The cauldron's warmth couldn't smother the cold fury in Snape.
Nimbus 2000.
The word was a key, snapping open a coffer crammed with memories of humiliation, jealousy, and helplessness. When those eyes once again merged with that foolish pastime, a sharp rage—of betrayal, of being made a fool—surged up at once. He nearly spat the vilest sarcasm, to smash that broom and all the sordid memories it stood for.
Sean, intent on his work, carefully prepped his ingredients, utterly unaware of Snape's devouring gaze. Professor Sprout had just taught him how to handle galangal powder, oxalis, shrubby wormwood, and aloe juice. If he didn't focus on the notes, he'd inevitably miss small details. So he drew the notebook close, reading by the glow of a magic candle.
Sensing something off, he glanced back—straight into Snape's glacial stare. In his focus he paid it no mind and quietly returned to the oxalis. He reviewed what he'd done, wondering which step had gone wrong this time.
Snape was, without doubt, cutting; he only wanted to teach prodigies, not the ordinary. His standards were like a PhD advisor's imposed on children fresh out of primary school. What seemed self-evident to him was arcane to them. To most first-years he was so harsh the very name made them blanch.
To Sean, though… he counted as a good professor.
Sean finely minced the oxalis—pale pink, faintly vinegar-scented; called oxalis because it's akin to the Chinese lantern plant's acid. In the wizarding world it goes into several draughts.
When the notebook was lifted away and the boy reverted to that flustered, early-stage fumbling at the cauldron, Snape's anger ebbed a little in the boy's focused green eyes. Something complicated flashed in his own.
But after watching the child toil and end with substandard prep, he couldn't hold back:
"Dunderhead! If you use one more batch of half-ground powder and juice thin as water—get out of my dungeon!"
Sean silently pulled back the ingredients he'd been about to add and re-prepped them as Snape had taught.
Now Snape's gaze was almost judicial. He would not tolerate the nobility of Potions being linked in the least with that filthy sport. Nimbus 2000, brewing, making money…
The natural conclusion snapped into place: an orphan with no income, studying the most expensive broom, hoping to sell potions to buy it.
How vulgar. How pitiful.
He actually snorted.
"Heh—unspeakably pathetic, or—"
Before the words landed, Sean set the notebook down and tipped in the ingredients. The cauldron roared to a boil. Heat shimmer twisted the air and Snape's shadow. The draft flipped a page; a line of ink flashed under Snape's eye:
"In this morning's flight test the Nimbus 2000 showed superb emergency turning. The trick lies not in the waist, but in intent guiding the second charm cluster on the left rear. It is nearly identical to the final guiding step in potions—proof that magic is joined by a single primal thread."
Sean startled and glanced over; Snape's retort died in his throat and came out differently:
"Path—etic heat control! Your troll brain can't grasp the beauty of a low simmer. Then learn what's written on the lower-left of page 63 in The Book of Potions—when an Antiswelling Solution boils, the flame should be set to twice the standard constant!"
Sean seemed to miss the scolding, eyes on the seconds as he trimmed the flame. The cauldron's bubbles rolled and burst; a heady white steam unfurled.
He recalled the book he'd just discovered—by a famous apothecary who left Hogwarts, Zygmunt Budge. At fourteen he was the best in his class, even correcting the teacher's use of soft-shell crayfish tails. When he judged himself ready he asked the Headmaster to enter the school's Potions Championship.
The Headmaster refused—too young, under seventeen, too dangerous. In anger Budge left in protest, convinced Hogwarts wished to smother a great potioneer; he never regretted it.
What stuck with Sean was a schoolroom anecdote: a rival spilled Love Potion on himself and fell for their Potions master; ever after, when brewing Laughing Potion—which requires loud, uncontrollable laughter—he'd think of it and the brew would come.
A small, silly story—but Sean caught something: if Laughing Potion needs laughter, can't we infer other drafts also need a wizard's emotion? Perhaps the feeling Borage's rite calls for isn't the end—only focus and the longing to succeed, i.e., fortified conviction. To advance, potions might need emotions as precise as charms do—Levitation's release, Lumos's yearning for light…
Potions and charms should be linked by a primal line.
In the firelight Snape's face could no longer be read. His anger vanished in an instant; his body withdrew into the dungeon's shadow. Sean Green—he already had a broom; where it came from mattered not at all. What mattered: he loved Potions—proven by both Snape and Borage. People who don't love it never receive those slips.
So what was he doubting?
The twisted anger and the slip in his hand dragged up that irrevocable sentence—and today, it had almost happened again.
"Sean Green…" His robes stirred; a cold gaze fell. "Heh—perhaps you'd care to explain—using that foolish broom, are you planning to perform… idiotic acrobatics?"
His sight slid back to a faraway Hogwarts. If he hadn't let rage warp his reason—if he hadn't said that sentence then, and had done this instead…
The cauldron gurgled; sunset leaked through a crack. The knots in Snape's eyes cocooned into the moss on the dungeon flags. The spiders had lived here a long time; it seemed the sun had found them at last.