How About I Don't And Say I Did
Mad Eye and Jessie stared each other down after the former called the latter in for a meeting. She knew it was about the Tournament. He was going to try to convince her to go along with it, just so the faculty could suss out the real culprit—or maybe they really did think she cheated!
But none of that mattered today, because Jessie made an absolute fool of herself in Potions class, and Cedric saw it all! The absolute horror! It was supposed to be a perfect Draught of Death, but Jessie was hung over as hell—some would argue she was still drunk from the night before. Either way, she was dangerously unfocused. She stared too long at the back of Cedric’s beautiful head, while nursing the insistent pounding in hers, and forgot to stir the pot on time. It spoiled and smelled of dead bodies, the odor permeating the entirety of the dungeons for the rest of the period.
Snape took 20 points and gave her a detention, so she had to do it all over again tonight!
“I’m not bloody doing it, Professor! Crouch can go choke on a bezoar for all I care!” Jessie blew up, ending the silent stalemate. “No one can force me to compete. I’ll just leave! Or lose on purpose! What, is Crouch going to hold my hand through the entire thing?”
“Come on, buck up, girl! Show some Gryffindor courage!” Moody roared back at her, his good eye bulging to match the size of the blue one.
Jessie dramatically threw up her hands. “I don’t give a flying broomstick about representing my House. This is pointless! Don’t you get that?? The cup was tampered with! I’m innocent! I shouldn’t have to go through this stupid game! I’m not bait!” She begged him to understand.
“Aye…but what would the boy think? The Hufflepuff?”
Oh, he was playing dirty. His impeccable hearing must have picked up on that pathetic crush as her name flew out of the goblet on Halloween. Or…literally he could have heard one of the thousands of times she mentioned Cedric to Addi in a single day, her longing gaze at the back of his head, etc.
Jessie huffed and crossed her arms defensively, a blush coming to her cheeks due to the mention of Cedric. “This is a huge mistake,” she said less firmly than before.
“Whether it is or not, it’s happened. I suggest you start reviewing charms and curses,” Mad Eye advised her, and she internally groaned, her eyes getting dangerously close to an impertinent 'roll'. “And if I hear another outburst from you, or any more bellyaching about the competition, you’ll be serving a detention with a room of Bogarts to up your bravery!” He threatened, earning a petulant look from her.
Jessie pursed her lips and shoved down some unkind comments, which could certainly be considered “an outburst”. Since when is stupidity the same thing as courage? Nonsense! “Yes, Professor,” she said through gritted teeth, as if it physically pained her to comply. “May I be dismissed?”
Moody gestured towards the door with a twitch of his head.
“Thank you,” Jessie said tensely and took her leave.
The dungeons were a dingy place which smelled of depression and despair. All the bad d-words you can think of can also be applied to the professor which taught down there. Dickhead, especially, comes to Jessie’s mind.
“You will not leave until you’ve brewed a perfect Draught of Living Death. I do not care how long it takes you,” Snape orders, staring her down and daring her to protest with his challenging gaze. Jessie was barely smart enough not to take the bait.
“Yes, sir,” she replies flatly. Snape turns sharply and marches back to his desk. Awaiting him was a mile-high stack of essays. He clearly did not have anywhere to be. She knew if she failed a few times, it was of no consequence to him. It would only delay her evening plans.
Jessie began, carefully reading her book’s instructions. Snape was not kind enough to put up his own, as he usually does before every class. This time, she was on her own. At least the annotations by the previous owner made this brew a bit easier. Half an hour in, she still hadn’t made a mistake, by some deity's grace.
‘The Sopophorous bean should be crushed’, she read with some skepticism. Jessie usually wasn’t one to trust a mystery ghost writer (again, queue war flashbacks with Tom Riddle’s diary), but it seems this one knew what he/she was talking about. She took the flat edge of the silver blade and pushed down on the bean, finding that it was must easier to juice in this manner.
‘Add a clockwise stir after every seventh counterclockwise stir’, she read next to the last step. Now, she just felt ridiculous.
Jessie never understood why directions mattered in stirring. Conceptually, it was just random nonsense. Mixing ingredients one way should not be different from the other. That’s why her potions in previous years were straight garbage. The only reason she even made it into Snape’s N.E.W.T. course was because he was especially hard on her. No, not like the unfortunate Neville Longbottom in Harry’s year. He didn’t bully her, per say. He just made her repeat detentions until she finally got everything right, like the harshest private tutor in existence. She wondered why Snape never did that for anyone else. Maybe he just got bored, and she was an easy target to torture.
Jessie ruminated over those thoughts as she reluctantly followed the handwritten instructions in the beat-up textbook. As much as she wished she didn’t get this special attention, Jessie had to admit that it worked out in her favor, academically. As expected, the potion turned as black as Snape’s outfit (a reflection of the soul? she pondered) and was ready for testing.
“Finished?”
Jessie jumped at the unexpected voice which came from behind her. She stepped out of the way, and Snape dropped a leaf into the brew. It shriveled and the edges started to burn until it had completely disappeared. His eyebrows raised slightly, which is quite a dramatic display for him. She could tell he was surprised.
