Brave { Neville Longbottom}

Chapter Sixty Five

"Ready for Potions?" Kefira asked her group of friends that morning, however, the only response she received was a series of groans.

"You guys are so dramatic sometimes." Kefira grinned. "Come on, it won't be that bad."

"It won't be that bad for you, you mean." Seamus said. "You actually know what you're doing from all those detentions. The rest of us well...we're...we're..."

"Doomed." Dean finished for him.

"You guys aren't doomed." Kefira said. "I bet you, it won't even be that bad."

"You want to bet money on that, Walsh?" Seamus asked her.

As soon as they walked into the Potions classroom, Professor Snape had Kefira sit away from her friends to " reduce the excessive talking."

Kefira sat on the other side of the classroom, the entire time giving Professor Snape a dirty look as he spoke about the potion they would be working on that day. It was a Shrinking Solution, one that needed to have the appearance of green to be deemed correct. Kefira was at an advantage over her classmates as she had made the potion once before during one of her many detentions. It seemed those detentions were paying off. As many times as her cauldron had been poured out during that detention, Kefira almost knew how to brew it by memory.

She sat at her work station beside Ron Weasley and worked to herself to make sure she didn't get anything wrong. Sometimes, she waited for Professor Snape to walk over and pour her cauldron out, but every time he walked passed her, he gave a glance down at her cauldron and continued on his way. Kefira sighed in relief before she turned to Ron who was holding up two ingredients as if he were debating which one to put in.

Harry and Ron had been forced to make Draco's potion from him as he was left unable to, due to his injury.

"Put those down." Kefira whispered to Ron.

"What?"

"You don't need anymore caterpillars or daisy root. Right now you just need to shake up the rat spleen." she told him.

Ron held up the rat spleen and made a face. "Shake it?"

"Yes. Shake it. If you don't it won't work."

Ron turned to Harry and handed him the spleen. "Kefira says you have to shake it."

"Why me?"

"Because I don't want to." Ron said.

Kefira chuckled at the two while Harry shook the rat spleen. Suddenly, her attention was dragged over to where Neville had been working beside Hermione when Professor Snape stopped to ridicule him.

Unfortunately for Neville, instead of his potion turning green, it came out an orange. Kefira knew exactly what he had done wrong, because during the first time brewing it she had made the same mistake. 

Too much leech juice and rat spleen.

Professor Snape wasted no time to call the boy out in front of the class. As punishment, Neville had to fix the potion by the end of class and afterwards, he would feed it to Trevor.

"You can't do that!" Kefira called out. If there was a slight chance that Neville made a mistake, it would poison the poor toad.

"Quiet Walsh!" Professor Snape snapped at her.

At the risk of making things worse for Neville, Kefira bit down on her tongue hard to keep herself from saying anything else.

She finished her potion and waited to see if Neville would succeed. Luckily, Hermione was able to whisper the help that Neville needed. By the end of the class, the once orange potion turned green. Trevor had been given a bit of the potion, and Kefira crossed her fingers that it would work.

When Trevor transformed into a tadpole, she was the first to clap her hands and cheer on Neville, but she was quickly silenced by a look from the professor. Trevor was turned back to his normal size, and Professor Snape proceeded by deducting five points from Hermione, for whispering the instructions to Neville.

Once the class was dismissed, Kefira waited until everyone cleared out of the classroom, she lifted Trevor off the floor into her hands before approaching Professor Snape.

"Class is over, Miss Walsh." Severus peered over his shoulder before returning back to fixing up the classroom with his wand.

"Why do you have to be so hard on Neville? He's never done anything to you."

Severus ignored her.

"It's not right, you know? Picking on him all the time. All that does is destroy his confidence."

The man stood still but remained silent.

"I don't know why you do it ...but you shouldn't."

"You will not tell me how to run my class. My job here is to teach you, not-"

"Then teach Professor Snape. Do not ridicule, teach!"

"You're asking for detention so early into the year, Miss Walsh."

"No, I'm asking you to stop and think about what you're doing."

"I know what I'm doing."

"No, you don't. Because you don't know how much damage you're doing."

"Unless you want to serve a week's worth of detention you will walk out of this classroom right now."

Kefira walked over to the door but before leaving she stopped once more.

"I don't know who hurt you, Professor Snape, but hurting others won't help you heal."