The Warty Way

Half an hour later Lavender rather felt like crying. Everything was going wrong, as usual, only this time it was especially bad because she was surrounded only by "Outstanding"-students. To the left, to the right, in front of her, behind her—everywhere she saw satisfied faces in front of their cobalt blue solutions, bubbling away slightly in the cauldrons. Only with hers, nothing happened. The instructions Hermione and Parvati whispered to her alternately didn't help either.

Close to tears, Lavender dipped the spoon into the cauldron, again and again, performing the indicated number of clockwise stirring movements, but neither the water in it, nor the already water-logged violet roots that were sadly bobbing up and down, were in any way impressed by this. She surely had forgotten something at the beginning—it happened to her all the time. And soon, Severus will come and beat me up, she thought fearfully. If only I wouldn't freeze like that!

At the very next moment, the dreaded voice sounded behind her, "Miss Brown, the first lesson is almost over. When do you actually want to start your tincture?" Snape had stepped close behind Lavender, so close that she could feel his warmth through her robe. She froze in motion, not knowing what to answer.

"Well, Miss Brown?"

Lavender felt his gaze on her back, also Parvati and Hermione watched her expectantly from the side. "Um," she made, turning slowly to face her teacher. Severus was looking at her with his night-black eyes, and this glance bolted right through her. She had faced him like that many times before, by his countless sarcastic comments about her always bungled work. But never had her body responded so violently. Adrenaline raged through her veins and her knees were as soft as pudding.

"I guess some things never change," Snape said now in a low voice that could nevertheless be heard in every corner of the room. "Miss Brown has never had anything like tact—she has none now, and she never will. Even her untainted ancestry is of no use to her! She'll never pass this course like that!"

A pleasingly laughter sounded from four Slytherin-throats, and the word "Squib" was to be heard more than once. Lavender saw Parvati furtively give Draco the middle finger, but that was little consolation. No one could help her, and Parvati and Hermione had long since given up defending their friend from Snape and the others. They knew how sensitive she was about her pride.

Lavender was used to mean remarks from her teacher, and the fact that he spoke of her in the third person as if she wasn't even there was also old hat. But it was always hard for her to be hit at her weakest point, especially because everyone was allowed to watch.

And today Snape clearly wanted to surpass himself, for, shaking his head, half addressing his protégés from Slytherin house, he continued in a drawling voice, "Apparently she really did imagine she could convince with other qualities."

Parvati gasped and Lavender swallowed hard. He had never gone that far before!

The pitying looks of the two friends finally tipped the scales. Lavender straightened up to her full height, so that she at least reached Snape's shoulders, and looked him boldly in the eye. "She might even have them," she replied, mimicking her teacher's purring tone. Her heart was beating madly as she did so.

All of a sudden, the room fell dead silent. Stunned, Snape returned Lavender's gaze and for a moment time seemed to stand still. A long moment in which Lavender could lose herself in his eyes and thought she saw something other than coldness in them.

Many times Parvati and her had tried to find an expression for what was sometimes, rather rarely, reflected in Severus' gaze. Was it grief and pain over a bitter loss? Was it loneliness? Or too little sex?

Then his voice broke the timeless spell, and Lavender became aware again of the classmates around her. "Miss Brown!" hissed Snape, still quietly, but now clearly angry. "You really should watch what you say. Not knowing Potions is one thing, you know. Audacity coupled with bottomless stupidity is another! That's another ten points from Gryffindor!"

He turned to go, but glanced over his shoulder again. "And tomorrow night you'll be in my office at seven o'clock sharp! Detention!"

Lavender stared after him open-mouthed as he immediately picked out his next victim, whose name was of course Harry Potter and whose potion was not exactly the desired colour either.

"Detention, oh-oh, how awful," Parvati murmured half aloud beside her while she decanted her finished tincture into a clean vessel.

"Jealous?" Lavender murmured back, although she didn't feel like joking around at all. She was really freezing now; even her fingers were blue. But never in her life would she have begged Parvati for a pair of tights!

"Come on, you were asking for it," Parvati whispered.

"No, I didn't!" Lavender protested indignantly, suppressing a chatter of teeth. "Are you perhaps the only one who is allowed to get cheeky? I don't want to put up with everything either!"

"Well, yeah," nodded Parvati. "But did it have to be a line like that? It was almost a come-on!"

"He was literally begging for it!" returned Lavender, suddenly giggling. "His face was just awesome, wasn't it?"

Parvati's lips twisted into a grin. "This was obviously not what he expected! Well then, have fun tomorrow night!" She gave her friend a wry look.

