Work Text:
“That’ll be fifty points from Gryffindor, Mr. Longbottom.” drawled Snape, his eyes glinting with sadistic satisfaction as Neville’s potion turned a funny colour and smoked a dull purple.
Harry, from beside Ron, faltered. He looked at his potion, then Ron, raising an eyebrow.
The pair had gotten good at this: communicating through looks.
Harry’s expression said should we sabotage our potion? and Ron’s reply was a firm nod. Over the course of this first potions lesson with the Gryffindor’s, Snape — their potions teacher — had been doling out unfair deductions to the other house. Case in point, Crabbe and Goyle’s cauldron to their left just sputtered and popped, tipping over, and Snape merely cast a sideways glance at the duo and warned “Careful, Mr. Crabbe. This potion is not to be made by the incapable.”
Totally unfair.
So, to fully test their theory, Harry purposely knocked into Ron when his best friend was ‘carefully’ adding the next ingredient. The whole lot dropped into the cauldron, making the potion mixture fizz, bubble, and then explode in a cloud of green smoke.
Snape sighed, long and sufferingly. He had pointedly been ignoring that a Weasley and a Potter were sorted into his house — as Snape, Harry discovered, was the head of Slytherin — and clearly hadn’t wanted to interact with either of them.
“..Clean that up, Potter, and start. Again.” he enunciated slowly, as if Harry was a dimwit. At this, Ron gave a wordless cry of outrage, as did Harry.
Snape sighed again, knowing they had some complaint, but Harry was quicker to speak than Snape.
“You haven’t deducted any points from Slytherin!” he cried, the unjustice of it welling up in his chest and providing the confident to speak his mind. “I just ruined a batch of potion entirely! Neville’s is salvageable, ours isn’t!”
Snape closed his eyes. In this one lesson, he looked as if he aged fifty years.
“...fine.” sneered Snape, as if it pained him. He turned away from them, his cloak billowing as he ventured to the front of the classroom.
“Five points from Slytherin.”
Even the Gryffindor’s cried out at this, but Harry was leading the demands, it seemed, because Harry slammed his hands down as Ron yelled, “That’s not fair!”
Snape’s eye twitched.
“Quiet!” he demanded, sweeping an arm out. All but Harry fell silent, and Ron was only quiet because he knew Harry had it covered.
“Mr. Potter, may I ask why you want more points deducted from your own house?” he said, and Harry let his temper boil over again.
“I don’t want house points deducted, but—”
Snape cut him off with a firm, “Then quiet down, Potter, and return to your potion.”
“Let me finish my goddamn sentence!” Screamed Harry, and once again, he banged his fist down (Vernon had done this enough while enraged that Harry had subconsciously picked it up) so hard that he was sure his hand would bruise later, some of the utensils on the potion station jumping.
Snape was quiet at this, though only because he was shocked at this turn of events.
“You’ve deducted at least one hundred points from Gryffindor this class alone, and barely even ten for Slytherin! You aren’t hiding your favouritism and it’s pathetic. You’re a grown man — if you can’t handle an adult job, why are you teaching?”
Even Malfoy couldn’t cast a snide remark at this.
Snape merely stared into Harry’s eyes as if this rage, this all-consuming fury at injustice, was familiar to him. In the night following, Harry would wonder why that is, but as of the present moment, he was angry.
“Either deduct the same points you took from Gryffindor, or give Gryffindor their points back.” Harry demanded, ending his rant. He turned to Ron, finally noticing the ginger’s silence, and saw that his redhead was in awe, blue eyes wide and a smile on his face.
Harry smiled back.
“...one hundred points to Gryffindor.” Snape grumbled eventually, adding sharply, “Is that sufficient, Mr. Potter? Or can we expect more.. interruptions.. from you?”
Harry turned to Snape.
“Depends,” he said cooly, having learned to control his tone due to Vernon often striking out if Harry’s tone was even the slightest note wrong. “Are you going to be an adult and teach us properly?”
Snape clenched his jaw and said nothing more. The class, slowly, resumed their quiet conversations.
Ron smiled, helping Harry to slowly rebuild their potion.
“That was awesome, mate.” Ron whispered, and Harry agreed, his hands still trembling from the adrenaline. He wasn’t used to being able to speak out against unfairness like that: he’d largely given up at the Dursley’s.
For the rest of potions, Snape fairly dealt out and deducted points from both houses. Both Harry and Ron shared quiet snickers when they heard Malfoy grumble, “Wait ’til my father hears about this.”