Thanks to the book Professor McGonagall had given him, Harry's first magical project had been determined. The ability to transform into an animal whenever he wanted without the use of a wand not only sounded incredibly useful, but also sounded like a great magical and intellectual exercise.
That night Harry read as much of the book as possible. It was a very large book, not quite the size of A History of Magic, but definitely larger than the standard school tomes he had seen. It would probably take him somewhere around week or two to finish reading, especially since he could only afford to read it at night before he went to bed.
This was because he not only wanted to continue spending time with Hannah, Neville and Susan—whom he found himself getting along with quite well despite his initial reasons for befriending them—but he also wanted to continue enhancing his reputation as a polite and helpful young man in order to facilitate more respect from his peers and the teachers. It was necessary for him to present this image to everyone at Hogwarts since he was so famous and everyone had their eyes on him.
Still, even if he was only able to read the book at night, Harry knew he would make good progress. Thanks to his eidetic memory he could read around 100-pages per hour and still be capable of remembering everything. So far he had managed to read just a little under eight chapters of the book.
What he had read was quite fascinating. Becoming an animagus was one of the most complicated and difficult feats of transfiguration to accomplish. Often times it took years for someone to become an animagus, which was why so few people ever bothered becoming one.
According to the book, becoming an animagus required several steps. The first was discovering ones 'inner animal,' which all witches and wizards apparently had. Basically, someone's inner animal was the animal they were most connected to based on a combination of key factors, such as physical features and personality traits.
Sirius was the perfect example of this. Harry's mother had always told the man that his dog transformation was perfect for him, since both would hump just about anything with two legs.
Morgana had explained that there were two ways for someone to discover their inner animal. The first way was done via meditation to connect with ones inner animal. This process was long and arduous, and also half the reason becoming an animagus took so long. It not only required years of meditation, but also a mastery of Occlumency, the rare skill to defend ones mind from intrusion. This was because Occlumency not only defended the mind from external influences, but also organized the mind in such a way that it was easier to connect with oneself.
According to Morgana, only those with a clear mind could connect with their inner animal, and only those who mastered Occlumency could take on that animal's form without losing their mind to said animal's instincts.
This was another reason it took so long to become an animagus using this method. Occlumency was not only a very rare skill, but also one that took years to master on own. Morgana's book stated that mastering Occlumency normally required four to five years of intense training under a master, and discovering ones inner animal took another two to three years. That meant if someone wanted to become an animagus using this method, it would take six to eight years all told.
There were, of course, advantages to using this method. One of those advantages was having a much closer connection to ones inner animal. This led to the witch or wizard in question not only having an easier time of their transformation, but also gaining traits of their animal outside of their animal forms.
A good example of this would be Morgana herself, who had used this method to become an animagus. Her form had been that of a bird—a raven to be more precise, and it had given her several unique traits and abilities she could access outside of her animagus transformation.
One of her abilities had been those of enhanced eyesight. While ravens didn't have the eyes of, say, a hawk or an eagle, they still had incredibly sharp vision. Much sharper than those of a human. Morgana's book stated that after becoming an animagus she had been able to see objects such as buildings, people, animals and plants with extreme clarity up to fifty miles away outside of her animagus form.
Another talent she had gained was the ability to feel air currents. It was a little known fact to those who had not studied zoology, but when a bird flew, they did so by riding air currents, not just flapping their wings. This was especially true during long distance migrations. How else could their ability to travel hundreds of miles without tiring be explained?
This particular ability, while not sounding very useful at first, had actually enhanced Morgana's skill with elemental wind magic to nearly unheard of levels. Harry had no clue what kinds of powers and abilities she had with wind magic; the book didn't say, but it was definitely an interesting little fact and made him wonder what kind of powers he might gain from his own animagus form.
However, it was not those powers that truly captivated Harry's attention. While those abilities sounded incredible, what really gotten him interested was Morgana's ability of partial animagus transformation. Morgana le Fay had the ability to partially transform specific parts of her body into her animagus form, while retaining her human form in others. One of the powers she'd been well-known for, in fact, was her ability to transform her arms into wings and take flight by creating wind currents underneath her.
It was that ability, more than any other, that convinced Harry to become an animagus this way, and not using a potion to discover ones inner animal, as most people did. He didn't know what his animal was, but whatever it was, he was quite certain that the abilities he could gain from complete mastery would prove far more useful than simply using the potion.