Of course, it was not the first time that she or Parvati had to spend a few hours in Snape's office doing some boring job, there had been trouble enough all these years. But something was different now, and Lavender felt that Parvati noticed it, too. They were both no longer children. Lavender had turned seventeen in August, and Parvati would do so in a few weeks— at that age, others had long since had a boyfriend! Is that why she suddenly had such butterflies in her stomach, at the mere thought of sitting alone with Severus tomorrow among all his glass bottles and dusty parchments?

"I see everyone in this room has finished their tinctures by now," Snape interrupted her romantic thoughts with his typical drawl. "Except for the very hopeless cases …"

Again he stopped close to Lavender, and this time it was fear that made her knees tremble. "And exactly those seem to need our tincture the most, don't they? Or did I misunderstand something earlier, Miss Brown?" he now addressed her directly, studying her appraisingly from top to toe. "I don't see any warts …"

"Take it off, take it off," Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini chanted in muffled voices, and all the Slytherins burst out laughing.

Lavender felt a scorching heat cover the skin on her neck and face. I've got to get out of here! she thought, but summoned her last bit of self-control. "I don't have any," she replied in a composed voice.

"Well, that can be changed!" Snape pointed his wand directly at her face, looked deep into her eyes, and in the next moment she felt several fine splashes spread across her forehead, nose and cheeks. Lavender blinked in confusion and immediately ran her hands down her face. "Oh God!" she cried as she felt the thick lumps under her fingers and cast a horrified glance at Parvati, whom Snape had chosen as his next victim.

Parvati laughed out loud, but immediately slapped her hand over her mouth. "Man, that looks nasty," she gasped in a choked voice.

"Hold still, Miss Patil!" Snape snapped at her, and this time Lavender saw something black shoot out from the tip of his wand before it settled on Parvati's fair skin in the form of droplets that quickly swelled to the size of peas.

"Oh God!" Lavender whispered again, and now she had to laugh, even though she didn't feel like it at all. "Do I also look that shitty?"

"You both look mega-shitty," Pansy said amiably, who had turned around in her chair and gazed at the two of them with glittering eyes. "Can't wait to see how you get them off again, Brown! With your bungler-dishwater …"

"Just wait your turn!" hissed Lavender angrily and immediately began rummaging through her robe pockets for her small pocket mirror.

Meanwhile, Snape had moved on to sprinkle the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs in the back rows with the ominous black substance. When it was Susan Bones' turn, she was seized with panic and ran screaming out of the class. "I should have done the same," muttered Parvati, who by now had turned the tip of her wand into a small mirror, inspecting her murderous dark brown warts. "There's even hair coming out of this one, yuck!"

"That man has a sense of detail," Lavender remarked wanly. She had finally found her mirror and took an anxious look inside. Immediately she sat bolt upright and yanked fiercely at Parvati's robe sleeve. "Parvati, he's put a Leo in my face!" she hissed excitedly.

"A Leo?" Parvati repeated blankly. "Is that supposed to be funny?"

"Man, the constellation! My star sign! Look!"

Parvati took her gaze away from the mirror and examined the nine ugly things on Lavender's face. "Yeah, right," she said thoughtfully after a while. "And it's even side-inverted, so you can see it in the mirror right away. The man really has a sense of detail … Do you think it's on purpose?"

"He even considered the right proportions of the stars!" Lavender was beside herself, her heart beating again like crazy. What kind of joke Severus had been playing on her? Since third grade, she had been an absolute expert on everything concerning stars, particularly the field of astrology. Did he know about it? Did he know her zodiac sign?

Parvati meanwhile turned her attention back to her own reflection. "Well, I actually have no Libra in my face!" she said, a little disappointed.

As Severus passed her on his way to the front, Lavender in her over-excited state couldn't help saying, "That was a nice idea to hex my zodiac sign on me, Professor!" Immediately after, she bit her lower lip. Was this probably too cheeky for him? Or just too … stupid?

Snape stopped and turned his head slightly. "Your zodiac sign?" he repeated with raised eyebrows, but then he understood. "Oh, you mean the constellation of Leo. You have noticed, congratulations! That is, wait … one point for Gryffindor!"

"Thank you, sir," Lavender murmured in a tone that one could just about classify as ironic.

"You see, I have allowed myself the little fun of having the nice formations in your faces portrayed somewhat—little parodies of your character traits," Snape turned to the rest of the class. "Is there anyone else who noticed what I was trying to tell them in an arty—pardon, warty way?"

Pansy and Millicent started to giggle, whereas Hermione rolled her eyes. "How funny", Parvati muttered, then reached for her mirror again.

The others also looked now thoroughly into their mirrors or into the disfigured faces of their neighbours, but no one spoke up.

"I thought so," nodded Snape. "Because I made it extra easy for Miss Brown!"

