Slytherin Pride

Slytherin Pride

Chapter Three – Checkmate/Whispers

By Slytherin’s Silver Snake

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Ah. The home away from home, how ‘quaint’… Severus looked around at the Potions classroom, suddenly feeling homesick as his beetle-black eyes focusing in the torchlight that fell lazily across the room, landing upon the stone-cold mineral floor; it was still relatively the same as it had been twenty years ago – thankfully, this time, he was in control; there would be no students causing chaos as long as he was there (if they did, they found themselves in detention and had points deducted – unless they just ‘happened’ to be in Slytherin). Letting his gaze fall across the room, he picked out the aged wooden desks that had seen brighter days. The tables themselves had been at Hogwarts for what seemed as long as several millennia, give or take a few historical events here or there, but he had his own excuse for not replacing them, and was proud enough of his theory to repeat it in the staff room; What’sthe use in learning Transfiguration if you can’t transfigure yourself new furniture?

The Potions Master then moved away from the door and silently walked through the room, his black cloak elegantly flowing behind him as he remembered the time in which he had used to sit at the very desk (now brown-black with a large rut, thanks to a practical joke by Moony and co) that was a row forward from the very back of the dungeon classroom; it had been directly behind Cerise’s desk – and back in their sixth year, he had whispered across to her about how their home-made Glacialis Potion was developing. Speaking of Cerise, I wonder if she still remembers our little potion sessions down here after hours? he wondered. Balding Potions, Shifting Potions and the quintessential Love Potions (which we kindly slipped into Black’s pumpkin juice at the Yule Ball), we made it all. Ah, we had some fun in those days. Severus laughed – and wished that his old friend were in the room with him so that he could say it to her face. But she was still outside, waiting for the Repair Charm to finish sewing together her torn robe.

Severus’ cold black eyes then gazed at the front, there was a missing desk that hadn’t survived who had been sat there earlier in the day. Neville Longbottom… the dim-witted idiot. And then there were the shelves of common ingredients for the various potion-brewing exercises that he would ‘lovingly’ set for whatever class of dunderheads that he had to teach. His lips sneered as he happily (for himself, anyway) recounted what had happened earlier that day with the Slytherin/Gryffindor fifth-years. Neville had melted his seventh cauldron. The Potions Master, naturally, had been there in the twinkling of an eye…

 

“But sir! It wasn’t Neville’s fault!”

“So. You helped him did you? Thought that you might lend him a hand or two?”

“… I might have.”

“Oh. You should learn to keep your mouth shut Potter.”

“And why’s that?”

“Well, now both you and Mr. Longbottom are both liable for an act of vandalism – ”

“ – Vandalism?!that’s not fair! It was only a – !”

“Silence! Sixteen points will be taken from Gryffindor.”

“Sixteen?!”

“Yes, sixteen. Didn’t you hear me the first time? One for cheek, five for assisting Neville and ten for destroying school property.”

 

… All in all, it was a good day’s work; and as there was the reverberating sound of the open classroom door opening and slamming back into place, Severus didn’t bother to turn around to see who had entered as he walked over to his desk that was directly opposite the door, “What took you so long?” he asked wryly, barely glancing up at the black-haired woman who was strolling between the desks, her slender feminine hand running over a pothole in one of them – that would have been where someone’s cauldron had once melted after they had added too much shredded Boomslang skin. “You always were this patronizing,” the tallish woman replied haughtily, casually turning around in her stride and walking back towards the door.“You’re welcome,” he thought aloud, the raven-haired woman standing still as he stooped down and reached under the desk, “but are you going to go so soon? Cerise, you only just got here. Why don’t you try to settle down instead of flitting around from place to place. If I didn’t know any better, I swear that’s why ‘Corvus’ is your surname. I’m surprised that you don’t deliver your own mail.”

Severus then pulled out a brown box from under his desk. The woman called Cerise then turned around, walked over, her dark blue cloak and black robes billowing behind her like pairs of wings as she laughed through her nose, “Are you, of all people, making me an offer?” Snape snorted as he flicked open the box’s lid – what an absurd idea, really. He quickly made his feelings known, “Don’t be ridiculous. Honestly Cerise, I forgot that you could be this infuriating once you finally open that mouth of yours.” He checked that everything was in his rare ingredients box; Severus had recently done a little ‘shopping’ before he came back to Hogwarts – and he also didn’t put it past certain students to try and take something that didn’t belong to them. Let’s see… he ran the thin and slender fingers of his right hand over each of the ingredients that were inside, Unicorn Horn, Graphorn Horn, Bicorn Horn and a pouch of Gillyweed. He then shut the box, “Perfect.”

