Heyyy I'm back
The classroom was empty. Only Snape was sitting at his desk, and as he looked up she made sure to attack him with the weapon of her glare. Since he had made her feel belittled and resentful all day, she was now going to give those feelings back to him!
Too bad Snape didn't even bat an eye at her lethal assault. "Sit down," he snapped, as crabby as ever.
Seething even more that her attack didn't have its intended effect, Ari stomped to her regular seat and plopped down in her chair. Snape was still sitting at his desk, writing something down with his quill. She waited for him to give her more instructions, but he didn't. He just kept moving his quill, not even looking up from the parchment. Now just what could he be so busy with? She tried glaring at him some more, but he didn't look up. What a pain!
"Professor?" Ari snapped, jiggling her foot underneath the chair. "Are you just gonna make me sit here for the entire detention?"
"No," he said curtly, finally glancing up at her. "Have some patience, idiot. I will attend to you shortly."
She scowled. Oh, so he was just taking his sweet old time, huh? What was the point of him making her come here at seven o'clock sharp if he couldn't bother to start on time?!
She felt even grumpier as she sat bored at her desk and waited for Snape to be done. She wondered what he was going to do with her. She did a quick scan around the room, but couldn't find any weird torture devices lying around, so that was good.
All of a sudden, there was a loud whoosh beside her. Quills, inkpots, and rolls of parchment suddenly flew onto her desk, and she jumped. Snape suddenly tapped the parchment with his wand, and she jumped again. The next moment, she watched as a line of text appeared on the spot he had tapped: I will use this as a lesson in self-discipline.
"Now write that out," he ordered, rapping the text with his wand, "one hundred times."
Ari looked up at him, bewildered. "Huh?" she said.
"Have you never written lines before, dunderhead?" he asked. "Of course you haven't," he scoffed before she could answer. "Writing lines is a common method of discipline for misbehaving brats like you. The student must copy a phrase that relates to their wrongdoing a specified number of times. Through tedious repetition, the lesson is slowly but surely drilled through the dunderhead's thick skull." He tapped her head with his wand, and Ari scowled and rubbed the spot.
"Now get started," Snape ordered, tucking his wand back into his robes. "Like I said, you must copy the line one hundred times. You are not allowed to leave until you have copied all one hundred lines in a neat, legible format."
"I'm not allowed to leave until — wait, what?!" Ari exclaimed, almost falling out of her chair. She stared at a sneering Snape, her mouth hanging open. "I have to write this a hundred times?!"
"That's what I said," he said coldly. "I already told you, idiot. Repetition is necessary for this task to achieve its desired effect."
"But still — that's too much!" she cried, her head spinning. "I can't write a hundred lines! I don't think I've ever written so much in my entire life! I'm gonna be stuck here for the rest of my life, Professor!"
"Then so be it," he said silkily, his sneer intensifying. "Perhaps then you can finally have the time to reflect on your decisions that condemned you to this situation in the first place."
She opened and closed her mouth a few times, so angry she could hardly speak. "This — this isn't fair!" was all she managed to growl out. She glared up at him with all the rage sizzling in her heart.
"You don't think this is fair?" Snape's voice dropped to a low, dangerous hiss. He lowered his head so that Ari was staring right into his heartless black eyes. "All I have asked you to do is pick up a quill and write with it. It's an unbelievably simple task, one that a toddler could accomplish without protest. Yet you have the nerve to throw a fit and say that it's 'not fair?' How would you feel if I sent you back up to scrub toilets with Filch instead? Would that be more 'fair' to you, entitled brat?"
Her whole face turned hot as Snape's taunts rang in her ears. Now she really couldn't speak. She hated this. Hated being with Snape, hated being belittled, hated being forced to write lines, hated being threatened to scrub toilets again. The mere thought of being trapped in those cramped stalls, scrubbing the never-ending row of toilets while Filch yelled at her in the background was nothing short of nightmare-inducing.
"One hundred lines," Snape whispered, his eyes flashing balefully. "Copied word-for-word. Now get to work. Do not make me repeat myself again."
Ari's hand was still shaking as she picked up the quill and dipped it into the inkpot. She could feel Snape still hovering over her shoulder as she pressed the nib to the page and formed the first two words: I wi—
But she had already run out of ink, having splotched most of it on the page. She re-inked her quill and finished the rest of "will." But she only managed to get through the word "use" before the nib went dry again.
