The Theory of Magic (Book 1)

12 // Detention & Vaudeville

Fi hated detentions.

Though a month of classes had passed, Fi had yet to give a single one, not that Magical Theory afforded the opportunity for much mischief or misbehavior. Her jaunts through the castle at night occasionally flushed out a misbehaving student or two, but the hedge witch only rounded the louts up and hurried them back to their dormitories. When she came upon canoodling couples during patrol, she escorted them back to their dormitories whilst mortifying the pair with a lengthy discussion on the kind of education that usually came from their Head of House or their parents. Fi felt having to listen to her—loudly—talk about contraceptives and responsibilities was punishment enough.

The only time Fi took more than a nominal amount of House points was when she found one of the older Slytherin lads flinging a rather nasty hex at a young Hufflepuff boy. By the time she finished berating Terence Higgs he was red in the face and quite put out by Professor Dullahan's usually understated temper. She hadn't been at Hogwarts long, but she had a reputation for being enthusiastic about her subject and lenient in her punishments. Seeing the woman go off was not a pleasant experience.

For all that Fi hated detentions, however, her fellow Slytherin professor adored them and handed out that particular punishment like Dumbledore dolled out lemon drops. Sometimes Snape proved so liberal in his detention-giving that he overlapped appointments and ended up having to shove some of the punishment off onto Fi. She wound up supervising detentions two nights every week, and she was beginning to think Snape was purposefully being a pain in her arse.

Fi grumbled under breath and turned a page in the book she read. The subterranean dungeons grew cold after nightfall and Fi knew they would only get colder as October matured. She sat behind Snape's desk, folded into his chair, as the static sound of scrubbing met her ears from the other side of the room. The poor Longbottom boy was bent over one of the larger cauldrons, scraping grunge from its belly.

"What exactly did you do again, Mr. Longbottom?" Fi asked as she set aside the book and let her head drop on the chair's cushioned top. The leather smelled faintly of the Potions Master; some cross between a masculine odor, parchment, and the spelled oil used to preserve vials and cauldrons. The empty classroom mostly smelled of whatever failure Longbottom was trying to clean out of those cauldrons. Fi thought she'd probably be far more snarly like Snape if she had to teach Potions because of how she hated ruined concoctions. It was a rather delicate art.

"I—I melted my cauldron," Longbottom confessed, voice high and squeaking, round face flushed. "P-Professor Snape said I could h-have killed everyone—."

Fi sighed and, after a moment of lazy hesitation, got to her feet. And the man complained about my melodrama. "It's always very important to be careful while concocting Potions and the like. They can be dangerous—though I highly doubt a first-year was handling anything sinister enough to kill an entire classroom."

"He—." Longbottom paused and swallowed, eyes on his work. He only spoke again in a miserable whisper. "He's so nice to the S-Slytherins. I think Professor Snape hates Gryffindors."

Fi frowned. "Why do you think that?"

"He always...he always picks on us." In the low-lighting of the dungeon, Neville's rounded cheeks flushed with more color. "I mean he really picks on us! Especially Harry. He hates Harry."

"The Potter boy?"

"Yes, Professor."

"Odd." Fi was well-aware that Professor Snape was a high-strung character who probably had quite the vicious bite to go along with that bark, but the man was too apathetic to have an actual grudge against a child. Oh he certainly enjoyed dolling out detentions and snipping away at points here or there. It added to whatever persona the man was trying to build, that casual mien of malice, the vaudeville villain with the devilish wagging brows, but men like Severus Snape didn't hate eleven year-olds. That would take far too much emotion and investment for a person who could muster nothing but a grunt whenever Fi stole his seat at the high table.