Professor Snape isn't always as detestable as the first-years make him out to be—at least, Sean found himself hoping to see the Potions master in the dungeon. Snide as he was, the man's instruction didn't vanish into thin air. It was the distilled craft of a master, and it always came just when needed, helping Sean more than he liked to admit.
Evening wrapped the Hogwarts corridors in lazy warmth. Gold slanted through the tall arched windows, striping the cold stone floors with long bars of light. At the forest's edge, the Forbidden Forest blurred beneath a thin wash of dusk creeping over the pine tops.
Shouldering his black satchel, Sean slipped past roughhousing first-years. A few Hufflepuffs glanced up as he went by, but said nothing.
A boarding-school orphan doesn't get many ways to earn money. Sean's ideas were:
Ghostwriting homework—low pay, lots of competition.
Running errands—requires mastering secret passages; he suspected the twins had that market cornered.
The greenhouses—Professor Sprout was happy to give out seeds. He could grow, then sell.
Galleons mattered. But if earning them ate his study time, it wasn't worth the price. Like his history notes: he wouldn't rush them for coin. History itself was fascinating. A book cranked out for profit wasn't the sincere work he wanted to spend years shaping.
So Snape's words had arrived like an answer:
"Even the poorest of potions never lacks a wizard who wants it…"
When Snape had said that, Sean's eyes had lit so suddenly that the professor had paused for a beat.
The air grew colder and dimmer. Sean pushed into the dungeon.
No master in sight—disappointing—but it didn't slow him. Ingredients out, flame lit; Snape's nudges might double his pace, but without a bedrock, understanding couldn't take root.
White steam spun up again in threads; it had looked like this since the tenth century. Only the shapes before the cauldrons changed—always the same: focused eyes.
Two pairs, tonight.
In the depths, beside a row of grotesque specimens, a shadowed gaze held longer than usual on Sean's work—tracking each step in silence. Progress—great progress—built from dogged, almost awkward effort…
Just as Sean reached for the slugs, a voice cut in, cold as the stones:
"Is your wits so poor you can't tell slugs on sight? Second shelf on the left."
Sean paused, looked up, and with a careful Levitation Charm floated the jar down.
"And that starved little eye of yours will only find rubbish ingredients. If I see you debase a draught with trash again—Sean Green—have your things out before I ever see your face."
Sean skimmed over the barbs and blinked. Snape was… letting him use his stores? All right, then, he thought—Hogwarts professors really were wealthy in their private ways.
He sank back into the brew; Snape fell into uncharacteristic quiet. He'd seen that technique before—only as a clumsy imitation. Few were clever enough to note every detail of how he brewed in class, then copy and correct. Copy; correct; repeat. The plain road to success.
The boy wasn't a potions prodigy—but he was an odd, devoted student who loved the subject. Snape had noticed: the boy didn't care for people, only the cauldron—the kind of stance that dredged up a boyhood shadow from Spinner's End.
And thinking of certain Gryffindors' idiot explosions in class—especially Harry Potter, who wouldn't stop his dunderheaded friends before they blew something up—Snape's brow unknotted a fraction.
Bubbles rolled; the syrup deepened to inky green. Sean nursed the heat—Borage's cauldron control lifted quality a whole tier. Snape's pupils pinched.
"Where did you learn that heat control? I do not recall teaching it."
Sean's chest tightened. Oh no—did Snape disapprove of Borage's methods? In the books, Snape's margins rewrote whole sections of Borage's text.
"Advanced Potion-Making, Professor," he admitted.
"Heh." A cold snort. "Your final heat was low; step three you stirred the wrong way. Do it again. Are your eyes for show?"
Sean froze. So he knew the hidden pages too. He didn't hesitate—scrapped it and started over.
Two hours later:
[You brewed one cauldron of Cure for Boils at Adept standard. Proficiency +10]
"Thank you, Professor."
A second Adept-level draught—sellable quality. Snape "bought it back" under the "Hogwarts Potions Reclamation Rules." Sean suspected he'd just coined that, but the man laid down three Galleons—a fortune.
Sean tucked them away, reverent, and thought: potionry really was a high-margin business.
Snape eyed the careful boy—face reading "Pathetic—no ambition." Once the transfer was done, he glanced at the earlier cauldron—the one scraping a pass—and the curl at his lip turned wintry.
His voice rustled through the dungeon, hoarse and edged:
"Even the poorest soil occasionally squeezes out something tolerable by blind luck. An acceptable draught means you've barely crawled across the abyss of incompetence, not stepped into the halls of potions. Do not let pride numb your nerves. Or regret will be your only antidote.
Sean Green—mediocrity is a choice. And here, I do not accept those who choose it."
~~~
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