The Potions Master's Daughter Part 2

CHAPTER 14 Trust me

At Hogwarts, opinions on the top most hated subjects varied among students. Some harboured a deep hatred for the History of Magic; others trembled with fear when stepping into Professor McGonagall's classroom. But ask anyone besides Slytherin, and they would likely name Potions as one of the most dreaded classes of them all. And ever since school began over a month ago, for the first time ever, Alice was able to say the same.

She was a star at Potions. It came to her so naturally, so effortlessly. Under her watchful eye, ingredients seemed to mix themselves of their own volition into brews of pure perfection. No recipe was too complicated, no elixir too advanced.

But lately, she had grown to despise the classes just as much as those poor Gryffindors who dragged their feet into the dark and gloomy dungeon for double Potions every Friday. But it wasn't the workload they dreaded (and now so did Alice); it was Severus Snape.

When she thought about him, and she did so almost constantly, different emotions tugged at her heartstrings each day. Some mornings she woke up with a sense of calm and a deep understanding for what Snape must've gone through in his time at Lord Voldemort's side. And on other days, she was void of any kind of sympathy, filled instead with anger and disappointment.

But most often, she was scared, both for him and for herself. Every time she saw him, her gaze drifted to his left forearm, concealed by a long black, skin-tight sleeve of his shirt. She began having trouble sleeping, twisting and turning for hours on end. And when she did eventually manage to close her eyes, night terrors haunted her until she awoke in the early hours of the morning, drenched in sweat with dark circles under her eyes.

And though school life was distracting, though there were essays to write, spells to practise, and assignments to get done, she couldn't help but succumb to the dark, bleak thoughts of death and suffering done at the hands of those most evil of all - Death Eaters; those to whom her father once belonged. Wherever she looked, she saw skulls with serpents coming out of their mouths; they seemed to hover ominously over the head of every Slytherin she looked at. Daphne's, Blaise's, Pansy's, Draco's...

Nothing had changed since Blaise and Daphne apologised for not having talked to her about their family's ties to dark magic. Alice realised that, for the two of them, the topic was equally as painful to discuss as it was for her. She didn't try to engage them about it any further and realised she was a fool for thinking they had ever mentioned it behind her back at all. Whenever the topic of anything even remotely related to the Dark Lord or his followers came up, they fell silent or changed the subject. Alice wondered how on earth she had never noticed it before. Maybe the awareness of good and evil came with age. Maybe it was part of growing up.

All things considered, when it turned out classes were to be cut short on Friday to accommodate for the arrival of the Durmstarng and Beauxbatons students, Alice and every Gryffindor in her year let out a collective sigh of relief. For once, she thought, she could put her worries aside, put her mind at ease. And she could instead, like everyone else at Hogwarts, let the excitement of the Triwizard Tournament take over. Only an hour and a half of Snape's presence to withstand and she could enjoy her evening just like everybody else.

'Since – much to my regret – entertainment seems to be prioritised over education in this school as of late,' Snape remarked bitingly, clearly unhappy about his class being cut short, 'we will focus on recipe writing today. An hour and a half should suffice for each of you to compose a prescriptive and detailed formula for the Calming Draught. Put your textbook away, Potter! The very purpose of this class is for you to test your Potion-making intuition. Now, you will turn in your recipes at the end of today's lesson and we will test them out in class next week.'