Of course, there was far more to just discovering ones inner animal that went into becoming an animagus. Becoming one not only required a lot of time just for a person to discover their animal form, but also required a lot of skill in transfiguration.
Morgana had written that in order to become an animagus, there were two branches of transfiguration one needed to obtain mastery of. Human Transfiguration: the ability to transfigure a human into another object entirely, and Cross-Species Transfiguration, which was the ability to transfigure a person or animal into a different animal.
Both sub-branches of Transfiguration were required to become an animagus. It was just another reason so few people ever became one. Transfiguration was one of the most difficult and complex branches of magic. Even the slightest mistakes could lead to disastrous consequences, including permanent transfigurations and even death. For this reason most witches and wizards preferred branches of magic that were considered safer, such as Charms.
Harry was not most wizards. He had every intention of not only becoming an animagus, but mastering all branches of magic to such a degree that no one would ever question that he was one of the best and most powerful wizards in the entire world.
The morning after receiving Professor McGonagall's book, Harry went through the same routine he'd done yesterday. However, even during his work out, Harry's thoughts remained on what he had read the night before. Even when he and Neville made their way to the Great Hall for breakfast, Harry was still thinking of how he would become an animagus.
How long would it take? He wondered. Morgana had projected it would take six to eight years by going through the process she had used, but that did that necessarily mean it would take him that long?
While he hadn't known about Occlumency until the Sorting Ceremony, the truth was he'd been practicing meditation since he was seven, and thanks to his need to shield his mind from his memories in order to function as a normal human being, he had practically mastered the art of clearing his mind already, which was the key to mastering Occlumency.
Did that mean he had already mastered Occlumency? The sorting hat had told him that he would have easily pushed it from his mind had it not spoken to him. But did that mean he would have been able to shield his mind from someone who had mastered legillemency?
He didn't know. Unfortunately, there was no way he could know. Not without finding a master Legillemens and asking them to take him on as an apprentice. Even more unfortunate was that he didn't know anyone who knew the art. He assumed that Dumbledore might. After all, the man was the most powerful wizard in magical Britain, but he wasn't entirely sure he trusted the man. Not after the Headmaster had left him on the doorstep of his magic hating relatives like a bottle of milk on a cold November night.
Harry supposed that just meant he would have to make do with what he had. He was positive he could discover his inner animal on his own before the start of the new year, it would just take time.
His only real problem was actually becoming an animagus once he found his inner animal. From what he had read of the books he'd bought during the summer about Transfiguration, Cross-Species Transfiguration was a fourth year skill, and Human Transfiguration was a N.E.W.T. Level skill, meaning it was only taught to those who managed to get an O on their O.W.L. Exams in fifth year. To make matters more difficult, in order to become an animagus one had to combine Cross-species Transfiguration with Human Transfiguration, which was above N.E.W.T. level magic that required Mastery of Transfiguration. All in all, if Harry wanted to become an animagus before the end of the school year, he had his work cut out for him.
Thankfully, he did have an advantage most others didn't. His mum's journals. While his mother had never become an animagus, she had described the process his father, James Potter, and his friends had gone through to become animagi. It gave an added perspective to what he had read from Morgana's book.
According to her, James Potter had been a genius when it came to Transfiguration. One of those once in a generation prodigies. In fact, it had been James who had first gone through the process of becoming an animagus, and it had been him who taught it to Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew. His mother had written that James had been so good at Transfiguration that he not only became an animagus during his third year at Hogwarts—an until then unheard of feat—but had gained Mastery under Professor McGonagall's tutelage before he graduated from Hogwarts.
That would also explain why Professor McGonagall had been willing to lend him her book, as well as why she seemed to have a soft spot for him despite this only being their second time meeting—he didn't count the times she had been around him as a baby. James had been her favorite student, despite the amount of trouble he and his band of misfits got into.
"Are you alright, Harry?"
Harry's attention snapped back to reality at the sound of Neville's voice. He looked at the round-faced boy walking with him on his left and gave a polite smile.
"I'm fine, Neville," Harry assured the boy. "I was just thinking about what we learned in class yesterday."
"Oh." Neville looked unsure for a second, but then plowed on. "So what do you think of our classes so far?"
"They're definitely intriguing. Way more interesting than the muggle classes I took in primary school," Harry said with a chuckle. Of course, learning magic was infinitely more interesting than learning math and English. Though he would admit to loving science and history just as much as magic.
"So what's your favorite class?"
