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“No – what’re you – no, the caterpillars go into the mortar, not the cauldron!”
The Hufflepuff threw the hairy caterpillars down angrily. “I’ll never be good at Potions!” she groaned.
Her Ravenclaw friend patted her back. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” she said compassionately. “You’re much better at Charms than me, after all!”
The Hufflepuff smiled.
“That’s better!” the Ravenclaw beamed. “Now, let’s get this done, shall we?”
“All right,” the Hufflepuff said and put the caterpillars into the mortar. She grimaced as she started to crush them. “That is so disgusting.”
The Ravenclaw was busy chopping up daisy roots. “When’s the next kitchen party, by the way?” she asked.
“Two nights from now,” the Hufflepuff replied.
“Students are forbidden from entering the kitchens,” said a soft voice behind them.
They spun around, the Ravenclaw cutting herself on the knife. Swearing loudly, she put the bleeding finger into her mouth.
Professor Snape’s lip curled. “Let’s see… that’s ten points each for planning an unauthorised student gathering in an out-of-bounds place… no, better make that fifteen… plus,” he looked into the mortar, “five points from Hufflepuff for the exceptionally poor job you’ve done with crushing these caterpillars.” He shot a glance at the Ravenclaw, who was still nursing her bleeding finger. “And two from Ravenclaw for your clumsiness – and another three for bad language.” And without another word, he strode past them to breathe down some other poor students’ necks.
The Ravenclaw shook her head in disgust. “Blimey, what put him in such a good mood?”
“Well, the Slytherins are the losers of the school at the moment,” the Hufflepuff replied and went back to squashing the caterpillars. “First, they’re the house with the fewest points, and then they get flattened by Gryffindor on the Quidditch pitch – and McGonagall constantly reminding him doesn’t do much to lift his spirits.”
The Ravenclaw grinned, wrapping a handkerchief around her finger. “I’ve rarely seen her so gleeful,” she said, giggling. “She let us off ten minutes early today – and no homework!”
“Yeah, but the downside is that now Snape is determined to dock as many points from us other houses as he can,” the Hufflepuff put in.
The Ravenclaw shrugged. “So what? We’ve still got a whole lot more. Now, let’s see here…” She ran her finger down the instructions in their textbook. “Damn, I forgot the bat spleens,” she muttered.
The Hufflepuff made a face. “Please don’t tell me we need to crush those, too.”
The Ravenclaw cast a look at the book. “No, but we’ll need to cube them.”
“Seriously,” the Hufflepuff exclaimed, “Who could think of that? I mean, who looks at a bat and thinks, ‘I’m going to cut out your spleen and see what it does when I stick it in a cauldron’?”
“Potion brewers are nutters,” the Ravenclaw said with another shrug, but not without checking that Snape was well out of earshot.
“I’ll get the bat spleens,” the Hufflepuff sighed.
“Right, and I’ll weigh the daisy roots,” the Ravenclaw replied.
The Hufflepuff nodded and slithered through the labyrinth of cauldrons, chairs, and bags to the ingredients cupboard.
“Didn’t buy enough ingredients, did you,” Snape, who seemed to have grown out of the ground behind her, sneered. “I suppose that’s another two points from Hufflepuff.”
The Hufflepuff rolled her eyes and turned around. “I’m looking for bat spleens,” she said. “They need to be stored in a cold place, and as there is no way to do so in our common rooms, they’re usually not on our shopping list at the start of the school year.”
Snape narrowed his eyes. “Five points from Hufflepuff,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
It took all of the Hufflepuff’s willpower not to roll her eyes again. “Yes, Professor,” she said instead, and added under her breath, “we still won’t sink as low as Slytherin.”
“What was that?” Snape asked sharply.
“I was agreeing, Professor,” she said lightly. “Can I get my ingredients now?”
Snape narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out if she was messing with him. “Don’t spill any of the unicorn saliva,” he said finally. “It’s more valuable than the entire cupboard combined.” And he stalked away again.
The Hufflepuff rolled her eyes again. She opened the cupboard, and quickly found the jar with the sickly purple bat spleens, right next to a delicate phial. She took a closer look at it. Inside the phial was a viscous, colourless liquid. That must have been the unicorn saliva.
“Pshah,” the Hufflepuff said. If it was so valuable, why didn’t Snape put it into more stable container? That phial looked as if a single touch would be enough to shatter it. She took the jar with the bat spleens and went back to her and her friend’s desk.
“Here you go, nice and fresh bat spleens,” she said.
The Ravenclaw wrinkled her nose and shuddered. “We need to cube four of those. Can you stir while I’m at it?”
“How many times?”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty times?”
“And very slowly.”
The Hufflepuff groaned.
They worked in silence, the Ravenclaw cutting the spleens, trying not to make too much mess, while the Hufflepuff grabbed a large wooden spoon and began to stir cautiously. The Ravenclaw chucked the small cubes into the cauldron after every round.
The potion slowly began to turn a rather gross shade of yellow.
