Déjà Vu [Harry Potter]

Chapter Six : Potions and Quidditch

"Careful!" exclaimed Elias. He quickly moved the boy's hand out of the way of the blade. "You wanna cut the roots with the very end of your blade. And move your fingers back. That way, your fingers won't be in the way and you won't cut yourself."

The Slytherin barely had the time to nod that Elias was gone. The cauldron of a poor girl had just exploded at the opposite side of the room. Since Professor Snape had to accompany a student to the infirmary –who had poisoned himself by inhaling the fumes of his cauldron and was now hiccupping without end, Elias had to take care of the whole class of Slytherins and Gryffindors by himself. Of course, Professor Snape had ordered that the class continued on without him, but Elias was sure he had done so only to see Elias fail in some sort of way.

Ever since he had arrived late on the first day of class, Professor Snape had disregarded all his efforts to improve himself, both as a potion master in training and assistant. All he ever told him was either orders, things he had to do for the next class, or insults towards his behavior barely disguised as remarks. Elias just couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong: things were going fine with Professor Sprout.

Yet, he couldn't give up. He loved it too much to give up.

However, teaching could be quite challenging sometimes, like in this case. The young man did not know what had gotten into the first years, but they were disastrous today. It was their third week of school, but they managed to do even worse than both the first and second week combined.

Elias quickly put the lid over the cauldron that had just exploded. The dark goo oozing from the dark recipient stopped flowing onto the table. He sprinkled some salt and crushed rose roots over the goo, hoping that it would neutralize whatever effects the girl had given it. It was just a Hiccoughing potion they had to brew, for Merlin's sake! How the fuck had she managed to make a substance that different from it?

He leaned on the wall for a short second. Elias passed a hand in his hair to get his locks away from his eyes and sighed. Thank Merlin he was not wearing his wizarding robes. He wouldn't be able to run all over the place like this without proper pants. Luckily, the teacher's dress code was not strict. Elias could wear a simple shirt and pants to teach, and, because of magic, the Hogwarts crest always appeared on his chest.

"Professor?" he heard from the other side of the room. Elias spun back, almost expecting a demon from the Apocalypse to have been summoned inside the classroom. To his surprise, the tables of Slytherins and Gryffindors in the back were calmly brewing their potions and actually reading their potion making manuals. Were they finally learning from their mistakes? Was Elias actually going to survive the class?

"Yes?" he asked as he went to the table that had called him, sending quick looks at the other tables to make sure that no one was going to cut off their hand or feeling like poisoning themselves.

"You forgot your notebook," a girl mentioned, pointing on the dark notebook sitting on her table.

"Oh, thank you," answered Elias as he quickly took his notebook and pen in his hands to leave more place to the students. It still felt weird to be called "professor", but he kind of liked it. It made him feel important.

The apprentice noticed that the eleven-years old girl was still looking at him curiously.

"Is there something?" he asked nicely. Her potion looked close enough to what they were supposed to get, considering that this was only one of her first classes where they brewed a potion.

"What's that?" she asked with a small frown. Elias followed her glance to his hands.

"This?" he wondered, lifting the pen in the air. She nodded. "It's a pen."