Voldemort's Protege

Potion Prep

Hermione's good mood lasted until potions the day after Tom agreed to offer some ideas for her to study. It wasn't that potions was an uninteresting subject and she didn't dislike Professor Slughorn, but she hated when they occasionally worked with a partner and disliked having attention drawn to herself. Most teachers praised her, but Slughorn really laid it on thick and while at times it was nice little ego boost most of the time all she could feel were the eyes of her peers on her. Having a partner was also a problem, she always chose Neville because nobody wanted to partner with either of them and Neville's nerves tripped him up so she spent half the time preventing him from making a mistake.

Normally none of that would be enough to actually bother her, but today Slughorn wanted to "shake things up", which she somehow knew would be a problem. "Alright, class I think we should swap around our normal pairs and let you work with someone new." Hermione internally cringed, but didn't let it show instead she watched as everyone was forced to shuffle seats around her attention was dragged back to Slughorn when he called her name, "Hermione Granger you'll work with Harry Potter. Lucky you Harry, you get to work with our resident potions master," Slughorn sent a wink to Harry who tried to smile.

Honestly Hermione felt like the lucky one, Harry was one of the few people in her year that she thought was a genuinely kind person. They hadn't spoken much, but he was always polite to her and the only times she'd seen him actually get angry at anyone was when dealing with Draco Malfoy who wasn't her favorite person either. "Hello, Harry," she greeted him neutrally trying to summon up some expression that didn't betray her feelings of discomfort.

"Uh, hi Hermione, let's try to work together well. Not that you need help, but I'll do my best not to mess anything up," he scratched his head and Hermione could tell he didn't mean it in a negative way so she merely nodded and offered to grab the ingredients asking him to set up his cauldron. On her way back to her seat carrying the necessary ingredients for their Forgetfulness Potion she saw Neville was paired up with Ron Weasley. She couldn't imagine that duo having an easy time. She didn't want to call Ron a mean-spirited person, but he was someone who easily became jealous so she didn't know much about him. Just from her experience in classes she felt he wouldn't work well with Neville, he didn't seem to have the patience to guide or knowledge to take charge.

Still she couldn't worry too much about them, she had her own work to do, Harry had placed his cauldron on the desk and she could tell immediately it was of higher quality than hers. That was largely why if they were sharing she'd rather use his cauldron. The school required pewter cauldrons so she didn't look at any other types when initially buying, but students from wizarding families especially rich ones knew to get higher quality products to produce better results. Not that she needed anything special to be at the top the class.

For the first part of the class things were quiet, Harry easily followed her instructions and they seemed to work well together. The problems didn't start until after she finished the initial stage and let the potion brew. On his way to get extra ingredients Malfoy, "accidentally" dropped a few Valerian sprigs into their potion and almost immediately the color of their potion changed from a perfect orange to a sickly looking yellow.

Harry turned his gaze to Malfoy who tried to look innocent and gave a fake apology, before Harry could get worked up Hermione grabbed his shoulder, "Harry I need you to grab some ingredients," before he could ask she continued, "I need a vial of Lethe River Water, five Mistletoe Berries, and three measures of Standard Ingredient." She wasn't sure how much she would need, but having more was better than not having enough.

Thankfully rather than question her Harry followed her instructions and returned with the ingredients she demanded. She sprang into action, since Malfoy had likely at least doubled the amount of Valerian Sprigs that the potion called for, she would just have to try doubling the rest of the ingredients to theoretically equal things out and end up with a double batch. The problem was trying to match things perfectly without knowing exactly how much Malfoy added plus the class didn't run long enough to brew the larger potion for much longer than the standard amount of time, which meant she had to try upping the heat.