Dark End of Term

“Okay, people, pay attention,” you addressed the rest of the Slytherin first years that you’d gathered in the common room early on Friday morning. The rest of Slytherin was making their way to the Great Hall for breakfast but you had instructed your yearmates to remain behind.

“What’s the big idea?” Goyle complained. “I’m hungry.”

“Today is the final Friday of term and that means it’s also our final Potions class,” you addressed them. “We still haven’t covered the Wiggenweld Potion. What does that tell you?”

“Maybe Snape forgot?” Crabbe suggested.

“Does that sound like something Professor Snape would do?” you asked him.

“Er… no…” Vincent admitted after a moment of thought.

“He still could have changed his mind,” Draco suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time he changed around the order we learned things this term. We learned all those healing potions ahead of time. Maybe he decided to push the Wiggenweld back into next term to compensate?”

“Or… maybe… he’s holding off on doing it until the last class of the year so that he can spring it on us as a surprise exam and catch as many people off guard as possible?” you suggested. “Maybe he wants to send as many students into their winter break with one last bad Potions grade as possible?”

“Gotta admit, Gaunt’s portrayal of Snape seems the most accurate,” Blaise remarked.

“He sounds paranoid,” Pansy huffed.

You thought back to a brief conversation you had with Professor Snape in class one month ago that was the reason you were holding this impromptu meeting.

“Professor Snape, sir,” you looked up from your brewing as the Potions professor went by.

__“What, Gaunt?” Professor Snape spat. He was still unpleasant even to his so-called ‘favorite’.

__“We had to write an essay on Dittany for Professor Sprout this week,” you recounted. “As you know, it’s an important ingredient in a number of healing potions - including the Wiggenweld Potion. I’ve certainly appreciated how you’ve altered the original curriculum to cover some practical healing potions ahead of schedule. But after writing that essay, I’m curious if we’re still going to cover the Wiggenweld Potion this term like we were originally scheduled to?”

__The Potions Master stopped and stared you directly in the eye, “Mark my words, Gaunt: we will be covering the Wiggenweld Potion before the end of term.” There was a cruel smirk on his face that instantly made you pity any student who got caught unprepared when it came time to brew this tricky little potion.

And that was exactly why you were trying to tip off the rest of the Slytherin first years.

“I guess none of you were listening last month when I asked Professor Snape if we were still going to cover it,” you noted. “His exact words were ‘Mark my words, Gaunt: we will be covering the Wiggenweld Potion before the end of term.’ Well, this is the last class of term… and we still haven’t covered it yet. So odds are that we’re going to be brewing it today.”

There was a rustling at the back of the group and you watched as Theodore pulled his copy of Magical Drafts and Potions. At least you managed to sway one of them. Millicent glanced over Theodore and seemed to think he had the right idea and pulled out her own textbook. Make that two. You could always count on Millie. She was one in a million.

“I’ve been researching the Wiggenweld Potion on and off for the last month,” you informed them. “And I’ll share the benefits of my research with all of you as one last pre-Christmas gift. You won’t do better than Granger… but if you listen to me, you’ll come away with a better potion and a higher grade than every other Gryffindor in that classroom.”

“I think I’d prefer a big breakfast as a pre-Christmas gift,” Gregory admitted.

“I’m sorry… who here is the top Potions student in our year?” you asked.

“Er… you are.”

“That’s right,” you said, “And who’s the one helping you pass Potions?”

“You.”

“So you think MAYBE I might know what I’m talking about here?” you demanded.

Goyle looked down, “Sorry…”

“In the interest of keeping your Potions grade up, you’re going to stay here and take my crash course on the Wiggenweld Potion until I deem you ready.” It wasn’t a request. It was an order. And, if nothing else, you found that Gregory and Vincent were good at following orders.

You silenced Goyle’s objections but you knew you had your work cut out for you with the others. “Let’s have a quick quiz. Who knows how many color changes are in the brewing stage of the Wiggenweld Potion?”

“...” No one answered.

