Professor Slughorn was quickly becoming Drucy's favorite teacher. He was just as jovial in class as out of it, welcoming in his students cheerily, the dungeon room windowless, but full of candlelight and lamplight. He gave them a standardized lecture on the importance of potions. Drucy was supposed to be interested in them because they could allow you to bottle fame and death. In truth, she was interested in them because they didn't require her to cast a spell through her wand. As Slughorn departed from a memorized speech (she could tell when he did so, because he began to really wander) and waxed merrily about the benefits of a good potion, she slowly realized that she might be able to shore up her apparent inability to do charms with the proper sort of brews, and she paid closer attention to his slightly disorganized hints of theory and process.

When he was done talking about potions in general, with much of the first Potions period over, Slughorn brought out a small vial that he had tucked into his robes. He held it to the light, showing them the pretty, deep reddish color. "This is not the simplest potion, but it is not very difficult, and you have plenty of time. You will find the instructions on page twenty-four of your book. Watch closely." He waved his wand, his cauldron filling silently with water. The class watched silently as he unstoppered the vial with a flourish, held it up theatrically, and turned it upside-down. The liquid formed a perfect, round ball at the lip of the vial, and dropped down towards the water.

Drucy and the other students gasped slightly.

The dark amber ball disappeared into the water. It did not splash. It did not even gloop. They watched the surface of the water… and nothing happened at all. There was not even a single ripple to show that something had just hit the surface. Slughorn chuckled at their astonished faces. "Sometimes no effect at all is the most amazing effect, aye? Alright, give it your best."

The students had spaced themselves out through the room, as Slughorn had not paired them up for this project. Drucy glanced around at her fellow students, slightly afraid that she might see the boy called Matt Briar, the one who had teased her on the train. He wasn't there. Daniel was, and he winked at her when he caught her gaze, before turning to his cauldron with a serious look on his face. Drucy bent to her own work, and it did not take long to realize that it was not as easy a task as she had hoped.

Potions were fiddly! Estimation would not do, in time or in ingredients. On top of that, she had to wave her wand over the concoction after stirring it for five minutes, and her wand was still feeling ornery from Charms. It turned her potion into a burnt mess twice. The third time, the potion turned green and started to hiss ominously. Slughorn cleared her cauldron for her both times. He was able to tell her that the first mess resulted from overstewing the beetle eyes, but even he could not explain why her wand turned the second mess green. On her third try, though, she mastered her nervous frustration and handled her wand as if she were handling Jade, gentle, but in charge. "Come on," she told it as quietly as she could, hoping that the surrounding bustle would hide the sound of her Parseltongue. "We want to be able to do this. To make something now and use it later. That's got to appeal to you. Let's make it work." She waved it, and was pleased to see her potion turn amber! It was not quite as dark as Slughorn's, but it looked good to her!

"Professor, Professor!" Drucy squeaked in excitement, carefully filling her vial. "I've got it!"

Slughorn took a look at her vial. "Not bad for a first go," he told her. "Let's give it a try." He waved his wand twice, once to clear the rest of her cauldron, and once to fill it with water. He tipped her vial. Did the droplet collect a little too quickly? Did it fall quite like his? It hit the water silently and vanished without a splash or a ripple. The other students were watching her now, and Daniel joined several of the Slytherins in a quiet cheer.

Then the bubbling started.

The surface of the water broke in a hundred bubbles, followed by more, then more, generating from underneath, pushing the bubbles further and further up, filling the rest of the cauldron. Drucy watched wide-eyed as the mound of bubbles grew higher and higher. She took a step backwards. "Professor?" she whimpered, as a tower of bubbles began to grow, a tower that she was certain would topple at any moment. "Professor…" she squeaked, eyes widening, taking another step back. The cauldron made a rumbling sound. "Professor!" Drucy shrieked, backing up another two steps and bumping into an unknown student, who steadied both of them as the column of bubbles nearly reached the ceiling.

Then the rumbling ceased and the bubbles began to pop quickly. Within seconds, she could see Slughorn's face again. He had been standing at ease the entire time, watching with a calm interest, smiling slightly. "That's a decent try, Miss Bulstrode," he told her. "Five points to Slytherin."

They were the first school points Drucy had ever earned. Her alarm faded into elation. She turned to see that the student she'd nearly backed into was another Slytherin, a pretty girl with blonde hair and green-gray eyes. "Nice!" the girl told her. "What's your name? Aren't you Drucilla?"

"Yes, but you can call me Drucy, everyone else does." Even as she spoke, Drucy realized that 'everyone else' was pretty much her sister and her parents. She hadn't spent any time playing with other girls her age, and she wasn't sure she knew how.

"I'm Roenna Goyle," the girl replied. "I know, we haven't really met. I was sitting across from you at lunch, though."