A dirty laugh from the Slytherin ranks; then Draco Malfoy asked with a harmless expression, "Sir—what did you want to tell Miss Brown now? That she has the proverbial Gryffindor courage of a lioness?"

Snape turned to his godson, and his lips curled into a disdainful smile. "Didn't I just say something about parodies?"

Pansy and Millicent killed themselves laughing, and Lavender, fighting back tears, fervently wished she had kept her cheeky mouth shut. What had she thought—that he would smile and wish her a belated birthday and maybe serve her coffee with it?

At least they're getting their comeuppance too, she thought, and the thought of Draco's flawless complexion being ruined made her feel a little better.

But she had rejoiced too soon. "Now look at that mess!" hissed Hermione, whose nose tip was adorned with a jet-black giant monstrosity, a little later beside her, pointing at Snape, who was in the process of placing small, harmless things on the inside of Draco's and his other Slytherin favourites' forearms. "And he takes only one of Draco's arms! It's so unfair!"

"Don't worry about it, Hermione," Harry comforted her, whose face really did look the worst of all. His sign was also Leo, but Snape must have stacked at least four of them in his face. "He's not doing his lapdogs any favours with that!"

"As if we'll ever need that again in our lives," growled Hermione. "And then even right in the face!"

In the meantime, Snape went through the rows and handed out small tweezers and brushes to his pupils, with which they were now allowed to apply the tincture to the warts. Unfortunately, this did not make them disappear immediately, as they discovered to their chagrin. "When removing warts and similar skin formations, patience and tact are required," Snape explained, and there was a smug undertone in his voice at the word 'tact'. Lavender raised her head briefly, and of course, he was looking at her!

"The tincture has to be absorbed for a while, until you can peel off the first layer and apply the tincture again. And so on … and before I forget: Normal skin could react with intolerances to the tincture, especially if its quality is not perfect! That's all. Whoever has finished may leave!"

With suppressed groans, the students set to work. Only Lavender sat like frozen in her chair. "Let's just share mine" Parvati offered her after a while. "He's got to accept it!" She was already peeling off the first layer of the ugly things that thereby lost a lot of their extent, when Lavender timidly prepared to dip her brush into Parvati's solution.

Immediately, Snape's voice cracked through the room like a whip. He was just at the opposite end, but apparently he had only been waiting for it. "Miss Brown! Don't you want to try your own tincture?"

Lavender winced, and this time she felt hot tears behind her eyelids. Did this bloke have to be so merciless? But obediently she began to dab the pathetic parody on her face with the failed slop from her own cauldron. What else could she do?

"Don't do them all at once!" said Hermione warningly, noticing Lavender's hands shaking. "Just wait and see how it works first!"

And she was right: after five minutes, the treated warts were still hard as concrete, but the skin around them had turned red and burned slightly. Lavender's self-control had collapsed completely and thick tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Now take mine and let him grumble!" Parvati hissed angrily. "Or do you want to walk around with your star sign on your face forever?"

"No, of course we can't assume the responsibility for that," Snape's sarcastic voice sounded behind them at that moment, and the girls whirled around in their chairs.

"Don't you think that's going too far, Professor Snape?" Parvati asked her teacher in a pressed voice. "Look at her skin, it's bordering on assault! She's in pain!"

"I had pointed out to you all that the tincture should not be put on the skin, especially when it is of such a lousy quality as this," Snape replied indifferently.

Parvati jumped up furiously. "But despite the lousy quality you have forced her—"

"Twenty points from Gryffindor," Snape said in the same tone as before, "for making unqualified impertinent remarks to a person of respect! Sit!"

Parvati gave Snape a hateful look and gritted her teeth. But she sat down again.

"And, Miss Brown," he turned to Lavender, "since your solution has obviously totally failed, you may now share Miss Patil's tincture. It seems to be flawless, at least!"

"Why couldn't she do so in the first place?" Parvati whispered sourly and started to peel off the second layer of her warts.

The Slytherins, who had actually finished long ago, were still huddled around the door, giggling stupidly, probably in joyful anticipation of the next embarrassing interlude. But to their boundless disappointment, Snape shooed them out with a wave of his hand.

"Come on, now get started!" Parvati prodded her friend, who sat on her chair with blue lips, teeth chattering, her cold hands tucked between her not much warmer thighs.

But Lavender was devastated. As she brought the brush from Parvati's tincture to her face under Snape's eagle gaze, her hands shook so badly from cold and nervousness that she did not manage to hit her warts with it.

Snape finally put an end to this tragedy. "Help her, Miss Patil," he said impatiently, "or we'll be sitting here tomorrow!"

Looking grim, Parvati took Lavender's chin between two fingers and carefully began to coat her friend's warts with her tincture. They were alone in the room by now, except for Harry, who could hardly stand against the sheer number of his "skin formations".

