“I swear, Snape hates me,” Harry said sullenly as he climbed the steps out of the dungeon classroom.
“It’s only the first week, and I’ve already lost Gryffindor points.” “Don’t take it to heart, Harry.
Losing points is completely normal.
There isn’t a week where Fred and George *don’t* lose points for Gryffindor,” Ron comforted him.
“Look at Eliana—she’s so brilliant, and she lost points too!
In both Transfiguration and Potions.” “And she’s got it worse than you.
She was ordered to stay behind and scrub the classroom.” Harry felt a bit guilty for thinking so, but it did make him feel slightly better.
“Poor Eliana,” he said.
Ron nodded in deep agreement.
“Yeah.
We all got to leave, but she has to face Snape all by herself—and she can’t even use magic.” Harry’s mood sank again.
“If I were the one punished, Snape wouldn’t even need to tell me that.
I don’t know how to clean with magic anyway.” “Neither do I,” Ron continued reassuring him.
“It’s fine.
Hardly anyone does.” That was actually true.
Harry realized he wasn’t really that different from everyone else.
Even those from wizarding backgrounds like Ron, Seamus, or Malfoy didn’t have much of an edge—everyone was equally outclassed by Eliana and Hermione.
From that perspective, maybe muggle-born young witches and wizards were just smarter.
Thinking of Eliana, Harry’s spirits drooped again.
He wondered what kind of torture his friend was enduring right now.
Meanwhile, Eliana—whom the two boys envisioned as an utterly helpless victim—was happily wiping down a potion desk with a rag.
To others, this might look like punishment, but from a different angle, it was a prime opportunity to leave an impression on the professor!
She had done her research: Professor Snape taught every Potions class in the entire school.
With so many students, plus his status as a Potions Master and the endless line of people trying to curry favor with him, if she didn’t make her presence known, he might not even remember her by the time she graduated!
She scrubbed the table vigorously, finishing the outer desks first before slowly working her way toward Snape at the podium.
Snape was grading the Cure for Boils potions they had brewed.
Intrigued, Eliana stretched her neck—scrubbing a table twice, glancing over at Snape, scrubbing twice, taking another peek.
A very murky potion received a P.
Eliana nodded inwardly; it really looked terrible, so a P was fair.
A potion that looked like wet cement—Eliana recognized it as Harry’s—and Snape seemed to recognize it too.
Scowling in utter disgust, he slapped down a T.
The next bottle was a clear, pale blue.
Eliana recognized her own.
Suppressing her excitement, she pretended to be absorbed in scrubbing while her eyes practically rolled out of her head trying to glance at the tip of Snape’s quill.
“Miss Ritchie.” A deep voice suddenly echoed through the quiet classroom.
Startled out of her hyper-fixation on the grades, Eliana jumped, nearly dropping her rag.
“Ah…
yes??” Snape observed her startled, chick-like state with satisfaction, his tone growing a fraction lighter.
“I believe you were sent here for labor, not to destroy school property.
Spare that poor desk beneath your hands.
You are about to scrub a hole right through it.” Eliana looked down.
Sure enough, the desk in front of her was gleaming so brightly it stood out starkly among the dingy, time-worn tables around it.
“Haha…
there was a stubborn stain here that wouldn’t come off, so I got a little carried away,” Eliana offered weakly.
Making others feel awkward seemed to bring Snape even greater joy.
He said nothing more, but deliberately set aside the potion he hadn’t yet graded and began marking the others.
Watching Eliana wriggle in anxiety yet not dare to speak a word, he felt immensely refreshed and gave the work in his hands a P.
Indeed, hard-timing these dim-witted, unlistening dunderheads—who managed to mess up in the exact ways he had warned them about despite having the instructions written right on the blackboard—was truly a miraculous cure for a soul damaged by class.
Once all the other assignments were graded, he finally, unhurriedly picked up Eliana’s bottle.
Under her eager, expectant gaze, he swiftly made a mark in the grade column.
Judging by the trajectory of the quill, it was an E.
At the very least, it wasn’t the round, swooping stroke of an O.
Eliana’s embarrassment instantly vanished.
She darted over to Snape’s elbow in a flash.
“Professor Snape, why couldn’t my potion reach an O?” She meant to ask how she could improve to earn an O, but in her haste, her words sounded as though she were questioning her grade.
At least, that was how Snape interpreted it.
As expected, even if these Gryffindor lion cubs appeared well-behaved, they were ultimately a bunch of foolish, reckless, arrogant, and thoroughly unpleasant little dunderheads.