“Er…” the Hufflepuff said, “is it… supposed to look like that?”
The Ravenclaw looked into the cauldron and frowned. “No, I don’t think – ugh!” She recoiled, covering her nose with her hand. “That stinks!”
Purple fumes were billowing from the yellow liquid, slowly filling the entire classroom.
The Hufflepuff coughed, her eyes watering. “What went wrong?”
“I don’t know,” the Ravenclaw replied, gasping for air.
By now, the whole class was coughing and wheezing, trying to wave the smoke away and covering their mouths and noses.
Snape swooped over to them, glanced into the cauldron, and shouted, “Out! Everybody out!”
He didn’t have to say it twice. The students scrambled to leave the dungeon as quickly as possible, knocking over cauldrons as they went. One Ravenclaw, almost blinded by the fumes, accidently bumped into a Hufflepuff, sending him crashing into the ingredients cupboard. Lashing out in panic, the Hufflepuff grabbed a shelf as he fell down. The shelf collapsed, showering the Hufflepuff with jars, phials, pots, and bottles. The phial with the unicorn saliva hit him directly on the nose and broke into a thousand pieces, covering him from head to toe in gunge.
Whimpering with pain, he picked himself up and ran out of the classroom. The other students were already outside, and Snape threw the big wooden doors shut behind him. “Up,” he snapped, “get upstairs, now!”
When they had managed to leave the dungeons behind them, Snape closed the doors to the staircase. Then he turned around very slowly.
The Hufflepuff and the Ravenclaw whose failed potion had caused this mess shrunk under his intense stare.
“How many rat spleens did you put into that potion?” he asked, dangerously calm.
“R-rat spleens?” the Hufflepuff stammered. “I didn’t… those were bat spleens!”
“Exactly,” the Ravenclaw piped up, “it said so in the book, I’m sure of it!”
“Of course it said so in the book!” snarled Snape. “Your idiot Hufflepuff friend obviously took out the wrong jar!”
“Excuse me?” the Hufflepuff said.
But Snape jerked around, looking at the Hufflepuff covered in unicorn saliva. “Didn’t I say how valuable that stuff is?” he snapped.
“S-sorry, Professor,” the Hufflepuff stuttered, “it was an accident, I swear!”
Snape sneered. “Hufflepuffs,” he spat, “Useless, the lot of you!”
“Now hang on just a minute,” the Ravenclaw piped up, but Snape ignored her.
“I really don’t know why I’m still bothering to teach you,” he said, working himself up. “You are stupid, clumsy, gluttonous daydreamers, utterly incompetent, childish fools!”
“Oi!” the Hufflepuff with the unicorn saliva called out.
“Quiet!” Snape shouted. “Or I’ll make you pay back the school property you just destroyed, and believe me, that will render your entire useless family bankrupt!”
“Insulting his family?” the Ravenclaw exclaimed angrily. “Is that really how far you’ve sunk?”
“Shut up or do you want to lose your house a hundred points?”
“That’s against the school rules,” a Hufflepuff pointed out, “you can only dock points as long as-”
“I don’t care!”
“Right, I’ve had enough!” the red-haired Hufflepuff shouted furiously. “It’s not our fault if your ingredients cupboard is rubbish!”
“Exactly!” her Ravenclaw friend agreed. She turned to her classmates. “VIVE LA RESISTANCE!!”
- Two Days later -
Professor McGonagall lowered that day’s copy of the Daily Prophet and frowned down the staff table. “Has anyone seen Severus lately?”
“No,” Professor Sprout replied, “not since the incident in the dungeons.”
“Strange,” McGonagall murmured. “If he doesn’t turn up today, he’ll miss the match Slytherin versus Hufflepuff. And I was rather looking forward to watching him watch it. Hufflepuff is in very good shape.”
“Maybe he’s ill,” squeaked Professor Flitwick. “You know, from the fumes.”
“No, he’s not in his office or his quarters,” Professor Sprout replied. “And he hasn’t been to see Poppy, either.”
“So he’s just disappeared?” Flitwick asked, frowning.
“Apparently,” Sprout said.
“Strange,” McGonagall said again. Then she sighed. “Oh, well.” She picked up the newspaper again. “I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually.”
That afternoon, Professor Flitwick walked from table to table in his Charms classroom, correcting mistakes and offering words of encouragement. “No,” he said to a short-haired Ravenclaw. “You’re gripping your wand far too tightly.” He pointed at the red-haired Hufflepuff sitting next to her. “Look at how your friend here does it. Yes, well done, that’s much better!”
The Ravenclaw beamed at him.
“Tell me,” Flitwick said, remembering the conversation at the staff table, “weren’t you the class with the Potions disaster?”
The Ravenclaw froze and the Hufflepuff dropped her wand. The room fell quiet.
Professor Flitwick looked around suspiciously. “So you are,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Er…” a Hufflepuff stammered.
Flitwick narrowed his eyes. “There is something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” he asked slowly.
Everybody was either looking at their desks or out the window. Nobody dared to look Flitwick in the eyes.
