Chapter 076

"I'll prepare the ingredients while you add them to the cauldron," Harry said softly to Neville as he set aside all of the items needed to prepare the ingredients. The round-faced boy nodded, the gesture seeming almost instinctive, his mind not all there. Harry flicked his wand at the cauldron as it sat over the bunsen burner to start a fire.

He picked up his notepad and flipped to the page with his instructions for the boil cure potion, which they were making, according to the board up front. The instructions were written in elegant cursive, clearly visible and easily legible. He set the instructions in front of Neville, who was still looking at him in shock.

"Use these instruction to create the potion," Harry instructed.

Neville snapped out of his stupor at Harry's words and looked at the notepad.

"Harry," he said carefully. "These instructions are different from the ones on the board."

"Yes, I would imagine so," Harry said dismissively. "I created those instruction when I was experimenting at home. Not only will the potion be of a much higher quality, but it will also cut down half the time to make it. Just follow the instructions."

Neville didn't respond at first, clearly still very confused by everything that had transpired within the last few minutes, but he seemed to hold in his curiosity and muttered a, "right," before getting to work.

As silence descended upon the classroom, with nothing but the bubbling of cauldrons and the cutting, scraping and scuffing noise of people working on their potions to break it, Harry finally calmed down. He allowed his hands to work on their appointed task, and as Harry worked in silence with Neville, he allowed his mind to wander.

Now that he was much calmer, Harry felt a hint of shame at how violently he had reacted. He should be better than this. Harry had dealt with insufferable people before. If he could deal with his aunt, uncle and cousin on a daily basis and not lose his cool, then surely he could deal with one sour teacher.

Except this man wasn't just a surely teacher with a strong amount of biased, was he? It was clear that Snape hated him for some reason, even though they had never met. From the very moment he had come upon Harry's name during roll, the man had done his best to mock and insult Harry. The potion professor's animosity for him was quite astounding, and incredibly childish.

Which really just made Harry more ashamed of himself. He was supposed to be above responding to such childish taunts. A man who would resort to using elementary school insults and taking points was beneath responding to in a similar manner.

As Harry cleaned the horned slugs of any contaminants that might adversely affect the potion, his mind went through all it knew about Severus Snape thanks to his mother's journals.

According to his mum, she and Snape had actually been childhood friends when they were younger. They had met before being accepted at Hogwarts. Apparently, it was Snape who had informed his mother of her witch status.

When they arrived at Hogwarts, his mother had been sorted into Gryffindor and Snape went into Slytherin. Despite this, they still managed to remain friends for a long time.

During their years at Hogwarts, Snape had come under the assault of none other than the Marauders, who had taken to playing pranks on him and the other Slytherin students, though they had mostly picked on him.

Harry knew that a big part of this bullying was due to how close Snape had been to his mother. From the moment he had laid eyes on Lily Evans, James Potter had been in love with her, and had taken every opportunity he could to gain her affection. However, she had continued to spurn his advances, claiming he was an arrogant bully for picking on her friend.

Lily's spurning of his love had only pushed James to new heights of bullying, and Snape had responded to the then arrogant boy's taunts and pranks with equal fervor. This intense rivalry between Snape and James lasted until their seventh year at Hogwarts, when Lily began dating James.

However, Snape's friendship with his mother had been broken two years before that. During their fifth year, after a rather terrible prank that Lily had tried to defend Snape from, he had called her a Mudblood: a derogatory name for someone born from muggle parents, akin to calling someone of African descent a nigger, or a Chinese person a Chink. It was one of the vilest, most insulting words you could call a muggleborn, and it had ruined their friendship permanently.

Perhaps that was why Snape hated him so much. Perhaps he saw Harry's father as the man responsible for destroying his friendship with Lily. Maybe he saw Harry as a symbol of James' victory over him.

If so, then the man was even more immature than he thought. Blaming the child for the sins of the father was incredibly childish, and to carry a grudge for so long over a man whose been dead for 11-years was even more so. Harry wondered why Dumbledore allowed a man like this to teach school children. Surely the headmaster knew that having someone so petty and petulant teaching would only create more problems in the future?

"Harry," Neville said in a voice so quiet even Harry almost missed him speak as he stirred the cauldron. The original instructions said not to while on the brewing phaset, but Harry's improved instructions called for the potion to be stirred with two clockwise stirs and one counterclockwise stir every minute for five minutes to hasten the mixing of the ingredients after adding horned slugs.

"Yes?"

"What was all that about?" asked Neville. "You know, with Professor Snape?"

"I don't know," Harry said honestly. He wasn't sure if the other boy was talking about Snape's reaction to him, or the end results of their little mental duel. In either event, he only had a small bit of knowledge on both subjects, so he wasn't really lying, even if he did have a few theories. "You'd have to ask Professor Snape."

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