By Friday, Ari had recovered well from her virus infection. She felt better than she had in days. Better enough to go to Potions class and make Snape regret he had ever tried to make her sick in the first place. She just couldn't wait to see the look on his face when he saw that she was well and healthy and he had failed to kill her off after all.

Even though Ari was feeling a lot better now, Madam Pomfrey still made Ari drink a weird potion each morning with her breakfast. Apparently the potion was supposed to boost her moon system, whatever that meant. So on Friday morning Ari drank the potion, which had a grey tint and came in a small vial. It tasted kind of chalky, but not as unpleasant as the potion she had to cure her viral infection.

After downing the potion, the owls came in with their morning delivery. Ari got a letter from her dad and was just opening it up when another owl suddenly showed up at their table carrying a thin, oblong package. It dropped the weird-looking box right in front of Harry, who stared at it like it was a bomb about to explode.

"Wow!" Ari yelped, bolting up from her seat. "What's that?!"

But everyone was too busy oohing and ahhing over Harry's package to answer. "What's that?" Ari repeated. "What did the owl drop in front of Harry?" She swung her head expectantly at Hermione beside her, who was squinting at Harry's package.

"It looks awfully like a broomstick," Hermione responded sniffily, turning up her nose. "But that would be impossible, because first-years aren't allowed to have broomsticks."

"How do you know?" She watched as Harry inspected the package and bent his head to mutter conspiratorially with one of the redheads.

"It was clearly stated in the materials list," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. "Take a look at it if you don't believe me."

"But if Harry didn't get a broomstick, then what is it?" Ari demanded, too intrigued by the strange-shaped package that she could barely care about Hermione's judgmental tone for once.

"Well, given the shape and size of the package, I highly doubt it could be anything other than a broomstick," Hermione replied matter-of-factly, wrinkling her nose some more. "But like I said, first-years can't have broomsticks, so Professor McGonagall will confiscate the package sooner or later. Especially considering how she caught Harry breaking the rules once already, she won't want it to happen again."

"But he didn't break the rules!" Ari protested. "He was just getting even with Malfoy!"

"There are better ways to 'get even' than to make a spectacle in front of the whole class!" Hermione said all snappily, her hair springing up in that distinctive agitated way. "And in the end, it didn't accomplish anything but get them in trouble. Harry got a good scolding from Professor McGonagall already, but if he's going to turn a blind eye and smuggle in a broomstick — well then, he'll deserve whatever consequences that come next!"

Ari yawned and tuned out the rest of Hermione's hair-electrocuting rant. She didn't need to bogged down so early in the morning, thanks.

With that, Ari turned her attention to the staff table to see for her own eyes what Professor McGonagall thought about all this. However, she scanned the table twice and couldn't find the Transfiguration professor anywhere. Ari did, however, see Snape. He was glaring at Harry and the broomstick-shaped package, and somehow was looking angrier than usual.

Ari snickered. "Ha, look at Snape!"

"Hm?" Hermione broke off from her raving to glare at this interruption.

"He knows what's up," Ari said sagely, nodding at the staff table. "I guess we shouldn't be surprised if next time we see Harry stuffed up in one of those jars on Snape's shelf, huh?"

"Oh, please!" Hermione scoffed, tossing her eyes all the way to the sky. "I know Snape's not very nice, but he's still a teacher. He would never actually hurt anyone."

"Speak for yourself!" Ari scoffed back. "He just gave me two nights of detention, scrubbing toilets till two o'clock. And then he made me sick 'cause I was so overworked and couldn't get any sleep."

"And those are just the consequences you get for misbehaving," Hermione said all snottily. "It's no one's fault but your own. But now you know better, so you'll learn to behave yourself from now on, right?" She flashed Ari a pointed look.

"Of course!" Ari sniffed back, straightening up. "I didn't even do anything wrong in the first place. It's Snape who's in the wrong, always being mean and torturing everyone. I'm just standing up to the big bad wolf, that's all."

It was the only thing she could do, unfortunately, now that Snape hadn't been fired after all and was here to stay. He was just going to be a hitch in her otherwise perfect fairy tale adventure. But at least it should have been better now with Professor McGonagall watching over him.

