"Well, it's not like the two of you were slacking. You were both seriously injured." She motioned to Harry's still bandaged left hand and right wrist.

"It's fine," he told her. "Thanks for the notes though." The way she'd highlighted and made extra comments on the pages of notes meant he and Ron would have to do less work to catch up. It appeared she'd already found time to start the defense homework as well between classes that day and had written notes on the first few pages of reading for them too.

Harry had to return to the Hospital Wing the next day to get the bandages removed and so Madam Pomfrey could give his healing burns one last check over.

"These are healing nicely," she told him. "The dittany seems to have done its work. There's some scarring, but not as much as there would have been if Professor Snape hadn't been able to treat you before bringing you up here. Speaking of, you'll need to go down and see him as soon as you're done here."

"But I have Charms class," Harry said. He'd come up during lunch to get the bandages removed, but still had Charms class to go to.

"You've been excused. I'm sure your friends can take notes for you."

"Yes maam."

Harry left the Hospital Wing and went down to the dungeons, uncertain if Snape would be in his office or in a class teaching. He found him in his office. Apparently he had Tuesday afternoon free.

He was expecting Harry and the door opened of its own accord as soon as Harry knocked.

"Sit down," Snape told him. Before Harry could even ask what he was doing there, Snape was up out of his chair and pulling a potion out of a little cupboard on one wall of his office along with a bowl.

"Do you know what this is Potter?" he asked, holding out a glass container with yellow liquid.

Harry shook his head and Snape handed him the potion. "Look at it. Open it up and smell it. Do not taste it."

He did as he was told, pulling the cork out of the bottle and swirling the potion around inside before sniffing at it. He gagged at the smell. It was sickly sweet but also putrid at the same time. "What is it sir?"

"Essense of murtlap with witch hazel. Murtlap has a distinctive smell you won't forget now that you've smelled it. Together with the witch hazel it's a strong topical healing potion that can help reduce and heal scarring. Roll up your sleeves and let me see the burns."

"That has to go on my skin?" Harry asked, dismayed. He couldn't deny he'd be happy to get rid of the fresh scars, but he didn't want to walk around smelling like putrid murtlap for the rest of the day.

"Once it touches your skin and begins its work to heal the scars it will no longer smell. It smells primarily because the murtlap oil has been off gassing in this container for months." He motioned for Harry to do as he'd been told and roll up his sleeves and then poured some of the yellow liquid into the little bowl.

"Is it going to hurt?" Harry asked warily. He'd had quite enough of pain in the last few days.

"No."

Harry laid his bare arms on the desk, palms up, and Snape pulled a clean cloth out of the little potions cabinet and put it into the bowl to soak up some of the potion, then dabbed it onto Harry's fresh scars.

"It tingles," Harry told him.

"That means it is doing its work. Madam Pomfrey used dittany to grow fresh skin over the burn areas. In the center of the fresh skin growth there's no blemish, but at the edges where it meets your old skin there is scarring. Applying this now will reduce the scarring. It could not be applied until your skin was fully regrown or it would have interfered with the dittany she applied."

He dabbed the potion onto Harry's right wrist and said, "Sit there with your arms on the table for a few minutes and I will apply the potion again when it has soaked into your skin. This can be applied up to five times in one day. With any luck it should remove most of the scarring before we get to the fifth application. Anything beyond five applications is not likely to work."

If he wanted to apply it five times in one sitting, Harry could see why he would have to miss his entire Charms class.

Snape had a seat in his chair across the desk and said, "You have had quite an eventful start of term Potter."

Feeling awkward just sitting there with his arms bared Harry looked up at him briefly and said, "I'd like a quiet term as much as you would."

Snape scoffed quietly. "That is doubtful. You have antagonized Umbridge to the point where she feels she must harass you in return."

"I haven't," Harry said, before quickly closing his mouth. He knew better than to argue with a man who could make his life hell if he wanted to. "I haven't been lately," Harry amended his statement at the piercing look he was getting from Snape. "She just follows me everywhere."