“What have you done?” he sighed.
“Nothing,” one student mumbled, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve.
“We… I just messed up my potion, that’s all,” the short-haired Ravenclaw said, closely inspecting a graffiti on her desk.
“Was that a Vanishing potion?” Flitwick asked.
Now the Ravenclaw looked up with a frown. “What?”
“Oh, I thought an accident with a potion that made people disappear might explain what happened to Professor Snape,” Flitwick said lightly.
The entire class recoiled at the mention of his name.
Flitwick fixed his eyes sternly on them. “What did you do to him?” he asked sharply.
Everyone started talking at once.
“He insulted the Hufflepuffs!” a Ravenclaw shouted.
“He kept taking points away for no reason!” a Hufflepuff added.
Flitwick didn’t even try to tell them to be quiet. He simply climbed onto his pile of books, put two fingers in his mouth, and let out an ear-splitting whistle. “You,” he said into the sudden silence, pointing at the red-haired Hufflepuff. “Tell me what you did to Professor Snape and why.”
Flustered, the Hufflepuff recounted the disastrous potion class. Her classmates backed her up, which resulted in a little bit of chaos, but as long as it didn’t get out of hand, Flitwick let them be.
“Well, and then he started insulting our house,” the Hufflepuff said, “and then he threatened to take a hundred points away from Ravenclaw, so… um…” She stuttered and fell silent, looking at her classmates for help.
“So - what?” Flitwick prompted. “What happened then?”
They shifted uncomfortably on their seats. No-one wanted to be the one to say it.
“I’m waiting,” Flitwick said.
“We Stunned him and stuffed him into a wardrobe,” the short-haired Ravenclaw burst out.
Flitwick blinked. “A cupboard?” he repeated.
“Down the corridor that leads to the dungeons,” the Ravenclaw muttered.
“And he’s been in there for the last two days?” Flitwick was nonplussed.
The Ravenclaw nodded sheepishly.
“Well…” Flitwick said. He cleared his throat and straightened his robes. “Then we’d better do something about that, shouldn’t we?” And with these words, he marched out of the room.
The students looked at each other, not moving a muscle. Only when Flitwick stuck his head through the door again and said, “Well, what are you waiting for?” did they stand up and hastily followed him. Considering his size, Professor Flitwick was surprisingly fast. The class had to break into a jog to keep up. Only when they reached the Potions corridor, he slowed down, and motioned for the short-haired Ravenclaw to take the lead. With her heart beating fast, she obeyed.
They took a few turns, used one or two passageways that Flitwick hadn’t known to exist, until they finally reached a dim, inconspicuous secondary corridor ending in a dead end. It was barely more than a niche. Except of an unlit torch and a large wardrobe, made of dark wood that was decorated with carved-in ornaments, there was nothing there to see.
The Ravenclaw gestured to the wardrobe and mumbled, “That’s the one.”
“We locked it,” her Hufflepuff friend added.
“You’re lucky I’m the Charms master, then,” Flitwick deadpanned. He raised his wand and said, “Alohomora!”
With a click, the lock sprang open. For the fraction of a second, nothing happened. Then the doors creaked open, and a wrinkled bundle of limps and black robes tumbled out, landing in a heap at their feet.
“Oh dear,” Professor Flitwick muttered. He pointed his wand at the pile of fabric and greasy hair and cast a silent incantation.
The pile twitched, and then Professor Snape sprang to his feet, his robes billowing around him.
The students recoiled. But the dressing-down they feared didn’t come. Snape just stood there as still as a statue.
“What’s wrong with his eyes?” a Hufflepuff suddenly whispered.
Now the other’s noticed it, too.
Snape’s eyes were as round as an owl’s and eerily glazed.
“Severus?” Professor Flitwick said carefully. “Severus, are you quite all right?”
Snape swivelled his head and stared at Flitwick, unblinking. “Cottlewopple,” he said.
One or two students snorted, but had themselves quickly back together.
“I take that as a ‘no’,” said Flitwick drily. He gestured to a pair of Ravenclaws. “Get him to the hospital wing, will you.”
The Ravenclaws nodded. “Come, er, on, Professor,” one of them said.
“Cottlewopple,” Snape mumbled and followed them with drooping shoulders and dragging his feet.
“Right,” Professor Flitwick said, turning to the rest of his class. He barely reached the elbows of them, but they ducked nonetheless. “That was really very stupid,” he said.
They looked at their feet.
Flitwick made a long pause. “But,” he said finally, “I will turn a blind eye.”
The class lifted their gazes and looked at him in disbelief. One or two opened their mouths, but Flitwick held up a finger.
“Let me clarify,” he said. “I will turn a blind eye if you all sign a formal apology to Professor Snape together, refund his unicorn saliva, and tidy the classroom.”
The students grimaced, but one by one, they nodded. They all knew that it could have been much, much worse.
Pleased, Flitwick nodded. Suddenly, he chuckled. “Cottlewopple.”