Oliver Evans is The Prodigy of the Heart (Book One)

Chapter Sixteen: The Leader

"Are you ready to find out?" Trent asked as we entered the potions classroom. We took a seat at our table and pulled out our textbooks. "I'm as ready as I was just minutes after I finished. I've been dying to know, and losing a lot of sleep over this grade." I said with overwhelming stress in my voice

Professor Snape entered and the room fell silent. He strolled casually over to his desk, his cloak flowing behind him. We all had our eyes on him, waiting nervously for our OWL results. He looked over all our facial expressions and cracked a very faint, sly smile with the corner of his mouth.

"I am a little disappointed in the results for this class. It looks as though I won't be..." he stares bitterly down at Trent "...seeing all of you again next year. What a shame." he flipped his hair over his shoulder and took out a stack of parchment. He started at the farthest table from the door, setting the parchment face down in front of each student. As he approached our table, he looked at me; his eyes gleamed as the flickering flame of the hanging candles hit his pupils. I trembled with anxiety as he placed my parchment face down in front of me.

I didn't move. I couldn't move. I was overwhelmed with nervousness. Others had already flipped their pages over and either laughed, smiled or moaned. Snape's hand slammed down in front of Trent, who nearly jumped out of his seat. His parchment was under his hand, with the writing facing up. "Isn't it such a shame, Laywood. Such a shame." he lifted his hand to reveal a large, black D in the middle of his OWL. Trent's face and jaw both dropped, "A 'D'? A bloody 'D'?" he said in a broken voice

"So sorry to see you go, Laywood. I'll be sure someone brushes off the prints your back will leave when the door hits you on the way out." Professor Snape turned and went on to the next table. I looked sadly at Trent, who's head hung above his graded parchment. My hand started to shake as my fingers went underneath my test, gripping it loosely and slowly flipping it over. My eyes grew wide. Professor Snape momentarily turned his head back to look at me; my lips formed a smile. "I'll be seeing you next year, Evans." he said softly as he went back to handing out the results.

Trent picked his head up and looked over at my parchment. A smaller, nicely drawn letter 'O' was written in the upper corner of my exam. He grabbed the parchment from in front of me and examined it closely. "How the hell did you get an 'O'?"

"I'm not sure. This was the only OWL I really studied for, I suppose."

Trent threw my parchment back at the table and slumped in his chair, his arms crossed and his face scrunched. "I don't care. I didn't want to take potions next year anyhow." he blew a stray hair out of his face

"Cheer up. You have more time to take what you really want to. By the way, you never told me what happened with your grade for Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"Oh," he laughed "yeah that was a mess. I talked to Dumbledore and told him I had no idea what the stuff was that I had taken. He deducted some points from our house, but he didn't make them change my grade. Said because it wasn't a real liquid luck potion, he had no grounds for altering my original grade."

"Stroke of luck, mate. We're lucky that it didn't kill you. Making that potion incorrectly has been known to cause significant damage. Are you sure you don't want to go be checked out, just in case?"

"I'm alright," he said adjusting his tie "Only thing I've noticed is that sometimes my vision gets a little blurry...for a few hours." I looked at him concerned as Snape faced the class. "Thankfully, today is the last day I have to tolerate the presence of students who would rather spend their time...wasting mine." he contemplated, seeing all of the students start to grow rather uneasy. "For those of you who may not be insufferable halfwits, you can join me at my station. The rest of you, who consider a 'Poor' grade or lesser to be an acceptable attempt, you may clean the shelves."