Chapter Two: Potions with Potter
The sun was barely peeking above the horizon when Lili woke, stepping through her bed curtains to realize that it had not been a dream. She was still in the Slytherin dormitory, still sleeping in the bed between a girl that greatly resembled a ghost and one that snored so loudly Lili was amazed anyone in the room could sleep a wink.
She was a Slytherin, and that was that.
Faintly saddened, she went through what had been the normal routine at Zhong Mo Xue. She stretched, changed into her robes, and took several moments to write letters to a few friends as well as –and less enthusiastically—one to her father, informing him as succinctly as possible about the unexpected turn of events. The other four girls around her continued to toss and turn in their beds.
Her mind was tumbling over itself, her body shaking, nervous and excited. Slowly, taking several deep breaths, she sat on the floor just beside her bed and closed her eyes, letting her mind rise and fall with the movement of her lungs.
You can get used to anything, Lili, she reassured herself through the cooling breaths. She remembered those first few months at Zhong Mo Xue: they had not been pleasant. Or easy. This was just another challenge to endure. She pulled in deeper breaths and felt her muscles melt. There was no need for tension. Slytherin or not, she could get through one year of anything.
She smiled, sunlight filtering slightly through the darkness of her closed eyes.
"What are you doing up so early?"
Lili took one last deep breath before opening her eyes to see the girls from the previous evening watching her, standing beside each other, looking murderous. "The early bird gets the worm," she sighed, wishing, in spite of the large girl's rather jarring snore, that they would both go back to sleep.
The bigger of the two stepped forward, her sizeable frame causing the floorboards to creak. "Yeah, but the early worm gets eaten."
Lili didn't miss the glint in those beady eyes. No, it wasn't witty repartee. This was a threat. She stood, stretching herself to a height that proved only slightly taller than the ogre-like young woman. "Then perhaps all worms should go back to bed."
The heavy-set girl grimaced, but the retort seemed to please her companion.
"Uh, Millicent, isn't it?" Lili continued, turning away from the girls and concentrating on her mass of hopeless red hair, jutting at strange angles from a fitful sleep. "Could you please tell me where exactly breakfast will be served this morning?"
But Millicent was examining her, showing her protest in a silence.
"It'll be in the Great Hall, where the feast was last night," the ghost-like girl chimed in finally, her unusually large, black eyes seeming a bit kinder.
Seeming: the keyword apparently in Slytherin.
Lili forced a half-smile. "And you're—" But she couldn't remember.
"Dia. Dia Morrighan."
"Oh, yes, Dia. I'm sorry," she replied, fixing her hair sloppily with a silver pin. "I'm Lili."
"Lili, right. Uh, what were you doing just then, I mean sitting there?"
It sounded like genuine curiosity, and, being genuine, it seemed somewhat out of place in Slytherin-- as if it didn't quite fit the décor. "It was an exercise we did every morning at my old school. It's called Jiaoju. It's supposed to help with wuzhang."
Millicent abandoned her protest in favor of poison. "We speak English here."
"I don't exactly know the English word for it. Wuzhang is simple magic without an external focus—without a wand. What do you call it here?" She was trying her best not to sound embarrassed by her own ignorance.
"You can do magic without a wand?" Dia shot Millicent a quick look.
"Of course, it was a basic course at Zhong Mo Xue. You don't learn that here?"
"You cannot. You can only do magic without a wand if you are very afraid or emotional: everyone knows that."
"That's not entirely true," Lili said, trying to direct her attention back to Dia who seemed a little less incredulous. "If you have the ability to focus your own emotions and magical abilities internally, then you don't need an outside focus—like a wand or even a charm—at least, not for the simplest spells. That's wuzhang. And the way you learn to focus internally is through concentration exercises—like jiaoju. You're telling me you've never learned anything like that?"
Dia shook her head, saucer-eyes becoming, if possible, wider."So, you don't have a wand or anything?"
