September 1991
Harry got stared at a lot from the moment he left his dormitory the next day, and whispers followed him everywhere. He found it a very odd experience; he was used to being ignored. He practically had it down to an art form.
Harry, Neville and Ron had a dreadful experience with Filch on their very first morning, when a door they were trying to get through turned out to be the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor. Filch was threatening to lock them in the dungeons, and Harry was contemplating making a run for it, when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.
Harry, feeling very stressed out by his brush with potential death or imprisonment, blurted out to the Professor what he thought of the whole situation before his brain kicked in.
"Dumbledore is mad for not having a single warning sign on the door! We could have died! Doesn't he care?!"
Harry apologised straight afterwards, but luckily Quirrell didn't seem to take offense anyway. He just agreed that, "I think it's fair to say that Dumbledore has always had m-m-more things to concentrate on than the w-w-w-wellbeing of in-individual s-s-s-students. He's a busy man. I w-w-will ensure a sign goes up post-haste." He seemed friendly. They were all looking forward to his class, despite the man's stammer.
The classes weren't too bad so far. Astronomy was delightfully normal, if very late at night. Herbology he really enjoyed, and he paired up with Neville in that class. Ron refused to sit with Hermione though, and paired up with one of the other boys instead. History of Magic was surprisingly boring considering it was taught by a ghost. Hermione reassured him that the school ghosts couldn't hurt anyone; she'd read all about them in Hogwarts, A History. Harry decided after listening to the teacher drone that it would be a good class to catch up on studying and homework. Perhaps with earplugs. Charms and Transfiguration weren't of particular interest to him, so he didn't put in much effort in those classes. Harry was relieved to find out he wasn't miles behind everyone else. Getting "Acceptable" grades should be quite achievable.
The class he and his friends were really looking forward to was Defence Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell's speech impediment and stinky garlic-filled turban made the class rather unpleasant. Harry decided to work hard in the class anyway, even if it meant lots of independent study and practice. It was the most useful class of all – it was vital to be able to defend himself against any evil or bigoted wizards who might threaten him or his family. Or even senile twinkly-eyed ones who didn't know how to take "no" for answer.
So, after some thought about what might please the Dursleys best as well as set him up for a safe future, he planned to get Exceeds Expectations or Outstanding for DADA, Exceeds Expectations for Herbology and Potions, and Acceptable for all the others.
On Friday at breakfast while the owls were flying about delivering the post, Professor McGonagall stopped by the Gryffindor table and invited him to come to tea after classes that afternoon, "to chat about how you're settling in". Harry gulped, but she reassured him that he wasn't in any trouble. He agreed to come, of course. It wasn't like he really had a choice.
He was so looking forward to Potions, but it turned out to be even more of a disappointment than DADA had been. Harry knew exactly what kind of teacher Snape was within minutes of walking into the classroom. He'd seen that look every year; here was clearly another teacher who listened to rumours and had decided Harry was a loathsome little troublemaker before he'd even met him. He'd never heard of the potion he was quizzed on, but he was sure it wasn't in the first year Potions textbook.
When asked where to find a bezoar, which was only listed in the appendix "Handling Brewing Emergencies" as a remedy for poisoning, apparently the answer, "I imagine it would be located in the storeroom in case of potion emergencies" was unacceptable. A few people laughed, and Seamus winked at him when he caught Harry's eye.
"I will not tolerate disrespectful cheek in this classroom, Potter! Five points from Gryffindor!" hissed Snape, who continued to ignore Hermione's quivering raised hand.
"What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
Hermione seemed desperate to answer, but Snape still wasn't calling on her. Harry didn't understand why she'd try and answer a question Snape was clearly directing at him. He hesitated before answering. He knew the answer to this one – it was in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. But would it be better to give the correct answer, or play dumb? He decided to go for the middle ground as a test to see how Snape responded.
"I'm not sure, Professor, but I believe they're both poisonous, and monkshood has purple flowers," he said, in his best polite attentive voice, looking earnestly at Professor Snape.
Snape glanced away from Harry, avoiding looking him in the eyes as he responded sneeringly. "For your information, Potter, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. And to correct your very limited description the flowers can be of many colours, including yellow, white, or pink." Snape took another point off for "an insufficient answer" as everyone scurried to get out quills and parchment to write down all of Snape's corrections. He also snapped at Hermione and took another point from Gryffindor for "not being correctly seated". She sat down, disappointed.
