SUGAR QUILLS - DRARRY

HARRY

***

HARRY had never been fond of potions class. Besides the fact that he wasn't very good at it to begin with, the Hogwarts potions master, Professor Snape, did seem to spring at any chance to ridicule or torment him. This usually involved taking away unnecessary amounts of house points for nothing less than "stupidity", or using his lack of potion-concocting talent as an excuse to mock him infront of the entire class.

It was also double potions, meaning two houses shared the same lesson instead of one, and of course Gryffindor was always paired with Slytherin. Thus, the other reason Harry utterly despised this class. The Slytherins were anything but just towards Harry, particularly. And Snape being their house representative, Harry had often imagined that it resulted in the three-hour lesson to be a courtroom of sorts, where he was the victim, falsely proven guilty and getting charged over and over just for the fun of it.

These, plus his recent lack of proper time management, were all reasons as to why Harry was reluctant to enter his double potions class today. He stood behind the shut door, shivering slightly from the cold damp in the dungeons, knowing he was four minutes late, and also knowing Snape would surely take advantage of the situation and overly punish him as a couple Slytherins laughed.

The image was painted so vividly in his mind, Harry almost turned on his heel and walked right back up to the Gryffindor common room, the one thing stopping him being how ghastly the delighted look on Snape's face would be tomorrow as he gave Harry a punishment he thought worthy enough for skipping.

Harry took one final breath in, clutched his cauldron closer to his stomach, and pushed through the heavy, worn out wooden door. He exhaled a breath when he saw that Snape's back was to the door, jotting down instructions for today at the front of the class to which everyone else seemed to be hurriedly copying it down. Harry made no effort to remain standing, and immediately darted for the back of the room, trying to discreetly slide into the spot next to Hermione. The latter looked up, bearing an exasperated grimace.

"Harry!" She whispered urgently, rushing to slide her cauldron over as Harry set his own down with a light thud. "Where were you? Snape was talking about just how he'd punish you this time and—"

"Indeed I was, Granger," spoke a sour voice from behind the two of them. The class had gone silent and Hermione visibly cringed as she pivoted around to face Professor Snape. He bore an evil smirk, looking down upon the two.

"Potter," he spat, "You were late to my class. 10 points from Gryffindor. You are also to haul your things to the front. You will now sit with Zabini for the rest of the term—I will not hear any complaints!" Snape added after Harry tried to protest. "'Now' means now, Potter."

Harry groaned as he dragged his belongings up to the front, taking one last look at Hermione's sympathetic face. He didn't even get the chance to ask her where Ron had gone.

Stiffly situating himself in the seat next to Zabini, Harry once again replaced his cauldron. Soon the awkward silence was drowned out with scattered sounds of chopping, pouring, sloshing and voices Harry had already decided to ignore. He focused on his own task at hand; singlehandedly crafting a Strengthening Solution. He absentmindedly crushed his griffin's claw to a fine powder with the side of his knife and then stirred it in, waiting four minutes for it to begin to boil before using a dropper to drip 5 beads of salamander blood into the centre of the liquid and the boiling ceased almost immediately.

"You have 15 minutes left," later announced Professor Snape in his bored voice, "if brewed correctly, you should be scooping your solutions within the next minute." And to Harry's content, he was, in fact, ladling his potion, reaching over to grab a glass vial and cork. It made a surprisingly difficult task, trying to get one bottle from within his sack with a spoonful of mixture already prepared in one hand, especially while trying not to burn yourself on the rim of the cauldron.