"No, I have a wand. Magic with a wand is still a lot more complex than anything you can through wuzhang. I'd say wuzhang can handle the sort of charms you learn in your first year. And besides, wuzhang is much more draining and difficult than wand magic." She her wand from the folds of her robe, moving it lightly through her fingers. "Bamboo, 10 and a quarter inches, with combination dragon heart-string and demiguise hair core." As she moved it through the air, it glowed a muted silver.
"Huh," Dia snorted, leaning in for a closer look. "How does it make that silver stuff? It looks familiar…"
"It's the demiguise hair. Demiguises are everywhere in China, but of course it's hard to find them because they're, well, invisible. They use demiguise hair to make invisibility cloaks too."
Dia nodded as if remembering. "Yes, it's just like an invisibility cloak. My grandfather used to have one. It was that same kind of silver." She grinned, revealing slight dimples in her paper skin. "My brother and I used to pinch it from out of Gramp's closet and hide. He'd run all over the place looking for us: it was loads of fun."
"Geez, Dia, was that right before the tea party with your teddy?" Millicent spat, looking over the two of them sourly. "Besides, I don't buy any of this Chinese hocus-pocus. Wands with invisible silver hairs? 'Concentration exercises'—and everyone knows you can't do magic without a wand. Not with any predictability."
"You're wrong."
As soon as the words had left Lili's mouth, she was sure Millicent would reel off any number of curses in her direction. Or maybe come at her with those meaty fists. But, to Lili's surprise, Millicent merely smiled, flip. "Alright then, prove it."
Lili was caught off guard, surely a deadly mistake in Slytherin. She didn't feel like exerting the energy to prove anything: she was tired still and nervous.
But, at the same time, a small, irresistible part of her yearned to humiliate this brat into leaving her alone. Maybe a little show, to keep the dogs at bay…
Slowly, taking deep, warm breaths, she sat and closed her eyes. After a few seconds, she began to feel her breath growing hot. A fire tingled in her stomach and, inside her brow, tiny blue dots floated, coalesced into a glowing, devouring flame.
She opened her eyes and looked for a mark.
Millicent smirked so wide it seemed her face might crack in two. "See, I told you. You can't do magic without a—"
But her final word was interrupted by the sound of fire erupting violently across the room. One of the four-posters was completely engulfed in blue flame, crackling loudly enough to wake the other two girls with a start.
"My bed!" Millicent cried, rushing to her bed clumsily, fanning at the flames with her hands, as if, somehow this meager wind would put them out. "What the hell are you doing? You're going to ruin—"
"Relax," Lili sighed, taking in a deep breath. As she exhaled, there was a rush of wind, and the flames disappeared as quickly as they had come.
Ten eyes—including Dia's round gaze—turned on her.
The hypnotized stillness lasted only a moment, however. Millicent spun on thick heels, muscles straining to break across her jaw. "You could have ruined my bed, you daft—"
"Relax," Lili repeated, gesturing towards Millicent's four-poster which was, now, perfectly normal. "That was illusion fire. It couldn't have hurt your bed --unless I'd wanted it to."
It was a lie; illusion fire was always harmless—but perhaps it would have the effect desired. She couldn't help but sneer a little herself, looking at the girl's angular, jutting mouth drawn taut with rage. As angry as Millicent seemed however, Lili guessed the point was enough to keep her quiet for a while. As the others turned away, still blinking into consciousness, she smiled. Well, at least this demonstration might hold off their cruelty, for a while anyway. In the pit of her stomach, Lili felt a small laugh stifle itself with the knowledge that even these tough Slytherins were intimidated by her.
Yet, a part of her knew that something was wrong. She was being petty, and backbiting, and—no, she would never have done something like that at Zhong Mo Xue.
--But then again she had never found herself surrounded by people who understood only that might made right. And if she had to prove to them that she could hold her own, then, so be it.
