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Harry Potter and the Expert Potions Master	By : SickPuppy Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 21308 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe. I make no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Chapter 14 - Examinations

Easter had come and gone. The students at Hogwarts had had the long weekend off and had been back at work on the Tuesday, glad for the short break, even if those teachers who would have taught them on the Friday and the Monday were despairing of covering the course having lost those sessions. Their students had been given extra work to at least begin to compensate for missing the teaching, but Harry hadn't looked at the Potions, Muggle Studies and Ancient Runes tasks he had been given. He had been determined to have a few days off before the final slog leading to his exams.

June wasn't looking that far away now that they were into April and only had one more day off – May 2^nd. Although not yet officially sanctioned, most wizarding shops and services had already announced their intention of closing for the anniversary of the end of the war. As May 2^nd fell on a Sunday, most places were taking May 3^rd instead. Professor Mcgonagall hadn't even considered not doing so. It had been a hard won fight, and had taken place at Hogwarts, so of course they were going to observe the day. Whether it was a day of celebration or one of pain and loss was unclear.

Harry had tried not to think about the upcoming anniversary. His focus had to be on his work and on getting through to September when he could begin his Auror training. Thinking about the dead, as thinking about the battle always made him think of the sacrifices, only made it impossible for him to concentrate.

He was still awaiting a reply from Snape regarding his admission, but Harry wasn't overly worried. As his news hadn't appeared in the Daily Prophet, he was confident that Snape hadn't sold him out. Whilst waiting, and whilst in London for the trials, he had done some shopping and sent off an extravagant first birthday present to Teddy. He still felt that he should be doing more to help Andromeda, but with studying for his exams, he simply didn't have the time. Telling himself he would spend lost of time visiting Teddy once term was over, Harry felt the gnawing guilt diminish somewhat.

Time ticked by and soon April had vanished, and Harry's stomach churned as the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts approached. Not wanting to, he sat down to write some letters. One was to George:

Dear George,

I hope you have been as well as can be expected. This year must have been a terrible one for you, and I am sure you feel that it will continue for a long time to come. As we approach the anniversary of Fred's death, I wanted to let you know that I am still thinking of you, and wishing there was some way I could help. That is a foolish wish I know, as there is only one thing you want.

Given what happened at Christmas, I haven't felt that writing to you was possible, but at this time I wanted you to know you haven't been forgotten, what you have lost has not been forgotten, and what you continue to suffer has not been forgotten.

All the best,

Harry.

“Trouble?” Harry looked around the Owlery. He couldn't see his cheeky bird. Suddenly a chirrup reached him and Trouble dropped down, wings tucked in. He opened them at the last second to soar gracefully onto Harry's shoulder. “Show off,” Harry scolded softly. “Take this to George Weasley. Try Diagon Alley first, at his shop. Then, if you have no luck, go to the Burrow. The two addresses are on the envelope. And after, take this one to Mrs Tonks, okay?”

Trouble hooted and took off, spiralling up and up until he was nearly at the top of the tower. With a final chirrup he flew out and away to London.

Feeling oddly lonely, Harry walked back to the castle, wondering how long such a journey (Scotland to London) would take an owl. He'd never really given it any thought before, but now he felt slightly guilty that his owl was having to fly so far.

As May 3^rd was being used to commemorate the battle, Harry was losing yet another Potions lesson. Because of this, Slughorn had given him a frightening pile of work. He had also been handed a load of tasks to get through for Muggle Studies as well, but that was much less onerous. His teacher, Benedict Clement, had asked them all to read about transport methods used by Muggles, and compare them to magical methods, considering their strengths and weaknesses. Harry thought that wouldn't be too much of a problem, especially as he had experience of Muggle methods, and magically enhanced Muggle vehicles – Mr Weasley's car and Sirius' motorbike both sprang to mind. He wondered if the Knight Bus had been developed from a typical double decker. Muggle Studies was his one OWL that Harry was pretty confident of getting an Outstanding in. If he was lucky he'd scrape Exceeds Expectations in the other two, although privately he thought he'd probably get an Acceptable for Arithmancy. When it came to his two NEWT subjects, Harry really wanted Outstanding in them both. He was hopeful that he was doing enough to get those grades. Certainly his last few pieces of work had all been Outstanding.

