The door opened at exactly nine.
Snape stood in the threshold like a shadow given sudden form, his black robes pooling around him as though the dungeon air had thickened to hold him there.
His gaze swept over them—slow, deliberate—before he stepped aside just enough to let them pass.
Hannah’s shoulder brushed Tobias’s as they stood.
Ernie muttered something about drafts, and Justin’s exhale clouded faintly in the chill.
They filed in, the scrape of their shoes loud against the stone floor.
The classroom smelled of damp earth and something sharper beneath it—mint, maybe, or wormwood.
Tobias took his usual seat beside Hannah at one of the long tables, their cauldrons already set out in front of them.
Snape moved to the front of the room, his voice low but carrying.
*”You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making.”* Somewhere behind them, Ernie shifted uncomfortably.
Tobias kept his hands flat on the table, fingers spread wide, as if stillness might make him invisible.
The door creaked shut behind them with a sound like a bone settling into place.
Snape’s robes whispered against the floor as he circled the lectern.
He did not look up.
“Finch-Fletchley.” “Here, sir.” “Macmillan.” A pause, then Ernie’s voice, too loud: “Present.” The air thinned with each name.
Tobias kept his palms pressed to the wood, counting breaths.
“Vesper.” The silence stretched—half a second too long.
Snape’s quill hovered.
Tobias felt the weight of it like a hand between his shoulder blades.
“Here,” he said, quiet enough that Hannah’s elbow nudged his ribs in silent correction.
He cleared his throat.
“Here, sir.” Snape’s gaze flicked up, lingered—not on his face, but lower, where the layered fabric of his robes hid what shouldn’t exist—before moving on.
“Today,” Snape said, and his voice dropped lower, silk over stone, “you will attempt something very simple.
Something even the least competent among you should manage.” He paused, letting the words settle like sediment in murky water.
“The boil-cure potion.” Tobias exhaled slowly through his nose.
Next to him, Hannah shifted her weight forward, her fingers already twitching toward her ingredient pouch.
Snape turned to the board, his wand flicking once—the instructions appeared in sharp, black script, each step precise as a surgical incision.
“Read them carefully,” Snape murmured.
“Then proceed.” Hannah nudged Tobias’s elbow with hers—*herbology rules*, their silent agreement.
She reached for the dried nettles, her hands quick and sure, while Tobias picked up the mortar and pestle.
The snake fangs clicked against the ceramic bowl like tiny bones.
Around them, the other tables rustled to life.
Ernie’s voice rose in strained enthusiasm—”Right, so we just—?”—before Justin hushed him.
Somewhere to the left, a cauldron hissed as liquid hit hot metal.
Tobias ground the fangs methodically, wrist aching with the effort.
The powder clung to the sides of the mortar in pale, gritty streaks.
He glanced up once—Snape stood at the front, watching them all with the patience of a spider counting threads in its web.
By the time Tobias finished, Hannah had already added the nettles to their cauldron.
The liquid inside burbled thickly, the color shifting from murky green to something closer to bile.
“Next step?” she whispered.
Tobias tilted the mortar, letting the powdered fangs cascade into the brew.
The potion foamed violently for a heartbeat before settling into an uneasy simmer.
Across the room, someone coughed.
The fumes from the neighboring tables had begun to rise—first a sickly yellow, then an acrid orange, and finally, by the hour’s end, a peculiar shade of bruised purple that lingered in the back of Tobias’s throat like a warning.
Tobias’s cauldron did not change colour wrong, did not melt, and did not explode.
It simply refused to cooperate.
The potion should have shifted to pale orange by now—Snape’s board had been precise—but his remained stubbornly yellow, thin as watered-down piss.
Next to him, Hannah’s brew had at least edged toward amber, though it lacked the proper clarity.
She bit her lip, glancing between their cauldrons and the board like she might find an answer hidden in the chalk dust.
“Maybe the flame’s too low,” she murmured, nudging their shared burner knob with her knuckle.
The blue flickered higher.
Tobias added the last pinch of powdered fang as instructed, stirring counterclockwise with wooden precision.
Nothing changed.