"How could I possibly pick a favorite?" asked Harry, this time with a genuine smile. "Aside from the fact that we've only had two classes, there's no way I could choose one branch of magic over another. From what I've seen so far, they're all just too diverse to really compare them anyway." He looked at Neville with an inquisitive stare. "What about you, do you have a favorite?"
"Well, we haven't really had the class yet, but..." Neville blushed a bit and ducked his head. "I've always had an interest in studying Herbology."
"Nothing wrong with that," Harry said, much to Neville's shock. "Herbology is a useful skill, especially for potion brewers, and I hear that owning your own business in growing and selling plants as potion ingredients can be very lucrative."
It was actually one of the suggestions Ragnok had made to him, though Harry had no idea how he would go about starting that. Perhaps with Neville's help he could get started. Maybe he could even gain himself a business partner if he pushed Neville in the right direction.
"So then, you want to learn about magical plants then?" he asked.
"Yes." Neville nodded. Now that he realized Harry wasn't going to make fun of him for his love of Herbology, he seemed to have gained confidence. "I actually own a greenhouse at home where I grow my own plants. I don't have a lot right now. Gran said she wouldn't allow me to have any of the more dangerous ones until my third year at Hogwarts, but I do have a few that are pretty rare."
"The sounds sensational. Herbology is a commendable field of study," Harry praised, causing Neville to blush in a bit of embarrassment. The boy probably hadn't been given much praise as a child. He wouldn't be so under confident otherwise.
It looked like it was up to Harry to up the boy's confidence to where it should be. That was fine with him. If Harry was going to have Neville as an ally, he wanted someone who could make informed decisions without needing a prompt in the right direction, and he needed people who would challenge and push his beliefs by playing devil's advocate.
One could not become great unless they were challenged by those around them, including their allies.
"Hiya, Harry, Neville!"
A distinctly feminine voice reached their ears, and both turned around to see Hannah and Susan walking up to them. The blond, pig-tailed girl was waving to them, a large smile plastered on her face. Meanwhile, Susan walked slightly behind her with a shy, embarrassed smile directed at them.
"Good morning, Hannah," Harry greeted with a congenial smile. Hannah's bright smile greeted him as the two girls stopped in front of them. He then turned his attention to the other girl. "And good morning to you as well, Susan?"
"Good morning. Harry." Susan seemed to be doing much better in his presence than she had yesterday. No longer was she looking down at her shoes when she spoke to him. Instead, she was actually making a decent effort at maintaining eye contact.
Her face was still nearly as red as her hair, though.
With the addition of the two Hufflepuffs, Harry and Neville made their way into the Great Hall. It wasn't that crowded yet, though it looked like a little more than half the school was already eating, there were still quite a few seats available for them. Most of the people who had yet to come in were those who enjoyed sleeping in, like Seamus and Dean.
"Why don't we sit at the Hufflepuff table today," suggested Harry. The other three looked at him in identical masks of confusion, then at each other. After a shared shrug, they followed Harry's suggestion and made for the Hufflepuff table. Even though they had only been around him for one day, they were beginning to get used to the boy-who-lived's eccentricities.
By this point in time, a lot of people in the school knew about Harry's friendship with Susan and Hannah, so while their walk down the Great Hall garnered some attention, most seemed to run more along the lines of idle curiosity than outright gawking.
Which was good, because it meant people had already gotten used to them. That was one of the first steps towards acceptance.
As Harry sat down at the table with Susan on his left, Hannah on his right, and Neville on her right, several heads turned to look at them.
"Harry!" Sally-Ann Perks gasped in surprise while Ernie Macmillon and Megan Jones gaped. "What are you doing here?"
Harry offered the girl a polite, indulgent smile. "I decided that, since Hannah and Susan were kind enough to indulge me by sitting at the Gryffindor table yesterday, it was only right that Neville and I returned the favor."
"Oh." Sally-Ann Perks mouth formed a slight 'o' shape as she spoke. "Well, I guess that makes sense."
"So Harry," Hannah said, diverting his attention away from the other girl and onto her. Sally-Ann Perks puffed up her cheeks slightly, but didn't get to say anything when her friend, Leanne, began teasing her about wanting to spend time talking to Harry Potter.
Harry only spared the girls a curious glance, wondering if this was something girls did to bond with each other. The thought was shrugged off a moment later and he refocused all of his attention on Hannah.
While Sally-Ann Perks began blushing and sputtering, Hannah had continued talking.
"We have Charms class today, think you can give us some advice?"
