"Unless otherwise noted, a margin of five percent is adequate for this potion," said Snape.
"Okay." Dawn started carefully pouring the Bicorn Horn out onto the pan, and stopped when the scale said she had .246 ounces. She went on to measure out the next ingredient. "What does 'meld' mean?"
"What?" asked Snape.
"Down near the bottom," said Dawn. "It says to 'meld the crushed Scarab Beetles with the Asphondel Root.' Is that just a fancy way of saying 'mix' or is there some special melding technique?"
"I doubt you will get that far," said Snape, "but if you do, I will demonstrate the technique."
Dawn flashed him another smile. "Thanks!" Snape's scowl got even deeper.
Dawn hadn't quite gotten as far as melding the Scarabs with the Asphondel when Hermione came back. "Professor, it's time to take Dawn to see Professor McGonagall." She looked at the procedure written on the blackboard and frowned.
"Very well." Professor Snape withdrew his wand and waved it over Dawn's half finished potion. "Evanesco." Everything she had been working on vanished. "You may go."
Dawn smiled at him again. "Thank you Professor." She started to follow Hermione toward the door at the back of the dungeon. She stopped and turned around again. "Oh, Professor Snape? One more question: What was that potion supposed to do?"
"I was wondering if you'd get around to asking that one, Miss Summers. Perhaps Granger can answer that question for you."
Hermione looked back at the board. "It doesn't really do anything. Pretty much every step cancels out whatever effect the previous step may have had, but…"
"But what, Granger?" asked Professor Snape.
"But do any step wrong and it blows up in your face."
"Very good. Good day Miss Summers."
Dawn's smile widened. "Thank you Professor!" She turned back around and followed Hermione out into the corridor.
"You really enjoyed that?" asked Hermione.
"Yeah, it was kinda fun," said Dawn. "And the more you smile at him, the grumpier Professor Snape gets."
"You were baiting him?"
"Only a little. I really did enjoy the potions stuff."
"How far did you get with that procedure?" asked Hermione.
"About two thirds, why?"
Hermione stopped and looked at her. "Most of our class last year would have blown themselves up by the time they were half way through it."
They met Harry at the top of the stairs. "So how'd it go?" he asked.
"It was fun!" said Dawn.
"Er, are you feeling all right?" Harry reached out and put a hand on Dawn's forehead. "She's not running a fever," he told Hermione. "Maybe it wasn't Snape. Maybe someone impersonating him using Polyjuice Potion."
Hermione led them up the stairs toward the first floor, where McGonagall's office was. "It was Snape all right. He tried to blow her up."
"I'm sure that if he was really trying to blow me up, he would have succeeded," said Dawn. "It was a test, and I think I passed. Professor Snape may be the world's grouchiest person, but I don't think he's as bad as you guys were making out last night."
"You haven't seen the way he treats Harry yet," said Hermione. "Here we are." She knocked on the door to Professor McGonagall's office, and her voice invited them in.
Professor McGonagall asked Harry and Hermione to stay while she talked with Dawn, and had them demonstrate a couple of simple transfiguration spells that she then had Dawn attempt to emulate. Dawn tried, without any success. McGonagall called a halt after five minutes of Dawn trying to turn a match into a needle and sent her off to see Professor Flitwick.
"Well, I suck at Transfiguration," said Dawn as they walked off down the hall together.
"Don't worry about it," said Harry. "Our first Transfiguration class, Hermione was the only one who even came close to managing that spell, and she just made the match go a little silvery, and get a bit sharp at the end. And we all had a lot longer to try than McGonagall gave you."
Dawn's meeting with Professor Flitwick went very much the same way as her meeting with McGonagall, except when he had her try the Wingardium Leviosa spell on a feather. On her first few attempts nothing happened, but after Professor Flitwick corrected her pronunciation, and the way she swished and flicked her wand the feather suddenly flew up off the table in front of her. Instead of just floating in the air it kept accelerating upward until the quill end of it embedded itself in the ceiling.
Professor Flitwick seemed quite startled. "Yes, well, no problems with your power I'd say, but I think we may have to work on your control."
Next on Dawn's schedule was two hours with Professor Vector. She sent Harry and Hermione away, and then asked Dawn to describe what she had learned in her last year of Mathematics at her old school. Dawn spent half an hour talking about the things she had learned at Sunnydale High, and then Professor Vector started setting math problems for her. They covered a wide range of topics: trigonometry, geometry, factoring equations, finding the roots of quadratic equations, linear algebra, matrices, and half a dozen other things that Dawn had never heard of before.