Meanwhile, shaking his head, Snape made a note in his notebook. "That's a straight Troll, Miss Brown," he announced with a rich tone of satisfaction in his voice and leaned back with his arms crossed. Tears were still streaming down Lavender's face, but she held his gaze as he continued, "And I'm only giving you the Troll because there's no lower mark! You have failed all along the line. I really wonder what you are doing in this course in the first place!"

Parvati was sitting at a table in the Gryffindors' common room, a fresh parchment in front of her, on which there was only one line: "The Origin of the Unforgivable Curses—a Journey through two Millennia". It was the title that Professor Ashley had given for the essay, which was to be three pages long.

The room was almost empty at this hour. Lavender, too, had gone off with Hermione and a few more to the lake to bring her frozen limbs back to normal temperature in the warm sun, but she herself no longer felt like this after those dreadful two hours. No, actually it had been almost three; it had taken her forever, under Snape's nerve-wracking supervision, to erase all traces of his amusing exercise from her and Lavender's faces—especially the "Regulus"-wart of Lavenders "constellation", which was almost half an inch in diameter.

Lavender, as soon as they had left the dungeon, had immediately returned to her slightly over-excited perkiness—despite everything that had happened to her there—and seemed unable to wait to discuss everything with her friend. In the past, after such a memorable event, she and Parvati used to retreat with a lot of giggling—sometimes including tears—and analyse it with relish to the very last detail; and not infrequently devoted themselves to their favourite game afterwards.

But that was honestly not what Parvati had in mind today—although she had noticed exactly how disappointed Lavender was. And when she thought about it, her friend was actually the reason why she hadn't gone to the lake. Parvati had only wanted her peace and quiet, a shower, coffee and a little time for herself to write in her diary and do her homework.

Lost in thought, she chewed on her quill and finally pulled her diary close to her again, in which she had already filled two pages with her clear writing, which slanted slightly to the right. She reread her account of her first meeting with Severus Snape in many weeks and then, after some thought, summarised, "It was almost like always. We long for these two hours with him, only to be run down to for every little thing! Except he's never actually been as disgusting to us as he was today! He especially humiliates Lavender where he can. A real pain in the ass!"

Parvati really wondered what she had found so great all these years about idolising a chronically dissatisfied teacher who threw nasty remarks and cynical jokes around. With her friend, on the other hand, nothing seemed to have changed: She admired Snape and, just as always, almost fell to pieces when he mocked her for her incompetence, stabbing her with his piercing glances. And it wasn't only fear of him that played a role.

"Part of her enjoys having his attention no matter how far he goes and what a nasty audience she has to put up with," Parvati wrote. "She probably passes out just thinking about her detention! But I must admit, it wouldn't have been any different for me in the past!"

In the past, that had been before the holidays. But now, somehow, everything was different. Sure, she still had feelings for Severus. He fascinated her, but she saw through the fact that it was above all his aloof, cold manner that had kept her and Lavender in such suspense all these years. "Remove this mysterious facade, what's left?" wondered Parvati. "Probably a lonely, sexually frustrated soul who was just left behind! Otherwise, would he have such a need to constantly bawl us out one by one? Well, for me it may really be a bit more now …"

With this good intention, Parvati tapped her wand on her writing, which immediately became invisible; after that she closed her diary and cast a sealing spell. Then Parvati sat up straight, adjusted her parchment and briskly picked up her quill.

She had just written three sentences when four noisy first-year girls came clambering through the portrait. Instead of well-behavedly disappearing to their rooms, however, they carelessly slammed their bags on a table and began to talk loudly about their various pets.

They must have been sitting in the sun too long, Parvati thought annoyed and packed up her things. Just then Lavender entered the common room with Hermione. She looked like the picture of health; the red marks on her cheek were barely visible. "Well, you geek," she greeted her friend in a bold manner. "You really missed something at the lake!"

"That's okay," Parvati replied ironically. "You know how I love to sizzle in the sun!"

"Ever heard of trees?" Lavender asked back in the same tone. "Those long green things that cast shadows?"

There was no mistaking the disappointment behind it. Her large eyes were already shimmering meaningfully, and Parvati knew that her friend was almost bursting at the seams with the need to communicate—if only it wasn't about the thing that was worrying herself so much. But I can't leave her hanging like this, she thought to herself and was now annoyed that she hadn't gone to the lake with the others. It really wasn't worth sitting in there all afternoon for those three sentences. And she could write in the diary before she went to sleep.

"Next time, I'll come with you," Parvati promised. "And after dinner, we can still chat enough, right?"

Lavender's face immediately brightened, giving the lie to her cool reply, "But only if you have nothing better to do …"