"I wouldn't worry about the class to much yet," Harry told her. "Right now you'll just be getting an introduction into what you're going to be learning this year. The only spell you'll be taught is a simple color changing charm, which is very simple to accomplish. You should be able to get it right on the first try, that's how easy it is."
Even though Hannah was the one who asked the question, all of the first year Hufflepuffs near him leaned in to hear what he had to say. They remembered how Harry had done in Transfiguration. If he was even half as good in Charms as he was in that class, then it would be wise to listen to him.
"Speaking of classes," Hannah started. "What class do you guys have?"
"Double Potions with the Slytherins."
Hannah grimaced. "Ouch, good luck with that. I've heard that class is horrible."
"Oh?" Harry blinked. "What's so bad about it?"
"It's the Professor," surprisingly enough, it was Susan who spoke up. Harry, Neville and Hannah turned to look at her. She flushed at the attention, but screwed up her courage and continued. "One of the older students told us that the Potions teacher is really mean to everyone who isn't in Slytherin. Apparently, he's their Head of House."
"So we have a biased teacher who hates anyone not of his house." Harry frowned. "Surely you're exaggerating, right? I can't imagine the Headmaster allowing someone so biased to teach here."
"Well, maybe, I don't know," Susan admitted softly. "I'm just telling you what we were told. I can't help but think it's true, though. All of the older students who heard us talking agreed."
Harry's frown deepened. He would admit to being worried about what he'd told. Potions was actually one of the classes he was looking forward to the most. It would be very disappointing to have his expectations ruined by a biased teacher.
XoX
Potions, unfortunately, did turn out to be a major disappointment.
Harry and Neville entered class with the other Gryffindors. The classroom was located in the dungeons. It was dark, dank and there was a cold draft blowing in from somewhere.
The room smelled of fumes, almost clogging the senses. Everywhere Harry looked he could see shelves upon shelves lined with potions ingredients. Some he recognized; many he didn't. He saw powders, slimes, shells that looked like they belonged to some kind of animal. A few jars even had shrunken and shriveled up heads in them.
The Slytherin students were already there. Harry recognized Daphne and Tracey sitting together at a table near the back of the Slytherin section. Blaize sat with Theodore Knott, a weedy looking kid with beady eyes and stringy black hair. A little ways over, Malfoy was surrounded by Crabbe and Goyle, as well as Pansy Parkinson, a girl with black hair and a pug-like nose.
Harry and Neville sat in the middle of the group of Gryffindors. At first he had considered sitting in the front like he usually did, but after hearing about how the Potions professor was rumored to behave, had decided that it may be safer to sit somewhere more inconspicuous.
Wanting to be prepared, Harry pulled out several of the shrunken objects he had taken to class with him, his cauldrons and brass scales, the book Magical Drafts and Potions, and a muggle notepad where he stored all of his notes on the potions he had worked on over the summer, along with a calligraphy pen and his potions kit.
Neville also brought out the items he'd bought, but didn't have nearly as many supplies as Harry.
A little while after everyone had entered and got seated, the potions Professor swept into the room, his robes billowing out behind him, making him look like some kind of oversized bat.
Severus Snape was a very pale man with a long, hooked nose and shallow black eyes. His hair hung around his face and was incredibly greasy. It looked like it hadn't been washed in weeks. His finger nails were dirty, like he had never taken the time to clean them, and Harry's eyes could pick out several stains on his black robes from potions and fumes that had not been washed out. Once more, Harry questioned the personal hygiene of most adult wizards, as the man before him looked like he hadn't bathed in days.
Class started when Snape took roll. Like Professor Flitwick, he stopped at Harry's name.
Unlike Professor Flitwick, he did not seem very excited.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Potter," he said softly, with that mocking, condescending tone. "Our new—celebrity."
It was in that moment that Harry realized this class was not going to be anywhere near as pleasant as he had hoped, and would likely be even worse than he could have possibly imagined.
Draco Malfoy and his friends, Crabbe and Goyle, sniggered behind their hands. Snape finished taking roll and then looked up at the class with eyes darker than the blackest of nights and ten times more menacing. They held a condescending quality to them that made the man look like he was staring at a bunch of ants, rather than a group of students wanting to learn.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," he began, his voice barely above a whisper, yet everyone in the class could hear him and watched on bated breath. Harry had to give the man credit, he knew how to captivate an audience, even if he didn't care about looking more professional. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses.... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
Harry's eyes subconsciously narrowed. The last part of his speech had been unacceptable. A teacher was not supposed to mock and belittle his students by calling them names. It was the job of a teacher to encourage those learning under them and help facilitate understanding of the subject they're striving to teach.
