Draught of Living Death
‘Yaxley!!!’
Snape watches with horror as the platinum haired boy drops the decidedly empty ladle back on the worktop, a dash of faintly purple, clear liquid tingeing the corners of his mouth. Then he collapses like a marionette which has had it’s strings cut, hitting his head on the bench on the way down.
‘Merlin Yaxley’s killed himself!’ Someone shouts, and another student screams, then bursts into tears.
‘Out of the way!’ Snape shouts, striding across the room. His sixth year potions students part like the red sea before him and he crouches down next to the idiot child in a pool of black robes. What the fuck had the little fucker been thinking? How could someone manage to brew such a complicated potion, yet be so stupid as to then imbibe it? Salazar, he hopes the boy had managed to correctly brew it, or he definitely would be dead.
Snape presses his fingers to the boy’s neck to feel for a pulse, whilst simultaneously casting a diagnostic charm.
‘He’s alive.’ He pronounces. ‘Kipling, go fetch Madam Pomfrey.’
‘Oh, thank Merlin.’ Someone gasps.
Then all hell breaks loose.
Severus had not been teaching long. About three hours and thirty four minutes, to be precise, and though he was quite used to keeping an eye on several complicated potions at once when brewing alone, he was not used to having to watch other people’s potions, whilst also dealing with class emergencies, such as some utter twat deciding to drink his own fucking Draught of Living Death. Merlin, when Yaxley wakes up, Snape is going to kill him.
His main priority is to get the antidote into the child before he overdoses. Or at least he thinks that is his first priority, until a cauldron which had been bubbling away unattended on the other side of the classroom explodes.
Someone jumps backwards into a bench at the sound, knocking over another cauldron and burning their arm on the flames in the process, and several other of the (already improperly brewed) potions are also beginning to smoke.
One of the students is still crying (probably Yaxley’s girlfriend) but that is the least of his worries right now.
Snape barks out orders, flicking his wand around the room to extinguish flames and banish burned brews, then summons the antidote from his stores.
By the time Poppy arrives, there is a semblance of order, and Yaxley is beginning to come around.
‘Merlin, Severus, what happened in here? It looks like a battle field.’ She remonstrates, hurrying to tend to the student with the burned arm.
‘Perhaps Mr Yaxley would like to enlighten us as to why he thought it a good idea to drink a whole ladleful of the Living Death Potion?’ Severus intones, eyes practically boring a hole into the blonde boy’s skull.
‘You said to test it when we were done sir.’ Yaxley mumbles weakly.
Severus pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales a breath, reminding himself that murdering children might be looked down on in his current profession.
‘With a petal Yaxley, as I clearly demonstrated at the start of the class.’ Snape grinds out.
‘He was too busy mooning over his girlfriend sir!’ Someone pipes up.
Yaxley lives (just about), but the entire class receives a ten minute lecture on listening to his instructions, following basic lab safety protocols, and generally not being such a blithering bunch of dunderheads, after which even Poppy looks quite chastised, even though the incident obviously had nothing to do with her, she was at least twenty years his senior, and had seen him in his underpants on several occasions.
Severus is beginning to regret his decision to take this job already.
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