Today was the day we had Defense Against the Dark Arts.
Defense Against the Dark Arts was unusual in that, instead of being taught alongside students from the other houses, it was taught separately, one house at a time.
I figured that was probably because the subject involved so much practical work that it would be hard to run the class if there were too many people.
Honestly, Hogwarts students must be a real handful.
Anyway, that Quirrell professor with the turban... there was that thing on the back of his head, too.
Seen like this, it didn’t really feel like much of anything. Harry was definitely different, though. Every time Harry made eye contact with Quirrell, he’d frown and complain that his scar hurt.
"T-t-today, we w-w-will study t-t-trolls."
As soon as Quirrell started stuttering, complaints about the quality of the class began popping up here and there.
Ron was no different.
"I mean, if he stutters like that, it’s hard to hear the lesson no matter how good the content is. And what’s with that garlic smell stinging my nose?"
"Shut up and listen, Ron. In my opinion, it’s perfectly understandable."
"No, Leonard, it’s not just me. Everyone else is complaining too."
Ha...
Ron was right. Not that the class was bad, but that the students were complaining.
Among them, the more obnoxious ones had already started asking Quirrell rude questions.
"Professor, why does your classroom reek of garlic? Do you maybe not wash yourself?"
"Professor! If you stutter like that, we can’t understand you. So if our Defense Against the Dark Arts skills are poor and some bad wizard attacks us later, how are we supposed to deal with it? Isn’t that your incompetence?"
Faced with this unexpected situation, Quirrell broke into a cold sweat and started stuttering even more.
"Enough!"
I raised my voice to calm everyone down.
Then I raised my hand and asked Quirrell, "Professor, may I say a few words to the other students?"
"Y-y-yes, go a-a-ahead."
"Thank you. I’ll be quick.
You lot, do you even know what you’re doing right now?
You say you can’t understand the lesson because the professor stutters too much? From where I’m standing, it’s perfectly fine.
Before you blame the professor, shouldn’t you first ask yourselves whether you’ve even been trying to listen properly?
And it’s not even been ten minutes yet. How much do you think you know about Professor Quirrell that you’re already judging him?
Professor Quirrell is a teaching appointment personally chosen by Professor Dumbledore, the greatest wizard in the world.
Do you think your judgment is better than Professor Dumbledore’s?
And what’s this? The smell is too strong? The professor doesn’t wash? If you don’t like the smell, learn a Bubble-Head Charm!
Where on earth did you learn to act this rude?
Would you dare say something that arrogant in front of Professor McGonagall or Professor Snape too?"
"..."
"No, you wouldn’t. If you’re going to be rude, be rude to everyone. Selective rudeness? That’s just you picking on Professor Quirrell because he looks easy to push around, isn’t it?
I’m warning you now: never be rude to any professor again. If you do it one more time, I’ll personally beat you into the ground. Let’s not disgrace Gryffindor’s name, all right?"
Then a dark-skinned boy stepped up in front of me.
"Who do you think you are, coming out here and telling people what to do? What are you supposed to be?"
"Ah, so you don’t agree with what I said. Right?"
"Yeah, you little punk. Quit acting all high and mighty and get lost. Pointing out that the quality of the class is bad is a student’s rightful privilege."
"Oh, is that so? I see."
I didn’t even move a finger. I focused my magic and lifted the boy up. Then I made him spin around and around near the bones of the Hebridean Black hanging from the classroom ceiling.
"The way you’re acting, it sounds like you’re challenging me. And challenging me is the same as challenging the professor who gave me the floor. Do you agree? No answer. Since there’s no answer, I’ll keep spinning you until one comes out."
"Stop, stop! Fine, yes! I challenged the professor! I was wrong, so put me down already!"
What do you mean, yes? I was the one who basically ignored Quirrell too.
"From now on, never be rude to a professor again. And I’ll be sure to report today’s incident to Professor McGonagall."
I put the boy back in his seat and asked Quirrell for permission again.