“Good,” he commented tersely. Jessie relaxed in relief, but immediately froze back up again when he sharply turned to her. Snape’s eyes could have made a hole in her head with their intensity. “Why were you unable to do the same in class?” He demanded to know. That’s the thing about his questions…it was like being strapped down in a chair and interrogated.
“Um…” Jessie searched for an answer that would satisfy him, but there was none. “I guess I just got distracted and didn’t do the stirring right…”
His eyes narrowed, and Jessie thought he would make a good detective in a crime show. “Distracted…by…?” He asked slowly, extending the words and thereby increasing her apprehension.
Jessie grimaced and looked at literally anything but him. “I just mess up, or get distracted by people…and things…I don’t know. And then I do one little thing wrong, so I try to adjust to get it back the right way, but it never works…and then, boom, dead body smell.” She flicked her eyes back to him and ended her poor explanation with a half-hearted shrug.
Snape released a disappointed sigh. Jessie couldn’t tell if he knew she was somewhat lying about the object of her distraction. If he did know, Snape did not comment further on it. He just looked at her like he just ate an entire lemon. The sour puss, as McGonagall would say. “Why didn’t your partner help you? Miss Blair.”
That was very true.
“Well…sir…I guess...I didn’t want to bother her again," Jessie mumbled, embarrassed and trying her best to brush it off. "Not in class."
“That makes no sense at all.”
“I’m an idiot, and she’s saddled with me,” said Jessie outright, thinking of all the times Addie had to save her after spacing out and drooling at the thought of Cedric asking her for supplies.
“Idiots cannot brew acceptable Draughts,” replied Snape. At first, his tone sounded derisive, but the words could almost be construed as a compliment. “Aliquot the potion into five dozen 10 milliliter bottles, label and date them, and you are free to go,” he instructed her after the brief moment of silence.
That surprised her. The potion was good enough for him to collect? Wow. Jessie nodded, not sure what to say. It was almost like an honor. Very rarely did Snape collect students’ potions for his own supply.
Snape turned dramatically and stalked back to his desk. Jessie collected empty vials from the shelf and started writing the name of the potion and date on them. She placed on gloves and carefully ladled the draught, ensuring none touched her skin. Then, she waved her wand and banished the potion, staring at the bottom of her empty cauldron a bit longer than necessary. She wondered where it went, where all banished things go, and filed that question away in her brain as something to ask McGonagall, as it is a type of transfiguration.
“Have you finished with the vials?”
Jessie tensed again and lifted her gaze from the cauldron. Snape was once again missing from his desk and had miraculously snuck up on her. She really needed to pay more attention to her surroundings, not just the brewing. Jessie nodded once, answering Snape’s question, and he raised his wand. With one purposeful flick, the bottles started to levitate across the room and sort themselves accordingly in the padlocked storage room adjoined with the classroom.
Snape turned back to her and raised an eyebrow. “You are dismissed, Miss Potter.” He said, reminding her that the detention was now over.
Jessie looked at her cauldron again, her thoughts running interference with one another as they sorted themselves out. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “This all sort of came out of nowhere, didn’t it, sir? I mean, the Goblet. It’s probably just someone pranking me, right? Like you said before, even I could have confounded the thing—not to say that I did. I didn’t. I really didn’t. But another student my age could have. Literally anyone!”
Snape clenched his jaw. After five years, she knew that was a bad sign. “That very well could be the case.”
“Do you think I did it, sir?”
There was a pregnant pause, and Jessie got the weird feeling Snape that was looking into her very soul, trying to suss out the truth. “No, I do not.”
Jessie felt relieved, even though that didn’t change her situation. “Then why the hell—heck, sorry!—Why the heck do I have to do this?! Why is the will of an old, oversized cup dictating my safety?!” A bit of a hysterical trill wound its way into her voice.
Snape glared at her, but she got the sense that she was not the target of his ire. Just an unfortunate substitute. “I would direct that question to the Headmaster. Now, good evening, Miss Potter,” he said with finality, and Jessie took that as her queue to stop asking questions and leave.
“As I’ve mentioned before, I prefer a practical approach to things,” Moody started. With a slight grin at the apprehension which slowly spread across the room (the last ‘practical approach’ was him practicing nonverbals on them), Moody turned to the board and wrote in big letters: Repelling Dementors. “Can anyone tell me the charm used against Dementors?”
Jessie raised her hand slowly, seeing as no one else was going to do it. Of course, this was just too obviously geared towards her. He had to have heard the stories from last year.
Plus…she wanted to impress Cedric.
“Yes, Miss Potter,” Moody acknowledged her.
“The Patronus Charm,” answered Jessie.
“Good,” he replied quickly, as if expecting her answer. “And how do you know of it?” He asked, and Jessie got the distinct impression he already knew the answer to this, too.
Jessi grimaced before sardonically answering, “You know that time in every teenager’s life when their murderous godfather escapes Azkaban under the guise of killing the rest of your family, but then he just goes after a rat instead for an entire year, and you’re left dealing with a thousand dementors constantly after you, so you get help from a werewolf who is now on the Magical Welfare Program?” Jessie’s lips unwillingly formed a half-grin as giggles erupted around the classroom. “Pretty normal thing, right?”