Felix had his first private Potions lesson with Snape on Friday evening.
He had been expecting it since the four-professor meeting, and he had been dreading it in a way he did not dread the other lessons.
McGonagall was demanding but fair.
Flitwick was warm and precise.
Vane was gruff but patient.
Snape was none of those things, and Felix had spent the week trying to work out what the man actually wanted from him.
He arrived at the dungeons at seven o’clock exactly.
The corridor outside Snape’s office was cold, and the torches on the walls burned lower than they did in the rest of the castle, as though the fire itself had decided to be quieter down here.
Felix walked past the closed door of the Potions classroom and stopped in front of a second door at the end of the corridor.
It was plain, dark wood, with no nameplate and no marking of any kind.
He knocked.
“Enter.”
Felix pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Snape’s office was smaller than he had expected.
There was a desk, a chair, a shelf of ingredients, and a fireplace that gave off more light than heat.
Snape was sitting behind the desk with a quill in his hand and a stack of essays in front of him.
He did not look up when Felix entered.
He simply kept writing, the quill moving across the parchment in short, precise strokes, and Felix stood in the doorway and waited.
After nearly a minute, Snape set the quill down and looked up.
“Close the door.”
Felix closed the door.
“Sit.”
There was no chair on the other side of the desk.
Snape gestured to a stool in the corner of the room, and Felix walked over and sat down on it.
It was lower than the desk, which meant Snape was looking down at him, which Felix suspected was the point.
Snape studied him for a long moment.
His face gave nothing away.
His eyes moved across Felix’s face the way they had moved across the classroom on the first day — flat, unreadable, and entirely too interested in what they were seeing.
“You have been told why you are here,” Snape said.
“Professor Dumbledore said you offered to oversee my Potions education.”
“I did not offer.” Snape’s voice was quiet.
“I was asked. There is a difference.”
Felix said nothing.
“Your father and I have known each other for a long time. He wrote to me before the term began and asked me to keep an eye on you. I told him I would. That is the only reason you are sitting in this room.”
He picked up his quill and set it down again, as though he were not sure what to do with his hands.
“Your performance in my class has been acceptable. Your answers have been correct. Your technique has been adequate. None of that matters.”
Felix waited.
“What matters is whether you can do what I am about to ask you to do.” Snape stood up and walked to the shelf of ingredients.
He selected three jars and set them on the desk in front of Felix: a jar of crushed moonstone, a jar of powdered hellebore, and a small vial of clear liquid that Felix did not recognize.
“You will brew a Draught of Peace,” Snape said.
“You will brew it correctly. You will brew it in one attempt. You have thirty minutes.”
Felix looked at the jars.
“I don’t know how to brew a Draught of Peace.”
“I am aware.”
“You haven’t taught it.”
“No.”
“Then how am I supposed to brew it?”
Snape looked at him.
For a moment, something moved behind his eyes — something that might have been amusement, or might have been irritation, or might have been both at once.
Then it was gone.
“You will read the instructions,” he said, and pushed a piece of parchment across the desk.
“You will follow them. You will not ask me questions. You will not guess. You will read, and you will brew, and you will do it in thirty minutes.”
Felix picked up the parchment and read it.
It was a set of instructions for a Draught of Peace, written in Snape’s small, precise handwriting.
There were twelve steps.
The steps were simple on their own, but they had to be done in the correct order, at the correct temperature, with the correct timing, and Felix had brewed enough potions by now to know that a single mistake in the first three steps would ruin the entire draught.
He set the parchment down and looked at the ingredients.
“I’ll need a cauldron.”
Snape gestured to a cauldron on the floor beside the desk.
Felix picked it up and set it on the desk in front of him.
He lit the fire beneath it with a flick of his wand — a small flame, the kind he had learned to control in the first week of class — and poured in the base liquid.
Then he began.
The first step was to heat the liquid to a simmer without letting it boil.
Felix watched the surface of the liquid until small bubbles began to form around the edges of the cauldron, and then he lowered the flame and held it steady.
Felix measured the moonstone carefully, divided it into three piles, and added the first pile.
He stirred counterclockwise seven times, the way the instructions specified, and then added the second pile.
The third step was to add the powdered hellebore.
Felix reached for the jar and stopped.
Something was wrong.
He did not know what it was.
The instructions said to add the hellebore now, and the instructions were clear, and Snape was watching him from the other side of the desk, and yet something in the back of his mind was telling him not to.
He read the instructions again.
Add powdered hellebore.
Stir clockwise seven times.
Reduce flame to low.
He read the line a third time.
Then he looked at the cauldron.
The liquid was simmering the way it was supposed to.
The moonstone was dissolving the way it was supposed to.
Everything was going the way it was supposed to.
And yet something was wrong.
He set the jar of hellebore down without opening it.
“What are you doing?” Snape asked.
“Something’s off.”
“Something is off.”
Felix looked at him.
Snape’s face was still unreadable, but there was something in his voice now — something that had not been there before.
“The instructions are wrong,” Felix said.
“The instructions are correct.”
“They’re not. If I add the hellebore now, the draught will turn volatile. The moonstone needs to dissolve completely before the hellebore is introduced, or the reaction won’t stabilize.”