Sitting beside him, Neville shook ever so slightly in fear. His eyes were wide and he looked like he wanted to hide under the desk. Two tables away from them, Hermione Jean Granger sat on the edge of her seat and was already taking notes, looking eager to prove that she wasn't a dunderhead.
"Potter!" said Snape suddenly, causing nearly half the class to jump. Harry just frowned. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
Hermione's hand shot into the air while Harry stiffened in his seat slightly, but quickly relaxed and answered the question. "You would get a powerful sleeping potion known as Draught of the Living Death, which is said to be so powerful it makes the person who drank it seem as if they are dead."
Snape's eyes widened, surprise showing blatantly on his face. It only lasted for a second, maybe less. Harry doubted any of the students had seen it, but he had, and it was good to know he had just surprised the man who seemed to have the desire to pick on him.
"A lucky guess." Snape sneered. Harry's hand twitched where it was on the table. "Very well then, answer me this. Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezaor?"
"In the stomach of a goat, sir," Harry answered as Hermione's hand began to tremble in the air. It went ignored. "It's a stone-like object capable of curing most poisons, and is used in the preparation of many common antidotes."
Snape's nostril's flared, the only sign he gave to being upset that Harry had answered him correctly.
"What is the difference, Potter, between Monkshood and Wolvesbane?"
"There is no difference, sir," once again Harry answered the question as Hermione's hand frantically waved in the air. She was beginning to look angry. "It's the same plant, and is one of the key ingredients in the Wolfsbane potion that was created to relieve the strain of Lycanthropy during the full moon, and allows the werewolf who drinks it to retain their humanity during the transformation. Wolfsbane also goes by the name Aconite by mugle botanists."
For a long, long second, Snape stood there, staring at Harry like he was the worst kind of disease. Within the sleeves of his robes, Snape's hands clenched into fists so tightly they shook. The man looked one second away from throttling Harry.
And then the man's face went blank for a second, before he sneered. "Ten points from Gryffindor for cheating, Mr. Potter. And another ten for being an insufferable know-it-all."
Harry's body went stiff with rage. He managed to control himself, for the most part, but his eyes narrowed.
"Cheating?" he said, his tone almost questioning. "And just what makes you think I am cheating... sir," he added at the end, the tone more condescending than he had ever used when speaking to a teacher. Not that he was even sure this man deserved to be called such.
Snape's eyes narrowed. "It's obvious to anyone with half a brain that you cheated. None of those questions are on the first year syllabus—"
"Then why did you ask them to me," interrupted Harry, drawing shocked gasps from everyone in the room and flared nostrils from Snape. "If this knowledge isn't in the first year course work, then you shouldn't have asked me those questions in the first place. And the mere fact that this knowledge isn't something a first year is supposed to know makes it equally obvious that I didn't cheat, because there is no way I could have known you were going to ask those questions, since it wasn't in the first course syllabus... sir." This time, there was no mistaking the condescension in his tone when he said sir.
Snape's upper lip curled as he grit his teeth. The man looked like he wanted to burn Harry to ash with his eyes.
Harry met the man's glare head on. A part of him knew this was wrong, knew he should back down and regain his composure, but Snape had pushed one button too many. These days, there were very few things in this world that upset Harry Potter, truly upset him.
Accusing him of cheating or calling him a liar was one of those things. Harry Potter never cheated. He didn't need to. Thanks to his eidetic memory he was more intelligent than anyone his age he had ever met, and more intelligent than many people twice his age. He didn't need to cheat to get good grades.
It was also a matter of pride. Harry Potter was a prideful person. To cheat meant to stain ones honor and pride. And he refused to do that. To have Snape accuse him of cheating galled him.
It was during this stare down, where everyone on the sidelines waited on baited breath, that he felt it, that familiar feeling of something trying to poke around in his head. Legillemency.
Harry could barely contain a snarl as he realized Snape was trying to invade his mind. It was one thing for the Sorting Hat to enter his head to sort him into his house. He didn't like it, but he could accept it. It was quite another to have a teacher invading his mind because he was angry at having someone contradict him when he knew they were right.
And Harry was not going to stand for it.
Harry's magic rolled forth as he opened the floodgates to his core. His entire body became saturated in energy, which he compressed into a tiny ball within his mind.
And than he launched the magic at Snape's mind probe.
