His love for Potions I ✔

Chapter 23: Our teacher is a werewolf

"The news of the week, Potter?"

"Professor McGonnegall still won't return my Firebolt. I don't suppose you could- no, sorry, forget I asked."

"Miraculous. He learns."

Harry ignored this sarcasm as beneath him.

"And how are your little friends?"

"Ron and Hermione aren't talking to each other because her cat keeps trying to eat his rat," Harry said, gingerly adding his catfish whiskers to the potion. "And Hermione's not talking to me because I sided with Ron a little and we both have too much homework."

"It was my understanding that Miss Granger assisted you with your homework."

"I don't know. I've been too busy trying to figure out the reading about Undetectable Poisons to figure out Hermione."

Professor Snape considered this statement with apparent calm and then vanished the potion they'd been working on for more than an hour.

"Professor!"

"It does me no good to attempt to impart the most fundamental skills of potion-making if you fail your third-year classes because you do not understand the basic curriculum." Snape stalked away. "Clean that up."

"Getting cross with me isn't going to help," Harry said amiably. "It just makes you look like you need a blood pressure potion."

Harry was furious as well, but he had different ways of coping with his anger.

"What," Professor Snape said with icy clarity, "Is your problem with Undetectable Poisons?"

"The textbook," Harry said immediately. "The explanations you give in class are alright, but it just takes me a long time when I can't ask Hermione to explain the diagrams and things, and she sniffs at me if I ask her for advice these days."

"I suppose I assumed... were you educated in basic comprehension and arithmetic before Hogwarts, Potter?"

"I was never much good at maths," he said doubtfully.

"Throwing you into an Arithmancy class at this point would undoubtedly be funny, but it probably wouldn't be effective," Snape said half to himself.

Harry hated Snape's sense of humor.

"Very well. Throw yourself on your friend's mercy. Beg her forgiveness, agree with her that her cat is a paragon among cats, tell her that teaching others is a good way to learn material, whatever you have to do to regain your place in her good graces."

"Is that why you made me grade all those papers? I dreamed I was bleeding green ink all over the Chamber of Secrets."

"Do not use your nightmares to change the subject."

"I'm not lying to Hermione for you."

"Were any of the things I just said a lie?"

"...well, her cat's awful."

"All cats are awful. Next."