Another smarmy remark echoed through the classroom. Hermione stared at her cauldron, chopping her batwing tips furiously for today’s Tenzure Tonic test. There was no use in defending herself, and she wouldn’t risk looking up – the mere expression on her face would definitely earn her a detention for being disrespectful toward a teacher, and she certainly wasn’t interested in spending an extra hour being under Snape’s thumb.

‘That slimy, horrible, pretentious, thug!’ Hermione thought. ‘He is so sure of his superiority.’

Chop. Chop. Chop.

She didn’t understand why Dumbledore would let him get away with it year after year.

Toss and stir. Watch and simmer.

‘He is completely unfair and so utterly full of himself!’ She fumed.

She hated his smug, self-satisfied look, every time he put a stuttering student in their place. She hated the way he bullied poor Neville, and singled out Harry and Ron to embarrass on a daily basis. She nearly bore holes into the desk with her glare, recalling every instance in which he had deliberately and publicly insulted her. Her mind rattled off a list of dirty words for him she was far too polite to ever utter out loud.

Hermione boiled alongside her effortlessly prepared potion. She had done yet another perfectly brewed, textbook example of their task. As usual, she finished first in the class, and deserved a perfect score for her Tenzure Tonic. But where did she always get her lowest marks? ‘Yes,’ she thought to herself … ‘Potions.’ What a surprise. And, as if that wasn’t unjust enough, she recalled the nasty blow that really set her off today.

This morning she overheard Lavender and Parvati talking in the Gryffindor common room, utterly delighted to discover their semester marks for Potions were far above their merit. In fact, they were the same as hers.

She stabbed her little knife into its wooden block.

She looked over at the two of them, giggling as usual over some idiotic frivolity, their pale tonics, slowly turning thick and green, unattended over the flames. She couldn’t help but stare, slack-jawed at the slow-motion disaster that was meant to be their proficiency test, and balk at the offensive notion that they were her equals on any subject, much less one that required as much attention and care as potion making.

Hermione nearly jumped out of her skin as the textbook suddenly slammed down in front of her.

“The Tezure Tonic is to be prepared on one’s own, Miss. Granger, I suggest you stop staring at the work of others.�

She blinked her wide eyes, too shocked to speak. She could hear Malfoy choking back his laughter behind her, as Harry and Ron both looked up shocked at the mind-boggling suggestion that she actually cheated.

‘If he takes points away from Gryffindor,’ Hermione heard herself thinking, ‘I’m going to kill him.’

“Ten points from Gryffindor,� Snape said in his all too familiar drawl, turning away from her desk nonchalantly, not even bothering to state the imagined offense.

‘DIE!’

Hermione focused all of her undiluted hatred at his back, but if he was aware of her thoughts at that moment, he certainly didn’t seem bothered by them.

Clearly, he underestimated her – as he had always done, she bitterly recalled. Now in her fifth year of magical education, she was reduced to brewing Tenzure Tonics in Potions, and listening to Umbridge’s saccharine dribble in Defense Against the Dark Arts, while secretly practicing her advanced spells only in Dumbledore’s Army. She was no longer surprised at how the ministry managed to muck things up – their complete denial of Voldemort’s return was nearly as ridiculous as their paranoid quest for power – but Snape was believed to be a loyal member of the Order. How dare he treat her like this, day after day, allowing his grudge against Harry to interfere with preparing them all for the inevitable battle ahead?

‘We should all be studying antidotes and healing salves – what bloody use is quizzing us on our proficiency in brewing a tonic that relieved ringing of the inner ear?’ Hermione sat up straight, burning with indignation. ‘I made a working poly juice potion in my second year! I could walk out of here and get an “O� on the Potions N.E.W.T. tomorrow if HE wasn’t grading it!’ She thought, looking at the back of Snape’s head with loathing.

‘That’s IT!’ she thought coldly.

Snape slowly moved toward his chair.

‘Oops.’ She thought, never so much as bothering to look down at her cauldron, lest she miss the opportunity to catch Snape’s expression. ‘How did that toadstool get in there? My, my … what will that do? Is that bad? I can’t remember. I’m only just scraping by in this class along with Lavender and Parvati after all …’

Snape jumped with a great twitch as the unexpected effects of Hermione’s new-and-improved Tenzure Tonic potion caught everyone off guard. She smirked quietly, hiding behind the black fumes.

It was amazing what you could do with standardized school potions once you started adding random ingredients to them out of boredom, she mused. Sometimes, this highly experimental approach (and careful notation of the resulting effects) was the only way she could privately amuse herself, after she had memorized all of her textbooks cover to cover. Who would have thought the discovery of one of those various, disastrous effects would one day prove to be so useful?

“Everyone out!� Snape shouted his voice muffled behind a handkerchief. He waved a dark cloud away from his face before instinctively reaching for his wand. The students, ducking and frantic, clamored towards the doors. Squealing was Malfoy as he was the first to escape.

Harry and Ron seemed to be looking for her amongst the chaos, but were soon pushed along with the throng. Snape cast several spells in quick succession, but having never seen this effect from a simple Tenzure Tonic before, appeared to be at a loss, and quite furious about it.

He managed to create a clean air bubble around himself with the next spell, and clenched his wand with white knuckles.

“When I find out who…� he muttered murderously under his breath.

Hermione breathed safely through a cinnamon stick, listening to make sure that they were finally alone in the filthy haze, then held her breath for a moment and gave the potion a quick cinnamon stir, (counterclockwise of course.)

Within moments, the air cleared completely, leaving no trace of the madness that had occurred only seconds ago.

“Golly,� She chimed innocently, removing a mint from her bag to get rid of the lingering taste in her throat. “Care for a mint, Professor?� she added, with such perfect politeness that even Harry would have never believed her cheek.

Professor Snape stared in disbelief, and for the first time in five years of taking his awful class, Hermione witnessed him at a loss for words.

’Ten points to Gryffindor,’ she mused to herself, ‘for bravery in the face of Slytherin scum.’