Harry was amazed at the change in himself: at school he'd been happy to go along with Ron, keeping his head down and doing his work without too much concern about whether it was good or not. After all, with Hermione with him in every lesson, he knew he'd never be the top of the class, so why work himself into the ground only to be second best? Now though, he was determined that people would judge him based on what he did, not on what he'd done or on what people thought about him. If he was going to be seen as something special, he needed to be something special. Or do something special.

With time sneaking by so quickly, he felt the pressure that so far hadn't worried him too much: yes he'd bemoaned the piles of work, but now that it was May, and June very very close, he felt a churning panic at the thought of the exams.

Annoyed with himself for becoming so like Hermione, he pulled out a spare piece of parchment and a quill and drew himself up a revision timetable. He also wrote to Kingsley to explain that he wouldn't be going to the Ministry for the next few weeks – he certainly didn't want to lose a whole day's revision every week! That letter he'd have to give to one of the school birds to take.

That done, he went to fetch the work Slughorn had given him and, sighing, settled down to complete it.

Harry had no idea where the time had gone. One minute it had been January and he had been beginning his courses, then he had blinked and it was now June!

The June sun beat down from a cloudless sky – for once Harry wished the Great Hall wasn't mimicking the day outside as he felt sweat trickle down his face and his glasses began to slide, once again, down his nose.

Like all the students at Hogwarts, he was taking an examination. As they had smaller groups than normal, the OWL examinations were running alongside the NEWT ones. This meant that students studying Transfiguration (for example) were all sitting the exam together, regardless of which course they had been on. The only difference was that the OWL students sat on the left of the hall, the NEWT ones on the right.

Harry had been both looking forward to, and dreading, his examinations. He felt that he had done as much as he possibly could have done to prepare for them and was in a good position to achieve well, but there was still that nagging sense that he was going to mess up and would open his results letter to see five Ts staring back at him.

The final two weeks before the examinations had consisted of ridiculous amounts of revision of exam topics, copious amounts of homework, and lots and lots of frayed nerves. The staff were tense, the students were tense, Harry even thought the ghosts had looked tense when they drifted past. Well, all except Peeves who took huge delight in causing chaos. Harry had stopped the mischievous spirit bothering him by throwing a few well aimed curses at the poltergeist; an unfortunate side effect was that people had realised Peeves left Harry alone and so wanted to study in the same room as him to avoid being tormented by the bow-tied ghost.

The tests were done in alphabetical order, so Harry had sat Ancient Runes and Arithmancy close together, then had a few days peace and quiet before facing his Muggle Studies paper. He hadn't even worried about revising for that and had instead focused on his NEWT courses. Potions had had two components – a theoretical paper and a tiring, hot day down in the dungeons creating the antidote to a Muting Potion.

Now he was writing the final few lines for his Transfiguration theoretical paper, and only had the practical to complete the following day, and then he would be done and able to leave.

He was looking forward to returning to Grimmauld Place, seeing Kreacher, and beginning his studies for the Auror Training course. Too, he wanted to begin his campaign to get Snape's portrait accepted at Hogwarts, something he felt guilt about as he hadn't done anything about it despite telling Elizabeth Burke's picture that he wouldn't just let it slide. As well, he wanted to have the chance to write to Snape as much as he liked, bombarding the older man with questions that he knew would annoy, but which would be answered punctiliously. Since asking about a personal shield charm, Snape had clearly been researching, as he had said he would, as his last letter had been full of snide comments about supposedly 'genius' wizards who should have known better. From that Harry had assumed that Snape was making some progress towards achieving a shield charm. From hints dropped, Harry knew Snape was also working on something that might allow him to be granted the title of Expert Potion Master. He'd wanted to ask, but knew that he wouldn't be told; the older wizard hadn't revealed anything, and wouldn't just because Harry asked. So, Harry hadn't bothered.

Instead, he had amused himself wondering what Snape could possibly be working on that he thought would revolutionise the wizarding world enough to gain him the coveted 'Expert' addition to his title.

Whatever he had feared about Ginny, clearly no-one else seemed to believe her angry assertions that Harry was gay. Indeed, Harry had heard unkind remarks about Ginny herself, and how she hadn't been good enough for him. Sometimes it paid to be 'The Chosen One'; not often, granted, but sometimes. He wondered how furious she had been when all her schemes had come to nought; he wasn't interested, and no-one believed her claims, thinking them simply a scorned woman's invective. Knowing them to be true, Harry was just grateful Ginny had been such a bitch about screaming her unbelievable ideas at all and sundry.