“Fifteen,” you informed them. “There are fifteen different color changes and eight different colors.” You reached into your school bag and pulled out your Magical Drafts and Potions book and opened it to the page you had bookmarked for the Wiggenweld Potion. Without even looking at it, you passed the book off to Draco then proceeded to rattle off the long list of color changes. “The potion starts off green from the initial mixture then the first dose of salamander blood turns it red. You’re to keep stirring until it turns orange and then add a second dose of salamander blood to turn it yellow. Stir again until the potion turns green and then add more salamander’s blood until the potion turns turquoise. Not blue. Not teal. Turquoise. You’re done stirring and now you need to heat the potion until it turns indigo. And then you add the final dose of salamander blood until it turns pink.”

“So it’s a rainbow,” Pansy interrupted. “That’s not so hard to remember.”

“We’re only just getting started,” you informed her. You saw that some of the others were using their fingers to count. “After it turns pink, you heat the potion until it turns red, add five lionfish spines, and heat it until it turns yellow. Add five more lionfish spines and the first dose of flobberworm mucus and the potion will eventually turn purple. Stir the potion until it turns red again for the third time then add the second dose of flobberworm mucus until it turns orange for the second time then stir until it turns yellow for the third time. Add honey water until it turns turquoise. Again, not blue, not aqua, turquoise. You finish the potion by adding drops of boom berry juice, stirring one last time and then letting it simmer for thirty minutes. Then once the potion cools… and provided you haven’t made any mistakes… it will be back to its original green color.”

Millicent stopped counting and applauded.

“That’s right,” Draco stated after reading along with the book you handed him. “So you memorized the whole thing?”

“He’s been studying it in the library every Friday evening for over a month now,” Daphne answered for you.

“Wow, Daphne, make it less obvious that you’re stalking the boy,” Pansy snarked.

Yes, after the ‘Scooby-Doo’ incident, Daphne and Tracey were back to following you everywhere. Gemma’s ominous warning about BEING TORN APART BY STARVING DOGS was still a source of nightmares for you so you pretended not to notice your two extra shadows. You knew they were following you. And at this point you were pretty sure that they knew that you knew they were following you. So you made sure not to do anything that the tenacious duo might perceive as suspicious while you were under their near constant scrutinizing gaze.

They’d eventually get bored and stalk someone else… right?

“You lot seem to think that I’m the top Potions student in our year because Professor Snape favors me over Granger,” you remarked, “But you’ve got it backwards. I’m top of our year in Potions because I put in the time and effort to ensure that I’m in a position where he can favor me over Granger. Now get your books out. I’m doing you a huge favor by giving you this tutoring session before class. No one goes to breakfast until EVERYONE has the color sequence memorized.”

“Eep…” Pansy let out a quiet squeak.

“Problem, Parkinson?” you asked. “I seem to remember you coming to me last month for help with a Potions essay. If anyone here could use a free tutoring session… it’s you.”

You made your point and everyone did as ordered.

Over an hour later, you heard the common room door open behind you. You didn’t turn to see who had walked in as you were currently busy grilling the three holdouts of your nine ‘students’. The first two were Crabbe and Goyle which was no surprise. You kept having to stop and refer to the color chart in the back of your book to show them what color turquoise was and how to set it apart from teal and aqua. The third troublesome student wasn’t Pansy - the Slytherin who currently boasted the worst Potions grade. No, while Pansy made her opinion of how disgusting she found the thought of handling anything that contained flobberworm mucus, she actually had a firm grasp on colors. Your third holdout was Daphne Greengrass and, damn it, you were near positive that she was doing it on purpose.

“Come on, Greengrass,” you complained. “You know flowers so why can’t you remember colors?”

“If knowing plants was the secret to being good at Potions then Longbottom would be top of the class!” she retorted. “Maybe you’re just a bad teacher? Maybe you need to make me remember?”

Seriously? Was that her plan? Was she really trying to goad you into using a compulsion on her? In public? Not a chance.

“Once more… from the top..” you instructed.