Resolved, and looking around the room, feeling focused, she caught Dia's doleful, black eyes, and couldn't help but grin a little at the lingering surprise she still spied there.
"So, shall we go to breakfast?"
The breakfast was almost completely alien to her--oatmeal, eggs, and bacon. She stared at her plate for several minutes, and poked at it disconcertedly for several more before resolving to take a little of the oatmeal and wait till lunch. ("What, you've never seen anything besides rice?' Millicent had quipped. She had not, however, mustered the courage to say this any louder than a mumble.)
And something even more unsettling than the rather unusual, greasy breakfast—her first class was Potions with the rather unusual and greasy Professor Snape. It was a double class with the Gryffindor seventh-years.
In fact, it wasn't until she was sitting in the dank dungeon classroom that smelled of a hundred, fermented potion ingredients, that it occurred to her. Harry Potter. He was the same age as she: he would be in this class. She had heard stories about him from her father, but even as far away as China people knew the name of the Boy Who Lived. And even all the way across the world, the young man was regarded with a general sense of awe…
Indeed, almost as soon as Lili had taken a seat beside Dia and Millicent, a tall, skinny young man sauntered into the Hall, looking none too happy over round glasses. He seemed to be listening intently to a mousy-haired young girl who spoke to him in low tones. Behind them, an even taller boy, red-hair glowing like torchlight and freckled face drawn in frustration, seemingly at whatever the girl was going on about.
"That's Harry Potter."
"You do know who Harry Potter is, don't you?" Millicent spat, not taking her beady eyes of the tousle-haired boy across the room.
"Of course."
"He's a real twit," she continued, venom practically dripping from her lips. Lili was glad that, finally, Millicent seemed to dislike someone more than her. "I mean prancing around here like he owns the place. He won't stand a chance if You-Know-Who ever gets a hold of him."
Lili glanced over at Dia to see if she would confirm this statement, but Dia was rather busy talking with a pale, blonde boy behind them.
"Professor Snape, though, he's the only professor that doesn't fawn over that Potter – or any of those other nasty Gryffindors. This is my favorite class, just for that reason." Seeing that Lili didn't seem too interested, her voice grew more intense. "Those other two are his little henchmen. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger." She said the girl's last name with such disdain that Lili was afraid to turn and see the horrible look that must surely be contorting Millicent's already none-too-pleasant face. "The only thing worse that Harry-bloody-Potter is that Granger. One of these days—"
But Lili wasn't listening. Harry had suddenly caught her gaze, and she looked away quickly, heart pounding, cheeks going red. She wasn't sure why this embarrassed her so, but it was several minutes before she allowed herself to look back up at him.
He wasn't looking in her direction anymore, but was leaning forward as the red-haired boy whispered something, eyes darting between Lili and Harry.
They're talking about me. Her insides burned, and she had to take several more deep breaths before she felt calm again. What could they be saying? What could they possibly have to say about her?
"You're new."
It was a long, overly-elocuted voice from behind her, and she felt Dia's thin fingers tapping her shoulder. She turned, finding herself face to face with a slender young man, almost as ghostly white as Dia. An eyebrow raised momentariliy as he flashed what must he must have considered a winning smile.
It took Lili a while to muster anything similar. "Uh, yes, I am. Lili."
"I'm Draco Malfoy, and this is Crabbe," he gestured half-heartedly towards a house-sized young man beside him. "And this is Goyle." Another leviathan.
Lili nodded, unsure of how to respond. She was well enough acquainted with the name Malfoy to know that her father had never used it in connection with anything positive.
The pale boy made no attempt to hide his disapproving appraisal. "You were in China? I bet that was dreadful. Is it true that you can perform curses without a wand?" A slight smirk.
News travels fast, she wondered, giving Dia and Millicent an uneasy look. Must be another charm of Slytherin.