He glanced up at the clock – there were five minutes left and he had finished, even finished checking the paper. It had been difficult, not with the questions themselves, but with knowing when he had included enough information, as he had had to force himself to stop going off on tangents sometimes to ensure he answered the main question itself. He finally understood how Hermione had felt – having a huge amount of knowledge was sometimes a handicap; you had to select what most mattered. To cover himself, when Harry had checked his answers, he had added bullet points mentioning things he hadn't had time to explain properly so that the marker would know that he did understand all the concepts they were testing (hopefully).

As Professor Clement called time and accio'd all the exam papers to him, Harry let his head fall back, rolling his shoulders, and simply enjoying having finished the tough parts. Actually transfiguring something he was confident of being able to do. In the past six weeks every one of his attempts had worked perfectly, so tomorrow held few fears for him.

Other pupils would no doubt be practising so any students who had already finished their exams, and who had tried a small celebration in the various common rooms had found the idea not going down too well with those who still had tests to sit. Tomorrow night was when there would be plenty of celebrations, and no-one would complain. He suspected that even the staff would be enjoying a tipple or two.

In the morning he ate breakfast and then checked the list that was hanging outside the main door to the hall. It listed the time of each person's practical exam. Harry was not until 1pm, straight after lunch. Two people were listed for each time, so Harry assumed that there must be a second adjudicator. After all, it was a lot to expect Mcgonagall to get through both the OWL and NEWT students all on her own.

With the morning to kill, and with nothing really to do to prepare for the test, Harry wandered outside and sat beneath the tree that Snape had been tormented by. For a moment Harry just touched the bark, wondering how such things appeared to the tree itself. Did it 'see' or feel the people around it? Or was its life lived at such a slow pace that the humans that surrounded it were like flies, there and then gone after only causing a moment's irritation? Was the tree changed by all the things that had happened near it?

Thinking too deeply about a tree was perhaps going too far into philosophy, Harry thought, and pushed the past (and the tree) from his mind. He tugged a piece of parchment from his cloak and dug out a ball point pen. Sometimes Muggle contraptions were easier. He was happy to use a quill indoors, but out here it was just simpler to use a biro than mess about with quills and ink bottles.

Dear sir,

I'm nearly finished with my exams. Potions wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought – the paper was quite straightforward. I kept an eye out for a trick question so wasn't surprised when I saw that I was being asked about 'Fine' Potions. I'm sure some people mis-read it as 'Fire' Potions as they are the more common, but I read the question very carefully, and it was definitely 'Fine'. The practical was an antidote to a Muting Potion. Again, it wasn't too bad, just time consuming to remember all the likely ingredients, find their antidotes and the final 'magic' ingredient to make it all work.

Muggle Studies was brilliant! We were given a photograph (non-moving) of a Muggle kitchen and had to identify and explain five of the items in it and how they allowed a Muggle to have some of the comforts that we have. That was fabulous! I did the dishwasher, telephone, electronic scales, microwave, and mixer. In the next part of the examination we were given a list of ten magical things. We had to choose five of them and describe the Muggle counterpart and compare and contrast the two different methods. Easy peasy!

Ancient Runes was a bit hard going, but I just took my time with it and tried not to worry about having a chance to check it all later. As it happened, I had about five minutes at the end to make one of my answers make more grammatical sense, but I think an 'Outstanding' is a lost cause there.

Arithmancy...ouch! If I get anything above 'Troll' I'll be pleased. I was given a person's name and date of birth and had to produce a description of the person, commenting on their strengths, weaknesses, heart, social aspects, and personality traits. That done I then had to predict a future based on several pieces of information I had been given – namely other people who this person interacted with – so I had to work out their traits before seeing how they would affect the original person and then predict their future. My head hurt by the end of it, and as I came out I suddenly realised I hadn't specified which system I was using. I'd based it on the Chaldean system, as I prefer that, rather than Agrippa's ideas. Still, the predictions should be reasonably similar, right?

I had the Transfiguration paper today and I'll finish writing this tomorrow once I've had the practical. The questions weren't that awkward. Some required really long answers but I just kept going until I'd covered everything I needed, and had also added something extra to show my understanding was better than average.

Harry stopped, tapping the plastic pen against his teeth. What else to say? His life had been nothing but exams recently, and he worried that without that, he and Snape would have nothing to write about. Harry really didn't want to lose his friend, especially now that they had achieved more than just a shared acceptance of the past.