Well, that settled it. Snape wanted him to do poorly, and would punish him more if he acted too smart. He'd have to drop his mark for Potions to "Dreadful", which was a shame. Snape put them all into pairs, and Neville was paired with Seamus, while Harry was matched up with Ron. Harry was considering how best to sabotage their potion, and how to guess what a "Dreadful" potion should look like, when Neville managed to melt Seamus' cauldron into a twisted blob. Neville collapsed in pain, covered in boils, and the spreading pool of potion started burning holes in people's shoes. Harry, crouching on his stool, quickly removed the excess quantity of dried nettles from the pile he'd deliberately over measured. Getting a potion wrong was dangerous!
Some more points lost for Harry, who was blamed for it all (Snape reminded Harry a lot of Vernon in a bad mood), and Harry knew that Snape didn't just dislike him – he hated him.
It was clearly going to take an awful lot of studying Potions in his spare time to be good enough to safely get a D. He didn't want anything to explode or melt his hands off! He would have to visit the library as soon as humanly possible.
Tea with Professor McGonagall was fairly straightforward – her agenda was quickly surmised. She wanted to be reassured he wasn't about to run away from Hogwarts. He of course gave her every impression that he was happy where he was. Even if he hadn't been, he wouldn't be so stupid as to warn her if he was planning to make a run for it. Really, where would he go? If he went home they'd just fetch him back, and the Dursleys would be furious about all the fuss. So he drank the tea (a rather nice Earl Grey, if his guess was correct), ate some rather delicious shortbread, and chatted about how much he liked DADA and Herbology, and how he'd made some friends.
She also had something to show him.
"We thought you might like to see the news about what caused such a disruption to your visit to Gringotts," said McGonagall, pushing a Daily Prophet newspaper towards him. Harry read all about the break-in. It sounded rather odd – why would someone go to all the effort of breaking in yet not leave with a single item? Perhaps they chose the wrong vault. Or perhaps the vault owner was tipped off by someone the thief knew, who didn't want to see the theft be successful.
"And I hope I don't have to remind you to stay away from the third floor corridor on the right-hand side?" she said sternly.
"Of course not, Professor," he replied, a bit puzzled. One could hardly forget a threat of painful death. "Has Professor Quirrell gotten some signs put up yet?" he asked curiously.
"Ah yes, you'll find every entrance to the forbidden corridor is now clearly marked," she said approvingly. "He said it was your suggestion – very thoughtful of you to think of the safety of your fellow students, and brave of you to raise the idea with a teacher. Well done, Mr. Potter! Take a point for Gryffindor."
He nodded politely, and didn't raise the question of why they were risking students' lives in the first place. Adults never liked their more stupid opinions and decisions being questioned. You had to be very careful about that if you wanted to attempt it. He'd rather just leave her in a good mood with a favourable impression of him. She was his Head of House, after all.
He wondered if there was a connection between the theft and the banned corridor. It was a strange change of topic – like the theft prompted her to think about the corridor. Anyway, it wasn't any of his business, and he certainly wasn't going near the third floor corridor. That would be crazy.
Harry went straight to the library after his tea with McGonagall. Hermione was there already – she perked up happily when she saw him and started chatting about their Transfiguration homework.
"Sorry, I haven't started that yet. I'm here to do some study for Potions," he explained.
"You're welcome to share my table, if you want," she said a bit shyly. There certainly was plenty of room – no-one else was sitting at her table.
"Sure," he said, "I'll be back in a moment, I have to find some books." She smiled happily.
He came back a little while later with his arms cradling a stack of books so high he could barely peek over the top of it. He settled down to study next to Hermione in companionable silence.
Advanced Potion-Making by Libatius Borage went a bit over his head, but the second chapter had a dry but useful explanation about "Right use of potion ingredients". It had some very useful tips about how chopping, slicing and dicing an ingredient changed the potion's strength and properties. Harry previously had no idea there was a difference between crushing and grinding, or how to clean your mortar and pestle to prevent contamination of ingredients (soap was contraindicated for various listed reasons, including a perplexingly odd reference about how too much cleaning could ruin the "affinity" of the tools). Grinding sand or salt in the mortar was Borage's preferred cleaning method. He decided he'd come back to that book later after he'd gotten a better grounding in the subject. It didn't actually explain the differences in how to chop versus slice, and there was a lot of terminology he didn't understand.
Most of the Potions books he'd picked turned out to have only recipes for different potions, with no explanations of the theory behind them, nor warnings on what could go wrong with them. Both the Book of Potions by Zygmunt Budge and the truly ancient looking copy of A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick, and Surgery after a quick browse went straight into a pile of books to reshelve.
