"Out of a goat?"
The boy stared up at him with a horrified look. Any other student he would have suspected of mocking him, but Severus Snape had been around Steven Universe for the majority of an afternoon. The boy didn't have a disingenuous bone in his body.
"Wouldn't that hurt the goat?"
Snape stared down his nose at the boy. "There are ways of extracting the bezoar without injuring the animal."
Most wizards didn't bother, of course. Most bezoars were extracted from animals already meant for some other purpose. He didn't bother to inform the boy.
"It is used to save you from most poisons."
"So that's why goats can eat almost anything!" Steven said.
Snape glanced at the boy, surprised. Most Ravenclaws didn't make that association, not right away. Of course, the boy's reasoning as to why was undoubtedly wrong, but still...
"What would you get if you added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
The boy shrugged.
He didn't even seem to be bothered by his ignorance.
"It creates a sleeping draught so powerful as to be called the Draught of living death."
The boy's expression cleared. "Oh! For the goat!"
The children around him giggled. They undoubtedly thought the boy was being clever, but Snape knew better. The boy was too much of a dunderhead to even try to be sarcastic.
"It could be used much as Muggle healers use certain chemicals before they cut someone open," Snape acknowledged, "But it is typically used for other purposes."
The Purebloods looked horrified while the Muggleborn seemed unaffected. Muggles didn't have access to advanced magical healing and had to make do as well as they could.
"What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
"Wolfsbane is for werewolves," Steven said. "Monkshood is for...monks?"
"They are the same thing!" Snape said sharply.
"I didn't know monks and werewolves were the same thing." Steven said.
The class burst out laughing.
"The plant," Snape said, gritting his teeth. "Monkshood and Wolfsbane are two names for the same plant. And I will see you in detention, Mr. Universe."
Steven leaned over to his classmate, doubtlessly to ask what detention was.
The Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs got along perfectly well, unlike the barely controlled chaos between the Griffendors and the Slytherins. There were no attempts to sabotage each others' potions, and so there were only the usual mistakes leading to injury due to carelessness.
He'd tried for years to pair the Slytherins with the Ravenclaws and the Griffendores with the Hufflepuffs. It would be far safer, but Albus Dumbledore believed in the "spirit of competition," and refused to allow it.
Sometimes Snape thought it was his way of continuing to punish him for his past as a Death Eater.
Because the class was relatively quiet, he had more of an opportunity than usual to observe the boy, Steven.
To his surprise, the boy was meticulous in his potion preparations. He followed instructions exactly, and he was neat and precise while weighing the dried beetles and crushing the snake fangs, although he visibly winced when he saw the ingredients. Doubtlessly he was hoping that the snakes had lived full and satisfying lives before their fangs had been pulled from their decaying corpses.
When a careless classmate caused his cauldron to melt and explode, the boy lunged across the room, grabbing the boy and bouncing to a stop out of range of the bubbling mess.
He held his classmate above him in one hand.
"Skills!" He shouted.
Despite himself, Snape had to be impressed with the boy's reaction time.
He was even more impressed when the boy was able to complete his potion despite the interruption with only a small variation in the color.
The boy stepped into the room at the allotted time.
Most students crept into detention, with looks of fear on their face. A few swaggered defiantly.
Steven walked into the room as though he didn't understand that he was in trouble.
"You may begin by cleaning these cauldrons out by hand," Snape said. "No magic."
He showed the boy the cleaning supplies, and the boy went work willingly enough. He wasn't as precise at this as he was at his potions work, and Snape had to correct him several times.
After a time, Snape spoke.
"Your potion work was...acceptable today."
The boy looked up at him, and his face broke out into a large grin.
"Had you worked with potions in your previous life?"
The boy shook his head.
"Most children aren't as proficient as you proved to be," Snape said. "How do you explain it?"
The boy frowned for a moment. "I guess I grew up a little different than most kids."
An understatement if Snape had ever heard one.
"The gems don't have children," Steven continued. "They are created as adults, and that means that they don't have childhoods."
Interesting, although it seemed to be off topic.
"Garnet, amethyst. Pearl...they did their best, but I don't think they knew what a human childhood was supposed to look like. My dad tried to tell them, but once I moved in with them, he wasn't around all of the time."
Snape stared at the boy without speaking, hoping he would eventually get to the point.
"They don't either...well, Amethyst does, but she'd just as soon eat the box as what was in it. None of them knew how to cook anything other than pies...Pearl liked the smell of them."
The infuriating thing about eleven year olds was that they were incapable to telling a story without going on numerous tangents.
"So I've been cooking for myself since I was six."
Sometimes they also skipped steps.
"So your guardians allowed you to work with open flames from the time you were six."
"Pearl taught me to read directions," Steven said. "And they let me cook what I wanted. I learned pretty soon that it tasted better if I actually did what it said on the box."
"And this?" Snape asked, gesturing at the sloppy cauldrons.
Steven flushed. "Pearl loved to clean. Even when the other gems tried to help she took over."
Snape stared at the boy for a moment, then sighed. "You need to do the cauldrons again. Leaving remains from old potions contaminates the new potions."
"And that can make your cauldron melt," Steven said, staring up at him.
Snape nodded. "Using magic to clean them can affect the potions."
The boy looked at him for a moment, then nodded, a look of determination on his face. He set to work on the cauldrons much more vigorously.
Snape wasn't sure what had possessed him to explain himself to the boy, but apparently knowing that this was important did wonders for his work ethic.
Snape's first impression of the boy had been that he was a dangerous dunderhead, oblivious to the harm to which he was going to expose others.
Undoubtedly when it came to harm to himself, the boy wasn't all that concerned.
Yet he'd saved a classmate from a trip to the infirmary, and now, as the boy bent to scrub the cauldrons even harder, Snape saw his shirt slip up.
There were boils on his back, undoubtedly from where he'd put himself between the classmate and the potion.
Snape knew from experience how painful those boils could be. Most children his age would have made a dramatic production of being injured. Children loved drama.
Yet the boy had had them all day, and he hadn't said a word to anyone.
Even now, he was scrubbing his second cauldron.
Snape checked the first cauldron Steven had re-cleaned, and it gleamed.
By the end of the evening, the cauldrons were cleaner than they'd been since they were new.
The boy never complained, not once.
As the boy stood up, Snape handed him a vial.
"Rub this where ever you have boils. They should be gone by the morning."
The boy stared up at him for a moment, and then a smile bloomed on his face as he stared up at Snape.
As he left, Snape found himself staring at the door.
The boy was dangerous, but not in the way he'd thought. He'd thought the boy was good at manipulating people, at reading body language, and doubtlessly some of that was true.
Yet people liked him instinctively not because of how he was able to manipulate, but rather because of what he was. He was honest to a fault, naive even, but not stupid. He genuinely cared for other people in a way that felt alien to Snape.
In Snape's experience, most people only had the capacity to care for a small number of those they were close to. Some people were not able to care for anyone else other than themselves. His former master had been one such.
Steven seemed to care for everyone, down to those who supplied the potions ingredients.
It was hard not to respond to someone who genuinely liked you, and unlike most of the popular children who would occupy their time with frivolities, the boy seemed destined for more.
Unfortunately, those who would follow in his wake would be far less impervious to damage than he was.
The boy would bear watching.