His love for Potions I ✔

Chapter 4: Snape is stressed

Christmas break was brilliant, and far too short. Far too soon, Harry was back to dealing with the lizard and his lizard minions.One evening, after Malfoy jinxed Neville....

"There's no need to tell me I'm not brave enough to be Gryffindor, Malfoy's already done that."

Harry offered Neville a chocolate frog.

"You're worth twelve of Malfoy. Anyway, you always stand up to me. Unless Malfoy's just scarier than I am?"

Neville smiled weakly.

"You're way scarier than Malfoy, but that's different."

"Why?"

"...I dunno," Neville said, looking faintly thoughtful, which was an improvement over looking near tears. "I think I'll go to bed. D'you want the card, you collect them, don't you?"

#

Malfoy stopped by Harry's potions bench the first week back from Christmas break, expression innocently benevolent.

"My father's arranged with Professor Snape for me to have private tutoring in Potions. Professor Snape says I have potential." Malfoy lowered his voice. "Maybe if you had a father, you could ask him to help you. Oh, wait."

Malfoy didn't have a chance to finish his little speech, because Harry tackled him, though Ron tugged him off again pretty quickly. Horrible bully-

"Five points from Gryffindor and detention, Potter," Snape said, something very close to delight slithering through his tone. "For conduct unbecoming a Hogwarts student and disrupting my classroom."

"Yes, sir," Harry said, gritting his teeth and trying not to think about it. He was pretty sure his temper didn't used to be this short, but Draco had a talent.

"Oops, I broke Draco's vials," Ron said, in a wavering voice, drawing everyone's attention to where he was standing next to Draco's desk. As they watched, he tipped Draco's potions equipment onto the floor, where it shattered.

There was quite a lot of yelling, after that.

"Well," Ron said to Harry in an undertone, after they'd been given detention and told to report to their head of house, "I couldn't let you have detention with him by yourself, could I? He'd have a perfect chance to kill you without any witnesses."

"You think witnesses will stop him?"

Ron went quiet after that, apparently not having thought that one through. This was why Ron was Harry's best friend, even if Hermione and Neville were pretty great. If Harry jumped off a cliff, Ron would jump off after him and they'd figure out how not to die on the way down.

#

Snape seemed to find having Harry in detention positively blissful. For the first time since the year started, he smiled as he graded homework at his desk, as Ron and Harry scrubbed caked slugs out of cauldrons and tried not to inhale the noxious fumes of the cleaning solution.

When they were done, Snape had a look at their work, smiled at them (both Harry and Ron recoiled in terror), and said, "Unacceptable. Start over."