There was a flash of defiance in Daphne’s eyes but then Tracey elbowed her and she looked behind you and paled. She swallowed nervously then quickly rattled off a list of colors. “Green, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, pink, red, yellow, purple, red, orange, yellow, turquoise, and green.”

“You could’ve done that this whole time, couldn’t you?” you growled in annoyance.

“Gaunt!”

You let out a high-pitched yelp and saw Daphne smirk as you jumped at the sound of your Head of House’s voice. You whirled around and, sure enough, Professor Snape had been standing right behind you and was now towering over you. That explained Daphne’s attitude change.

“Er… P-Professor Snape!” you stammered in surprise, “What brings you to the common room?”

“I’m investigating why none of my first years were at breakfast this morning,” the Head of Slytherin House stated. “This was especially unsettling considering you have my class this morning.”

“Well, as you’ve likely deduced… we’re here because we have your class this morning,” you explained. “Last month, you said ‘Mark my words: we will be covering the Wiggenweld Potion before the end of term.’ Well, today is the last class of term so unless you changed your mind - which you are, of course, free to do - it seemed highly likely that we’d be covering it today so I’ve been hosting a study session.”

“He’s been holding us hostage and won’t let us go to breakfast!” Daphne felt the need to impart. Seriously? It’s like the girl was going out of her way to undermine you and cause trouble for you.

“He’s doing us a favor…” Pansy quietly hissed at her.

You gave a nervous shrug, “I’m trying to give them the benefit of my research so that they can go into their winter break with a good Potions grade on their record.”

Professor Snape gave a curt nod. “Very well, carry on, Gaunt. But do keep in mind that while knowing the color sequence is important. Being able to properly identify those colors is more important.” Too bad you didn’t have a charm for that.

With that, your Head of House turned and stalked out of the common room with his cloak billowing behind him.

You opened Magical Drafts and Potions to the color wheel at the back and held it up in front of you. “Well?” you prompted the others. “Now that Daphne’s done wasting everyone’s time… who wants to try identifying the color sequence first?”

Daphne glared at you while you smirked back as you were bombarded with requests to go over the potion again. Even Tracey looked concerned for her Potions grade. Professor Snape had essentially just given you and your review session his blessing. Everyone realized that the Potions Master’s blessing meant that if the Wiggenweld Potion wasn’t already going to be covered in class, it DEFINITELY was now.

You spent another half an hour reviewing the Wiggenweld Potion with your classmates. You missed breakfast entirely so when you were done the ten of you gathered your cauldrons and Potions kits and headed straight to the classroom.

Things couldn’t have gone better if you had planned them yourself. You smirked as the Gryffindors walked into the classroom completely unaware of the surprise Professor Snape was about to drop on them.

The door barely closed when Professor Snape sprang the ‘surprise’ exam on the class. “Since today is our final class of term we will be doing a review to see if what I have been teaching has managed to penetrate your thick skulls. You will be brewing the Wiggenweld Potion. Alone. This will count as seventeen percent of your final grade.”

Why seventeen? You idly wondered. There were seventeen sickles in a galleon. But still wizard numbers and percentages didn’t make much sense. Maybe you would reach a better understanding if you took Arithmancy in third year? That class was supposed to be all about the magical properties of numbers.

You were drawn from your thoughts on magical numbers when you felt a collection of relieved stares on your back from the Slytherin side of the room. But across the aisle the Gryffindors gave gasps of shock and mumbled protests about how much of your grade this surprise ‘review’ would count for.

“But professor…” Granger started to protest.

“Silence!” Professor Snape spat to cut her off. “You’ve been warned before about questioning how I teach this class. Five points from Gryffindor. Maybe now the message will sink in.”

The Slytherins around you sniggered and you glanced back at Granger to see that her face had gone red. Weasley was glowering at Snape from beside her.

“As I was about to say before Granger saw fit to interrupt,” Professor Snape continued with a cruel grin. He waved his wand and the familiar instructions that you had spent a month pouring over appeared on the board at the front of the classroom. “Those of you with an adequate grasp on the basic skills that we have covered this term should be able to follow this recipe without much difficulty. Those of you who lack that same grasp… may find yourselves... struggling.” Professor Snape sneered at the back of the Gryffindor half of the room. You didn’t have to be a genius to guess that it was directed at the unfortunate pair of Potter and Longbottom.