"Did you not attempt to make a nuisance of yourself asking her questions all through class and then going to her office every evening to pepper her with questions?"

Well, Harry had done that. When he didn't answer Snape stood up and moved back to the bowl of potion to apply a second round to Harry's arms. "Now she is enjoying repaying you in kind."

He frowned. "She's doing this to get even?" He was surprised.

"I do not know. The Headmaster believes she was always going to do what she could to ruin your reputation in the eyes of your peers and staff. She certainly appears to be enjoying herself while doing it however."

She was everywhere Harry turned. The only place she had stopped following him to was the Quidditch Pitch. Harry had even considered going outside more often just to get away from her because he didn't want to stay cooped up by himself in Gryffindor all weekend in his free time.

Between applications of the murtlap Snape sat at his desk and graded papers for five or ten minutes at a time. After the fifth application Snape held Harry's left arm up to look at his palm and wrist closely and then gave a nod of approval. "The scarring has been minimized as much as it can be." While he was looking at Harry's right wrist, Harry checked out his left hand. There was a faint line around the edges of where the burn had been, but it was so faint it wasn't noticeable unless Harry really looked hard.

"You may go to the remainder of Charms or go to dinner early," Snape told him. "Whatever you choose, you are to stay out of trouble."

"Yes sir."

"Do not do any potions work until class tomorrow as you do not have gloves to use at present."

Harry nodded and left, unsure how he was supposed to brew in class without gloves. His apprentice gloves had been burned through and were probably in a garbage bin in Snape's private lab. The man was supposed to provide what he needed, but Harry wasn't sure when or if he would. His question was answered the next day in double potions when Snape sent Harry to sit on the Slytherin side of the room with Goyle, and handed him a pair of soft black dragonhide brewing gloves. They looked like Snape's.

"Mr. Goyle, you would do well to listen to what Potter tells you to do during brewing today. This is the last day we have time to work on mastering the Emerald Drink Of Despair, and anyone who sits next to Potter seems to improve."

Harry was too busy examining the gloves to fret about sitting next to Goyle or to listen to the praise Snape had given him. These didn't just look like Snape's gloves, they were his gloves. He looked up at Snape in question, but the man only turned away and went over to Pansy to ask her to move to the Gryffindor side next to Parvati, who was also struggling with this particular potion.

Harry put Snape's gloves on, feeling strange wearing them. They were soft inside too, and thinner than what he was used to wearing. He could tell based on the type of leather that they were more protective even than apprentice grade gloves despite being thinner.

Goyle grunted and Harry came out of his thoughts to realize that the Slytherins seemed uncomfortable to have him sitting on their side of the classroom. Harry cleared his throat and asked Goyle quietly, "What did your last brew look like in class?"

"What's it to you?" Crabbe snapped at the workbench in front of them where he sat next to Draco.

"I want to help him but I need to know what went wrong with his last attempt at the potion." Harry hadn't been there for the previous class because he'd been in the Hospital Wing Monday, and he had no idea why Goyle was struggling with it. His potion could have exploded, or bubbled over or been sabotaged and Harry would have had no idea.

"It was green like it should be," Goyle grunted in an irritated way.

"What shade of green?" Harry asked him. "Dark, light, glowing?"

"Glowing light green," he said.

"You could have added too much powder of star anise. That would have made it fluoresce."

Goyle ignored him and went to gather supplies and Snape brought over a box with the supplies he wanted Harry to use. When Goyle came back, he looked confused.

"Why are your ingredients different? Are you making a different potion?"

"I'm making the same thing. He's trying to trip me up."

"He wouldn't do that," Milicent said behind him, already chopping flobberworms for her potion.

"I can already make it by the recipe," Harry said, not turning to look at her. "Once I can do that, he gives me the wrong amount of the ingredients so I'll have to calculate and make a new recipe that still has the right proportions. When I can do that he gives me the wrong ingredients and makes me figure out how to turn them into what I need." When he was finished looking at the powder he'd been given in a little jar and trying to determine what it was, he looked up and found Goyle, Crabbe and Draco staring at him.

