His love for Potions I ✔

Chapter 17: The first private lesson

At the beginning of his first private lesson with Professor Snape, Harry felt the need to clarify something.

"The next time you hex me, I'm going to get Fred and George to put up posters of you all over the school in the dress, with the vulture on your head."

Snape's nostril's flared.

"I am not in the habit of hexing students, no matter the provocation, Mister Potter. I trust you took my point?"

Harry didn't say 'I've had nightmares every night this week about green light and laughter.' He didn't say 'sane people make points by talking, not by cursing each other.' He didn't say a lot of things.

"You have my word that I will not hex you." Snape seemed like he was going to add something, but thought better of it.

"If you want to teach me to duel, I'll learn," Harry added. "It seems like it'll turn out useful one way or another."

"Survive to be fifteen, and we'll talk."

Harry grinned briefly.

"I've done alright so far."

"Arrogant as ever. Tell me, why do you want to learn Potions?"

Harry blinked at his professor.

"I thought you knew."

"Despite what you may believe, you are not so very much the center of my world that I feel the need to know every thought that skitters through your mind."

Which was Snape for 'answer the question.'

"Because it's beautiful," Harry said, after a moment. "Elegant. And different from duels and Quidditch - those are all about where you are now, but Potions you have to have a plan for, except when you need to improvise...." He trailed off, not certain how to put it into words.

"You respect the Art." Professor Snape did not turn to look at Harry, or stop what he was doing, which was setting up a cauldron on one of the benches at the front of the classroom. "You realize you have no talent for it?"

Harry waited, hoping it was a rhetorical question, but Snape seemed content to let the silence continue.

"I'm mostly good at Quidditch, but Potions is what I want to do."

"Come watch," his teacher invited, and Harry pulled up a stool to watch his professor prepare a potion. Every movement was precise, every gesture spare, conserving every motion. It was not quite beautiful - Severus Snape was not someone who cared enough about how he looked for his actions to be beautiful - but his knife was a silver blur and his expression was remote and Harry wanted to be him.

"You're sometimes exactly like your father," he said, laying out the ingredients, measuring them into shallow bowls. Harry stayed very quiet, because someone in a talkative mood about his father always had his attention. "And sometimes you are nothing like either of your parents. He got into a great deal of trouble at school, and caused a great deal of trouble. He was always laughing, and he was very good at Quidditch."

Snape began crushing peppercorns in a mortar with controlled violence. Harry blinked wildly, worried he'd sneeze and interrupt the flow of words.

"Your mother, on the other hand, was good at everything. Everything she touched turned to gold." A flicker of a glance Harry's way. "Metaphorically speaking."

Harry nodded.

"Neither of them turned their hand to subjects that they did not have a talent for."

A flick of Snape's wand ignited the fire beneath the cauldron and set it to heating. Harry tried to draw his mind back to the present, with very little success.

"I don't really know anything about them," Harry said. "Aunt Petunia doesn't talk about mum except to make up lies about her."

The professor said nothing to this, adding his first ingredient with a flick of his fingers.

"Is this Pepper-Up Potion?" Harry asked, to fill the silence.

"Indeed. The Hospital wing will be needing it, once the October rains begin. I usually put it together in larger batches."

"Why not this time?"

"Because you are easily distracted."

Harry glared, because that was definitely an insult.

"You said I could learn to make Polyjuice."

"Polyjuice is restricted because it is easily used for deception, not because it is particularly difficult. The ingredients are rare, and the process slow, but it isn't difficult if one has the necessary discipline."

Harry thought guiltily about Aunt Marge, and said nothing about his overall level of discipline.

"How did you steal the recipe from the Restricted Section?" Snape asked, as if he was asking Harry to pass the potatoes.

"I asked Professor Lockhart for a pass."

Snape snorted.

"And I'm supposed to believe you'll wait innocently playing with your friends while Black stalks you."

"Well, I am," Harry said. "I said I would, didn't I? And I'm not actually stupid."

This didn't seem to merit a comment.

"Is there a potion for sleeping?" Harry asked abruptly. "My headache potion doesn't do much good if...."

"Madame Pomfrey is supplied with Dreamless Sleep," Professor Snape said. "It is, like Calming Draught and most other potions with beneficial effects, addictive over time."

Darn.

"Your homework for next week will be a history of the development of the Pepper-Up potion and ideas for improvements to the recipe."

Harry wilted. More homework. The look in Snape's eyes was far too cheerful, too.

Professor Snape was, at heart, still a sadist.

#

Bringing up where he could try some magical candy or ice cream recipes to Fred and George was at once a very good and very bad idea.

"Oh, you poor ignorant child. Fred, we have no choice."

"We have no choice, George."

And with that, each of them took Harry by an arm and frog-marched him downstairs, to introduce him to the Hogwarts kitchens.

Harry's life was never the same again.