“What, Miss Ritchie?
Do you consider your potion to be flawless?” He let out a cold sneer, mocking her in rapid-fire speech: “I presume that when crushing snake fangs, if you were slightly more meticulous—such as grinding them with the back of a blade after crushing—you might yield a finer powder that blends far better into the solution?
When selecting horned slugs, perhaps you could choose ones of a more uniform size, or do you find uneven sizes more aesthetically pleasing?
Furthermore, your technique in prepping the slugs ranged from barely acceptable to utterly crude.
What, were those slugs not to your liking…
What are you doing?” He stopped.
“I’m writing down what you’re saying!” Eliana was scribbling furiously in her textbook with a quill.
Her nib moved so fast, as if terrified of missing a single word, that a speck of ink splashed onto her nose.
She wiped her nose carelessly, leaving herself with an emerald-green smudge across her snout, yet her eyes remained bright with eager light.
“Professor Snape, is there anything else?
You’re incredible!
You can tell so much just from a finished potion!” Snape froze.
He was universally acknowledged as a vindictive, scathing, insidious, and thoroughly disliked professor.
Naturally, he didn’t care for the students either—nor did he care what they thought.
Thus, he could easily tell that the girl before him was being entirely, genuinely sincere.
Had the smoke from Longbottom melting his cauldron affected her brain?
Snape pondered the possibility of abandoned potion fumes causing brain damage.
Seeing that he didn’t seem inclined to speak further, Eliana somewhat regretfully tucked her quill away.
Suddenly remembering something, she perked up again enthusiastically.
“Professor Snape, I remember you have a class with Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff this afternoon.
Since it’s their first lesson too, it should be the same content as ours, right?” “What, Miss Ritchie?
Must I report my lesson plans to you before class?” Snape replied with habitual sarcasm.
Eliana was undeterred.
She leaned in closer with a bright, shameless smile.
“Professor, I don’t have classes this afternoon.
Can I sit in and take your class again with them?” In all his years of teaching, Snape had never heard such a request to seek out torment.
The entire man stunned for a moment.
*Great, he didn’t yell at me right away, which means there’s hope!* Taking advantage of his silence, Eliana boldly grabbed the corner of his cloak and tugged gently, pleading in a hushed voice, “Please, Professor Snape!
I really love your class, and I love Potions!
Just let me take it one more time!” “I think your teaching is wonderful.
Now that you’ve pointed out so many of my flaws, I really want to practice again to see if I can improve.” She rattled off sweet talk non-stop.
Snape stared at Eliana as if she were a troll dancing ballet.
Eliana looked up at him with wide, earnest eyes.
Snape abruptly yanked his cloak back as if it were a tray of glowing hot coals, then turned and strode out of the classroom.
The hem of his black robes billowed like dark waves behind him, accompanied by a coldly dropped line: “If you dare to show off in class just because you’ve already had one lesson, Miss Ritchie, I will throw you out myself.” Eliana automatically ignored the lingering sarcasm: *That’s a yes!* She scrubbed the tables with even greater vigor.
Spotting the graded potion samples on the podium, she called out dutifully after Snape’s retreating back, “Professor!
Should I carry these graded assignments to your office for you?” The moment the words left her mouth, the bottles and jars vanished into thin air with a *whoosh*.
Oh, no need then.
Eliana smacked her lips regretfully, then suddenly slapped her forehead.
Right, there was another thing.
Earlier, Professor Snape said her handling of the slugs was hit-or-miss, which proved that the techniques Malfoy used were actually helpful.
Well, it made sense.
He was from an old pure-blood family after all.
Malfoy might seem a bit weak, but having been steeped in it from childhood, he had probably picked up quite a lot.
Maybe in future Potions classes, she could sit at the same table as Malfoy and learn from him up close.
As for Malfoy potentially refusing—she’d just grab him and drag him over before class started.
With those thin arms and legs, he didn’t look like much of a fighter anyway.
Who cared if he was willing or not?
Having resolved another matter, Eliana happily hummed a tune.
Meanwhile, in the Slytherin common room, Malfoy sneezed twice in a row—*achoo, achoo!*—and suddenly felt a cold chill run down his spine.
“Is there a leak somewhere?
Why did the draft suddenly turn so weird?” After looking around to no avail, he sat back down in annoyance.
“These buildings are almost as old as Merlin himself.
Can’t Hogwarts properly renovate this place?!”