"I’m sorry, Professor. Our Gryffindors were being rude. It seems to have quieted down now, so please continue the lesson."
"Y-y-yes. Th-th-thank you, M-Mr. Oppenbach."
I hadn’t helped Quirrell because I particularly liked him.
Why would I help a guy with that bald bastard riding around on the back of his head?
I just thought I needed to show the first-year Gryffindors my power properly at least once.
If I wanted nobody to talk back to me from now on, this kind of process was absolutely necessary.
"If you crush them with overwhelming force, the rest of school life gets easier."
Wasn’t that none other than Professor Snape’s teaching?
What?
You’re saying that was about Slytherin?
Those guys and these guys.
"Th-th-th-then I’ll c-c-continue the l-l-lesson. T-t-trolls are..."
Honestly, it was maddening. If he stuttered like that, you couldn’t understand a thing.
*
Time passed, and at last Friday arrived.
Today was Professor Snape’s Potions class.
While we were eating breakfast in the Great Hall, Hedwig flew over and dropped a letter for Harry.
"Oh, a letter? Who’s it from, Harry?"
"It’s from Hagrid. He says we don’t have classes on Friday afternoon, so why don’t we come visit his hut?"
"That sounds like a good idea. Let’s all go together."
"Yeah, sure, I’ll go too."
"All right. I’ll write back to Hagrid."
So the three of us made plans to have lunch and then go to Hagrid’s hut.
After breakfast, we headed down to the Potions classroom in the castle dungeons.
Potions was taught together with Slytherin, and this warped educational system at Hogwarts existed purely because there were so few professors.
The Hogwarts faculty was usually very accomplished, but one person couldn’t possibly teach hundreds of students all by themselves.
Even now, the professors probably didn’t have much personal free time.
They barely had enough time to teach the students, so when were they supposed to do their own research?
And their salaries weren’t even that high, while they had no real breaks except during vacations.
At Christmas and Easter, they had to prepare for the next round of classes, and on weekday evenings they had to run their own clubs.
On top of that, they sometimes had to clean up after student accidents.
From that perspective, being a Hogwarts professor was a job you did purely for the honor of it. If you asked me to do it, I’d never take it.
Maybe that was why Dumbledore kept dumping the Headmaster’s work on Professor McGonagall and running off every day?
So what was I trying to say? Well...
I was finally going to meet Malfoy.
"Even after I warned you, you’re still hanging around with that blood traitor? Pull yourself together, Potter. Did Gryffindor rot your brain or something?"
Malfoy picked a fight the moment he spotted us.
Look at that filthy temper.
Still... he’d been raised on that kind of education from childhood, so it was only natural he’d turn out like this.
Besides, apparently he straightened himself out later, so I’d just leave him be for now.
Though come to think of it, he seemed to be like this for his entire school life...
"I decide who I’m friends with, Malfoy."
When Malfoy started in on him, Harry shot back.
Just then, the classroom door slammed open and Professor Snape swept in, his black robes billowing.
He really did look like a black bat.
"You seem to have plenty of energy for talking, Potter. Gryffindor loses 2 points. Everyone sit down."
There it was! Snape’s biased judgment!
Hermione shot her hand into the air and said, "Professor, Malfoy was talking too, so it’s unfair that only Gryffindor loses points."
"Did I ask you to speak, Granger? Gryffindor loses another 2... no, 1 point."
After that, Professor Snape gave me a quick glance.
Wait, does that mean he docked us less because he saw me...? No, then couldn’t you just let it slide...?
Whether I liked it or not, Professor Snape began the lesson.
"You have gathered here to study Potions, a very precise and extremely difficult art.
There will be no foolish waving of wands in this classroom. Because of that, many of you will find it hard to believe this is magic.
However, this remarkable field is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and precise branches of magic.
I do not expect you to truly understand the beauty of a cauldron simmering and bubbling with faintly glowing fumes, or the subtlety of a potion that courses through the veins and seizes the mind.
But I can teach you how to pack fame into a tiny glass bottle, brew glory from a cauldron, and even stop death with a stopper, if you are not as thick as the fools I usually have to teach."
