Get Dazai to do his work!
Potions was as boring as always. Professor Snape droning on and on about the type of potion they’d be making in fifteen minutes time. Sure, he’s grown to... Tolerate the teacher, but the subject itself was boring. All these subjects were boring. He sighed, leaning his head against the table. Blaise paid no mind to this beside him, continuing to quietly write down the notes alongside the rest of Slytherin (and Gryffindor). Snape paused from writing on the board and glared across the room. Some Gryffindors shivered under his gaze, while most Slytherins carried on as usual, only a hint of nervousness in them.
“Dazai, stay back after class.”
“Why, Professor Snape? He didn’t do anything wrong, did he?”
Stupid Hermione going out of her way to defend him. When he looked in her direction, eyebrow raised, the people sitting nearby jumped and quickly averted their gazes. Before the man could answer, Dazai let out a long, dramatic sigh.
“Yes, sir!”
He put on a false smile and then promptly leaned his head on the table again. Honestly, he didn’t necessarily care about why Snape wanted to speak with him, but if it’s about his home life and self-harming habits, it’s getting old now. He’d just have to play the same game as always. The only bad thing about it was the fact that they were in the first half of a double.
He sighed, preparing himself of a long fifteen minutes of doing nothing, making a poison (that he could hopefully drink and die from, not that staying as a ghost would be any good) and then doing whatever the fuck Snape wants from him.
.
.
.
“Boy.”
“Hmm...?”
Dazai had somehow fallen asleep halfway through class, a few minutes before they started brewing their potions. Lucky, aside from Neville’s screw up which resulted in his potion frothing up and almost burning himself, there were no incidents. Even though the boy was asleep, many of his classmates moved further away from him, even if they ended up sitting right in front of Snape’s watchful eye. As if he was a threat. A danger. The boy peered up drearily at him, blinking repetitively, as if trying to understand the situation.
“Oh. Professor Snape.”
Something looked wrong with the boy’s eye as he looked around the room again. The one that had the bandage over it, too. He must still be recovering from that, but didn’t... Wasn’t the eye removed? He himself didn’t seem too worried about it, and that wasn’t the reason Severus wanted to speak to him anyway.
“Yes, boy. You were asleep for most the lesson.”
His eyes had widened as if he was afraid of doing exactly that. He was no longer in a hazy, half-asleep state- no, he was awake and very well alerted. After seeing the empty classroom, he seemed to calm down enough to look like that never happened, but by the hunch of his shoulders and the frantic movement of his hands underneath the table, it was seen as otherwise.
“Not to worry. Mr. Zabini hovered over you the whole time and made sure no one came close. He was going to wake you up himself before I told him that I’d do it.”
“...Right. What was it that you needed me to stay back for?”
“I’m worried and slightly concerned how you managed to pass first, second and third year. You haven’t done a single sheet of work since coming here, yet you have your nose stuck in a book any other afternoon.”
“Actually, I did an essay or something on Devil’s Snare in first year, and my research topics are unrelated to school.”
That didn’t help at all. He stored that away in the backs of his mind, in that big pile of ‘Dazai red flags’ that he’d be swiftly ignoring for now. Devil’s Snare...He quickly shook the thought out of his mind before it fully developed. Surely, Dazai would have some other reason.
“I still don’t get your point, sir.”
“Is there any way... And I mean, any way at all, that I’ll be able to get you to do your schoolwork?”
“Who knows?”
“Well then, at least enlighten me: What, exactly, is the reason you’re refusing to do any sort of work?”
“Because it’s boring, unnecessary and useless. I already know all the answers, what’s the point of making me write it out?”
He was aware of Dazai’s intellect. Above average, he would say, but with his cocky, cheerful attitude and his dislike for work, he’s seen as a lot dumber and a lot lazier. Yet, he can find no solution for this problem. At least working through to understand it is progress.
“So, the problem is writing it down?”
“Mhm.”
“Auto-writing quills are strictly banned from Hogwarts, as well... If there were a more... Practical way to do your homework, schoolwork and assignments, would you do it?”
“Sure. I don’t want to fail, necessarily. Can I go now?”
“...Sure.”
Dazai stretched as he jumped up before waving goodbye and walking out of the dungeons.
“Tomorrow, at your remedial lessons, I’ll try to have a solution.”