There was no subtlety in Harry's defense. It couldn't even truly be called defense. Harry's mind and magic bashed into Snape's probe with all the subtle prowess bull in a China shop. It crashed against Snape's mind probe like a middle-aged battering ram bashing against the gates of an ancient stronghold, destroying the probe like it was made of paper. So powerful was Harry's retaliation that the mental attack actually had some adverse physical effects.
Unprepared for such a powerful counter, Snape stumbled as the mind magic smacked him in the face almost literally. The attack burrowed through his mind and drove a spike of pain into his brain.
He hissed, bringing a hand up to his forehead to try and stem the pounding in his skull. It felt like someone had driven a spike through his head. His vision blurred for a second, before snapping back into focus with painful clarity.
Harry watched on, glaring at the man who dared enter his mind uninvited. He didn't know much about the mind arts. In fact, he only knew what the sorting hat had told him. But surely there was some kind of law against invading the mind of a minor? Of a student?
Snape seemed to come to. His body straightened and his hand fell away. Harry watched the man grimacing warily, waiting to see if he would be stupid enough to attack him in some way again. If he did, Harry would show him that he was not one to be trifled with. If he tried anything, Harry would break the man's nose. It wouldn't take much to knock him flat. Harry could probably reach Snape before he even pulled out his wand.
However, Snape did nothing more to attack him. After a moment where the two stared at each other, one wary and ready to attack, the other with an unfathomable expression, Snape turned away, flicking his hand at the chalkboard where a set of instruction wrote themselves.
"Follow the instructions and begin making the potion," he said, his voice distant. He sounded like he was in pain, or suffering from a migraine. "I expect each of you to have a vial filled with the potion at the end of class. Begin now."
There were a few seconds where no one did anything. Everyone switched their gaze from Harry to Snape in confusion and shock. Harry could almost imagine what was going through their minds as they tried to come up with some comprehensible theory on what had just taken place.
He couldn't blame them; he would be confused as well if he'd just watched what amounted to a mental duel between two people.
Snape snarled. "Well! What are you waiting for!? An invitation!?"
That got everyone started. There was a great scraping of chairs as students stood up and made their way to the potions cabinet to grab their potions. Neville also tried to get up, but Harry placed a hand on his shoulder.
"I'll get them," Harry said, summoning his wand from his holster. Without deliberation he waved it over at the cabinet, and all of the ingredients the instructions called for soon floated above the heads of shocked students and made their way to Harry's and Neville's desk.
Professor Snape eyed the flying potion ingredients, his face carefully blank as he watched Harry begin setting everything up.
"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."
Neville looked at Harry for a moment, before eventually nodding and returning to the potion. He took the cauldron off the fire, then added two porcupine quills that Harry had chopped up and added them to the cauldron.
As Neville began to stir, Harry debated on what he should do about Snape.The man clearly couldn't be trusted with children. Equally clear was that Snape's grudge against his father still ruled his life. At the same time, Dumbledore must have a reason for keeping him at Hogwarts.
That didn't mean much to Harry, not after discovering that Dumbledore was the reason he'd been forced to live at the Dursley's, but it did mean he couldn't do much. While being the Boy-Who-Lived gave him great leeway with his peers, and could be used to further his cause politically, it would not help him win a fight against Albus Dumbledore. The man had been a leader of the light for 100-years, considered one of the most powerful wizards of the century, was looked up to, respected, and had more political acumen and pull than Harry did.
Perhaps it would be best if he did nothing for the moment, then? Yes, that seemed to be the best course of action right now. He would do nothing, and no one but him and Snape would know what had truly transpired during those few minutes. He would come to class, act exceedingly polite and not let on that anything was wrong, and he would secretly hold the fact that the man had tried to unsuccessfully invade his mind hang over the potion Professor's head like a dark storm cloud. Every time Snape saw Harry, he would know that Harry could say anything at anytime, that he could release the news that a professor of Hogwarts had attacked a student using legillemency, but for some reason wasn't. He would make the man sweat.
In the meantime, Harry would look up the school rules involving using Legillemency on a student. He would also see if some of the law books he had yet to read had anything on Legillemency and it's legalities in the magical world. Hopefully, there would be something he could use against Snape in the future, either as blackmail, or to get him fired if the man became too much of a problem.
It wasn't exactly what he wanted to do, which involved publicly humiliating Snape and having the man live the rest of his life in shame, but it was the best he could do on such short notice. It would be enough, for now. Harry was nothing if not patient.