Snape lowered himself in front of Harry, dragged a stool over, and sat with his black robes pooling around him like spilled ink. "Put your hand down, you silly girl," he said without looking at Hermione.
No one knew why he stared so fixedly into Harry's eyes. It almost looked as if he wanted to test the Gryffindor boy's courage, though his expression was cold enough to suggest he might rather cut those green eyes out and preserve them forever in a potion jar.
The result clearly disappointed him. Harry met Snape's gaze head-on and refused to look away, because courage had never been something he lacked. If anything, he had rather too much of it for his own good.
"Professor, this isn't fair!" Ron burst out before Snape could speak again. He stood up for his friend with a flushed face and pointed across the classroom. "Why does Slytherin not lose points when one of their students was late too?"
His finger landed on Roger Williams, who was lying beside Daphne with his head on the desk. Ron's voice grew louder, gaining confidence from his own outrage. "He's even sleeping right there in the open!"
Daphne nudged Roger with her elbow. As expected, he did not move, and she gave up immediately because she had never truly believed she could wake him.
Snape slowly shook his head and rose from the stool. His sharp gaze sliced across Ron's face like a knife, and when he spoke, his voice was calm enough to be terrifying. "Courage without thought is indistinguishable from stupidity."
Ron stiffened, but Snape did not give him the chance to sit down gracefully. "Questioning a professor in public. Five points from Gryffindor."
The Gryffindors glared at him with barely hidden fury. Even Hermione stared at Snape, her lips pressed together, clearly fighting the urge to argue despite having just been insulted herself.
"I won't accept that!" Ron shouted, trembling under Snape's dreadful aura but forcing himself to continue. "I'm not wrong, and I don't believe he can answer those three questions either."
Hermione rolled her eyes the instant she heard it. From what she knew of Roger, those questions would not challenge him at all, and Ron had just handed Snape a perfect excuse to humiliate Gryffindor again.
"If you insist," Snape said.
He walked to Roger's side and paused, sniffing the air faintly. A subtle change passed through his expression. "Dragon's blood and moon dew."
Then he raised his wand. "Rennervate."
The spell struck Roger, and a thread of sharp, borrowed energy forced its way through the heavy sleep wrapped around him. To Daphne's surprise, Roger woke on his own, blinking as though dragged back from the bottom of a lake.
"Is class over?" Roger asked groggily.
He looked around and saw Daphne frantically gesturing toward Snape with her eyes. Roger followed her signal, found his Head of House staring down at him with a dark and sour expression, and instantly woke a little more.
For one wild moment, Roger wanted to ask why Snape was looking at him like that when his lifelong grudge was clearly reserved for Harry. Fortunately, he still had enough survival instinct not to say it aloud.
Snape took a slow breath and repeated the three questions he had just asked Harry. His tone made it clear that this was not an invitation but an execution, and every student in the dungeon leaned in despite themselves.
"The flower meaning of asphodel is regret, and wormwood is associated with bitterness and pain," Roger answered after a yawn he tried very hard to hide. "Powdered root of asphodel added to an infusion of wormwood produces a powerful sleeping potion, more commonly called the Draught of Living Death."
Hermione frowned slightly. She had expected the potion answer, but she had not expected Roger to start with the language of flowers, and she suddenly wondered whether there was another layer to Snape's question.
"A bezoar is an antidote found in the stomach of a goat," Roger continued. "As for monkshood and wolfsbane…"
He caught the increasingly unfriendly look on Snape's face and quickly ran through the situation in his mind. If he said there was no difference, Snape would probably say nothing, but after class he might still keep him behind for extra Potions lessons. Since neither possibility seemed immediately fatal, Roger shrugged and gave the correct answer.
"There is no difference," he said. "They're two names for the same plant, also known as aconite. It's a slender, upright, poisonous perennial. The flowers can be used in potion-making, while the leaves are highly toxic."
Snape's face went stiff. Roger looked up at him and, because exhaustion had damaged his caution, smiled faintly. "Was that meant to be a riddle, sir?"
"Five points to Slytherin," Snape said coldly. He turned back toward the room without one word of reprimand. "Now write that down."
Roger sat there half-dead, yawning as the borrowed energy kept him conscious without making him feel remotely rested. It was worse than being asleep and worse than being awake, which made it exactly the sort of thing Snape would consider educational.
"Roger, that was amazing," Daphne whispered, looking at him with bright admiration. Their own Head of House had actually awarded him points in the middle of class.
Roger smiled weakly but did not explain. He was suffering too much to enjoy the praise properly, because Snape had forced his body awake while his mind remained drained and heavy.
Ron's face turned ashen after hearing the perfect answer. His hatred for Slytherin deepened another notch, but he remembered his brothers' warnings and could not quite summon the courage to stand up and challenge Snape again.
First-year Potions was simple, especially the first lesson. Snape explained the basic handling of ingredients, the correct way to use a cauldron, and the order of steps required to brew a simple potion for curing boils.