"What?"

"You have to master the potion, and then master it again with the wrong ingredients?" Draco asked.

Harry motioned to the powder. "Powdered star anise mixed with powdered flobberworm. I have no idea how much of each is in here, so now I have to add it to the potion and judge based on what color and consistency and smell it has how much more I need to add." He looked into the box again and said, "I need bitter root leaves but I've been given boom berry leaves and blood root leaves, so I'll have to mix these in equal parts to get the same effect as bitter root and cancel out the poisonous oils in the blood root and boom berry."

"That's impossible," Goyle said, starting to measure out his ingredients. "You can't get bitter root by mixing blood root and boom berry."

"No," Harry said, "but we're only getting the oils from the bitter root leaves, which is why we crush them. The oil has something we need. If I mix the blood root and boom berry leaves and crush them I'll get the same thing out of the oil that comes from them."

"What is the thing in the oil?" Draco asked skeptically.

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. Some chemical."

"Then how do you know all that stuff can be mixed together?"

Harry reached down to his bag beneath the table and pulled out the apprentice book on ingredients. It had hundreds of ingredients, their properties, where they could be found and other information like which ingredients could be mixed together to get certain effects. It didn't have every ingredient out there, and Harry had wondered if he'd be given another apprentice book after he memorized this one that had more. If there was a new book like that it was probably something given to apprentices in their third or fifth year of apprenticeship.

"It's in here," Harry said. Snape asked him weekly where he was at in this book and his other apprentice texts now, and Harry noted that the things he found in the boxes of ingredients Snape gave him to work with in class were always things he had already read about.

Draco looked slightly impressed... or maybe not, and turned back around to work on his own potion without another word. Harry tried to keep track of where Goyle was with his potion as he worked with the ingredients in his own box trying to come up with something that would pass and wouldn't earn him a failing grade for the day, and several times reached out to stop Goyle from adding the wrong amount of something into his cauldron.

"That's too much, re-measure it," Harry said, stopping him from once again dumping too much powder of star anise into his cauldron.

"It says one measure," Goyle grouched at him.

"Yeah, but that's not one measure," Harry said, pointing at it. "Level it off. That's a measure plus almost another quarter of a measure." Harry picked up Goyle's knife and pushed it against the top edges of his measuring device to level off the amount of powder inside, making the extra fall onto the table. "There, put that in. If you're not precise your potion will be glowing again."

Crabbe seemed to be on the same step as Goyle at the table in front of them and took a moment to level his measuring device off as well. Harry turned around and found Blaise behind him next to Millicent doing the same thing and bit his lip trying not to laugh.

Goyle did pass his potion this time around, though he didn't say thanks to Harry or mention him as part of his success. Harry didn't mind as he was too busy fretting over his own potion. Draco turned around at the acrid stench coming out of Harry's cauldron and scrunched up his nose. The potion was hissing and smoke was coming up out of it.

"I thought you were supposed to be good at this Potter," Draco said.

Snape came over to look into Harry's cauldron and ignoring the blond asked Harry, "What went wrong?"

"I can't tell how much of the powder to add because the star anise is mixed in with the flobberworm already. I need a measure of star anise and half a measure of flobberworm, but I have no idea what ratio of each is in the powder. I thought maybe you'd given me a ratio of one to one half, but I guess not."

"What are the steps to find out what the ratio is?"

Harry gave him a bewildered look. It hadn't been anywhere in his apprentice texts, or at least if it was there he wasn't to that point in his reading yet.

"I don't know sir."

"Where did you obtain this powder mixture?"

"The box."

"And where did you obtain the box?"

"You," Harry said with a frown. Draco sniggered in front of him as he put his things away into his bag.

Snape turned to Draco and said, "Mr. Malfoy. What is the point that has gone over Potter's head?"

"He could have asked you," Draco said. He took a moment to smirk at Harry before leaving the room. The rest of the class was filing out now too on their way to lunch.

