Chapter 4
The moment Raven had been dreading all week, had come; her first day of Potions with her Uncle Severus. It wasn’t that she hated her uncle; it was the simple fact that she had no respect for him at all. He looked at her as an inconvenience and she looked at him as a temporary setback to her soon-to-be freedom. All she had to do was make it through the next two years under his supervision. Then she was out his care and free to do what she wanted. Making it through his classes and living with him through the summers, without killing him, was her first goal.
When she walked into his class, the last thing she wanted to do was sit at the front. She found a nice little spot tucked away at the back of the class next to Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan. When she saw Harry and Ron, she gave them a little wave.
“If you don’t give him a reason to talk to you, he won’t,” said Seamus.
“Excuse me?” Raven didn’t know who he was referring to.
“Talkin‘ ‘bout Snape, of course. He seems to only pick on the ones that annoy him the most. Most of the time it seems to be Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville.”
“Thanks for the tip. But we’ll see. I mean, I’m his niece and I annoy him just for being alive and here.”
Raven and Seamus laughed a little. Soon Snape barreled into the room and immediately started in on his first day of class rules. As soon as Snape started talking, Raven immediately tuned him out. It was almost a habit. The moment he started talking to her, she would just stop listening. Once there was commotion in the classroom, Raven lurched out of thought and looked around the room a little confused.
“Seamus, what are we doing?” whispered Raven.
“You weren’t listening? We’re making a Shrinking Solution. We have to have it done by the end of the-”
Seamus was interrupted by an ominous black shroud standing before him. Raven and Seamus looked up and saw Snape standing over them.
“What seems to be the problem, Finnigan?” Snape asked.
“Sir, I was telling Raven what we-”
“If she has a question, she needs to address it to me. Unless you think you can teach this class better.”
“I was unclear on the instructions, Professor. He was only trying to clarify what you couldn’t,” Raven interjected. Dean and Seamus leaned back into their chairs. Raven could see steam coming out of Snape’s ears. A smile came to her face. Raven always seemed to feed off of Snape’s anger. To her, this was fun.
“What part of “make a Shrinking Solution” do you not understand?” Snape asked.
“Oh, I understand perfectly when he says it,” she said, pointing to Seamus. “To be honest, the moment you opened your mouth, I lost all concentration. Must be the manner in which the instructions were presented. My deepest apologies, Professor.”
“I will need to see you after class, Miss Snape.” Snape was clearly about to lose his temper. It was obvious if he said much more to her, he would snap.
Once he walked away, Raven looked over at Seamus and apologized.
“I can’t believe he didn’t take points away from Gryffindor because of that,” Seamus said. “If any of us said that to him, we would have detention for a month.”
“I don’t want my actions to hurt Gryffindor. I’ll try harder to keep my mouth shut.”
Seamus and Dean smiled and continued making their potion. Raven finished cutting her roots for the potion when Draco came in. He had been hurt by a hippogriff during Care of Magical Creatures. Of course, he provoked it and it attacked, and Draco made his injury out to be much more than what it was, but Raven knew that this incident was going to come back and haunt someone. Lucius wasn’t going to let this one slide.
Because of his injury, Draco ended up with forced assistance from Ron and Harry. It was clear that the two weren’t very happy about it. Later, Snape took points from Gryffindor because Hermione helped Neville with his potion. Raven now saw how much Snape picked on Gryffindor and it rubbed her, in every bit, the wrong way.
Once class was over and the last student left, Raven remained in her seat. Snape didn’t acknowledge her existence for a few minutes. He roamed around the front of the classroom putting away vials of potion and parchment. Once he was finished he sat at his desk.
“We need to get a few things straight,” he grumbled. “In no way, are you allowed to speak to me like that while in my class. I am your professor while you are in here. Any more snide remarks will cost you and your house dearly.”
“So don‘t talk to me. Don‘t give me a reason to speak to you and I can‘t make any ‘snide‘ remarks.” Raven was still reeling from the things that happened in their first potions class. Now that students were no longer in the room, she wasn’t about to let the rulebook get in the way of what she had to say.
“Are we going to come to an understanding? Or are you going to let your sarcasm get in the way of keeping things civilized?”
“Are you going to let your general disgust for life get in the way of your student’s education?”
“Why must you smart off every time I say anything?” Snape looked as though he wanted to pull his hair out in frustration. Raven, meanwhile, was as cool as she could get.
“You just make it so easy.” She never stopped smiling. She enjoyed the look of agitation on his face.
“What can I do to make these next few years as painless for me as possible?”
“First of all, stop acting like you are the only one being inconvenienced. I don’t want to be here, remember?”
“You are here for your protection!”
“Protection from what?”
“You know what!”
Raven jumped out of her chair and walked swiftly to her uncle’s desk. “Don’t give me the ‘Sirius Black’ excuse! He doesn’t know who I am! There is a reason you are making me come to Hogwarts! There is a reason you want to keep an eye on me.”
Snape looked away from Raven. He looked as though he was trying very hard to keep something quiet.
“I can see it, my dear Uncle Snape. You are forgetting, again. Let your guard down and I can see what you see. What and who do I need protection from?”
Snape looked back at his niece. He still looked as though he was struggling but now it was just trying to find the words. “There are people out there that, if told about you and what you can do, will try to find you. Look at the situation with the Malfoys.”
“Don’t worry about the Malfoys. I can deal with them. Now, who else are you talking about?”
“What do you think will happen if certain people find out about what you can do? It’s not common that people are born with such natural abilities such as yours. Some of what you can do takes years to learn.”
“I don’t think about it. So I can use Legilimency and Occlumency without thinking or do some spells without uttering a single word. I don’t think I’m better. As a matter of fact, I know I’m not better. Every single witch and wizard has things they can do that I can’t. Look at you. You have a natural people repellant. I’m not able to do that.”
Snape glared at her.
“Hey, I didn’t say that they would have abilities that I wanted,” Raven said smiling innocently at her uncle.
“Let’s get back to the subject at hand,” Snape said. “What are we going to do to get through the next couple of years?”
“Disown me?”
Snape once again gave her a disapproving glare.
“You know there is no solution to this, right? I, generally, tick you off and you, generally, tick me off. We could agree to just leave each other alone, but that won’t work since you are my professor. I would say treat me like every other Gryffindor, but then I would get treated horribly and I would react in a non-polite manner. So you tell me, what do you suggest we do?”
Snape rubbed his forehead and then the rest of his face. It was clear he was at a loss as to a solution to this conundrum. “You could start by watching your tone and how you speak to me in class.”
“You could start by treating all your students fairly.”
“You could accept that you’re here and you’re just going to have to deal with it!”
“You first!”
There was another small silence while the two controlled their tempers. “I think the thing that would help you best, Miss Snape, is a little detention.”
“So I can spend more time with you, Uncle?”
Snape rethought his idea. “Maybe you should just leave.”
“It’s about time you sent me away.” Raven immediately grabbed her things and walked toward the door.
“Are we going to do this all year?” Snape asked just as Raven put her hand on the doorknob.
Raven opened the door, then turned to her uncle and smiled broadly. “Yes and I can’t see it any other way!”
Chapter 5