"This is too hard, sir," Ari complained, looking up at Snape. "I can't even get the first line down."
"It has not even been a minute," he snapped. "Shut up and apply yourself."
Scowling, Ari turned back to the parchment and dipped her quill back into the inkpot. With great difficulty, she wrote out the rest of the sentence. All the ink kept bleeding through the page and she had to keep re-inking the quill every two seconds. Her words looked all wonky and blotchy, like there were little ants crawling around the page. By the time she was finally done with the first line, she could barely even read what she had written.
She stared at the splotched page and sighed gloomily. Well, it looked like Snape hadn't been wrong about her handwriting being horrible.
"See, sir?" Ari said, looking back at Snape. "This is gonna take me forever. It's even harder with this quill. Maybe if I could use a pencil—"
"No," he interjected. "You are to use a quill, and that is final. Now move on to the second line."
She glared at him, and he glared back at her. Ugh, what a pain! What was the point of writing out the same line so many times? It was so stupid, so useless! Even more useless than scrubbing toilets!
Grumbling silently, she re-dipped her quill into the inkpot and started the next line underneath the first one: I will—
But then Snape suddenly rapped the back of her hand with his wand. "Don't press down so hard."
"Why?" she asked, looking up at him.
"You are on the verge of breaking the quill," he growled, "and I refuse to waste another one on you. And relax your grip while you're at it. The bird is already dead; no need to keep a death grip on it."
Ari loosened her fingers around the quill and resumed writing. She made sure to press more lightly on the page this time, too. But she had barely finished the word "use" before Snape touched the quill's feather with his wand. "Lower your quill."
"Huh?" she said again.
"You are not to hold it straight up, dunderhead," he drawled, as he used his wand to direct her quill downwards. "Tilt it at a forty-five degree angle."
Ari rolled her eyes, sick of being lectured for every little thing. But her irritation vanished when she noticed that the ink was now flowing more smoothly from the nib. "Hey, look, sir!" she said excitedly, looking up at him. "I can write easier now!"
"Keep going," he snapped, his eyes flashing.
She was more easily able to scratch the next few words and finish the line: I will use this as a lesson in self-discipline. It was still quite messy. But at least her words were less blotchy, and she could read what she had written now.
Ari hastily re-inked her quill, determined to do even better this time. But before she could lift her quill from the inkwell, Snape pressed his wand to her hand again. "Scrape the excess ink against the bottle opening."
She lifted the nib and scraped the shaft against the glass so that some drops of ink rolled back inside. Then she carefully angled the nib back and resumed writing. She was pleased to see that her lines were thinner and more controlled now that she had gotten rid of the excess ink.
Snape's wand suddenly rapped her hand again. "Don't drag the quill." She quickly released the nib's pressure on the page. "And relax your grip."
She readjusted her fingers and resumed writing again. Soon, she had finished that line. And then another. And another. And more and more and more. Sometimes Ari would remember the proper way to write with the quill, other times Snape would tap her hand with her wand, reminding her to adjust her grip or stop pressing so hard or whatever else she needed to do.
Before long, the lines began melting into each other, growing on her page like an army of words. And she started getting really into it, determined to continue growing her army and making it more beautiful. With each minute that ticked by, she could write each line more and more easily, and the words looked less and less blotchy.
"I've got a question for you, Professor," Ari suddenly said as she was halfway through her sixty-ninth line.
"Yes?" came Snape's voice from a distance away. Surprised, she suddenly looked up and noticed that Snape had returned to his desk, writing something with his quill, much like her. She must have been so busy writing she hadn't noticed him leave her side.
"What does 'self-discipline' mean?"
He looked up from the parchment, quiet for a moment. "What do you think it means?"
"I dunno," she said, absently scraping her quill against the inkwell and forming the words "I will" on the parchment. She had heard of the word "discipline" before, so if she had to go with what she knew… "It… it means something bad? It means punishment?" She peered up expectantly at him.
"No, idiot," he said curtly, setting down his quill. "You are thinking of discipline. Self-discipline is a character trait. A self-disciplined person is able to control their emotions and impulses in the short-term to achieve long-term goals."