Harry huffed and moved to finish cleaning up his workstation. Neville gave Harry a sorry look on his way out as he was the last of their classmates to leave and Harry sighed. He wished he were just a regular student and not an apprentice. He did have fun sometimes with the extra challenge, and he couldn't deny he'd felt proud to be doing so well that Snape had him helping other students sometimes, but it would be nice not to have extra work on his plate. It would be nice to not have Snape staring at him as though he was waiting for some sort of answer Harry didn't know.

"Why did you not ask Mr. Potter?" Snape asked now that they were alone.

"I didn't think I was allowed to."

"You are my student, and my apprentice. Why would you not be allowed to ask for clarification regarding an ingredient you were uncertain about?"

"I thought you were trying to confuse me and wanted me to figure it out on my own."

"If you had been able to figure it out on your own, that would have been acceptable. However, my goal is that you should succeed with potions you are asked to brew. I presented you with a challenge. I did not present you with something I expected you to fail at. If you had acquired the ingredient from an apothecary or another potions master, would you have asked what the ratio of star anise to flobberworm was?"

"Yes."

"Then do so the next time you are uncertain about ingredients I have provided."

"Yes sir." He felt foolish now. It wasn't unreasonable to think the man wanted to challenge him and to figure it out on his own, but he could see now that he'd been stupid thinking the man was actively trying to give him a challenge so hard that he'd fail at it. It was in Snape's best interest to teach Harry what he needed to know to pass the first apprentice exam, not just to confuse him.

After he returned Snape's gloves to him and packed the last few things away into his bag and went to the door, Harry stopped and turned around and asked, "Is there another way to figure out the ratio though?"

"What does flobberworm powder react with?" Snape asked.

"Water," Harry said.

"How much flobberworm powder would gel a measure of water?"

"It's a one to one ratio. One measure of water to one measure of powdered flobberworm."

"With that knowledge could you have tested the powder in water to see how much powdered flobberworm was in a single measure of the powder you had been provided, and then from there figure out how much in each measure was star anise?"

"Yes sir," Harry said. "I'll do that next time."

Snape gave him a pointed look.

"Or I'll ask," he said. Snape gave a nod and turned away, so Harry left for lunch, still feeling foolish over the whole incident, and confused as to why Snape had let him wear the expensive master grade dragonhide gloves instead of just having Harry borrow an extra pair of student gloves from the lost and found.

* * *

"Do you wanna get out of the castle for a while?" Harry asked Hermione Friday afternoon. She'd been released from her Arithmancy class early, and since Harry no longer had Divination to go to, he had free time as well. Ron had been dragged out of the castle by Angelina for an extra practice since they were already two weeks into October now and their game against Slytherin was only two weeks away.

"I need to go to the library," she told him. She'd gone back to the common room just to drop off her books and pick up a new notebook. "We've been assigned a big project and I'm supposed to search for an arithmancy book I need to do research. It's going to take me the rest of the afternoon."

"Ok," Harry said, feeling bummed.

"I'll go," Neville said. Inspired by Ron and Harry's escape from Divination, he'd gotten permission from his gran to drop the subject as well just a few days prior. Neville's gran didn't think much of the subject of Divination to begin with, and had told Neville to put his extra hour and a half each week to good use studying for the upcoming OWLs.

"Yeah?" Harry asked. "I just wanna get out of the castle. I don't want to be locked up in here all the time and can't go anywhere inside without Umbridge being on my case."

"We can go down to the greenhouses," Neville said. "It'll be warm in there and I have permission from Professor Sprout to go in after hours so long as I stay out of greenhouse 5."

"Let's go," Harry told him. He ran up to the dorm to get his hoodie and the most recent book on vampires he'd checked out from the library, and then the two of them headed out of the castle.

"What are you reading?" Neville asked, pointing at the deep crimson book.

"Oh, it's a book about vampires."

"I thought you had only checked vampire books out to pester Professor Umbridge."