"I'm sorry," Drucy said, abashed. "I haven't even tried to get to know anybody. 'Rowna'…" She pronounced it the same way the girl had. "Is that supposed to be like 'Rowena', like in Ravenclaw?"

"Yeah," the girl said with a shy grin. "But with two 'n's' and missing the 'w'. Dad isn't much of a speller. I think he was hoping I'd be really smart."

"Are you?" Drucy asked. Then she blinked, nearly cursing her own self. "I'm sorry, that was the wrong thing to ask, and I didn't even know it until I heard myself say it."

Roenna giggled quietly. "It's okay," she said. "I don't think I'm really smart. But at least I'm not conceited, like half of Ravenclaw House. Look, I have to get back to my potion, it's sat too long already. Maybe we can talk after class?"

"That sounds good," Drucy said gratefully, turning back to her cauldron… to find it empty. She looked around for Professor Slughorn, and spotted him standing in front of another student's cauldron, one of the Gryffindors. The student turned her vial upside-down, and the entire potion immediately dropped into her cauldron. Shrieks erupted from the entire half of the room as the water immediately splashed high and wide with a loud *bang*! The water mixture seemed harmless, though, and pretty soon the students were shaking it off and going back to their work. Slughorn offered a few words of encouragement. When he glanced around, he caught Drucy's eye and smiled at her. "I cleared you, dear, you're done. You can go back to your Common Room if you'd like."

Back in the Common Room, Drucy realized that she couldn't get back into her bedroom, because she didn't know how to dissolve the lock her sister had placed on it. She put her bag in her cauldron and found a seat not too far from the plate glass window, where she could glance up at the anemone garden from time to time. Then she pulled out her Potions book and started to study page twenty-four earnestly, muttering the instructions to herself

"Try stirring once every two seconds, you silly girl," a drawling sneer sounded from right above her head. Drucy startled with a shriek, and looked around. The room was empty… except for… "Up here," the voice spoke again, a man's voice, sounding bored. She looked up. There was a portrait of a sour-faced, greasy-haired, dark-eyed man just above her table, glowering down at her. Drucy didn't have to read the name on the frame, but she did anyways. "Severus Snape… Former Headmaster Snape?"

"The same," he replied, sounding a bit mollified. "It looks like Slughorn has seen fit to waste your time with one of the most useless – and showiest – potions in history. The consistency depends upon being stirred well, but not overstirred. The instructions say to stir continuously, but I found that it worked better when I used one second for a full revolution, and the second to rest. When you do it that way, you only have to stir for three minutes instead of five, and the thickness is more consistent."

Drucy stared at the portrait for a moment. "Why haven't you ever spoken to me before? I've seen portraits of you before."

"My dear girl," Severus Snape intoned wearily, "a great many people want to talk to me, and I have no desire to talk to any of them. They are more interested in my role in the Second Wizarding War, such as it was, than anything that I am actually proud of doing, or knowing. I never spoke to you before because I never wanted to."

Drucy thought about this for a long moment. Then she smiled, looking back up at the portrait. "You did potions for years. You were the Potions Master. Please teach me. I want to know how to do it right. I want to know all those things that aren't in the book. I want to know why potions work, and not just how."

"Why are you interested in potions?" Snape asked her simply. Drucy felt that it was best, under the glare of that portrait, to tell the truth. She had heard rumors about the former Headmaster, and she did not know how much of his formidable abilities he had retained in portrait form.

"My wand is a little strange, and has a powerful core," she told him. "I'm a little afraid of it sometimes. I want to be able to make magic without depending on spells. I want to be able to make something now that I can use later, something that will work consistently. I want to be able to do through potions what my wand can't or won't do for me."

"You will have to become proficient with your wand," Snape told her severely, "especially if it has a powerful core. You will need to be able to control it. You're a Lestrange. Is it dear old Bellatrix's dragon heartstring?"

Drucy looked around the empty room before speaking back to the portrait. "Please… can you keep a secret?"

Snape looked down his nose at her, but he lowered his voice. "Child, I have kept far more profound secrets than these."

"It's a basilisk core."

Snape remained silent for a long moment before the corners of his mouth curled up unpleasantly. "So," he said in a low voice, "the old fool actually did it. And you say this wand functions? In your hand?"

"Sort of," Drucy confided. "When it does, it's really, really powerful. But it's temperamental. It won't do charms at all, and it seems to do curses all too well."

Snape remained silent for a long moment, long enough that Drucy wondered if the portrait had frozen in place like a Muggle picture, something she wasn't sure was even possible. Then he spoke, and his voice seemed almost kind. "Yes, I will take you as my student. I will teach you everything I know… in its own time." He fell silent for a moment longer, then spoke again. "Turn your book to page fifty-six…"