Recnac Transfaerso

4 - Jumping Obstacles

The next few days, Harry was reminded of getting ready for the Polyjuice Potion in his second year, finding all the ingredients he could before deciding he needed to "borrow" some from Professor Snape. However, this time it was without the help of his friends. He decided to get the ingredients for the necessary potion right after Quidditch practice.

When the team finished up, he told Ron (Gryffindor's new keeper) that he had to go visit the Owlery quickly and ran off before he could offer to come along. Harry grabbed his invisibility cloak. When no one was looking he draped it over himself and began to make his way into the castle and towards the dungeon. He dropped his Quidditch things behind a statue near the Gryffindor tower, noting to himself to pick it up on his way back, and continued on his way.

He had tried this a few nights already, both proving to be failed attempts, as the office was locked and Harry didn't know the password. As he got closer to the dungeons he pulled out the Marauder's Map and found the dot labeled Severus Snape to be heading towards the dungeons also, in fact, heading right towards Harry!

Harry whipped his head around to see Snape quickly walking towards him. Harry flattened himself against the wall just in time for Snape to breeze past him. Tiptoeing, Harry followed closely behind him. This was going to be interesting.

They finally reached Snape's office. Snape suspiciously looked around before muttering several different passwords to get into his office. Harry had originally planned to just memorize the passwords and come back later, but as he couldn't make them out all that clearly he just closely followed Snape right into his office, the door automatically shutting behind them.

Snape walked over to his desk and abruptly sat down. Harry noted that he didn't look in the best mood. He pulled a stack of papers out of his desk drawer and began to study them before writing letters on them with red ink. Harry recognized them as their last night's homework,

Harry quietly tiptoed over to the shelves of potion's ingredients and looked for the bottles with the things he needed. When he found each one, he would quickly glance over at Snape, who was hunched over papers muttering about ignorant students, and slip the bottle under his cloak, pour enough of it into the empty vials he had brought in his bag, and then replace them on the shelf, hoping to make it less obvious that there was any missing. He was thankful that he had his scarf and gloves on, and ended up putting them in his bag to prevent the vials from clanking together.

When he was done, Harry realized that he couldn't exactly just leave, as a door just opening on it's own might rouse some suspicion. Instead, Harry cautiously walked up to Snape's desk to see what kind of grades the class was getting, not that it was a great mystery. Harry peeked at the grade-book next to Snape and rolled his eyes as he saw the Gryffindor students having mostly C's, D's, and F's next to their names. Snape came to Hermione's paper, briefly looked it over and drew a big red C on the top, with the comment: "Too wordy." Harry almost sighed. He knew she had worked really hard on that paper, especially since her last paper bore the words: "Too brief." His paper was next in the stack. Snape barely glanced at it before writing a fat F on the top, as Harry always got.

"Damn Potter brat," Snape muttered as he marked the letter in his grade book, almost causing Harry to laugh. Snape finally came to the end of the stack of papers and went on to draw up his lesson plans for the next class Harry had with him. Harry smiled as he saw him scribble down "Pop Quiz: Properties of a Cheveux Potion." He'd have to keep that in mind. Snape's pop quizzes were notoriously random, on things he'd mentioned briefly months earlier, or not at all. Harry always got F's on them, along with most of the other Gryffindors. Not surprisingly, the Slytherins always got great scores on them, undoubtedly because Snape warned them in advance.

'Hah. Well won't Snape be surprised when the Gryffindors ace this next one.' Harry thought.

Luckily, after Snape drew up his lesson plans for his various classes, he decided to call it a night, and Harry was able to follow him closely out again and then slip away up to the Gryffindor common room, grabbing his Quidditch stuff on the way.