Around them, the classroom thrummed with uneven success.
Ernie’s cauldron emitted a smell like overcooked cabbage, while Justin’s had settled into a passable ochre.
Snape drifted between the tables, his silence sharper than any reprimand.
When he reached theirs, his shadow pooled first over Hannah’s workstation, then slid across Tobias’s cauldron like ink spilling.
Tobias kept his hands flat on the table, fingers splayed.
Snape peered into Hannah’s brew.
“Acceptable,” he said, the word brittle with withheld disdain.
Then he turned to Tobias’s.
The pause lasted exactly two breaths too long.
Tobias could feel the weight of that gaze—not on his face, but lower, where layers of fabric hid the impossible.
His throat tightened.
The potion’s surface trembled faintly, as if stirred by something deeper than heat.
Snape’s lips thinned.
He moved on without a word.
Hannah exhaled through her nose.
Tobias unclenched his fists slowly, the wood grain imprinting crescents into his palms.
Snape paused at his cauldron for two seconds longer than at the others and went on.
The bell rang with the dull clang of a distant guillotine.
Tobias and Hannah exchanged a glance—silent, quick—before rising with the rest of the class.
Their cauldrons sat cooling, their contents barely worth bottling, but Snape had demanded samples regardless.
Hannah reached for the small glass vials, her fingers steady as she filled one, then passed the second to Tobias.
The liquid sloshed thin and unimpressive into the vial.
Tobias pressed the cork in with more force than necessary.
“Labels,” Hannah murmured, already scribbling on a scrap of parchment.
Tobias copied her motions, his letters uneven where hers were neat.
They walked their vials to the front bench, setting them down beside the others—a line of failures in glass.
Snape did not look up from his ledger.
At the back basin, the water ran cold enough to sting.
Tobias scrubbed at the cauldron’s rim, the greenish residue clinging stubbornly to the metal.
His hands ached.
Next to him, Justin worked in stiff silence, his face still bloodless from whatever Snape had murmured to him halfway through the lesson.
The Hufflepuffs moved as one when the bell rang again—shoulders hunched, steps careful—out into the corridor in a slightly shaken cluster.
Cedric Diggory was in the corridor outside the Potions room when they came out.
He leaned against the damp stone wall with his arms crossed, third-year robes rumpled at the shoulders as if he’d shrugged them on in a hurry.
When Tobias stepped into the corridor, Cedric pushed off the wall and fell into step beside him without preamble, his shoes scuffing softly against the flagstones.
“You missed the part where Snape’s eyebrows try to strangle each other,” Cedric said conversationally, nodding at Justin’s faintly green-tinged face.
“That’s rookie stuff.
Wait until he starts docking points for breathing too loudly.” The other Hufflepuffs clustered loosely around them as they walked, their voices low and relieved now that the dungeon air no longer pressed thick against their lungs.
Cedric kept pace with Tobias easily, his hands in his pockets, shoulders relaxed.
He smelled faintly of broom polish and the peppermint candies Madam Pomfrey handed out after Quidditch tumbles.
“Trials are next week,” Cedric said, glancing at Tobias sidelong.
“You should come watch.
We’ve got a decent shot at the cup this year if Davies doesn’t wreck his shoulder again.” He grinned suddenly, bright as a Knut tossed in sunlight.
“Also, the Great Hall’s doing treacle tart for lunch.
That’s practically a religious experience right there.” Tobias listened, his hands still faintly chilled from the basin water.
Cedric talked the whole way up the dungeon steps—about Quidditch formations, about how the new Defense professor had actually managed to vanish a Grindylow without setting anything on fire, about whether house-elves put raisins in treacle tart on purpose or if it was some ancient kitchen curse.
He didn’t pause for replies.
He didn’t ask why Tobias’s potion had refused to change color.
He just walked, and talked, and when they reached the ground floor landing, he clapped Tobias lightly on the shoulder—once, brief—before veering off toward the Great Hall with a lazy wave.
Tobias watched him go, the imprint of Cedric’s hand lingering warm through his robes.
He understood he had another quiet ally in the older Hufflepuffs.