Still, Ari couldn't help but feel resentful as she went to Potions class that morning. She couldn't believe the nerve Snape had, to stand there like nothing had happened, even after all the suffering and sleep deprivation and sickness he had caused her. As Snape went around handing back last week's homework, she glared at him with all the force her eyeballs could muster, hoping that she could give him even just a fraction of the pain he had given her.

Alas, Snape didn't look the least bit fazed as he arrived at her table and thrust a piece of parchment in her face. After giving him one last glare, she snatched it from his hand and flipped the paper over.

Her eyes were blinded by a bold, red circle scrawled on the top of the page. Once she realized what she was looking at, she let out a huge scream.

"Professor, you made a mistake!" Ari shrieked, throwing her essay up. "It says I got a zero!"

People burst out laughing, mostly from the Slytherin side of the room. She saw Malfoy and his friends howling and banging their fists on the table, and beside her, Hermione rolled her eyes all the way to the back of her head.

Snape swept back to her table, an ugly smile on his warty face. "No, it's correct," he said coldly. "Unlike you, idiot, I do not make mistakes."

"But a zero!" she cried, her head spinning with disbelief and outrage. "That — that's way too much!"

"No, it's just right," he said with that same slimy smirk. "You reap what you sow, dunderhead. And seeing what a worthless brat you are, everything you produce would naturally be equally as worthless."

The Slytherins laughed even louder, and Ari clenched the essay in her hand. "But—"

"Five points from Gryffindor," Snape hissed, his eyes freezing over. "And if I hear another word escape your mouth, it'll be another five points."

"But—"

"Five points from Gryffindor!" he spat.

She glared at him with a renewed vengeance, and he glared right back at her. That little idiot toad! Greasy warthog face! All sorts of insults flew through Ari's head and hot rage sizzled in her chest like bacon on a frying pan. Just when she thought he couldn't get any worse, he did! First taking off points, then threatening to kill her, then making her sick with detentions, and now giving her zeros! Just thinking about it made her want to punch Snape's great ugly face right then and there. Never ever had she felt so angry, not even on her worst days with Sam! It was unbelievable how someone in real life could be so horribly, disgustingly evil.

When Snape swept away again, Ari released the parchment that she had been curling up in her fist and quickly peeked at Hermione's paper to see what score she had gotten. But Hermione flashed Ari a sharp glance and stowed her paper away, quick as lightning. But Ari thought she caught something that looked like a six, which looked a lot better than Ari's zero.

They just took notes that day in class, but Ari could barely concentrate on the lesson. Now that the worst of the anger had fizzled away, she was left pondering her subterranean homework score in a big black pit of despair. Just how could she have gotten the lowest possible score, when she had written the required length and turned it in on time? No matter how bad she might have done, a zero was just completely uncalled for. Totally unfair. Then again, since when was Snape ever fair? He had made her scrub toilets till two o'clock and threatened to mutilate and kill her, after all, so giving out undeserved zeros was honestly pretty tame in comparison!

Either way, there was no way Ari could let this slide. Snape had tortured her for long enough, and this latest incident was just the final straw. She was going to put that idiot back in his place and show him he had picked the wrong person to mess with! He was just a dumb little toad, after all, and she was a grand, beautiful princess — and Snape couldn't tell her otherwise! He had nothing against her!

So when the bell rang for the end of class, Ari stuffed her belongings in her backpack and waited for everyone to leave so she could have her showdown with Snape. Hermione flashed her an admonishing look and beatboxed a bunch of warnings under her breath, but Ari ignored her.

When the last person had emptied the room, Ari found Snape looming at the front of the room like an overgrown bat, his twisted leer fixed on her. Clearly, he had been expecting her. "May I help you?" he silkily asked after she had marched in front of him.

"Yes," Ari said through gritted teeth. Without further preamble thrust the wrinkled essay in his face. "I don't like what you gave me on my assignment. You put down a zero, but I think I deserve a lot more than that. I worked really hard on this thing, you know!"

He raised an eyebrow at her over the parchment. "I never knew that turning in crude finger paintings constituted hard work now."

She stamped her feet. "It's not fingerpaint!" she snarled, some of the old rage she felt at the start of class resurfacing. "It's an actual essay — I used a quill n' ink n' to write it all out! I spent time on this thing, too, hours and hours!"