"Huh?" she said, getting lost in his long, complicated descriptions again.
He rolled his eyes. "To put it in dunderhead talk — for example, let's say that you have a homework assignment due the next day. If someone was self-disciplined, they would put their energy in completing the homework first, rather than doing something they consider more enjoyable."
"Like playing with your stuffed animals?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, flashing her a pointed glance. "Is that what you consider entertainment?"
"Yes, sir," she answered, beaming. "I've got a stuffed birdie and puppy, and they're really cute. Sometimes we talk about stuff and look out the window. We used to look out the window all the time back home, and talk about the things that were out there — and look, now we're out here! In a beautiful castle filled with cute people and their magic sparks, just like in my dream."
"Your dream?" he repeated with narrowed eyes.
"Yes, sir," Ari said, shifting restlessly in her seat. "I had a dream about a castle and a lake and I was riding across it with a boat. And then I saw cute little people inside the windows making sparks with their wands. I didn't know it was Hogwarts, though. I didn't know till I actually came here and saw the lake and the castle for real."
"What did you think, when you saw it for real?"
"Oh, it was wonderful!" Ari breathed, as the heart-pumping exhilaration and wonder came rushing back to her. If she closed her eyes, she could still picture the majestic silhouette of the castle in front of her, waiting to greet her. "I couldn't believe it was real. It was so beautiful, even better than in my dreams — and the tugging on my heart finally stopped. I felt happy. Peaceful." She opened her eyes and saw Snape staring at her with those dark, motionless eyes. "But you wanted to expel me today, didn't you, Professor? You wanted to ruin my dreams and make me go back home. But that won't happen anymore. Now that I'm finally here, you can't make me go back."
"No," Snape said quietly. "Once you've opened your eyes to the truth, there is no returning to the ignorant ways of your past."
"Yeah," she said. She couldn't imagine going back home anymore and spending the rest of her life pent up in her tiny little room, now that she knew what truly awaited her out here. "I guess."
As she stared at Snape's solemn face, she got that same feeling when she had first seen him during the welcoming feast — cold, strange, and a bit unsteady, like she was diving headfirst into the lake. And she couldn't look away. There was something different about him now compared to earlier today, or the other times she had been with him — maybe because he was no longer yelling or spitting or threatening her like a possessed demon. He had been pretty calm today, she noticed. Maybe it was because he had finally taken Professor McGonagall's warning to heart and had finally put on the brakes. Ari was glad for it. Snape wasn't that unbearable, honestly, when he was calm and sitting still.
Another hour or so later, Ari finally finished her one hundredth line. Her hand and wrist hurt horribly, and her eyes were burning from concentrating so hard. But it was worth it, to see all one hundred uniform lines stacked on the page in her beautiful army.
"I presume," Snape drawled once she went to his desk to get her work checked, "that you have learned a valuable lesson while you were here?" He looked up from her parchment and met her eyes.
"Yes, sir," she said, and then recited: "I will use this as a lesson in self-discipline. One hundred times. And I'll use my self-discipline from now on after this, too. Like you said, Professor, I'll do my homework, even if I don't wanna."
"And will you really?" Snape said, his eyes flashing. "Contrary to what you may think, brat, it's one thing to speak about doing something. It's another thing to actually do it."
"But I will do it!" she protested, shifting her feet restlessly. "I won't just talk. I'll actually do it. I'll work on my homework and turn it in on time. Just watch me, sir."
"Oh, I will," he curled his lip. Ari didn't know whether to take that as encouragement or a threat. "You have fulfilled your duty for today. You may be dismissed."
"Okay," she said softly. His words weren't as sharp as they usually were, and she decided to take his earlier statement as encouragement. She smiled at him and he narrowed his eyes. "Thank you, sir."
His dark eyes roamed her face and she studied him, trying to figure out his expression. "You're welcome," he finally said, his voice curt. "Now get out."
Maybe Snape wasn't so bad after all, she thought as she laid in bed that night. He was pretty nice, actually, when he wasn't screaming and throwing temper tantrums and making fun of her. Plus, he had taught her how to write with a quill, and taught her a good lesson in self-discipline, too. And from now on she would use her self-discipline so she would work hard and never get a zero on a Potions assignment ever again. That would prove to Snape just how much she had changed!