"Sometimes I can perform simple curses without a wand, but it's very difficult." She straightened a little, trying to shift back into confidence. "And China wasn't dreadful. It was wonderful. We certainly didn't have any classrooms as dank and smelly as this."
"I'm sorry the classroom isn't to your liking, Ms. Lee, but, if you could, I'd appreciate you muddling through somehow."
Lili snapped around only to see Professor Snape lurking behind his desk, addressing her dangerously over a now quiet, assembled class. Lili felt her pale cheeks flush, but bit her tongue hard so as not to seem too embarrassed.
"Now, this is your last year here," Snape continued, flitting his eyes off her and letting his scowl fall evenly across the room. "And, since you dunderheads have wasted the last six years fumbling over basics, we're going to be forced to triple our workload this year to make up for your lamentable --yet, I confess not unexpected-- lack of skill. Let's not waste any time, then." He cleared his throat. "We're on page 612, starting with the most complex of the Petrification serums. The advantages of using this as opposed to the other formulations you're supposed to have mastered are–"
Lili found her attention wandering as Snape went on about eye of this and finger of that. They had covered these potions two years previous at Zhong Mo Xue, and she saw no reason to listen to Snape's rather dull lecturing if she didn't have to. Instead she let the words sift through her ears, and found herself daydreaming, remembering her after-hours potions apprenticeship with Mistress Yang…
"Miss Lee, why don't you tell us."
She certainly hoped she hadn't jumped at hearing her name. Snape leaned forward on his desk, shoulders taut like a hunting tiger. "Miss Lee?"
Her tongue curled and fumbled before she was finally able to open her mouth. She searched her ears for some lingering hint of the question. "Um, powdered horn of ki-lin."
Snickers erupted, mostly from the students on the Gryffindor side of the room, but several from near her, including from Millicent.
"That's correct."
Everyone looked around, glancing between Snape and Lili as if something didn't add up.
He scrawled the words across the blackboard with an air of indulgence. "The horn of the ki-lin has all the appropriate properties necessary,however you might run into a problem if you do not have a considerable amount of Galleons in Gringotts. To get a ki-lin horn from the Orient to England is quite difficult and costly, Miss Lee." He turned about again, eyes hitting hers like an arrow straight to its mark. "What would one use if one needed to use somewhat cheaper materials?"
He was staring straight at her, prompting her to respond again, the same look of intensity he had held her in the night before. Another test.
Though she should have felt nervous with all the eyes boring into her and the sound of Draco quipping "Why don't you ask Weasley, he'd know about anything cheap", Lili couldn't help but feel a little surge of electricity. She always felt most confident when challenged. And this was her arena. She swallowed, thinking.
"Basilisk scales in the right ratio would work, but I suppose that would also be a little costly…I guess the most common English equivalent of ki-lin horn would be dragontooth. But it might be cheaper to try the tooth of a dog charred in a fire for a while...sometimes that has the same effect." She felt very grateful that she had decided to flip through her Potions textbook a week ahead of time to learn some of the English terms and traits of ingredients. She felt even more grateful that her previous Potions Mistress had been a bit of a penny-pincher and had made sure to teach her a variety of cheaper alternatives to ingredients deemed tai gui.
The class looked away from her and back up at Snape, waiting to see who would win this showdown.
The Potions Master might have been impressed, but he managed to seem only vexed. "Indeed, though I think, for this potion, we might want to stick with dragontooth." He turned away, with a growl, continuing several equations on the board.
Lili felt her own breath once more.
"A dog tooth? What kind of magic do they do in China?" Millicent whispered in Draco's direction.
She was too relieved to let Millicent bother her. Relaxing again, she watched Snape scribble across the board. It was one of the few opportunities she'd had to examine him without having to dodge his heavy eyes. Even in the low light of the dungeon, his hair was shining with grease, bouncing limply as he wrote. She imagined his face, pressed near the chalkboard, hooked nose dusted with white. He certainly wasn't a pleasure to look at, but he--well, he was a puzzle, and her natural curiosity took hold, even at the objection of her judgment. She hoped that the entire year would not be filled with this type of anxious antagonism, but, if it was, at least she knew she was somewhat up to snuff.
