Grindelwald's Daughter

Three

Chapter 3

“I HAVE NOT ASKED YOU TO TAKE OUT YOUR BOOKS.” Snape shouted, his cold voice echoed across the room. He slammed the door shut behind him and moved to face the entire class.a

 Next to me, Hermione hastily dropped her copy of Confronting the Faceless back into her bag and stowed it under her chair. "I wish to speak to you, and I want your fullest attention."

I was sitting in between Stevie Rae and Hermione. Stevie Rae was half asleep with her head rested on her arms on the table, whereas Hermione had her full attention concentrated on Snape. His dead eyes examined the room, looking at us each individually.

"You have had five teachers in the subject so far, who will all have had their own methods and priorities. I am surprised so many of you scraped an O.W.L. in this subject. I shall be even more surprised if all of you manage to keep up with the N.E.W.T. work, which will be even more advanced."

 I stopped paying attention at this point and decided to think about my life. My entire existence was a lie, everything was a lie. I felt humiliated. Snape was saying something about a monster with many heads and flexibility, I didn’t really care. He knew. Lord Voldemort knew. That’s why Dumbledore told me. Mom and dad are curretnyl finding people in the Ministry to protect me. I didn’t need protection, if Lord Voldemort was coming for me nothing would be able to stop him. I was just going to have to accept that.

"Has an Inferius been seen, then?" said Parvati Patil in a high pitched voice. "Is it definite, is he using them?"

"The Dark Lord has used Inferi in the past," said Snape, "which means you would be well-advised to assume he might use them again. Now you are, I believe, complete novices in the use of non-verbal spells. What is the advantage of a non-verbal spell?"

Hermione's hand shot into the air. Stevie Rae gave a loud groan as the table shook. Snape took his time looking around at everybody else, making sure he had no choice, before saying curtly, "Very well--Miss Granger?"

"Your adversary has no warning about what kind of magic you're about to perform," said Hermione, "which gives you a split-second advantage."

"An answer copied almost word for word from The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Six," said Snape dismissively  

"You will now divide," Snape went on, "into pairs. One partner will attempt to jinx the other without speaking. The other will attempt to repel the jinx in equal silence. Carry on." I paired up with Stevie Rae and immediately started practicing.

 I had already practiced non-verbal spells before with my parents so this task wasn’t very challenging for me. Stevie Rae was pretty good too. Ten minutes into the lesson Hermione managed to repel my Jelly-Legs Jinx without uttering a single word, a feat that would surely have earned her twenty points for Gryffindor from any reasonable teacher, but which Snape ignored.

 "Pathetic, Weasley," said Snape, after a while. "Here--let me show you--"

 He turned his wand on Harry so fast that Harry reacted instinctively; he yelled, "Protego!"

His Shield Charm was so strong Snape was knocked off-balance and hit a desk. The whole class had looked around and now watched as Snape righted himself, scowling.