Stories from the Vault - Hogwarts Mystery One Shots

A Typical Day in Potions

"Given the sorry state of your previous attempts, today we'll be reviewing how to properly  brew a doxycide potion."

Sarah stifled a groan as Snape droned on about doxycide, hinting that anyone too incompetent to make it had no place at Hogwarts. Sarah's name was mentioned repeatedly. 

Normally, she did well in Potions, but she had to admit that the doxycide had given her trouble last week. She still wasn't sure why. 

After the lecture, Snape barked at them to get to work. Sarah and Rowan lit the tips of their wands in the poorly lit dungeon so they could tell one jar of fowl smelling liquid from another. 

Sarah unloaded all her ingredients unto the table, being sure to organize them so she could follow the brewing instructions carefully. She unstoppered the bottle of her first ingredient, but was stopped from pouring it into the cauldron by Rowan's hand on her wrist.  

"No, Sarah! The first ingredient is bundimun acid, not bubotuber pus." 

Sarah frowned and squinted at Snape's untidy scrawl on the bottle. "Ugh, someone's gonna have to teach that man to write!" she snapped, pushing her chair away from the table to find the correct ingredient. "Watch her," she added to Rowan, eyeing Merula suspiciously. 

Merula snorted. "Please, Spellman. I've got better things to do than even pretend to pay attention to you."

Sarah retrieved the bundimun acid and returned to her table, only to find the potion ingredients she'd carefully laid out strewn all over her side of the table. The jar of dragon livers had been spilled and the juice was leaking down onto her chair. 

Sarah cut Merula an icy glare. "Uh oh, Spellman," she said, her mock-sincerity diminished by her stifled laughter. "Looks like someone made a mess of your ingredients. You better clean it up before Snape comes over."

"Rowan!" said Sarah. "You were supposed to watch her." Rowan, who was already carefully chopping her dragon liver into equally sized cubes, glanced up at the sound of her name, scrunched her nose at the mess, and went back to working with her knife. 

"I'm sorry, Sarah. I was lighting my cauldron fire. You know how important it is to maintain the proper heat. I was too focused to pay attention to what anyone else was doing."

Sighing, Sarah pulled out her wand to clean up the mess. 

"Spellman!" spat Snape from behind her. "Look at the state of your table. Those dragon livers are unusable now. Tell me, have you always had no care for things that don't belong to you or did you develop that trait after your brother was expelled?"

Sarah closed her eyes, pausing before she spoke so as not to say anything that would get her in more trouble. "Sorry Professor, I'll clean it up."

"I'll be taking five points from Gryffindor for your carelessness."

Sarah sopped up the liver juice and re-sorted her ingredients, refusing to look up from her work until she head the swish of Snape's cloak that signaled he'd glided away to find some other victim. 

"I'll get you back for that," she hissed at Merula, who was still smiling maliciously. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Merula. "Is 'failure to take responsibility' something else you've developed since your brother abandoned you?"

Sarah ignored Merula's cackling laughter to get started on her potion. The dungeon now smelled of a mixture of moldy clothing and rotten fish, so she guessed everyone else was at least halfway done with their doxycide. 

She'd just added the dash of hemlock to her own cauldron when she heard, "Uh oh."

She looked up. Barnaby was seated across from her, his usually rosy complexion replaced by one of bright green. His face almost perfectly matched the lining of his Slytherin robes.