That evening, Kate went to the office with her finished homework in hand.
When she got there the door was already ajar, so she didn't even need to knock. A light push, and she could see all the glass jars lined up on the office shelves.
Snape himself was still at his desk marking essays. Without so much as lifting his head, he said, "Come in."
"Professor," Kate said, walking in with a neatly stacked bundle of parchment in her arms, "I've finished the homework you set today."
Snape shoved the essay in front of him aside and reached out to take the parchment. He skimmed it briefly, then raised his head, his eyes as gloomy as ever.
Kate rubbed her hands together, a little nervous. "Is something wrong?"
"There are herbs on the preparation bench. Process them to standard," he said in a low voice.
Kate glanced back at the herbs on the bench — measured in heaps, not handfuls — and while she managed to keep her face straight, she cursed him quietly for exploiting child labour.
Then she went off obediently to chop.
Most of her ingredient-preparation technique had been stolen from watching Snape in the first place, and with the System assisting, the materials she turned out could only be called perfect.
Snape, meanwhile, was reading her homework with genuine attention.
To keep him from finding fault, Kate had even recopied the whole thing with a magic quill so the handwriting was flawless — absolutely up to standard.
She stole a careful look at him out of the corner of her eye. Good — no change in his expression, which meant her work at least passed.
After more than an hour of hard labour, the pile of herbs was nearly done. Kate was still screaming internally when her peripheral vision caught Snape lifting seven or eight bloody, mangled animal organs out of a glass jar beside him and setting them down in front of her.
"Continue," he ordered coldly.
Kate's face twitched. She had no choice but to switch knives and work her way, textbook method and all, through a heap of things that would have to be blurred out on television.
By the time the organs were done, the hand holding her knife had developed a faint tremor.
Snape simply flicked a Scouring Charm at the bench and then fetched a pile of mineral ore, telling her to grind it into powder.
Kate:
When you're standing under someone else's roof, you bow your head!
Swallowing her temper, she pulled on gloves and set to work on the mineral powder.
It was lucky she trained regularly; anyone else might genuinely have failed a task that demanded both precision and stamina.
At last only a thumb's worth of the final stone remained. She hadn't even had time to wipe the sweat off her face, grinding away at a steady rhythm, when a voice came from directly above her without warning:
"Which potions can be made from these materials?"
Wonderful. There was an oral exam too.
She pulled herself together fast, hands never stopping, mind racing. "Rejuvenation Potion, Transformation Potion, Draught of Living Death, Cheering Potion, Veritaserum, and… Magic-Suppressing Potion."
Her voice wavered on those last few words.
Surely Snape wasn't planning to make her brew her own dose and drink it?
Would she have to bring her own ingredients next time, too?
The words "stingy old miser" were practically fighting their way out of her mouth when she heard Snape, standing behind her, ask: "What is the optimal preparation method for each of those potions?"
Kate started reciting on reflex, rattling them off like a waiter listing the specials. "Draught of Living Death — first extract the infusion of wormwood from the wormwood…"
She finished reciting the methods for all of them just as the last of the ore turned to powder, and hurried to bottle it up.
"Shafiq."
"Yes!" Kate answered before her brain caught up.
Then she heard Snape say, "From now on, every Friday, you will come to my office."
Oh, come on. Old Bat, could you be any pettier?
She'd talked back twice in class — did that really warrant weekly detention?
Kate hadn't finished complaining before a notification rang through her head:
[Side Quest unlocked: Until the end of term, report to the Potions classroom every Friday and complete Severus Snape's requirements.]
She blinked. If it was a Side Quest, then there'd definitely be a reward afterwards…
Snape's talent for Potions!
Even cut in half, that would keep her fed for the rest of her life!
Kate's eyes lit up and her spine snapped straight. "Yes. I'll be here on time."
She had no idea why he'd suddenly decided to give her private lessons, but only a fool turned down an opportunity that walked right up to her door.
Snape narrowed his eyes slightly, watching Kate's inexplicable burst of enthusiasm, and remembered how she'd spent the year before last quietly stealing his techniques. A soft snort escaped him.
"Do you know Black?" he asked.
Kate's excitement was doused in an instant. Her expression froze, and she swallowed a few times, her throat tight.
No wonder Snape had summoned her to his office. Everything before this had just been detention. This was what he'd actually wanted to ask.
She steadied herself and answered calmly, "Didn't he break into Hogwarts a few days ago because of Harry?"
"So you don't know him," Snape said, his tone icy. "Then how do you think he broke into Hogwarts — and left again unharmed?"
The shattered window in the armor corridor on the second floor was something only the professors knew about. No ordinary student could possibly know.
Kate kept her back to him the whole time. Unable to see his face, she fell back on the answer she'd prepared long ago:
"Maybe he knows about other passages into the school? Wasn't Black a Hogwarts student himself, once?"
"Oh. You don't think someone on the inside helped him get in?" Snape countered.
The question made Kate's scalp prickle, but she had to keep playing ignorant.
"If someone on the inside had helped, he'd have known it was Halloween and that everyone was in the Great Hall. He wouldn't have gone straight for the Gryffindor Common Room."
Snape considered that for a moment, thoughtful, then swept away from behind her with a flare of his sleeve. "You may go."
"Yes, Professor." Only then did Kate peel off her gloves, eager to make a quick escape.
"Wait." Snape stopped her abruptly and held out the homework from his desk. "For someone of your level, this is far too simple. Write two more rolls of parchment."
Kate's face twitched. She took the parchment and saw that it had already been annotated all over in red ink — every place where her work fell short of perfection within the third-year syllabus.
"…Fine," she answered, rather grudgingly, and slouched out through the door with her head down.
So Snape still had his doubts about how Sirius had gotten into the school. He might even believe Sirius had been inside the castle the whole time.
And she was one of his suspects.
Suspected, but not entirely — otherwise he'd never have let her walk out of that office so easily.
Kate patted her chest, tucked the parchment away safely, and reminded herself that next time she absolutely had to be more careful. Then she hurried back to the Common Room.
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