He shrugged. "It was interesting reading actually. I'd like to get more books about them from the defense section of the library, but there's no way Umbridge will let me into that section again. I found this one in the history section. Did you know the Ministry used to work with vampires? They can go into situations that aren't the safest since they can't die the same ways we can. There's this one that brewed potions and was always climbing to the top of mountains like Everest to get rare ingredients other people couldn't get to."

"That's interesting," Neville said. They made it to the greenhouses and Harry was glad to get in out of the chilly autumn air. It was cloudy out and windy and looked like it might rain.

"Look," Neville said, leading Harry over to a corner of the greenhouse to a large planter on a workbench filled with dirt. There was a spindly plant growing on one end, and a squat plant with thick glossy green leaves that looked like they were filled with liquid right next to it. "This is my planter. Professor Sprout said I could do what I wanted with it last year. Last year I was growing Mimbulus Mimbletonia. Over the summer I sold the three I grew and made twenty Galleons! This year I'm trying to hybridize this succulent with butterscotch borage. If I can, then the gel from inside the hybrid succulent could be used as an astringent. No one's ever hybridized a type of amnosia with a succulent before!"

Harry leaned in and inspected the two plants for a few moments and then stood up and looked at his friend. "You should look at one of my apprentice books sometime. One of them just has ingredients and their properties and information about them, and three fourths of the ingredients in the book are plants."

"Professor Snape wouldn't care if you let me look at it?"

Harry shook his head. He hadn't been told anything about not letting others see his books. Hermione had looked through them at the start of the school year. "I think you'd probably really like being a potions apprentice," Harry said. "We do a lot of gathering plants."

"Yeah but there's a lot of brewing too. I'll just stick with growing plants in a greenhouse," Neville said with a laugh. "When I graduate I want to get a piece of property somewhere out in the mountains and build a huge greenhouse and grow all sorts of things. I want to experiment with hybridization of plants that have never been mixed together before and see what I can come up with. Then you can buy the plants from me and make potions with them."

"I don't think so," Harry said. "I'm going to be an auror. I'm just stuck in this apprenticeship til my grades in potions go up. I ought to be able to make it through OWLs and NEWTs just fine now."

"Mr. Potter."

Harry and Neville turned and found Filch. "Aren't you out of bounds?"

"We're allowed to be here outside of class," Neville said. He looked as nervous as Harry felt to see Filch there. When had he come in? Had he been following Harry since Umbridge was still in class teaching?

"Yer allowed to be here outside of class," Filch corrected Neville with a toothy grin. "But this is out of bounds for you Potter. Best be on yer way."

Harry left without an argument, and Neville followed. Filch watched them until they were well away from the greenhouses.

"Did that seem creepy at all to you?" Harry asked.

"Yeah. Was he following us? I almost never see him outside the castle."

"Umbridge must have put him up to it."

"You can just get Professor Sprout to give you permission too. I'll tell her you're helping me. She'll give you a planter of your own to work with."

"That's ok," Harry said. It was nice in the greenhouse but it was apparently too easy to follow him down there and listen in on whatever he was saying. He hoped Filch hadn't heard him say he was only doing this apprenticeship for two years to raise his grades, though he thought he probably had. "I need somewhere else to lay low."

"The lake," Neville suggested.

"Yeah, but what about when it starts to rain and snow?" Harry was actually lamenting the fact that he'd lost the use of the greenhouses with Neville. Neville could have worked on his plants and Harry could have studied or read in the warmth of the greenhouse.

"You sure you don't want to start your own project? There must be something you could grow and say it was for your apprenticeship. Professor Sprout would approve you to be in the greenhouses whenever you wanted so long as it's before curfew." They turned and headed for the lake.

"There's this one mushroom actually," Harry said.

"Yeah? What is it? I've read about mushrooms some, but not too much yet."

"Shaggy Inkcap. There's a book of potions I've been reading from the library. It has some defensive potions and talks about chimaeric potions used for defense. Shaggy Inkcap is in the base for almost every chimaeric potion in the book, but professor Snape doesn't keep them stocked in the student supply cupboard, and I didn't see any in the other potions supply cupboards either."

