Chapter 49: Making Mistakes in Potions

Can't you see that you're smothering me

Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control

Because everything that you thought I would be,

Is falling apart right in front of you.

Caught in the undertow.

Every step that I take is another mistake to you.

Every second I waste is more than I can take.

I've become so numb

I can feel you there become so tight

So much more aware, I'm becoming this.

All I want to do is be more like me,

And be less like you.

Linkin Park – numb (again)

Making Mistakes in Potions

Sage smiled slightly as his uncle said, "By Gods, I believe you might have unearthed your brain from underneath a miles worth of rubble."

"I'm glad you approve, sir, but you have been doing your very best to bury me underneath a miles worth of books."

Severus threw him a glare, "I may have given you the work, but you did not simply complete it."

"Well, sir, honestly, I did at first, but then I wisened up a bit."

He raised an eyebrow in disapproval at first, but then said, "According to the practice tests I made up for you, I should be expecting top marks. Incredibly well with Dark Arts, Potions, Transfiguration, Charms, and all three languages you've opted to test. Your Runes, History, and Astronomy could use some more work."

"I'll work on that, Uncle. There is still a few months left to prepare."

The Professor nodded, lifting his teacup. A thoughful look crossed his face, and then his brow furrowed.

"Speaking of prepared. Will you be prepared to resume your Rite of Passage this summer?"

"Well, sir, I have not had much time to think on it, but that is what I had planned when I left."

"Good. You have been meditating every morning?"

Sage's face twisted in surprise, "How did you know, sir?"

"I can tell by your demeanor. It does make a difference. Meditation is nothing more than learning to clear your mind, to focus. You have been doing well in your practicals lately. I believe you are back where you should be with the wandless magic, even though that is not much. You have much farther to go."

Raising a brow, "I'm not sure what to say."

"That you will continue going forward and not backward?" He said in a hopeful manner which did not suit him at all.

Sage rolled his eyes, "Of course, sir."

The potion's classroom was tense as usual, Professor Snape stalking around scaring Longbottom and insulting Potter. Sage was working next to Malfoy, and the Professor did not fail to take notice that he was becoming quite skilled. He had very soft, fluid movements around the cauldron, and he clearly wasn't paying any attention to what was going on around him. He had not even taken significant notice to the professor reading the article about Harry and Hermione, or perhaps he would have lost his focus. He did not notice two out of the three of them relocating the work, either.

He had added his armadillo bile and had begun slowly stirring the mixture, when there was a knock on the door. A knock on the door was such an odd occurance, he looked up and furrowed his brow. His uncle looked ready to kill whoever was at the door.

When Karkaroff came in, Sage almost dropped his stirring spoon into the cauldron, he felt the bile rise up so high in his stomach. His hand stopped stirring. Unconsciously he pressed his lips together rightly and put his other hand to his worktable for his next ingredient. His eyes never left his uncle speaking to Karkaroff. His heart was beating loudly. He tried to refocus on his potion. He lifted up a vial of lacewing flies his hand had been searching for and held it over the cauldron, still glaring at Karkaroff.

He tipped the vial over.

"MERLIN!"

Sage jumped, with the rest of the class, about a mile as his uncle yelled and then flashed his hand out towards Sage. The lacewing flies were immobile in the air, floating over the cauldron.

"Sage Severus Snape, come here!"

His eyes wide, he began walking up to Severus. The man never, never called him by his full name. Something was incredibly wrong and it must have to do with his potion. Dread was plastered onto his face, the same way that anger was plastered on his uncle's face.

"Did you not read the chapter in preparation for this class?"

Sage looked up, "You know I did, sir, you were there while I was reading last night.

"Then tell me," the man hissed, "the instructions for preparing and brewing this potion." He whipped his wand out and erased the directions off the board.

Sage stared at him, feeling the entire class staring at him, Karkaroff included. He knew this, he knew it. What had he done wrong?

"Well, sir, the base for the potion is an infusion of rosewood and dried thistle."

He continued to rattle off ingredients and how they were prepared and when they were added. His uncle's face was dangerously close to his the entire time.

"So you were prepared," Severus stated, "Have you spotted your error yet?"

Sage frowned, knowing that he could have caused a lot of damage, "Yes, sir."