I didn’t agree with his talk about the beauty of cauldrons, but everything else was true.
Many of the greatest achievements in the wizarding world came from Potions, and the field had a bright future.
Potions could clearly do a great many things.
It was just that there were too few masters of it, so achievements worth recording didn’t come up very often.
Potions was an incredibly damn difficult field.
Having someone as skilled as Professor Snape at Hogwarts was a blessing.
Of course, strictly in terms of skill...
"Put all your books away."
Hermione raised her hand again and asked, "But Professor, if we put our books away, what are we supposed to study from?"
"No stupid book is needed for my class. I’ll write every recipe on the blackboard."
No, Professor. Then don’t tell us to buy the book in the first place... my blood Galleons...
Of course, thanks to the private lessons I’d received before school started, I knew Professor Snape’s own recipes were far better than the ones in the book.
But wouldn’t it be better to just rewrite the book then...?
After telling us to put our books away, Professor Snape asked Harry in a cold voice, "Potter. What happens if you add powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Harry was wearing a completely clueless expression. And behind him, Hermione had her hand raised high.
She’d probably be better off just lowering it...
Professor Snape wasn’t trying to give points for a correct answer.
He just wanted to see how much Harry knew, and if he was below standard, he wanted an excuse to be petty.
Ah, though if Harry had been gifted in Potions like his mother, Lily Evans, he might have favored him a little.
"I don’t know."
"Tsk. Famous name, but apparently not much skill to match. Where would you find a bezoar?"
When Harry couldn’t answer correctly, Professor Snape tossed out another question in a mocking tone.
"I don’t know, Professor."
Even on the second question, Hermione still had her hand raised high, and on the Slytherin side, Malfoy and his gang were clutching their stomachs and laughing.
"Potter, it seems you didn’t even glance at a book before coming to class. Then next question: what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
"I don’t know, Professor. But he seems to know, so why don’t you ask him?"
Harry finally seemed to have reached his limit.
Professor Snape, as if he’d been waiting for that, immediately deducted points from Harry.
"Potter, your insolent attitude costs Gryffindor 1 point. Now then, who can answer?"
Without giving Hermione, who was still holding her hand up, so much as a glance, Professor Snape pretended to scan the classroom and then asked me, "Mr. Oppenbach. Would you like to answer?"
Professor Snape was telling me with his eyes that if I got it wrong, he’d kill me.
I stood up and answered the questions.
"If you add powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood, you get a very powerful sleeping draught called the [Potion of Living Death]. If brewed properly, it’s so effective it can make someone sleep for a whole week, so you have to take the proper dose.
A bezoar can be found in a goat’s stomach, and it’s a universal antidote that can cure everything except a very small number of extremely powerful poisons.
Finally, monkshood and wolfsbane are the same plant. It’s a highly poisonous herb often used in various poisons."
"Excellent, Mr. Oppenbach. Five points to Gryffindor for each answer, fifteen points in total."
Slytherin and Gryffindor both stared in silent shock.
And yes, so did I.
That Snape was giving Gryffindor points?
"What are you all doing? Why is no one writing this down?"
Professor Snape flicked his wand. Letters flew out from it and stuck themselves to the blackboard.
He flicked his wand again, the cabinet doors opened, and the ingredients needed for today flew out and landed in front of each student.
"Today we will be making a simple cure for boils. Pair up in twos and make the potion according to what I’ve written on the board. Time limit: one hour. If your finished product is below standard, or if you’re even one second late, you’ll have extra lessons. Begin now."
Harry paired up with Ron.
Then I’d naturally have to work with Hermione. This would be a perfectly legal date.
I walked over to Hermione and said, "Hermione, how about pairing up with me?"
Hermione readily agreed.
"Sure, that works. Lavender and Parvati paired up on this side, so I was on my own anyway."
Together, we began making the boil-cure potion.
Truthfully, there was no need for Hermione and me to work together on such an easy potion.
We could each make it separately and still get top marks without question.
