A couple of weeks slid by in the ordinary rhythm of classes, homework, and the growing ache in everyone's arms from Sprout's increasingly ambitious plant life. Tuesday drills with Vance had become a routine.
Potions, on the other hand, had not gotten any friendlier.
"The powdered doxy egg should be added before the toasted dragonfly thoraxes," Snape said, chalk scratching across the board. "Not after."
"Sir," said Aegeus, looking at the board, then at his textbook. "Jigger says you have to add the egg powder last to keep the dragonfly thoraxes from reacting too quickly."
The room didn't even react— he'd interrupted enough times that everyone was used to it by now.
Snape set the chalk down and said without any particular venom, "Adding the egg powder last stops the reaction before it can even start— it will stop idiots from blowing up their cauldron, but it also leaves the potion far too weak." He turned back to the board. "Make the potion exactly as written."
"And ten points from Gryffindor—"
Although he deducted points, he didn't seem angry about the interruption, and the reason for that goes back to a couple of days ago.
~~~Flashback~~~
It had happened a couple of days ago.
"The lionfish spines are to be added before the salamander blood," Snape said, chalk scratching across the board without looking at anyone in particular. "Not after."
Aegeus looked at the board, then at his textbook, then back at the board.
"Sir." He didn't raise his hand so much as simply speak, the way he always did. "Jigger says to add it after, as adding it before causes the lionfish spines to bind with the salamander blood, which can lead to dangerous fumes if done incorrectly."
The room went quiet, even more tense than last time. It was, after all, the second time he had interrupted the class.
Snape had looked up at Aegeus— seething. Aegeus met his gaze and didn't blink.
Under the wooden desk, hidden beneath the shadow of his robes, Aegeus's fingers traced the tight, subtle curve of the wand movement. His lips barely moved as he breathed the incantation into his collar— Legilimens.
Five points
Snape paused, not breaking eye contact for a second; they both held it, and for a handful of seconds neither of them so much as blinked.
Snape said slowly, "Although adding it after prevents the blood from binding, it also weakens its properties."
"Ten points from Gryffindor"
What actually went unspoken was.
Fifteen, Snape's said, as plainly as if he'd spoken it aloud.
Aegeus didn't look away. Five.
Snape's mouth didn't move, but something in his expression sharpened. Twelve.
Six.
A pause— the kind of pause that, in an actual negotiation, would have involved someone standing up and leaving the room.
Ten, Snape's eyes said finally, flat and final.
Aegeus held the look a moment longer, then allowed the smallest incline of his head. Ten.
~~~End Flashback~~~
Neither of them had so much as twitched an eyebrow through the whole exchange.
Across the aisle, the atmosphere along the Slytherin benches curdled into cold hostility.
Lucian Bole glared at Aegeus, his knife biting viciously into his roots with unnecessary force. "Look at him," he muttered under his breath to Derrick. "Daring to speak to Professor Snape like that. The nerve!"
Peregrine Derrick didn't bother masking the scowl on his face. "And ten points? Is that it? It's his second time doing that; he doesn't even have a hint of remorse!"
"He doesn't show a grain of respect for our Head of House," another Slytherin boy hissed from the row behind them, his knuckles white around his glass stirring rod. "He should have taken fifty points and thrown him out."
To the Slytherins, the eleven-second stare-down hadn't looked like a word exchange— it had looked like raw defiance from a Muggle-born who thought his summer reading gave him the right to challenge the Potions Master. What infuriated them most wasn't just Granger's audacity, but that Snape had let him off with a token ten-point deduction instead of crushing him outright.
Aegeus heard the low murmurs, the sharp clatter of dragged cauldrons, and the tight, resentful glares tracking his every movement. None of it reached his face.
He picked up his brass scales, set his balance weights to the exact measure dictated by Snape's board, and began preparing his ingredients with precision. Their frustration was irrelevant; the transaction was complete.
~~~
For a long time, Aegeus had considered the point system entirely redundant. No matter how many points teachers piled up in front of him, the total meant nothing— until now, when he finally discovered their real use.
It's a currency!
The moment he made that realization, he set out to find someone willing to trade— and Professor Snape was the obvious choice.
Snape obviously cared about Slytherin winning the House Cup, and he was hardly subtle about it. He seized every excuse to shower his own house with points while draining Gryffindor dry at the slightest offense.
So he had spent the two weeks since raiding the library for anything on the Mind Arts, Legilimency especially. He didn't need true skill— just enough skill to hold a single thought hard enough for someone far more capable to read it, and catch theirs in return.
He wasn't remotely qualified to cast wandlessly or nonverbally, nor could he breach a mind. The entire scheme hinged on a single variable: Snape actively choosing to probe his surface thoughts, and choosing to project a response back.
He hadn't started in the Restricted Section— he knew better than to ask McGonagall for a pass for something like that, and he wasn't nearly skilled enough to sneak in unnoticed.
It was in Living With Legilimens: Choose Your Minds Wisely that he found his key. Legilimency wasn't reading a mind like reading a book. Unless a master actively forced an entry, surface Legilimency was entirely passive— it simply picked up the sharpest, most concentrated thought or emotion the subject was projecting at that precise second.
That was what Aegeus needed.
He didn't need to learn how to breach someone else's mind or construct a flawless Occlumency defense. He simply needed to learn how to "compress" a single, isolated, clear enough thought and hold it at the very front of his mind while stripping away all the other thoughts.
Aegeus had felt that distinct, heavy weight probing his mind from time to time during lessons. He knew the moment Snape turned that focus onto him, the link went both ways. If Snape projected a thought back down that open channel, then a conversation became possible.
_________________________________________________________________________
TO BE CONTINUED
~~~
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15 advance chapters
I also finished the first chapter of the horror. patr eon members are 15 ahead, but this chapter is from my secret stash, so it's 35 ahead.