The classroom went quiet as the brewing process began. You went through the potion with a practiced ease and were comfortable enough to take fleeting glances around the room when Professor Snape wasn’t looking. You were pleased to see that your fellow Slytherins, while nervous, were benefiting from your tutelage. The Gryffindors… not so much. It was clear that Granger was the only one of them who read ahead so seven of the eight lions were going through this recipe for the first time.

Professor Snape stalked around the room and silently observed the class. He remained silent and made no attempt to help anyone. Everyone was left to pass or fail on their own merit.

The biggest incident came about halfway through the lesson. You breezed through the well practiced potion and were sitting pretty at the second to last step which consisted of letting your potion simmer for thirty minutes. So you felt comfortable enough to take some longer glances around the classroom to see how others were faring.

You cleared your throat and made a show of twisting like you were stretching after all the stirring you had been doing. The sudden noise and movement was enough to draw Granger’s attention. The bushy-haired witch was a few steps behind you and was in the process of adding honey water to her brew. Her eye-line darted past you to your simmering cauldron and a flash of agitation crossed her face when she realized how far ahead you were. You raised two fingers to your forehead and wiped them across it to show that this potion was ‘no sweat’. Her brown eyes went wide when her sharp mind quickly brought her to the correct conclusion that you knew about Professor Snape’s ‘surprise’ exam ahead of time. Her eyes left yours and briefly surveyed the Slytherins who all looked a lot less panicked than the Gryfindors. Her eyes flashed back to yours and got even wider when she realized that everyone in the classroom wearing a green and silver tie knew about the upcoming review in advance.

Granger’s mind was quick as a whip. She pieced everything together in a silent three-second exchange. But it had been one second too many. Your eyes dropped to her potion where she was still absently pouring in honey water. The concoction was now a faintly brighter aqua blue instead of the proper turquoise. This was exactly why you put so much emphasis on the shades of blue during your study session. Granger looked horrified and yanked the bottle away. There would only be a faint difference between your finished potion and hers but that would be plenty for a bastard like Professor Snape to mark her off for.

Subtle sabotage completed, you looked away from Granger and left her to her hasty attempts at salvaging the damage that her split-second of inattentiveness caused. She also completely missed a frazzled and near frantic Neville Longbottom adding his first batch of lionfish spines way before his potion was the proper red. That would come back to bite him. Now the window to get every other step the proper color had drastically shrunk. Maybe a skilled potioneer with perfect timing could have salvaged it but Longbottom certainly wasn’t one.

And of course, Professor Snape chose that precise moment to sweep between the two workstations and stopped to make a condescending tutting noise when he spotted the mistakes the two Gryffindors made. He stood there for another couple of seconds and casually glanced over his shoulder at his least favorite student and watched him add flobberworm mucus to his potion.

It took you those few seconds to realize what the Potions professor was doing. The light from the front of the classroom was causing him to cast a shadow across the cauldron behind him. This caused Potter’s purpling potion to look darker than it actually was.

Three potions sabotaged within ten seconds. It was a bad day to be a Gryffindor.

Professor Snape caught you looking and you hastily turned back to your own potion. You could hear the subtle swish of your Head of House’s cloak as he swept up to the front of the classroom and stopped to look down into your simmering cauldron. You both knew that what you were looking at was a perfectly brewed Wiggenweld Potion.

Professor Snape gave you a faint nod then stalked off to terrorize someone else.

One by one, the potions were completed. Yours was the first one done and was, as expected, perfect - the end reward after a month of on and off studying. Draco also turned in a perfect-looking potion but he was the only one. Granger shot you a scathing glare as she brought up a Wiggenweld Potion that was a shade lighter than yours.

