𝐕𝐈𝐕𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒 - the wizarding world

V. THE FRONT PAGE

V. THE FRONT PAGE
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From what Ivy had heard, Professor Severus Snape should never have become a teacher of children. With Snape being the Potions master, and the head of the Slytherin house, she wasn't exactly sure what to expect from the man who walked around in a lengthy, black cape and gloomy drapes with long, stringy, black hair. The Professor had a permanent sneer on his pale face, and always looked as if there was a hippogriff turd underneath his hooked nose.

Snape didn't favour anyone that wasn't a Slytherin, but even then you had to be exceptional at Potions for him to like you, Angelina had told Ivy. It was in Potions class that Gryffindor lost all its house points, and where you could get detention for simply breathing too loudly.

Ivy was on her way to the dungeons after coming from the second, even more upsetting, Defense Against the Dark Arts class. She passed the Hufflepuff common room and a painting of a bowl of fruit in the corridor next to it, but without Fred and George since they couldn't have been bothered to get O.W.L.s in Potions last year.

Which left Ivy and Katie to themselves, since Angelina hated Potions and despite getting an Exceed Expectations, decided not to continue with the class. Ivy's schedule noted that they had the class with Slytherin, which was unfortunate for the four sixth year Gryffindors that were taking the N.E.W.T. classes.

The cumbersome, wooden door was already closed when Katie and Ivy arrived at the classroom five minutes late.

"Snape is going to murder us!" Katie exclaimed furiously as she caught her breath. "And I'm going to murder you!"

Ivy took a deep breath, hunching against the cold, stone wall. "Can't be worse than Madame Baudelaire, I promise you that..." she said in-between breaths.

"You haven't met Snape... you'll change your mind quickly. Let's go in," Katie said and slowly opened the door.

It didn't open quietly; the old and battered door opened with a loud, scraping sound as the rusted, metal hinges struggled under the heavy weight of the door. Ivy closed her eyes in an attempt to disappear as every head slowly turned to the two girls trying to enter the classroom. Ivy and Katie quickly stepped inside, and, with the same awkwardness, closed the door.

"Miss Bell," Professor Snape's voice drawled through the room as he stood at the front of the dreary class with his armed menacingly crossed. "Why bother coming at all when all you do is interrupt?"

Ivy slowly stepped out from behind Katie, a cautious smile on her face. "Sorry, Professor. I got us lost..." she told the passable and very true excuse.

Snape didn't say anything for a dragging few seconds, his beady, black eyes never leaving Ivy. "Fine," he said. "Ten points from Gryffindor. Evans take the seat next Miss Meadowes, Bell next to MacGregor."

Ivy quickly shuffled off to the table at the very back of the class, right in front of the shelves that held many of the ingredients for potions; she spotted powdered bat-spleen and abraxan hair and even a vial of armadillo bile.

The Potions classroom was dark, not surprising since it was in the dungeons of Hogwarts, but it seemed dirtier than need be and on all desks laid frog legs and shrivelled Ivy-didn't-wanna-know. In one corner of the room stood a basin into which ice-cold water poured from a gargoyle's mouth, while in another was a student supply cupboard. It was colder here than up in the main castle, and would have been creepy enough without the pickled animals floating in glass jars all around the walls.

Compared to Beauxbatons, which had a separate wing for all potion brewing; there was the brewery, then the classroom, a storage facility and even an adjacent greenhouse where they would grow and make their own ingredients, this was a dump. She had enjoyed the class back then, but now it merely creeped her out.