"Dried nettles, crushed snake fangs, stewed horned slugs…" Snape prowled between the benches like a bat stalking insects. Nearly every student except Roger and Malfoy received at least one cutting remark.
Naturally, Snape ignored Roger completely and stood behind Malfoy instead. He praised Malfoy's careful movements and made the rest of the class watch, as if the boy had just performed a work of high art rather than stir a cauldron without setting himself on fire.
Roger lay listlessly on the table, nursing a deep resentment toward Snape's unsporting spell. He propped his head on his left hand, waved his wand with almost careless precision, and finished the boil-cure potion with very little visible effort.
Daphne glanced at him and suddenly felt that partnering with Roger had been a terrible mistake. "You're not allowed to do anything this time," she whispered fiercely. "I'm making it myself."
A violent hissing sound erupted behind them before Roger could answer. He turned his head and saw Seamus's cauldron belching thick clouds of acidic green smoke.
The cauldron had already been taken off the fire, but the porcupine quills were still sitting untouched on the table. Roger only needed one glance to understand what had gone wrong.
"Oh," he murmured. "Neville probably forgot to add the porcupine quills."
As expected, the cauldron gave a final angry sputter. The violently reacting potion burned straight through the bottom, collapsed onto the floor, and splashed everywhere in a spreading wave.
Neville was drenched. Angry red boils erupted across his skin, swelling over his arms, face, ears, and even inside his nostrils, and his pained wails echoed through the dungeon.
"Poor kid," Roger sighed. "Neville is the last person who should be in this class."
Potions was a precise art. One wrong step could ruin everything, and for someone as nervous and forgetful as Neville, brewing potions under Snape's glare was less a lesson than a form of torture.
"What are you standing there for?" Snape roared at Seamus, sweeping the spilled potion off the floor with a sharp flick of his wand. "Take him to the hospital wing."
Seamus hurried to help Neville, looking terrified of touching any part of him. The whole class watched them go, and the dungeon seemed even colder after the door shut behind them.
"Observe," Snape said, his voice dripping with disdain. "Some students have already completed their potions, while others cannot even use a cauldron properly."
As expected, he used Roger as the example, or more accurately, as the target. Roger's faintly amused expression made Snape's mouth tighten, as if he suspected the boy understood far more than he was letting on.
"Next class," Snape said abruptly, "you will be paired with Longbottom."
Roger's smile froze. That was not a reward, and everyone in the dungeon knew it.
Snape turned to Harry immediately afterward, his tone becoming accusatory again. "Why did you not warn them?"
Gryffindor unsurprisingly lost another point. As for the reason, it hardly mattered, because Snape did not require a reason to target Harry Potter.
Harry's resentment split itself into three streams. Snape took the largest portion, Malfoy took the second, and Roger was unfortunately swept into the remaining current simply because Snape had used him as a comparison.
Snape stalked back to the front of the classroom. He had never seen such foolish first-years, and the atmosphere in the dungeon grew heavier and more oppressive with every passing minute.
When the bell finally rang, the young witches and wizards fled toward the dungeon entrance as if escaping a disaster. No one wanted to linger under Snape's eyes a second longer than necessary.
"Roger Williams. Stay behind."
Snape's soft voice came from behind him like the click of a lock. Daphne and Hermione both gave Roger looks that clearly meant good luck, then waved at him as though saying farewell to someone headed for execution.
"Dragon's blood and moon dew," Snape said without turning around. He was writing something across a long sheet of parchment. "The only potion in the magical world that commonly uses both is Blue Moonlight."
"You guessed correctly, sir," Roger said.
Inwardly, he cursed Snape's nose. Outwardly, he looked displeased but polite, because those two qualities were safer than honesty in a dungeon with Severus Snape.
"If you already knew that," Roger asked, "why did you cast Rennervate on me?"
"Do you believe it is appropriate to sleep in class?" Snape asked coldly.
Roger nodded helplessly. Of course he admitted sleeping in class was inappropriate, but considering how basic first-year Potions was, he felt he deserved credit simply for attending instead of sleeping somewhere more comfortable.
"The recipe for Blue Moonlight can be found in many places," Snape said. "However, only a handful of potion masters can brew it properly."
His voice shifted into something very close to a command. "Take it out. Let me see it."
Roger had no choice but to remove the vial of Blue Moonlight from his pocket. The silver-blue liquid shimmered beautifully in the dungeon light, and even after seeing it countless times, Roger still found it strangely intoxicating.
"Exceptionally high completion," Snape murmured.
He swept his shoulder-length black hair back, and his examining gaze moved between Roger and the potion. There was suspicion in it, but also interest, and that made Roger more uneasy than pure hostility would have.
"Do this," Snape said.
He tossed over a four-foot sheet of parchment. Roger glanced down and saw that it was filled from top to bottom with Potions questions. It was, without question, a test paper handwritten by Snape.
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