"And," he asked impatiently, "what was it?"

"I don't think that I stirred and simmered my potion enough before adding the lacewing flies, sir."

"And, what would have happened if I had not prevented the lacewing flies from going into your cauldron."

Sage raised an eyebrow and looked thoughtful for a moment, thoughtful and tentative. "You cannot mix pure armadillo bile with lacewing flies, sir, they are flammable. Since I did not stir it enough, there would have been too much armadillo bile on the top to react with the lacewing flies." He stopped, a pained expression on his face.

"AND!"

"With the combination of other ingredients it may have blown up."

"You nearly blew the entire classroom to pieces! Ignorance may be an excuse, albeit, one Longbottom would use and would gain him an F. But you, you are competent, you were prepared, and you know what would have happened. Lack of concentration, I am afraid, is not an excuse at all. You were simply not paying attention."

"Yes, sir," he said quietly.

"Get out!" He yelled in his nephew's face. "Get out and do not return to my classroom until you are ready to pay attention and concentrate. Better yet, you can spend our classtime cleaning and prepping all of the ingredients for use in the storeroom to the specifications on the clipboard in there. By the time you have completed that, I am quite sure that you will have learned to pay attention."

He turned away from Sage and did not pay any attention to him as he backed out of the classroom looking pale and shocked.

Blasted boy. Just when things turn pleasant, he manages to mess it up somehow.

When he heard the door close, he turned back around and cleared out Sage's cauldron with a wave of his wand, setting the lacewing flies aside.

"What are you all looking at, back to your potions before another one of you almost blows us all up. And thirty points from Gryffindor."

Harry glared at the professor, hatred rising in his stomach. Professor Snape certainly enjoyed yelling at people and making them miserable. Harry only wished he could do the same thing to the professor and see how he liked it. How he hated the man.

As he finished up his own potion, he made the same mistake of watching the two professors, waiting to see if they would say anything. As the end of class neared, Harry cleaned up and bottled a sample of his potion, as he was turning to table again, he knocked over his armadillo bile purposely. The second the bell rang, he disappeared under his table with a rag, hanging onto every word he could get out of the professors.

Sage threw his bag into the storeroom and slid down the wall onto the floor, putting his hands on the side of his head.

"Why does this always happen? Why can't I just…Just do everything right!" He said aloud.

He banged his head against the wall in anger. Stupid Karkaroff. Bastard. He had to come during my class! And I, being the stupid git that I am, had to watch him. As if he were going to do or say something of importance in front of the entire class. Sure, I can certainly see him casting the killing curse at Harry right in Potion's class.

As he stood up, he lifted the clipboard off its hook and looked down the list. His eyes traveled around the room. His heart sank, his stomach suddenly felt twisted. None of the ingredients had been touched or prepped since he had stocked up weeks ago. There were barrels upon barrels of ingredients. Things that needed to be picked apart with a knife to separate out the useable parts. Others that needed to be ground into powder or chopped into certain sized pieces.

He groaned deeply. If he tried to complete this during his potions class, he'd be prepping ingredients for weeks! One simple mistake, one that anyone could have made and he got stuck with this. But no other student was the professor's nephew, and the man might deal with the other student's idiocies, but certainly not his nephews. In the man's own words, he should know better.

Sighing, he pulled out six large empty bottles that were two gallons each and one that was four gallons and lined them up on the end of the table. Then he took out a sharp knife and placed it on the table. With both his hands, he grabbed a barrel half his size and pulled it out from under a shelf, putting all his weight into it.

1.)Separate whole bats into the following: eyes, teeth, ears, wings, intestines, and livers

Sage swallowed, disgusting. He pulled out a few bats and threw them down on the table in the center of the room. Starting with the easiest, he sliced off the wings and put them into the largest container.

Severus stalked into the classroom angrily, not able to forget the scene from the day before. He would not be able to get it out of his mind either, as he would be constantly reminded of it by the lack of his nephew's presence in the classroom. He turned on his heel as he approached the front and looked to see if anyone had dared to be late. He could take some of his anger out on them. Suddenly, he felt his temperature rise a few degrees as his eyes fell on Sage sitting in his seat as if nothing was the bother.