Ginny flounced past, her red hair bouncing prettily in the breeze. For once she was alone. Actually, now he thought about it, she had been alone the past week or so. He felt something akin to sympathy.

“Ginny?”

Startled, she turned. “Harry?” her tone wasn't warm, but she wasn't snarling at him so he took this as a good sign.

“How're your exams going?” he asked, wondering why on Earth he'd called out to her.

Ginny opened her mouth and then closed it. Her impression of a goldfish was perfect. Her brows lowered over her eyes. “Fine. But did you really want to talk to me about my exams?”

Harry shrugged. “Well, no, not really. But I don't see why we can't be civil to one another. After all, it's been six months since we split up. Isn't that enough for you to ...” he stopped, trying to find a way to say 'get over me' that didn't sound arrogant.

“Oh yes,” her voice fairly throbbed with sarcasm, “yes the last six months have been just peachy, Harry, and as for it being long enough for me to do whatever it was you were afraid of saying, I couldn't care less about you. I stopped caring the minute you left.”

Unable to stop himself, Harry retorted, “Odd, when you lied about me after I'd gone, and have done nothing but spread lies about me whilst we've been at Hogwarts. You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were still pissed as hell at me.”

“I'm pissed,” Ginny admitted, a hard look on her face, “pissed at myself for ever wasting a single minute of my life on you.”

“Then why are you so vehement about slandering me?” Harry was genuinely puzzled. Her recent behaviour made no sense.

Hands on her hips and fury burning in her eyes, Ginny snarled, “You just went. On Christmas Day! Do you have any idea what that was like? Everyone was talking about you, well, everyone except George, I don't think he'd even noticed, and everyone had an idea about what to do with you. Do you know, at first, Ron thought I'd made a mistake, misunderstood what had happened. He couldn't see you for what you really are...”

“What am I?” Harry jumped in, “All I said was that I wasn't ready for what you wanted. I was being honest, Ginny, you know, like you're supposed to be in relationships! But you never cared about honesty did you – you just wanted what you wanted and I had to fit into that, even if I didn't!”

“Of course you don't, you're a fucking Butter-butt!”

Harry pushed up off the grass, finally furious himself. “You never told me just what made you jump to that ridiculous conclusion. Was it just that I had some respect for your parents and wasn't willing to bone their daughter under their roof?! Was that it?”

“No!” Ginny almost howled the word, “It was you! I'd come into your room at night, watch you sleeping, and ...”

“You fucking pervert.” Harry paced. “You fucking molested me whilst I slept?! What is your problem?!”

“I'm not the pervert! You were the one who moaned at me to do it harder, there, right inside me when I touched you. You were the one dreaming of a man doing disgusting Unnatural things to you!”

For one long, long moment Harry was still. All the way back then he'd felt an attraction to men? Even before he had realised that he and Ginny were never going to last? How long did it take a brain to catch up to what the body and soul already knew?

“I - I can't help what I dream, Ginny. Have you never dreamed anything weird and wondered where the hell it came from?”

“Not night after night. Not the same desire. The desire to have another man touching you in foul, dirty ways.” She glared at him as though he were a decaying worm.

“So, back when you were all hot to marry me, how did you explain away my deviant dreams?”

“I thought I could change you. Change you, what a joke! The great Harry Potter who can't be normal in anything. Who has to be different all the time! I'd never have a place in your life, I'm not special enough!”

There was pain in amongst the anger and Harry saw it. Whatever else had happened, he had cared for Ginny once. “Look, I'm really sorry you feel like that, but it isn't true. You are special. Just, you and I are done. We are never going to have that Happy-ever-after I thought we'd get. I've altered so much since we got together, and no, I don't mean being gay, I know that's what you think, but it isn't true,” hating the need to lie, Harry went on, “I'm not the boy who fell for you, and you're not the girl who fell for me. We're adults now, have been through a war. Things have changed. So very much.” He paused, trying to gauge how much she was accepting. It was true, they had changed, but all of this he had covered with her when they had dated, but she had ignored it then, not wanting to believe it. Now he saw the dawning light of acceptance (or maybe preferring the kinder platitudes to the uncomfortable memories) on her face. “I'm sorry, Ginny. Really, really sorry that I can't be the man you want.”
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Harry Potter and the Expert Potions Master