"What other cupboards are there?"

"One in the corridor outside the upper year potions classroom and one in his private lab."

Neville shuddered. "His private lab? Is that deep in the dungeons somewhere?"

"It's in his quarters. That's where I was brewing when I got burned last week."

"Well can we find some shaggy inkcap here?" He motioned around them. The Hogwarts grounds were large, but Harry wasn't sure where to start looking. He had looked to see if shaggy inkcap was in his apprentice book of ingredients, but it wasn't even mentioned there. He'd meant to find another book of ingredients in the library, but had been steering clear of it as much as possible since every time he went, Umbridge or Filch showed up to ‘search' their study nook.

"If you could find some I could help you grow it. I did read about propagation of mushrooms. I don't think it will be too hard as mushrooms have a lot of spores. I don't think you'd be able to do it from dried or powdered mushroom though. You need a fresh one."

Harry nodded. "That'd be cool actually. It'd give me a reason to come outside more often. Not to the greenhouse though. I still want to find a better place to get away from Umbridge and Filch."

"Hagrid's cabin?"

"I'm not sure he's got space for me to grow mushrooms. It's getting cold out anyhow, do mushrooms really grow in the winter?"

"Greenhouse," Neville teased, still trying to convince him.

Harry caught sight of the Quidditch Pitch in the distance then and said, "What about the Pitch? She hasn't followed me out there for a while, and she knows I've been going to practices to watch the team."

They abandoned their trek to the lake and turned towards the Pitch just as the sky opened up and began to sprinkle.

"Are you thinking of the changing rooms?" Neville asked. "Or the upper stands? The boxes the teacher's sit in are covered, but there'd be no guarantee someone wouldn't come and mess with what you're growing."

"No," Harry said. They picked up their pace, wanting to get out of the rain. By the time they made the Pitch there was a full drizzle.

"Wait, aren't we going inside?" Neville asked when Harry turned from the entrance and started walking around the outside.

"I was thinking we might find a good spot to sneak underneath." He began looking for a rip in the heavy canvas fabric that covered the underside of the Pitch on the inside and outside. He'd never seen under the Pitch, but assumed it was just framed out with wood, and wasn't a solid stone structure like the castle.

As they circled, still not finding any openings in the fabric, they came around to the spot where the Gryffindor changing rooms were. Harry knew the changing rooms were there because there was Gryffindor fabric on both sides of the wooden structure which they could see from the outside. "Here, help me with this," he said. He put his fingers behind a piece of the Gryffindor canvas and pulled, hoping to dislodge it without ripping it. He didn't want to vandalize the Pitch, he just wanted to get underneath.

Neville pulled too and after a good tug the bottom corner of the canvas came away from where it had been nailed into the wood frame, and Harry and Neville climbed underneath, lighting their wands to give them light. They were soaking wet and glad for the shelter.

"Here's the wall of the Gryffindor changing room," Harry said, knocking on the only solid wood wall. On either side of them was canvas which kept the wind and rain out. The canvas was attached to heavy wooden beams that framed in the structure of the Pitch, and high above them there was a wooden ceiling, which Harry assumed was the floor of the stands students sat in to watch matches. There was a hole in the ceiling that let a little light in, though not enough to really see by, and dirt under their feet, along with a few loose boards that had fallen from high up at some point and were on the ground.

"This could work actually," Neville said, looking around. "I mean, you couldn't keep it warm like a greenhouse, but fungus doesn't necessarily need sunlight to grow since it doesn't get its energy from photosynthesis. You'd just need a plant or some rotting wood for the mushrooms to eat away at."

"I thought you said you didn't know much about mushrooms," Harry said with a grin.

"Well, not as much as I know about hybridizing plants. I'll have to find a book about it."

"If you do, I'd like to read it. I've been keeping out of the library."

"Now we just need a mushroom to start us off. What was it called, the one you wanted to grow?"

"Shaggy inkcap."