"What are you doing here?" The Professor demanded.

Sage looked up, composed. He had expected this response.

"You told me to come back when I was ready to pay attention, sir."

Severus leaned down closer to him, "I told you to come back when you were ready to pay attention and after you had prepped the entire storeroom," he growled.

Sage furrowed his brow and said to his uncle, "I did, sir."

"In the forty minutes we had left of class yesterday?"

"Well, no sir, it took rather longer than that."

Severus grabbed him by the arm and pulled him towards the door, "We'll see then."

As he threw open the door to the storeroom, he nearly took a step back. Instead of burlap bags and wooden barrels there were hundreds of glass bottles of varying sized and colors sitting on the shelves clearly labeled.

He turned around and grabbed Sage by the shoulders, "Did you use magic," he snarled. He had to have used magic! If he was so stupid, he'll have to go back to Hogsmeade and replace everything and then prep it all again!

"No, sir, of course I did not. I know that using magic on ingredients for use in potions can alter the ingredients. You've banged that into my head since I was little."

Severus stared at him.

"How did you do all of this then?" He asked, calming down slightly.

"I was embarassed, uncle, that I did something so stupid, and I didn't want to miss anymore classes, so I stayed in here all day yesterday except for during classes…And I stayed up all night finishing it."

As if something had been pulled from over his eyes, the Professor took in the bulging, dark circles under Sage's eyes.

"You stayed up all night?"

"Yes, nearly, I went to sleep around six o'clock."

"Six," the man parroted.

"Yes, sir."

Severus raised an eyebrow, his face relaxing a bit so that it did not look like a sneer. He walked around the room looking at the shelves and the bottles.

"Why did you do this all last night," he asked, dropping almost completely out of his professor persona.

Sage shrugged and wet his lips, "Things have been going well, sir, and I didn't want to see you angry with me again. I thought this would-." He stopped, not quite knowing what to say.

"Make me realize that you were trying your hardest and that you were sorry for being inattentive to what you were doing."

He gave a small, half smile, "Yes, that's all."

Severus let out a deep breath, it was difficult for him. He had almost forgotten what it had been like to have Sage at home, to teach him at home. Then he remembered something. There were no distractions at home. No other people. Just them. And Sage had done much of it on his own. Many things had been coming back to him lately and remembering what it was like when Sage was simply his nephew was one of them.

"I'm not angry anymore, Sage. Just a little disapointed, with all the work you have been doing lately, that you could not push Karkaroff out. I expect it was his presence that had your attention. You must know, as a Magi and not just with potions, that when you feel your attention and focus leaving you, that you should stop what you are doing, whatever it is. While I would not have been happy with you leaving your potion, it would have been a better decision. Lack of focus and concentration can be deadly because of what you are, but you know that. Perhaps I should not expect so much with all that is going on around you." He said so reflectively and not judgementally.

Sage shrugged, almost wanting to simply agree with his uncle's statement, even knowing that it wasn't true.

"I would not get any better if you did not expect it of me, sir. I simply made a stupid mistake, and I'm not stupid enough to make it again. I let myself be distracted."

"Why don't you go and get some sleep. You can use my rooms. I will wake you for lunch and we will talk."

Sage looked at him strangely, "I'm fine, Uncle, I'd like to come to class."

Shaking his head, Severus said, "No, brewing potions is something best not done while extremely tired, as a precaution. Go and get some rest. You can make the potion later tonight. There is another one that I would like your assistance with as well."

His eyebrows up in disbelief, "You're sure?"

The Professor nodded, "Yes. Have you grow that accustomed to me being unforgiving?"

"Not really, sir."

"I simply have no need for you getting sick and that tends to happen when you are very tired. You are gaining back wasted time, you do not want to fall behind again. I have to get back to the class before Longbottom melts another cauldron. Do as I say and go to sleep for a few hours."

Sage nodded as the man left the room in somewhat of a hurry, his black robes coasting along above the ground behind him.

And I know I may end up failing too,

But I know you were just like me

With someone disappointed in you

I've become so numb

I can feel you there become so tight

So much more aware, I'm becoming this.

All I want to do is be more like me,

And be less like you.

I'm tired of being what you want me to be

Linkin Park – numb (for the last time)

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