She was surprised to feel herself jump slightly when he turned from the board, as if caught doing something she oughtn't. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice.
"I'll break you into pairs now, and I want a Potion of the correct color and thickness by the end of the class—and no, I don't want it splattered all over the walls, Longbottom."
A rather chubby young man in the front row slumped at his desk.
"Alright, Granger and Malfoy."
Behind her Lili heard a moan. Please put me with Dia. Dia didn't seem too bad, and she certainly beat Millicent…
"Longbottom and Bulstrode."
"Oh bugger," Millicent whispered under her breath. Please put me with Dia.
"Patil and Morrighan."
Her lips parted slightly at the realization. He was purposely pairing Slytherins with Gryffindors. She frowned. It seemed needlessly malicious…
"Weasely and Goyle."
A grunt from behind her.
Snape paused, looking up for only a second. "Potter and Lee."
She stayed still for a moment, watching Snape as he continued down his parchment, checking off names with his quill. What possible reason could he have to stick her with Harry Potter? Was this another test? If so, why not stick her with this Longbottom boy who seemed the most hopeless of all?
The tall boy trudged over to her, unenthusiastic squeak of shoe leater with every step. "Alright, then, shall we take that one over there?" He pointed towards a cauldron in the back corner of the room, conspicuously close to his red-headed friend.
Lili stood. "How about over there?" She gestured towards a cauldron on the opposite side of the room, near to no one else.
He sighed and nodded, adjusting the flasks and bottles under his arm with only the hint of a sulk.
They worked in relative silence for a long while, exchanging only the occasional direction.
"Two not three."
"No, stir clockwise."
"I think it's six times—no, wait, it says—"
"Seven, yes, I know."
In the translucent steam of the cauldron, Lili felt more at ease. In fact, she began concentrating so intently on the potion, she forgot all about Snape, lurking around the room, pouncing on the helpless. She breathed deep: a thick smell of musk, the distinct sweetness of newt liver and the stiff, brittle aroma of fairy wing.
There was a reason, she reminded herself, to love Potions. The heat radiated up from the cauldron, coating her face.
"Is-- it true that you can perform the Unforgiveables without a wand?" It was a question he had been, apparently, keeping in to the point of bursting.
"Isn't it true that you're a complete jerk who thinks he's a big, important celebrity?" she said, matter-of-factly, only looking up at him after the potion was at a steady simmer. "I mean, that's what I've heard."
He forced a crooked grin, but only for a moment. "Sorry, I know I shouldn't listen to rumors and—it's just that, well—"
She arched her eyebrow at him before continuing with the potion. "What?"
"Well, you're in Slytherin, aren't you?" he pressed, adding a pinch more dragontooth to darken the concoction. "I mean, you're a Lee, you should have been in Ravenclaw…"
She gingerly picked out the dragontooth with some exasperation. "You don't need that much, it's dark enough already. And because I'm in Slytherin, there must be something wrong with me?"
The boy bit his lip, running a hand through his disheveled black hair, rumpling it in a seeming attempt to mask his discomfort. "Well, I mean you are in bad company. Bulstrode and Morrighan and Malfoy."
"What's wrong with Morrighan and Malfoy?" She could understand disliking Millicent, but Dia and Draco seemed perfectly cordial. So far at least.
The boy rounded on her as if she had just uttered some horrible curse. "What, are we talking about the same people? Dia is an absolute snob of a girl. Those rumors about you, wouldn't surprise me if she started them. And Draco, I mean, come on."
"What do you mean?"
The boy's brow furled so tightly that the question seemed almost painful to him. "I mean he's no good. A jerk, a snob. He's into all this pureblood stuff. Thinks he's royalty because his family is rich and powerful. It's all dark arts with him. A rotten apple, you know?"