"Is that so?" Snape sneered down at her like Godzilla before he attacked a city. "Well, I have better things to do than waste hours and hours of my time deciphering your hieroglyphics. Your penmanship is atrocious and makes me question if you understand the concept of literacy. From the little I could make out, however, I can tell you made no effort to understand or apply the subject matter. Either that, or you have the mental dexterity of a flobberworm."

"What's a flobberworm?" Ari asked, the only part she caught of his long-winded, complicated rant. "And what's a higher-glick?"

His eyes flashed. "Idiot child! I'll put it in simple words, then, to get it through your defective skull." And then in a slow, exaggerated drawl, he said, "I could not read what you wrote. Because I could not read it, you received a zero. Now is that clear to you, dunderhead?"

Ari made a face, turning his words over in her head. "I think so," she finally said. "So you gave me a zero 'cause you couldn't read my writing?"

"Indeed."

She thought about it some more, her anger slowly simmering down. Okay, so maybe the zero wasn't completely uncalled for… maybe in Snape's eyes he had a reason for it, but still…

"But that's stupid!" she burst out, curling the essay in her fist. "All the other teachers can read my essays — I got good grades on them, in fact!"

"The other teachers may be willing to become cryptographers, but I will not," Snape retorted. "The world does not revolve around you and your overinflated ego. Therefore, while you are in my class, I will not tolerate your unruliness or laziness. It is not difficult to understand, yet for some reason you are incapable of grasping and applying the simplest of concepts."

"Huh?" Ari said, her head spinning from his brain-melting droning.

"I rest my case." And then speaking in that horrible, slow drawl again, making her feel like a blobfish on display at the zoo, "while you are in my class, you will follow my rules. One rule is that you will submit all your assignments in a neat and legible format. Do you know what legible means, dunderhead?"

"'Course I do," she pouted. "It's those green things that grow in your garden."

"Legible, idiot, not vegetable!" Snape snarled, his eyes doing that demonic tango again. He pronounced the word again, and this time Ari could hear the subtle distinction between the words. "Legible is an adjective, and when something is legible, it means that I can read it."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, you could've just said that!"

"And you could try not to be such an illiterate imbecile," he retorted, and Ari made a face.

"But—"

"Be! Quiet!" Snape growled, a metronome pounding in his temple. Ari snickered. Ah, how satisfying it was to see the toad get riled up again. He glared at her before continuing, "as I was saying, if you do not submit your assignment in a neat and legible format, I will not read it and you will receive a zero. Such consequences will persist as long as you continue to not follow my rules. Do you understand now, idiot?"

"Yeah, yeah," she said carelessly. "I think your rules are stupid, though."

"And you have no right to comment on how I run my classroom!" he snapped. "Five points from Gryffindor for being a disgusting little brat."

"Okay," she smirked. She watched as his vein convulsed some more.

He narrowed his eyes to slits. "Do you think this is funny, dunderhead?" he gave a catty hiss.

"Yeah," she said. She gazed at his face, entranced. "It's funny 'cause your forehead keeps moving. It's so weird. It's like it's dancing!"

Said dance moves increased one-thousand fold as his forehead began throbbing to the beat of a military march. "And I wonder why that is?!" he snarled, his boiling eyes just about ready to melt a hole through her head. "I daresay the population has seen a spike in high blood pressure rates ever since your miserable lungs breathed their first breath. Five points from Gryffindor for being a waste of space! And detention!"

"But that's not fair!" she protested. "I was just curious about your forehead, that's all! How'd you get it to move like that? Is it a magic trick? Do you have a worm inside your head or something?"

"No! The only worm here is the one in front of me!" Snape barked as his whole head pulsated like a block of dynamite about to explode. "Five points from Gryffindor for having the audacity to exist. Now get out of my classroom, worm, before I toss you out myself!"

"But Professor!" Ari shouted, holding out the crumpled parchment in her hand. "The essay, you still didn't—"

"GET OUT!" Snape roared, great jets of fire spurting from his ears and nose. He advanced on her like a great dragon swooping from the sky, his sharp talons outstretched. With a squeal, Ari quickly whirled around and scampered out of the dragon's dungeon.