After twenty minutes, the rain slowed down and they headed back out of their makeshift shelter. Harry used his wand to stick the flap of canvas back down to the wood again to make sure it didn't flap in the wind and rip or let water into the little hideaway under the Pitch.

Before they got back to the castle, Neville agreed to find a book from the library about propagating mushrooms and other types of fungus, and Harry decided to ask Snape about shaggy inkcap, or if he had a book about more types of fungus. He was known for growing mushrooms so Harry hoped he'd have a book and not question Harry too much about his interest in it.

Harry went to Potions lab Saturday with Hermione and practiced the potion he'd failed Thursday in class, and after the lab was over he approached Snape.

"Sir?"

"Yes Potter."

"My apprentice book has a lot of information about mushrooms, but do you know of a book I could look through that has information on all mushrooms? Soren and Leighton said you were known for growing and selling them."

"Flourishing Fungus," he said. "It does not list all types but has enough information on common funguses found in this hemisphere to be useful."

"Is that in the library?" Harry asked.

He motioned for Harry to follow him out of the classroom, and led him to his quarters. Harry tried not to think about the last time he'd been here, sitting on the man's bathroom floor badly burned.

"What's your interest in fungus Potter?" he asked after they'd made it inside his quarters. He moved for one of several bookshelves in the living room and began looking through the titles. Harry was interested to see that he had shelves that were dedicated to subjects other than potions as well. There was even a bookcase full of defense books he wished he could look through.

"I was reading about defensive chimaeric potions," he said. "There's a few mushrooms they mention over and over and they're not in my apprentice book."

"Shaggy inkcap," Snape said.

"Yes sir."

"I have seen it growing on the grounds near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, usually up against boulders in grassy areas."

"Oh."

"Yellow Staghorn is also used frequently in chimaeric potions. That is found deep in the Forbidden Forest. There is also Lilac Bonnet, usually found growing under beech trees. I have not seen any of that on school grounds though I do have a jar of dried lilac bonnet in my private lab." He found the book he was looking for, and pulled it off the shelf.

"This is my personal copy and I expect to get it back in the same condition it was loaned to you."

"Yes sir."

He handed the book to Harry and then turned to his desk which was up against a wall by the door leading back into the corridor. There was a package on top wrapped in twine. He picked that up and handed it to Harry as well. "Your new apprentice gloves. They came by owl this morning."

"Thank you," Harry said.

"Now that they have arrived, we will attempt the caustic potion that led to the accident again."

Harry looked up at him and Severus looked away at the fear he found in Harry's eyes.

"We will approach the potion with caution, and you will not be burned again."

Harry looked down and bit his lip. He didn't want to work with caustic potions ever again. Once was more than enough.

"Say what you have to say," Severus said.

"Do we have to?"

"Are you asking because you are afraid of another accident?"

Harry shrugged.

"There are several caustic potions on the NEWT examination that are taught in seventh year. You will have to prepare caustic potions again at some point. It is best if we attempt this potion again and that you learn how to handle the ingredients properly." Despite the dunderheaded moves the first and second years often made in potions, it was the seventh years that were injured the most often in potions class. Two years prior a seventh year had made his potion explode by adding the wrong thing and his entire seventh year NEWT class had been splattered by a caustic potion. No one had escaped being burned, though the splatters were small and easily treatable compared to what Harry had experienced. He couldn't say he blamed the boy for not wanting to brew with caustic ingredients anymore, but the best way over his fear was to start brewing them again right away.

"Yes sir."

"We will not attempt it today. Perhaps after Halloween."

The boy seemed to have let the tension out of his shoulders after being told they weren't attempting the potion again right away.

He dismissed Harry and Harry left with the book and new gloves. Back in his dorm that evening Harry opened the package and was surprised when he found that the new pair of gloves was thin like Snape's and soft. They were brown but made of a different material than Harry's old apprentice gloves had been. Just like his previous pair of apprentice gloves, this one came with a card with information about them.