But the professor specifically said to pair up in twos, so there was no problem, right?
The professor’s kindness in even helping his student’s love life was just too heavy...
I decided to first see Hermione’s skill, so I only pretended to be properly preparing the ingredients.
But Hermione was definitely different.
I was admiring the way she was slicing the ingredients with her delicate hands.
Seeing how well she handled a knife, she probably cooked very well too.
Once we got closer later, should I ask her to cook for me? Hermione’s cooking, made by her own hands...
Then I felt like someone was glaring at me, so I looked around and saw Professor Snape staring at me with obvious displeasure.
Looks like I couldn’t keep fooling around anymore...
After some time passed, our potion was finished.
The color was perfectly clear and the viscosity was low, so it had been made flawlessly.
Looking around, Professor Snape was moving from place to place, mercilessly deducting points wherever he went.
Harry and Ron had only just finished preparing their ingredients and were putting them into the cauldron.
Uh-oh, that’s not how you do it. Are they even looking at the board at all?
Then there was a boom.
Everyone in Potions turned toward the source of the loud noise.
And the culprits were Neville and Seamus.
Neville, drenched in the liquid from the cauldron, had boils breaking out all over his body.
"You foolish idiots! You put in the nettles before turning off the fire. I clearly wrote to add them after turning off the fire! Gryffindor loses 5 points! I’m taking Longbottom to the infirmary. The rest of you, write your names on your finished potions and submit them before you leave. And Mr. Oppenbach, stay behind for a moment after class."
After finishing Neville’s first aid, Professor Snape lifted him with magic and carried him out of the classroom.
The Potions classroom, which had only been filled with the bubbling of cauldrons and Professor Snape’s reprimands, only then began to fill with the sound of everyone else’s sighs after he left.
"Phew, lucky day. At least we don’t have to see Snape’s face any longer. He looks exactly like a black bat, and he’s always prowling around trying to find something to criticize."
Ron complained bitterly.
But I already knew Ron had no right to say that.
"If you’d just followed the board exactly, you wouldn’t have lost points."
"Leonard, we did it properly. Snape was just picking on us."
"Look, you still don’t even know what you did wrong. You two dumped in the dried nettles and powdered snake fangs all at once, didn’t you?"
"Huh? How did you know?"
"I was watching everything you were doing from over here. Look at the board. What does it say?"
"Add the nettles first and stir clockwise three times, then add the powdered snake fangs and stir counterclockwise twice. Huh, really? Why didn’t we see that?"
"And after that, you still say you didn’t do anything wrong? If you add them all at once like you did, the potion’s effectiveness drops. See? The color’s cloudy. That’s what a proper boil-cure potion looks like."
"Oh, yours is really clear."
"Professor Snape really is extremely strict, but usually when he deducts points from you, it’s because you didn’t do what he told you to do.
Of course, the exception is when he deducts points from Harry on purpose like earlier.
The things Harry was asked about earlier are all things you don’t learn until fourth year or later."
"See? I knew it. Snape really is impossible to like. He’s always favoring Slytherin. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard of Gryffindor taking points from Snape. Fred and George would never believe it if I told them. Anyway, class is over, so we’ll head back first and wait in the common room. Let’s eat lunch together."
"Sure, go on ahead. The professor told me to stay, so I have to remain here."
Hermione also gathered her things and was about to leave.
I called out to her and said, "Hermione, you haven’t forgotten our plan for tomorrow, have you? I’m really looking forward to it."
Hermione’s face turned bright red again, and she managed a reply at last.
"N-no, I remember. I’ll be there on time."
Good.
With that, I’d finally taken one more step forward.
While I was reminding Hermione about our plan, the other students all left the dungeons.
And a little while later, Professor Snape came back in and took me to his office inside the classroom.
"Very well, Leonard. I remember what you said at the Sorting Ceremony. ‘What the hell is Slytherin?’ I told you to go to Slytherin, and yet you ended up in the most irritating house of all, Gryffindor. Was it because of that girl Granger?"
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