Duelling Practice

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While Snape walked into the classroom, he maintained his usual sneer. But inwardly, he was fuming. He was furious. He was angry.

Harry Potter had not only sent him flying, but he had also damaged the hard built reputation he had spent years to build.

Snape knew that he was not a truly respected or loved professor like Minerva McGonagall or Filius Flitwick, and to be honest, he had no such desire to garner the respect of these fools and dunderheads.

Snape, on the other hand, was a feared professor. He had a certain reputation, a certain prestige and a certain image but Harry had damaged it.

He wanted nothing more than to torture and inflict pain on this Potter brat, but he was helpless. He did not have the guts or the power to go against Dumbledore's words, especially after the way the old man had warned him. Dumbledore was not going to bear another of his mistake.

He knew he had to swallow this bitter pill—at least for now.

"I hope," Snape said in his usual stoic voice, "that I will have no nonsense and no gossip whatsoever in my classroom."

"You will all do what you are here to do," Snape continued, "and that is brew potions."

With this, Snape, in his usual style, wrote the recipe for a potion—something related to medical use and asked the students to brew it on their own.

Now, Snape, as a wizard and then as a potioneer, was excellent to the point of being unrivalled in his generation. He was a top notch potioneer and very few wizards or witches came close to him.

Harry, in his previous life, which had been immeasurably long, had obviously dabbled in potion brewing and, without a doubt, had proved to be a master of the art.

Harry, though no matter what, could not deny the fact that the first basics of the 'subtle art' of potion brewing he had learned had been because of Snape. Well, not from Snape in blood and flesh, but from Snape's diary— the diary of the Half Blood Prince.

But as a professor, Severus Snape was pathetic and useless. He rarely taught students through demonstrations. Most of the time, he simply wrote the recipes and steps to perform on the board. And while they were undoubtedly perfect, without demonstration and display, it was difficult for students to follow them precisely.

Adding to this was Snape's awful behaviour. He would loom over the students, mostly Gryffindors, frighten them, and deduct their points.

Snape created an atmosphere of nervousness and anxiety in the already dark and gloomy dungeon.

The students began brewing their potions. Harry and Hermione worked as a pair, though Harry hardly did anything. As was her nature, Hermione took the lead while Harry simply followed. He added ingredients when told to and adjusted the flames whenever Hermione asked.

Snape remained unnaturally quiet today. With two things in the limelight—damage to his reputation and the accusations of his favouritism and partiality toward Slytherin, Snape decided it was better to maintain some calmness.

Thanks to Snape's unnatural behaviour, the Gryffindor students performed exceptionally well compared to their previous attempts. Even Neville, who had barely made it to the classroom before Snape's arrival, was not as disastrous and awful as usual. He was at least able to complete the concoction.

For the first time in three years—at the beginning of their fourth year—no points were deducted from Neville Longbottom in Potions class.

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"Harry," Hermione said hurriedly as soon as they left the dungeons, "I'm going to the library."

"Will you come?" she asked.

Harry was about to respond when his eyes caught Daphne passing not far from him.

"You go on, Hermione," he said. "I'll meet you at the next class."

Hermione gave a nod and ran off toward the library. Who knew what she was trying to find out—Daphne's situation or probably something about house-elves?

"Daphne," Harry approached her. "Tracey."

"Harry," the witches replied in unison.

"Want to spend some time with me?" Harry asked. "I have something in mind."

"What?" Daphne asked.

"Come with me," Harry said and led the duo into an empty classroom.

 It was located in a rarely visited part of Hogwarts, except by pranksters like the Weasley twins.

"What are we going to do here, Harry?" Daphne asked. Though she seemed normal, the tension on her face was clear. Her past experiences with bullying had left scars on her mental state, and she was not yet close enough to Harry to trust him blindly.

"Worry not," Harry replied. "I thought we might do a bit of duelling practice…"

"Dueling practice?" Daphne asked, intrigued.

"Yes," Harry replied. "And let me see what the two of you can do together."

"Come at me," Harry said as he whipped out his wand, "together."

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