Master Grade Dragonhide Gloves
Burn proof up to grade seven caustic ingredients and grade 5 caustic potions.
Made from the leather of a fire breathing Wyvern named Torvik that once tormented the residents of Hattarvík in the Northern Faroe Islands.
No dragons were harmed to procure the leather for these gloves.

Harry was stunned. Student grade dragonhide gloves cost two Galleons. Apprentice grade dragonhide gloves cost five. He couldn't imagine what these must have cost Snape and wasn't certain why the man would buy them for him. He was required to get him new gloves, but he could have bought student grade ones for him like the rest of his friends had, or even just found a pair of used apprentice gloves since they were so expensive.

Harry pulled them on. They felt just like the ones Snape had but were different in their own way. These were smaller than Snape's and fit Harry's hands better. When Harry brought them closer to examine the leather further he found that the leather glistened in the light... it was as if something embedded deep within the leather was sparkling red.

Harry had never really had many nice things before. He had his father's invisibility cloak, which shimmered like these gloves, and the Firebolt from Sirius which he was now banned from using. Along with his photo album of his parents, those were his most prized possessions. They'd been given to him by people he loved, who loved him in return. Harry didn't love Snape, and he actually laughed out loud there alone in the dorms at the thought that Snape cared about him at all, but the gloves meant something to him nonetheless. Maybe it wasn't fair to say Snape didn't care at all. These gloves were made to keep brewers safe from caustic potions and ingredients. After the incident two weeks ago, he clearly didn't want to see Harry burned again if he had bought these. Perhaps it had been just as traumatic for Snape to treat the burns as it had been for Harry to receive them. Whether he cared about Harry not getting burned or not, Harry couldn't help but feel like these gloves were now amongst his prized possessions. He'd certainly feel safer wearing them when brewing with caustic ingredients.

Harry lay back on his bed, still wearing the gloves and held them up to look at again. The dormitory door opened and Dean came in. "What've you got there?" he asked curiously.

"New dragonhide gloves."

"Oh yeah," he said, "because your old ones got ruined?" Dean came over and looked and then whistled. "Where'd you buy them from?"

"I didn't," Harry said. "My potions master has to provide them for me."

Everyone knew Harry was a potions apprentice now, but few knew that Snape was the one he'd been apprenticed to. Some of the other kids had questioned why Harry had been made to brew in Snape's private lab after he'd been burned, but Harry had only told them it was part of his apprenticeship. It made sense to them given that Snape was the castle's resident potions master.

"Well they're nice," Dean said with a smile. "I'm glad you've got nice things this year." He moved off to his wardrobe to get ready for bed. Like the other boys in the dorm Dean had frequently brought extra clothes from home for Harry to wear each year knowing he had nothing decent. This year he'd even brought a few extra notebooks and a pack of Muggle pencils for Harry. Harry had explained at the start of the year that he had all he needed now but Dean had told him, ‘My mum picked those out just for you. You keep them. She'd want you to use them.'

When Seamus came in a minute later and kept his eyes resolutely in the opposite direction of Harry, the stark contrast between he and Dean made Harry sad. He missed joking around with Seamus. He wasn't friends with Dean and Seamus like he was with Ron and like he was becoming with Neville, but they had all gotten along well together before now. Now Seamus ignored him, and if he couldn't he snapped at him or acted like Harry was an annoyance. He wasn't calling him names or saying, ‘Potter sucks,' every time Harry passed like the Hufflepuffs did on a daily basis, but it still made Harry sad that he had lost a friend. He supposed he deserved it, because he had made a lot of people lose a friend when he had let Cedric die.

Harry took off his new gloves and stuck them in his bag so they'd be ready to go to potion's class Monday morning. In the last six months life had changed for him in so many ways, and he wasn't certain he could find a single way that was good, though the gloves stayed on his mind as he drifted off to sleep. In his dreams that night he wore the new gloves and fought off a Wyvern on some distant storm ravaged island in the middle of the sea. "That's my hide you're wearing protecting your hands from the flames of my breath," the Wyvern told him in a break in the battle. "Why fight me so hard?" Harry didn't know, and forgot the dream as soon as he woke the next morning.