“What’s perfect?” Severus looked up; his friend was gazing around the classroom, seemingly to remember the times that they had spent down here, “Nothing,” he replied simply, just wanting to get back in the safety of his Potions office, where the strange woman couldn’t ask too many questions. Cerise then nodded her head towards the table with the pothole, ignoring his latest answer, “What happened there?” He snorted as he tucked the wooden box safely under his right arm, “Neville Longbottom was what happened. The big idiot melted his seventh cauldron. I had to use a Repair charm to piece the table back together again, after which I gave him a most fulfilling detention.”

Cerise was gazing at him, and he recognized the look as one of suspicion, “Fulfilling for whom? Them?” The Potions Master subtly laughed as he made his way around his desk and walked towards the door that led to his office. It was a quiet laugh, but at the same time it was underlined with a smooth tone of lethality, “No. Fulfilling for me, of course.” What he had deliberately forgot to mention was the fact that he had told the two reprobates to clean every suit of armor on a long second-floor corridor by hand; except this particular corridor was one that Peeves often frequented, so it had been made even worse for the two boys, who had to listen to rude and ineloquent words from the aforementioned poltergeist. Oh, I wish that I had been there… but I forgot, I was! Severus repressed a smile as he recalled to Cerise the looks on the boys’ faces as they cleaned the armor with him breathing down their necks and Peeves’ use of tasteless language that had versed on everything from their love-lives to their studies, and even to their choice of breakfast. Since Cerise’s a Slytherin, she won’t mind, he thought.

A most terrifying picture it had indeed been – well, it would have been terrorizing, if it hadn’t looked like his friend’s mouth hadn’t become unhinged. Severus ignored Cerise’s quivering lips, grabbed the handle and opened the office door, “Now, are you going to come and engage me in some wizard chess, or are you just going to stand around all day?” Cerise laughed again as she slid off of the wooden desk (almost fracturing her jaw in the process), her heels lightly clicked on the stone floor as the two disappeared into the Potion Master’s office.

* * * * *

Inside the office, it was a contrasting atmosphere to what was in the Potions classroom. Although it was directly adjacent to the classroom next door, it seemed as if the office was somehow different – or it could have been because there were jars on shelves that were filled with even stranger ingredients than the ones that were floating around the circumference of the Potions classroom? However, its occupant didn’t seem to mind, as he walked over the polished stone floor and headed towards a moderately empty desk (moderately empty in the sense of a still-open book), “Oh do hurry up and take a sear before you wear a hole in my carpet.” Severus pulled a wand from out of his robes and pointed at a fireplace that was on the right of his side of the desk, which was directly opposite the door they had just entered, “Incendio!”

At that moment, the spell lit up his fireplace and the torches that were scattered around the room with tongues of red-hot flame. The office itself was illuminated in shades of jade from various directions. Conversely, these flames were tinged various shades of green instead of reds and yellows. Like I’m going to have Gryffindor colors in my quarters, he scoffed inwardly. “Green, eh?” Cerise was walking over towards the (moderately) empty desk, and as his friend pulled out a chair and sat down, he walked over to a chest of draws on the other side of the room and placed the wooden box that he was holding on top of them, “Does it seem that apparent?” he replied, unlocking the draws with a charm and taking out a larger box that contained his wizard’s chess-set, “Weren’t you also in Slytherin?” Severus then blew across the top of the box as his friend gently scoffed at his words – one of the things that he liked was that he could push Cerise to her extremes with his sarcasm, but she would only get angry if he went too far. This had better work, he whispered threateningly, walking back over to his side of the desk, pulling out his chair and sitting down. As he did, his black cloak and robes were like fluid in the way that they gently slipped over the side of his chair and cascaded onto the floor, “Now. Do you want to be black or white?”

Cerise looked at what he was doing as he opened the chess-set, “Does it really matter?” His face remained passive as he pulled out a set of black chess pieces from the box; that he had just opened, “Fine then. You can be black. And by the way, white gets the first move.” Severus looked on as Cerise arranged the black pieces – yet again she was trying to provoke him, “Well, if you want to lose faster, it’s your decision.” He then arranged his own pieces and they began the match…

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End of Chapter Three…