His love for Potions I ✔

Chapter 10: Pink elephants

On the list of things he didn't want Professor Snape to know about, a mysterious phantom voice telling him to rip, tear, and kill had jumped right to the top of the list, so he was a little distracted during the next Potions class trying to keep up a constant stream of thought about elephants.

Pink elephants, pink elephants, thinking about pink elephants-

"Mister Potter, what precisely are you doing?"

Pink elephants!

"Scrub that out and start over."

Harry eyed his potion - his sludge, to be brutally frank - sighed, and went to the sink to obey.

Later, after class and scrubbing tubeworms off the desks (really), Professor Snape eyed him without favor.

"An explanation, Mister Potter."

"...I was thinking about pink elephants."

Professor Snape gave him look number 5, 'children are the worst.'

"Because I thought if you could read minds, you'd hear the elephants and not what I was thinking about," Harry explained hurriedly.

"Your guilty conscience is not my problem, Mister Potter, regrettable as your natural tendency towards lying may be. Your potions are."

"Sorry, professor."

Professor Snape gave him a very unreadable look.

"Repeat after me, Potter. Occulmency."

"Occulmency, Professor?"

"Now, what do you do when you discover an unfamiliar term?"

"Ask Hermione, Professor?"

Professor Snape looked at him under lowered lids.

"Thankfully, your horrendous study habits are also not my problem. Go. You are giving me a headache."

"I have a headache potion that might help-"

"Get out."

Well, Harry thought that went well!

#

It turned out Occulmency was the study of defending the mind against mind reading, and that mind reading was more complicated than just being in the same room with someone you thought could probably read minds. Principles of Mind Majicks was an even more awful book than the introductory Potions text, but Hermione was interested enough in the project to read bits of it and summarize for Harry and Ron.

"You're supposed to clear your mind and only then start constructing mental defenses," she explained later. "And it's supposed to help with dreams, sometimes, Harry!"

Harry pretended very hard not to have heard her, on the theory that his dreams would go away if he didn't think about them.

#

"Your headache potion, Mister Potter."

Harry eyed him.

"You are not the sort of boy who thinks things through. You have headaches frequent enough to need it. Therefor, you have it with you. Give it to me."

Harry glared, but handed over the small glass jar of smoky blue potion. Professor Snape held it up to the light, eyeing it.

"The standard recipe?"

"Yes, professor."

Professor Snape didn't comment on this, opening the jar and taking a drop of the potion out with a finger. He touched it to his tongue, expression pensive.

"You are unlikely to poison yourself. No more than two doses a day, do not use stale frogspawn, and do not share. I will not have another amateur apothecary set up behind my back."

"...does that happen a lot, professor?" Harry said, grabbing his jar back before Professor Snape could change his mind.

"Students are my punishments for my sins."

"You must have an awful lot of sins, then," Harry said, and froze as he saw Professor Snape's expression.

Harry backed away slowly, because he was beginning to get a sense of when Professor Snape was about to tip over from dutiful teacher who hated him into adult wizard who hated him.

"Survive, mate?" Ron asked, waiting in the hall.

"Yeah, I think so."

"What's he keep wanting to talk to you about, anyway?"

Harry showed him the headache potion.

"Potions. I think if he weren't allergic to teaching, he would have said I'd done a pretty good job?"

Ron clapped him on the shoulder.

"You need higher standards, mate."

#

The argument about whether Draco Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin reminded Harry eerily of their argument about Snape the previous year, and it was hard to put his objection into words when Ron was going on about dark wizards, and Harry had to admit Lucius Malfoy was really suspicious. It wasn't as if Draco was a good person or anything.

And Hermione had said, ever so innocently, "There are lots of powerful potions in Moste Potente Potions, I'm sure we could copy down a few of them before returning the book to the library," and Harry was stuck.

Even if it wasn't Malfoy, logically speaking it had to be a Slytherin, right? Heir of Slytherin, after all. It could be Crabbe. Harry had a bad feeling about Crabbe, and torturing cats was just his style, though Harry wasn't sure being smart enough to torture cats was.

Harry paced Moaning Myrtle's bathroom anxiously, checking on the door and windows. There should be enough air moving here to prevent a repeat of the Snape Smelling His Hair incident (thank god Draco'd never heard about that). If it were less creepy and out of order, it would actually be quite nice, as bathrooms went. Girls really did get nice things. There was even a snake etched into one of the taps. Snakes, Harry thought happily, were good luck.

Having Hermione arguing him into breaking the rules was really a disconcerting experience, he thought a little bit later. Something about stealing from Snape's store cupboard stomped all over his bad idea alarm, but... well. It was Hermione.

Beating Malfoy at Quidditch was the only thing that went well that week, if you could call getting his arm broken going well.

The theft was easy, even if the night before Harry couldn't manage to sleep. A firework aimed at Crabbe's cauldron of Swelling Solution provided the diversion, Hermione accomplished her task, and Harry tried to ignore the look in Snape's eyes and the tone of his voice.

"If I ever find out who threw this," Snape whispered, "I shall make sure that person is expelled."