THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
By: Scatterheart
A long time ago in a campus far, far away…Section Eight
The following Potions class was largely a quiet affair, which consisted mostly of the sounds of pages flipping, scratchy quills on crackling parchment, and occasional winter coughs.
Hermione stared down at the rows upon blurry rows of writing in the textbook in front of her and tried to think – or rather, not to think. She could not afford to think; the risk of losing a grip on the last shreds of her sanity was too high. The previous night's dreams had been filled with dark, rolling shapes that had trapped her in torrid embraces, and she had woken to find her bedcovers intertwined around her and her abdomen pulsing with the echo of a forbidden experience.
No, she could not think or analyze or make mental connections to real life, or do anything of the sort. Absolutely, absolutely not.
She felt an abrupt nudge at her side. "Hey, I don't understand anything on Chapter Nineteen," Neville mumbled. "Show me your answers to the reading questions."
Hermione shook her head, her hair tumbling like a descending curtain in front of her face. She made no move to brush it away; only kept her head bowed.
"Hello, woman? Can I see your work?" Neville repeated.
"No," Hermione shot back in a hiss. "If you have a question, ask Professor Snape."
Neville squeaked.
Hermione didn't actually need to turn to see that Longbottom had started to gape at her with saucer eyes and a round mouth that opened and closed like that of a drowning fish. "I'm not so sure about the questions either," she lied, forcing herself to concentrate on the strings of sentences before her. "Just ask the Professor if you're so stumped. What's he going to do? Bite you?"
"What's the matter with you, Hermione!"
"Nothing," she replied more heatedly than she had intended to. "What's the matter with you? Why do you always have to ask me?"
"Because you're my friend—"
"And Snape's your teacher. Ask him."
"But I—"
"Mr. Longbottom," Severus Snape said from the front of the dungeon. His voice was soft and unassuming. "Do you have a question?"
Hermione now imagined the poor boy looking like a toad that had just swallowed an ostrich egg. But the image struck no chord of amusement inside her, and only left her with an empty, filmy feeling that could only be described as pity. She tugged at her sweater and wrapped it closer about her body.
Neville cleared his throat. "I, uh… actually Hermione was—"
"Mr. Longbottom."
"Yes, Professor, I was only asking Hermione—"
He didn't as much as twitch at the sound of her name. "I'm asking you, Mr. Longbottom. Do you have a question?"
Hermione was filled with disgust. Apparently she had just evaporated away from the collective memory of the entire human race, as much as Professor Snape was concerned. She wanted to stand up on the desk and scream a profanity at him; perhaps he was notice her then, notice that she was not defeated from last night's battle.
"I… well…" Neville stuttered.
"Come here and show me the problem."
"Well, I don't…"
Snape stood in one velvet motion. "Then, Mr. Longbottom, I will go over there." He descended from his podium and walked along the row of desks, his shoes clicking like a metronome against the stone floor.
The thirty souls inside the classroom were all silent now, quills and parchments forgotten, as they perched on the edges of their seats and visually followed the Potion Master's every movement with mesmerized intrigue.
He passed in front of Hermione; without thinking, Hermione stuck out her foot from beneath the desk. It met with resistance, and she raised her head just in time to see Professor Snape stumble heavily forward like a fluttering black butterfly.
Stumbled, but did not fall. He grabbed the edges of Neville's table and held himself in check as his cloak continued to wildly undulate and rustle about his still figure.
And then came the whispers. Little chuckles, murmurs, thrown here and there through every crevice of the classroom. Someone coughed conspicuously three times, the last cough ending on a garbled syllable that sounded like "rheumatism," and the suppressed snuffles and giggles grew louder and more confident with each passing second.
"Silence," Snape said.
There was total silence. His voice could have sliced through granite.
Hermione tucked her foot under her chair.
"Now, Mr. Longbottom," Snape said. "What was your question?" And still he did not glance at her.
Hermione heaved an audible sigh. He was a vile bastard, but no fool. He knew. He knew that she knew that he knew. It was ridiculous. She decided that she hated him.
"Uh, well, I wanted to check if my math was right. On problem number three here," Neville was saying, pointing a pudgy finger at his scrap of parchment. "I remember that you said that wormwood equaled one and a half times basil in this potion? So, three dashes wormwood would be three and a half dashes… no, four and a half dashes of basil. Oh. Wait a minute. Yeah, I see how it is now—"
"I expect this was not your question, Mr. Longbottom. Was it?"
"Neville, I need to borrow a quill," Hermione interrupted, reaching over his desk and taking the spare one lying beside his textbook. She dragged the feather across the back of Snape's hand as she brought it to her own desk.
The Potions Master drew a sharp breath.
Good, Hermione thought, bitterly.
"Twenty points from Gryffindor for your superior intelligence and… audacity, Mr. Longbottom," Snape said, and left.
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