Dawn left Professor Vector after two hours, and made her way back up to Gryffindor tower. Her schedule gave her an hour lunch break before she had to go to her afternoon evaluation sessions. She was already feeling exhausted, her session with Professor Vector had been the most taxing so far, strangely because it was the one session where she understood most of what she was doing.
Dawn was feeling a little rested after a good lunch, and went off for her afternoon sessions with Professors Lupin, Sprout, Binns and the final session with Hagrid.
Harry and Hermione went with Dawn as they crossed the lawn to Hagrid's hut. They assured her that they'd been to see Hagrid while Dawn was with Professor Vector, to find out just what he had in mind to show her, and that he wasn't planning on introducing her to anything too deadly. "There are a couple that can give you a nasty bite if you aren't careful, but nothing Madam Pomfrey won't be able to set right in an hour or two," said Harry.
The session with Hagrid started out quite nicely. He warned her to take off her jewelry and put it in her pockets before he introduced her to a Niffler.
"Oh, he's so cute!" Dawn stroked the Niffler carefully with one finger while she held it in the palm of her hand.
"Aye, they are cute little fellers," said Hagrid, "but they'll really tear things up once they start lookin' for somethin' shiney. If you still had on yer earrings it'd rip em right off er yer ears! Now let me 'ave 'im, an I'll show yer somat else!"
Hagrid showed Dawn a succession of creatures, some cute and cuddly like the niffler, and others of a more scary nature. Harry could see that Hagrid was watching Dawn's reactions to each creature carefully, noting how well she followed directions for how to handle them. The only one Dawn refused to touch, despite Hagrid's assurances that it was quite friendly and wouldn't bite, was a large spider, with legs about a foot long. Harry would have called it a giant spider if he'd seen it before he'd met Aragog.
"Well now, that went well!" announced Hagrid after he had replaced the last of the creatures—a Cornish Pixie—he had for Dawn to see into its cage. "I've got a special surprise for yer out back!"
Harry and Hermione exchanged a look. They hadn't been warned about this. "Um, what sort of surprise is this Hagrid?" asked Hermione.
"Don't you worry!" said Hagrid. "It's an old friend, come back home! Come on now!" Hagrid lumbered away toward the paddock behind his hut.
Harry, Dawn and Hermione followed Hagrid. They stopped just as soon as they cleared the corner. The creature in front of Dawn was totally amazing. Hind quarters like a horse, and front like a giant eagle, with grey feathers and giant wings.
"Buckbeak!" cried Harry.
"What about the Execution Order?" asked Hermione.
"Professor Dumbledore got it overturned!" said Hagrid. "When the wizard filing the complaint turned out to be a Death Eater, and half the original panel all turned out to be takin' bribes from him, we got 'im a new hearing! An' this time I kept my head, and I remembered all the research yer'd done, and we got 'im off!"
Harry and Hermione moved toward Buckbeak. Dawn saw that they stopped a good distance in front of the creature, and bowed to it. Buckbeak bowed back, and they both moved in closer and started to stroke his beak and feathers.
"Now Dawn, yer saw what Harry and Hermione did there?" asked Hagrid. Dawn nodded. "Tha's the way yer have to approach a Hippogriff. Yer have ter show 'em respect. Yer look 'em in the eye, try not to blink much, an' when they look back, yer bow to 'em. If the Hippogriff bows back, yer can move closer. If'n it don't, back away. An whatever yer do, don't insult 'em! Hippogriffs are very proud creatures, and can get right nasty when insulted."
"Who'd want to insult such a beautiful creature?" asked Dawn as she stepped closer to the Hippogriff. She stopped where Harry and Hermione had stopped, and waited for Buckbeak to look at her. She bowed deeply and straightened up again, hoping that Buckbeak would bow back. She was not disappointed, and moved in closer. She reached up to stroke his beak, feeling very aware that he could probably snap her arm right off with it. "Oh, you are lovely!"
Dawn declined the offer to go for a ride on Buckbeak, though she stayed with him well past the end of the hour allotted for her session with Hagrid. It was nearly dinner time when they left Hagrid's hut to go back to the castle.
