Potioneer potter

Ch 2

Tomorrow afternoon came around far too quickly for Harry's liking and with it, the dreaded double potions. Yet again he had been subjected to a night of waking up with Cedric Diggory's lifeless yet somehow shocked expression painted into the back of his eyelids and a sharp pain in his scar that made his head ache. All of this exhaustion made Harry perfectly happy to leave Ron to be doing all of the complaining at lunch that day whilst he picked at his pasta salad.

"Lord knows he complains enough to cover the both of us, or the entirety of gryffindor for that matter" Harry thought with a tired fondness.

"I just don't get where we're going to use this in our life y'know? If I'm going to play quidditch or join Dad and Percy at the ministry or even Charlie with the dragons, why would I ever need to be the one to brew a bloody pain relief potion or something, I won't be a mediwizard and even then I don't see Madame Pomfrey brewing any of her whatever the fuck she uses, besides, if I really have to I can always go find some of those muggle tablet sweet things you were talking about that do the exact same, eyeball proteins or whatever they are-"

"Ibuprofen Ronald, and you'd need to have muggle money too."

Hermione's response did not seem to deter their red headed friend from his worries or, it seems, his second helping of butterscotch tart but she continued anyway.

"Ron, if you want to fail then feel free but don't complain to me when you get a howler a day from the lovely Molly Weasley and get rejected from any further education for not having one of the basic, required O.W.Ls. Come on, it's time to go anyway."

"Blimey Hermione, give it to me straight eh." Ron stood from the bench whilst clutching imaginary pearls. "And you know as well as anyone that I'm not going to give that slimy bat the satisfaction of failing me. No, I'm going to study that stupid potions section in the library day and night for the next two years, even if it kills me"

"If you're not careful Ron, it'll be the walk to the library alone that kills you and that'd be like Christmas for Snape"

Falling into step beside his friends, Harry's mind took the opportunity to return to evaluating his dreams and considered how to make sense of them. I mean it wasn't as if he could search the library for any mention of 'creepy dark corridor' and hope for the best. Perhaps he could ask Hermione, Harry thought to himself, after all she seemed to know every book in the whole of hogwarts. Or professor dumbledore, he considered next, surely the old man would have some advice. In the end however, Harry decided the best course of action was to leave it be and not to bother anyone about it, after all, how dangerous could a dream of all things be?

Harry continued to mull this over until he was pulled out of his rumination by Hermione's gentle hand on his arm letting him know they had arrived at the potions classroom.

"Harry? You ok? I'm sure your potions essay will be fine you know, you still have all year to improve as well. Besides it's not Snape who marks our actual OWL exam and I'm happy to help if you need."

"Hm? Oh yeh sorry 'mione I was just thinking about, er, stuff." Harry continued before Hermione had a chance to question any further.

"You know Fred and George said that Umbridge is even worse than any defense teacher we've had before! Even lockheart and that's saying something."

Hermione responded with equal disdain whilst Harry chose where to sit. He initially headed towards his usual seat between Ron and Hermione on the back row, as far away from Snape as possible but after an internal reminder about his required grade he took a moment to channel his supposed gryffindor bravery and took the end seat on the second to last row instead. Perhaps not the dutiful and excited student that Malfoy seemed to be but an improvement nonetheless.

"Essays out. Books out. Attention seeking away and begin to prepare the necessary ingredients immediately."

Harry groaned at Snape's undoubtedly personal attack but ignored it all the same and began gathering the ingredients listed in his recipe book and taking them back to his bench. He took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts. "It's just like cooking" he told himself. "There is not a menacing probably-death-eater watching me do this and it doesn't matter if it goes wrong." Harry wasn't quite at the point of believing this but started anyway.
When he would cook a meal back at privet drive, Harry would measure out and prepare the ingredients into separate bowls in order to be able to watch the food more closely and prevent it from burning. At Hermione's suggestion he decided to take this approach to his brewing this year and so commenced slicing, dicing, skinning, and crushing before the fire had even been lit. Once Harry began the actual cauldron work, he tried to just go with the flow and follow his intuition. After all he knew that in an art such as cooking, following a recipe to the exact letter never yielded the best results and what meal couldn't be improved by a couple of well chosen herbs or spices.

"You now have 5 minutes, for those of you with enough brain cells not to have turned your work into a potentially deadly concoction, or" Snape paused to give Neville a pointed look, "a seemingly living creature, kindly place a sample in the vials I have provided and leave it on my desk, appropriately labelled."

Harry was not sure how he was supposed to know whether his potion was deadly or not so he settled with reading the description provided in his recipe book and compared it to the substance in front of him.

A green such as one might find on the skin of an olive – yep, Harry thought. He had never seen an olive up close but Hermione was always rather taken with them at meals in the great hall.

Viscosity reminiscent of honey or begonia paste – he had no clue what on earth begonia paste was but Harry was definitely familiar with honey and as he gave his potion a poke he decided it was similar enough.

He continued through the list and eventually chose to risk it and bottle a sample for Snape to, most likely, insult and vanish but it was better than turning in nothing. He expertly picked a moment when Snape was too distracted reducing a 16 year old gryffindor to tears and swiftly placed his vial with the others, gathered his bags and slipped out after Ron and Hermione