She shook her head and moaned.
“I’m a virtual pariah, you know.
Because I sat next to you on our first day, everyone assumes I’m your friend and treats me like it.”
“Odd.
Other than being polite to you, I’m not sure what could have given them that impression.
Well, if it makes you feel better, you can be my friend.”
“No it doesn’t!”
“Oh well.”
The door slammed open and Professor Snape stalked in.
“POTTER!” He was already turning purple.
“Get your feet off the cauldron!”
Hari shrugged and lifted his feet so they were an inch off the cauldron.
Snape twitched.
He began to take roll with something resembling hatred of the English language.
“Potter .
.
.
What would I get if I mixed powdered wormwood and asphodel?”
Hari didn’t open his eyes.
“I don’t believe the answer is in our textbook, Professor.” He paused.
“No.
Nowhere.
The only reference to wormwood is page two-twenty-five and it mentions the danger of adding it to chocolate pudding.” Another pause.
“And no reference to asphodel at all.”
“Twenty points for your cheek, Potter!”
“Just to be clear, sir, the cheek here is for knowing that the answer to a random question you posed is not in the text you assigned us as the one needed for this year in Potions?” Hari asked innocently.
“Should I have instead acted dumbfounded because I did not know an answer I could not have read without looking in advanced texts before my first ever class in a subject?”
“Where would I look for a bezoar?” growled Snape.
“Ah, that one I think is mentioned in the text.
I believe on page four-thirty-one it says to buy them from the apothecary.”
“Wrong!”
“No, I’m sure of my citation, sir.”
“Showing your ignorance of magic, Potter. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
You would look in the belly of a goat!”
“Why would I do that, sir?”
“To find a bezoar!”
“But the text you assigned—”
“What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”
“The same as the difference between either of them and aconite, sir.”
“So you don’t know!
Fifteen points for failure to read.”
Hari cocked his head.
“But since the three are the same plant, I rather think I answered the question, Professor.”
“Detention!”
“Wonderful.
I needed something to do this evening.
I’ll enjoy avoiding it.
Thank you, sir!”
Snape had turned dark purple and kept muttering for several minutes.
“Instructions are on the board.
Begin brewing!”
Hari turned to Daphne.
“Is this a group exercise?”
“No idea.”
“Well then, I’ll work alone so that you might get graded fairly.” Hari rose and proceeded to climb onto the backs of Gryffindors and walk from shoulder to head to the cabinet and retrieve ingredients before walking on Slytherins to get back to his desk.
He held out a small packet to Daphne.
“Here.
I got extras.” She took them with a scowl.
Eighteen minutes into the brewing, Snape came over.
“Potter!”
“Yes, Professor?” asked Hari as he carefully stirred the potion exactly one and a half times using his left foot.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m following the instructions, sir?”
Snape glared into the cauldron.
“You’re doing it wrong!” he declared, looking at a potion that so far was being made perfectly and exactly according to the instructions.
The mix began to fizz appropriately.
His free hand used a spare knife to spear a flying ingredient from the air and set it aside.
Snape gulped.
That had been a bee stinger which, if it had hit the potion at this stage, would have coated everyone within ten feet with enough incomplete boil remover to turn each victim into a giant pustule.
He was right next to the cauldron.
Before he could finish contemplating just how close he had come to being turned into a sphere of pus, Hari flicked the stinger back in the direction it had come.
The Professor barely had time to turn when he saw the cauldron in front of Mister Malfoy erupt.
He was just thankful that he was more than ten feet away.
Hari had seen the eruption begin and grabbed Daphne as he leapt for the front of the room.
“I do believe class is going to be dismissed in a moment.” There was a boom as the spray hit other cauldrons, which filled the Slytherin half of the room with incomplete and tainted potion.
“Now would be the moment.” He ducked outside, dragging her along.
“I don’t know what will happen if we get hit with that stuff, but I’m betting it’s bad.
Uncle Sasori always says the worst part of poisons is making them.”
With that, Hari strolled off, turned a corner and vanished for the rest of the day.
When he turned up at dinner, it was to a round of raucous applause from the Gryffindor table.
“All hail the Great Potter, destroyer of Slytherin!” cried much of the table, led by the red-haired twins.
“Three cheers for Potter!” Followed by three loud rounds of cheering.
Dumbledore rose.
“Congratulations, Mister Potter,” he said.
“In less than a week, you’ve done more for interhouse unity than I’ve seen in decades!”
“But Headmaster!” shouted Snape.
“He set off a chain reaction in Potions that has the rest of his yearmates in Hospital!”
“To be fair,” called Hari, “I only threw back something they had clearly lost.
I thought they would want it returned.”
When Dumbledore nodded, Snape threw his hands up in the air and began to scream in incoherent rage.
Hari sat down next to Daphne.
“Will you be okay?” he asked.
“Why?”
“Because if they think you’re my friend, they might try to kill you?”
“What?”
“Oh yes.
I’m fairly certain at least two people have tried it on me already.”
“What?”
“So do be careful.”