The most promising book he found was definitely Potion Opuscule by Arsenius Jigger, which he'd picked out because it was by the author of their first year textbook. There were only a couple of recipes ("receipts") and they were used as examples to illustrate points about potion making, not to teach you how to brew them, as such. It focused heavily on potions theory for beginners, with chapters on "Cauldron Types", "Dicing and Slicing", "Stirring Technique", "Equipment Care", and very promisingly for his current research interest, "Volatile Ingredients" and "Brewing Safely". Harry returned his other books to the librarian, Madam Pince, and borrowed Potion Opuscule to read in his dorm. She looked like a rather impressive if severe looking woman, dressed all in black with a pointy witch's hat adorned with some black feathers. She warned him that if he tried to reshelve books he'd no doubt get it all wrong, and should never do so with a book he'd checked out - books were always to be returned to the counter. And that he'd need a note from a teacher if he wanted to access anything in the Restricted Section. He thanked her for her help, and promised he'd take good care of the book and return it promptly, which earned him a thin-lipped pleased smile. Librarians always treated you better if they thought you'd look after their books. He didn't want her to treat him like the school librarian back in Little Whinging had. She'd always hovered over him ever since Dudley had pinned the blame for some torn books on him.
He stopped back by Hermione's table on the way out of the library.
"Well, I'm off - back to the dorm," he announced. "So I'll see you later, okay?"
"You're leaving already?" she said, sounding a bit disappointed. "I didn't see you make any notes at all. Aren't you going to get your homework done?"
"That's rather the point," he said, "all my notebooks and parchment are back in my dorm."
"You can borrow some of mine if you want," she offered.
"That's really nice of you," he said, surprised, "but I have a system for notes and I'd rather write them down on my loose-leaf paper so I can put them into a binder." Hermione seemed to understand that completely, and invited him to come and study with her on Saturday, so they arranged to walk up to the library together tomorrow after breakfast.
They had a good time studying together the next morning. Harry had politely invited Neville and Ron to come and study with them too, but Ron said it was crazy to study on their first weekend, and said that surely Harry would rather play chess, or go outside. He was disappointed that Harry declined, but still didn't change his mind and join the study group. Neville on the other hand eagerly agreed, and spent a solid hour reading through just the Cure for Boils potion and also the next potion recipe in their textbook, apparently trying to learn them by heart.
Harry read through and made notes on the first couple of chapters of Potion Opuscule, learning firstly about how the different cauldron types affected the transmutation of potion ingredients in the potion. Apparently "base" metals and alloys like tin, lead and pewter cauldrons would enhance the "ignoble" or "grounded" properties of an ingredient during heating or stirring, while silver and gold cauldrons being "noble" metals would enhance the "noble" or "ethereal" properties of an ingredient. Harry consulted a dictionary, but found the terms rather poorly defined. He asked Neville, but he didn't know and looked rather panicked at being questioned, so Harry let him get back to his own study.
Eventually with some cross referencing with One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them where he found occasional references to grounded and noble properties of plants and animals (like the "noble" dragon), he managed to formulate his own rough definition. Ignoble properties were those associated with bodies (including effects like healing or poisons, which affected the body), earth, or water. Noble or ethereal properties were those associated with thoughts and emotions, the soul, fire, or air. It seemed to fit the examples listed in his book. Peppermint's efficacy at settling the spirit as part of the formulation for a Calming Draught was more enhanced in a silver or gold cauldron, whereas its physical effects on settling an upset stomach were brought out more by brewing Stomach Soother in a pewter cauldron. Alloys like pewter and brass for cauldrons and other equipment, or non-metals like stone, ceramic or wood for utensils, were the best choice for a beginning potions student who wasn't sure what properties they needed to enhance. Steel and iron were recommended as "of course best avoided by all but the most advanced Potion Masters", for some reason that wasn't explained but that implicitly the reader should already know. Interestingly, some advanced potions apparently necessitated a change of cauldrons or ladles part way through a recipe for the best results.
The illustrated chapter on ingredient preparation and proper knife use was fascinating too. Harry soaked up the information about chopping versus dicing as if it was instructions on how to be a gourmet chef. He didn't think it was so different, really. For everyday cooking (or potions brewing) it wasn't important, but if you wanted your dish or potion to come out perfect, it mattered a lot.
When they took a break for lunch, he chatted with his friends about what he'd learned. Hermione asked to borrow the book when he was finished, which he said was fine by him if the librarian didn't mind. Neville was interested, but said he knew the difference between slicing and shredding and so on - it was just that when he was in class he got too nervous and got all mixed up. He was going to concentrate for now on getting the recipes so well learned he wouldn't forget anything.
"I don't want to give Snape any reason to… judge me," he whispered.
"We certainly don't want to lose Gryffindor any more points," agreed Hermione.
Harry didn't think the threat of losing points was what put that look of hidden fear on Neville's face, but decided to talk to him about it privately later.
A/N: Sorry this chapter went up a little late today - I've been off watching the new Star Wars movie with the family. I can go on the internet again, safe from spoilers! *lol*