Most of the other Slytherins turned in potions that weren’t the right shade of green. There were only so many times you could point at a color wheel and expect it to sink in. But at least they had the recipes memorized. Pansy’s potion actually was the right shade of green but it looked a great deal chunkier than a proper Wiggenweld potion. That was a result of her poor ingredient prep. Her well-vocalized disgust of flobberworm mucus must have played a part there. In the end, all of them were at least passable. The same couldn’t be said for all the Gryffindors. There was a clear difference between the potions brewed by the students you spent the morning tutoring and the Gryffindors who were introduced to the Wiggenweld Potion recipe for the first time when Professor Snape put the instructions on the board.

The last student to turn their potion in was Longbottom who had fallen so far behind that his potion barely had fifteen minutes to simmer and looked like a lumpy mess and was nowhere close to the right shade of green. In fact, his compiled series of growing mistakes turned the potion a gross-looking yellow. It was by far the worst in the class and definitely wouldn’t fetch him a passing mark. But at least he hadn’t melted another cauldron.

“Gaunt, stay behind,” Professor Snape barked out as everyone packed up to leave. Your things were already packed since you were the first one finished so you stood and waited until everyone else left. The breakfast-deprived Slytherins gave you grateful nods as they hurried out of the classroom to drop off their potions supplies in the dorms on their way to lunch in the Great Hall.

Most of the Gryffindors looked miserable after toughing out the surprise exam. But at least the instructions were on the board. It was practically openbook. There would be no such luxury during end of year exams next term. Granger stopped in front of you and looked morally offended as she glared at you. “You cheated.”

“I studied,” you countered.

“Piss off, Granger,” Pansy’s shrill voice carried across the dungeon as she popped up from where she’d been ducked down behind her workstation a couple rows behind you. “It’s not his fault you forgot that Professor Snape all but promised we’d cover the Wiggenweld Potion before the end of term. You Gryffindors didn’t come to class prepared so it’s your fault you got caught with your pants down.”

It was an odd choice of words because when Pansy came over to stand beside you, she knocked against you and slipped a soft bunch of fabric into your hand.

Her knickers. You stated earlier that you were doing her a favor by helping her study… and your lingering compulsion once again compelled her to pay you with her knickers.

Granger huffed and left while Parkinson glared after her.

“Thanks, Gaunt,” Pansy quietly addressed you, “This saved my grade for the term. Definitely worth the price of payment.” You slipped her knickers into your pocket without looking at them and Pansy walked out and left you alone in the classroom with Professor Snape.

The Potions professor surveyed the eighteen vials of Wiggenweld Potion on his desk before looking up at you. “Nine points to Slytherin, Gaunt. One for each student you helped pass.”

You did some quick math. The fifty-seven you had plus the new nine brought your total to sixty-six. Not bad for your first term at Hogwarts.

“And I’ll also be giving you an extra point on the exam for the same reason,” your Head of House continued before giving a dismissive nod showing that was all, “Enjoy your break, Gaunt.”

“Thank you, sir,” you replied as a wide smile spread across your face, “You as well, professor.”

You dashed out of the classroom with your things and grinned as you walked along the dungeon hallway and, since you were alone, withdrew Pansy’s knickers from your pocket. They were purple and much like the pink ones you got from her last month... Pansy Parkinson’s purple panties felt like they were made of a quality fabric and were easily the nicest in your little collection. For everyone else, you were content with simply one pair of knickers but you couldn’t help wondering how many fancy knickers you could get from the annoying girl before the end of the school year.

The new addition to your collection combined with the nine House Points and the extra point you got on your review grade put you in extremely high spirits and there was an extra spring in your step as you returned your Potions equipment to your room and eventually made it to the Great Hall where your grateful classmates had saved you a seat. Helping all your Slytherin year mates get a solid passing grade from Professor Snape gave you a major reputation boost and you rode that high until the end of term.

Marvolo Gaunt House Point Ledger

Severus Snape: +9

New Total: +66

*No Snape ‘point freeze’ in the Dark branch.*

**Points awarded ‘off screen’ were from Snape in Potions.**

Points awarded by: SS, RH, QQ