Snape was silent.
Felix went on.
“The instruction says to stir clockwise seven times after adding the hellebore. But if the hellebore is added too early, the clockwise stir will accelerate the reaction instead of balancing it. The draught will look fine for about thirty seconds, and then it will boil over.”
Snape looked at him for a long moment.
Then he walked around the desk and stood beside Felix, looking down at the cauldron.
The liquid was still simmering.
The moonstone was still dissolving.
Everything was still going the way it was supposed to.
“You read that in a book,” Snape said.
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
Felix considered the question.
He did not have an answer he could put into words.
It was the same feeling he had when he did transfiguration — the sense that the magic already knew what it wanted to do, and all he had to do was listen.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I just do.”
Snape looked at him for another long moment.
Then he reached over and picked up the jar of hellebore.
“You are correct,” he said.
“The instructions are wrong. They are wrong on purpose. I gave you a flawed set of instructions to see whether you would follow them blindly or notice that something was off.”
He set the jar down on the shelf.
“The correct order is moonstone, then hellebore, then the stabilizing agent. You will add the hellebore now, stir counterclockwise seven times, and then add the third ingredient.”
Felix picked up the jar of hellebore and added it to the cauldron.
He stirred counterclockwise seven times.
The liquid turned a pale silver, then settled into a soft, steady glow.
“Add the third ingredient.”
Felix reached for the small vial of clear liquid and poured it into the cauldron.
The liquid turned clear, then silver, then a soft, steady blue.
“Stir clockwise seven times and remove from the flame.”
Felix stirred clockwise seven times and lifted the cauldron off the fire.
The blue liquid settled into stillness.
Snape picked up the cauldron and studied it for a long moment.
Then he set it back down on the desk and looked at Felix.
“You brewed a Draught of Peace in twenty-two minutes,” he said.
“You used a flawed set of instructions, noticed the flaw, corrected it, and produced a potion that most third-years would be proud of.”
“You did not ask me for help. You did not guess. You read the instructions, and then you used your own judgment to decide that they were wrong. That is the difference between a potioneer and a cook.”
He walked back to his desk and sat down.
“Your father is better at dueling than I am,” Snape said.
“He always has been. But he is not better at potions. In this room, I am the one who decides what you are capable of. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Snape picked up his quill and dipped it in ink.
“You will come here every Friday at seven o’clock. You will brew whatever I put in front of you. You will not argue. You will not ask questions. You will do the work, and you will do it correctly, or you will do it again.”
He began writing on the parchment in front of him.
“You may go.”
Felix stood up and walked to the door.
He was halfway through it when Snape spoke again.
“Mr. Falker.”
Felix turned.
Snape did not look up from his parchment.
He reached into a drawer and pulled out a small, leather-bound book.
He set it on the corner of the desk and pushed it toward Felix without looking up.
“Take it.”
Felix walked back to the desk and picked up the book.
It was old, and worn at the edges, and the cover was blank.
He opened it, and on the first page, in handwriting he did not recognize, was a single line.
For my son.
Read this when you are ready.
Below the line, in different handwriting — Snape’s handwriting — was a second line.
Your father never asked me to give you this.
He does not know I have it.
I have kept it for twelve years, and I am giving it to you now because I have decided that you are old enough to read it.
— S.S.
Felix looked at the book for a long moment.
Then he closed it and tucked it under his arm.
“Why?” he asked.
Snape did not answer.
He kept writing, his quill moving across the parchment in short, precise strokes, and Felix stood there for a moment longer before he turned and walked out of the office and closed the door behind him.
He did not go back to Gryffindor Tower.
He went to the Room of Requirement and sat down at the table and opened the book.
The first page was a letter.
It was written in the same handwriting as the line on the cover — his father’s handwriting, but younger, less careful, the handwriting of a boy who had not yet learned to be measured.
I am writing this because I do not know what else to do.
I am eleven years old, and I am starting Hogwarts in September, and I am afraid.
Not of the school.
Not of the teachers.
Not of the magic.
I am afraid of what I will become.
My family has a name that means something, and I do not know if I am worthy of it.
I do not know if I am strong enough to carry it.
I do not know if I am anything at all.
I am writing this because I want to remember what it felt like to be this afraid.
Because one day, I will have a son, and he will be eleven, and he will start Hogwarts, and he will be afraid too.
And I want to be able to tell him that I know what it feels like.
I want to be able to tell him that it gets better.
I want to be able to tell him that being afraid is not the same as being weak.
I do not know if I will ever have a son.
I do not know if I will ever be brave enough to be a father.
But if I am — if I ever am — I want him to read this.
I want him to know that his father was afraid too.
— Soren Falker, age eleven
Felix read the letter twice.
Then he closed the book and sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling of the Room of Requirement.
His father had been afraid.
His father, who had faced duelists and dark wizards and things Felix could not imagine, had sat in a dormitory at Hogwarts at eleven years old and written a letter to a son he did not yet have, telling him that he understood.
And Snape had kept it.
For twelve years.
Snape had kept his father’s journal, and read it, and never given it back, and never told Soren he had it.
Felix closed his eyes and stayed there for a long moment.
Then he opened the book to the second page and began to read.