Potions was, by contrast, held in the dungeons, and the temperature drop alone was enough to sour most of the room's mood before class had even started.
Severus Snape entered a few minutes after the class had settled, the dungeon door swinging shut behind him with a heavy sound.
He crossed to the front of the room without a word, black robes trailing behind him, and turned to face the combined first-years.
He offered no introduction, no welcome, nothing as generous as a nod. He simply tapped his wand once against the blackboard, and a set of brewing instructions appeared in tight, precise formula— a Cure for Boils, the first line read, followed by steps that filled the entire board.
"You will follow the instructions exactly as written," Snape said, his voice low and controlled, but it still somehow carried to every corner of the room.
"No talking." His gaze swept the class once, flat. "You have forty-five minutes. Begin."
While the rest of the class scrambled for crushed snake fangs and porcupine quills, Aegeus stayed at his station, cross-referencing the board against Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger, still open on the desk in front of him.
Three changes, inside the first two steps alone. The book said that the fangs are to be crushed to fine powder, the board specified a rough crush. The book wanted four clockwise stirs after adding the horned slugs, but Professor Snape only wrote two, counter-clockwise, with a pause in between
He raised his hand and waited, his cauldron still unlit. Snape's eyes found him immediately, narrowing with displeasure. "What?"
"The instructions on the board deviate from Jigger's standard text on two points, Professor," Aegeus said. "Ingredient preparation and stirring direction. I'd like to know the reason."
The dungeon went very quiet. Somewhere behind him, Marcus stopped mid-reach for his scales.
Snape didn't answer right away. He came down off the dais instead, and crossed the room until he was standing directly over Aegeus's desk— close enough that he had to tip his head back slightly to keep meeting his eyes.
"Word travels fast in this castle," Snape said, quiet enough that it barely carried past the front two rows. "They say there is a new Gryffindor who thinks rather highly of himself. I didn't know the audition was today..."
"It wasn't meant as one, sir."
"No," Snape said, in a tone that made clear he didn't believe it for a second. "Of course you didn't. No one ever does..."
He let the silence sit a moment longer before continuing, his voice dropping into something colder and more sarcastic. "Jigger wrote for dunderheads too dim to be trusted with anything more demanding than a pet rock. A rough crush preserves the oils that a fine powder evaporates."
"The counter-clockwise turns neutralize the slugs' acidity before heat forces a premature reaction. Follow the book, and you will get a weak, slow-acting, mediocre brew fit for a troll's apothecary. Follow the board, and you'll get something actually fit for a patient."
His eyes didn't leave Aegeus's for the entire explanation.
"Was that sufficiently illuminating for you, or does the golden boy require a written copy?"
"No, Professor. Thank you."
Snape straightened, robes settling back into place with a small, contemptuous flourish. "Five points from Gryffindor, for making me spell out the obvious."
He turned without waiting for a response and swept back toward the front of the room. "The rest of you have wasted enough time gawking."
Down the Slytherin side of the room, someone snickered. A boy named Peregrine Derrick leaned toward the student next to him, not bothering to keep his voice down. "He thought he knew more than the teacher."
"Pfff. A troll's apothecary," the other boy laughed.
Aegeus lit his burner without comment and worked through Snape's modified steps with precision— though he noted that Snape found reasons to pass his station rather more often than anyone else's for the remainder of the lesson, each time with a different mean comment.
By the end of the forty-five minutes, Aegeus's cauldron held a potion that was precisely the pale turquoise specified in Snape's notes, shimmering with a clear, silver sheen.
While half the room struggled with foul-smelling smoke or sludge that bubbled dangerously over the stone desks, Aegeus filled two crystal vials with a steady hand, labeled them in neat handwriting, and stepped forward to place them on Snape's desk.
He wasn't the only one who'd managed it perfectly. Rosalind's cauldron held the same turquoise, a shade duller than his, and she had finished with enough time left over to sit back and watch the rest of the room.
Marcus's was closer to teal than turquoise, and had a faint burnt-sugar smell. But it hadn't exploded, hadn't smoked, and hadn't required Snape's intervention— which, by Marcus's own standards, counted as a personal triumph.
He capped his vial with exaggerated care. And shot Aegeus a look that clearly wanted credit for not being one of the sludge cauldrons.
Snape moved down the row of finished potions without comment, pausing only twice— once at a Slytherin's cauldron that had turned an alarming shade of orange, and once, briefly, at Rosalind's, where he said nothing at all, which, from Snape, counted as approval.
As for Aegeus, Snape didn't look up from his parchment as the glass clinked against the dark wood. He merely gave a slight, flicking gesture of his hand— dismissing Aegeus back to his station to clean up.
When the bell rang, releasing the first-years from the dungeon's cold grip, the Gryffindors practically spilled into the corridor, gasping for the warm air of the higher floors.
"I thought he was going to turn you into a toad on the spot," Marcus breathed, wiping a line of sweat from his forehead as they climbed the grand staircase toward the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. "You are the bravest person I have ever seen! To question him like that!"
"I just wanted to know the answer," Aegeus said simply.
"Well, I hope you are happy. Because of your "answer" we lost five points!" Marcus pointed out.
"Five points was a cheap price to pay," Aegeus replied with no care in the world.
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TO BE CONTINUED
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