Friday morning.
Elias and Hermione finished breakfast at the Hufflepuff table and made their way toward the dungeons.
He didn’t care about the Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry.
He cared about Hermione getting stared at while she ate, and he cared about the possibility that watching it happen might push his Wrath stat somewhere he didn’t want it to go.
So for the past several days they’d eaten together at Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, where no one seemed to mind a Slytherin and a Gryffindor sharing a meal.
The Potions classroom sat in the basement.
This made structural sense.
It kept the volatile fumes contained and the ambient temperature low, and it also happened to place the students directly in the territory of Severus Snape, Potions master and Head of Slytherin House.
Elias’s first impression of Snape had been cold professionalism.
That impression lasted until he saw the specimens.
Dozens of creatures suspended in viscous liquid, their forms preserved in jars that lined the walls like silent witnesses.
Cold wasn’t the word.
The word was something closer to wrong.
Snape swept in moments later, black cloak billowing behind him with the theatrical inevitability of a man who had practiced the entrance.
Elias noted, with the same quiet observation he’d been filing away for a month, that the professor’s hair remained distinctly shinier than the first day of term.
He leaned toward Hermione and murmured the observation.
Hermione pinched her thigh hard under the table.
Twice.
Her expression stayed perfectly composed.
Snape mounted the podium and the room temperature dropped.
Not literally.
But the way his eyes swept the students, flat and empty, made the distinction feel academic.
Silence pressed down on them like a physical weight, and he seemed to approve of it.
Then his gaze landed on a particular boy in the audience, and his expression curdled.
He snatched up the parchment and began calling roll in a voice drained of all inflection.
The names passed without incident until he reached one.
“Harry Potter.” He stretched the syllables like taffy.
“Our new—celebrity.”
Harry swallowed.
His confusion was visible from across the room.
Draco Malfoy and his two shadows snickered into their sleeves.
Snape finished the roll and let the silence return.
When he spoke again, it was barely above a whisper.
“You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations. Many of you will hardly believe this is magic.” He paused.
“I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even stopper death. But there is one condition. You must not be the same collection of dunderheads I so frequently find myself teaching.”
Elias glanced sideways.
Hermione had shifted to the edge of her chair, spine straight, leaning forward.
Her eyes held the particular glitter of someone who had already read the textbook twice and was waiting to be impressed.
Snape caught the movement from the corner of his eye.
His gaze found Elias instead, and something flickered across his features.
Disturbance.
Perhaps confusion.
A Slytherin and a Gryffindor, sitting together in his classroom, equally intent on his words.
Whatever interest he’d had in tormenting Potter evaporated.
He turned back sharply.
“Wands away. Textbooks open. Today I will teach you how to prepare a simple boil-cure potion. I have had the privilege of witnessing trolls successfully brew this potion, so I do not expect to see anyone fail.” Another pause, colder.
“If anyone does, I will recommend to the Headmaster that the offending student be sent to Muggle kindergarten for remedial instruction. Two years should suffice.”
The scratching of quills filled the room.
No one breathed too loudly.
The children from wizarding families understood what it meant to be ranked below a troll; the Muggle-raised children understood the particular horror of being sent back to kindergarten.
Elias cross-referenced Snape’s instructions on the blackboard against the textbook and found discrepancies.
Different ingredient proportions.
Altered preparation methods.
He didn’t raise his hand to challenge them.
Instead, he worked backward from his understanding of each ingredient’s properties, reasoning through why the modifications would produce a superior result.
Snape was no Quirrell.
If his recipe diverged from the text, there would be cause.
When the logic clicked, his Potions experience jumped noticeably.
The satisfaction that followed wasn’t just about the numbers.
It was the recognition that the man at the front of the room knew more than the people who wrote the books.
Snape, who had been watching Elias’s face cycle from furrowed concentration to quiet clarity, chose that moment to strike.
“Potter!”
Harry jolted.
“Why did I replace flobberworm mucus with purslane root extract?”
Harry stared.
He exchanged a look with Ron, who looked equally gutted.
“I don’t know, sir.”
Snape’s expression darkened further.
“You don’t know, so you don’t ask. Do you believe that proves something admirable about you?”
Harry’s jaw tightened.
He wanted to say something.
He badly wanted to say something.
But Hermione’s hand was already in the air, and Snape was ignoring it completely.
“Let us see if your reputation is earned, Potter. Why are the porcupine quills added whole rather than ground into powder?”
“Why?” Harry repeated.
“Inattention and impertinence. Five points from Gryffindor.”
Harry opened his mouth.
Ron yanked him down by the sleeve before he could make it worse.
“Sorenson.” Snape still didn’t look at Hermione.
“You answer.”
Hermione’s arm dropped.
She didn’t look disappointed.
She looked certain, which was worse in its own way.
Elias stood.
“Purslane root extract contains compounds that neutralize the residual toxins from snake fangs. Flobberworm mucus doesn’t. It also accelerates the cooling process once the cauldron is removed from the flame. As for the porcupine quills—keeping them whole slows their reaction rate. If they were ground and added too early, the potion would convert into an acidic poison.”
Snape gave him a long look.
“Barely adequate. Sit. Five points to Slytherin.”
Barely adequate.
Elias filed the assessment next to the other data points he’d been collecting, neither wounded nor impressed.
But his attention stayed sharp, and when Snape turned back to Harry with renewed venom, he understood something he hadn’t before.
“Harry Potter, presuming upon his celebrity to sit without permission. Disrespect. Five more points from Gryffindor.”
Hermione made a small choking sound.
Those were her points.
Points she’d earned across a week of hands shooting up and answers that never stopped coming—gone in two sentences aimed at someone who hadn’t done anything.
Harry slumped lower, muttering to Ron.
“He’s got it out for me. Specifically me.”
Ron glanced toward the front and back again.
“We already knew Snape was awful. At least you’re not imagining it.”
Elias kept writing.
The scratch of his quill covered the sound of something clicking into place, something he would not name until much later.
He glanced at his panel.
ORIGINAL SIN STATUS
Pride [93/120]
Wrath [65/120]
Sloth [109/120]
Greed [90/120]
Envy [31/120]
Gluttony [52/120]
Lust [89/120]
The tick had been faint.
Nearly imperceptible.
Envy, up by one.
He didn’t understand why, and that lack of understanding was more interesting than the number itself.
It would matter later.