Lili glanced quickly across the room at Malfoy, bent over his cauldron, taking directions from the skinny, mousy-haired girl beside him. "Malfoy knows the Dark Arts?" She wondered how much he knew and if he had studied them, on the side, like she had, out of curiosity.
This question perplexed Harry even more. "Um—well—I don't have proof, but, I mean –his family—his father was a Death Eater and—"
"And because his father was bad, he must be bad as well?"
"Well, no—"
"We can't all have perfect, loving families," Lili sighed, letting her gaze fall back to the bubbling cauldron. She thought only briefly about her mother living somewhere in France now, with two stepsons.
"Look, it's not that," Harry insisted, gritting his teeth a little and waving some steam away from his face. "I didn't mean to offend you, I just figured there must be some reason you're in Slytherin. And as for Draco, you know. He's mean-spirited. You should hear the things he says about—well, for starters, about my friends."
The cauldron was swirling madly, a deep black. Lili pulled out her long spoon and removed her dragonhide gloves with a calculated motion. A reason she was in Slytherin. She had yet to discover what, exactly, was so much better about Gryffindor.
"I wonder if it's anything as mean-spirited as what you and your friends say about him. Or me."
The boy's bright eyes met hers, green mirrors facing each other into infinity. He opened his mouth to respond, but the voice that resounded was not his; it was one of silk and ice.
"Well, I see you two have finished."
Lili turned and met Snape's lank yet still somehow imposing form. He was almost a foot taller than her, and looking up, she could barely make out his eyes over the mountain of his nose. He was looking at Harry, who whose face was drawn tight and flustered, and then back at her. She drew her lips tight in an attempt to hide her emotions.
A slight smile cracked his face.
"Excellently done," he remarked, examining the potion only perfunctorily. "It looks like you can get things right with Miss Lee's help, Mister Potter. Perhaps you should consider her tutoring you in the afternoons."
Harry scowled. "I have Quidditch practice."
"Five points for Slytherin."
Harry looked up, but Snape's hard eyes and sadistic sneer evoked only quiet seething. The young man turned and left. Lili was glad to note that only Draco and Harry's female friend, cauldron already clean and upturned, were listening.
Turning back to herself, Lili, though she tried hard not too, smiled. Snape had been on her side: he had stood up for her. It was enough to make her glance up, looking past the greasy hair, searching for something she had missed.
Sensing her green eyes poking around at him, Snape stiffened and met Lili's face with a hard but not angry look. "Well done, Ms. Lee. You've certainly proved to be more than I expected."
It was a half-compliment, and she could only nod, suspecting that that sort of thing didn't pass his lips often. Tucking her books under her arms and trying to seem nonchalant, she walked away towards Dia and Millicent waiting wide-eyed at the door. She caught only a quick flash of Harry Potter's green eyes as he exited, flanked by his concerned friends.
Her hands shook and she felt flush. Maybe she'd been to hard on Potter. But she couldn't accept the continued assumptions that something was wrong with her. And besides, she'd meant every word.
Snape seemed to agree anyway. Whether he had been complimenting her because of the potion or the vexed Potter, she wasn't sure. But either way, she was proud of her work.
Beside Dia, pale Draco stood like a twin ghost. He, too,watched her, eyebrow still arched, lips pursed. He was still examining, and she wondered what in the world he was trying to figure out.
Perhaps things might work out for her, even in Slytherin. Better in Slytherin than Gryffindor, she heard herself thinking. She had a sneaking suspicion that the Gryffindors liked to feel they were the beating, courageous heart of the school-- of the world.
And that isn't me.
And why should anyone think badly of her just because she was in Slytherin?
She met Draco's pale appraisal and nodded a little.
No, perhaps she had found a proper place.
She felt Snape's eyes on her back as she walked out the Dungeon door.