Fear Draws People Together

Vivi ignored Snape's snide tone. She watched his movements, waiting for the Potions professor to change the subject.

Or rather, to choose one that was not quite so aggressive.

That was how Snape was. As long as you did not take his first wave of verbal assault, he would not be too aggressively hostile afterward.

Provided your surname was not Potter, and you were not a Gryffindor.

"What are you looking at?" Snape finally could not help asking after working for a while.

"Shrimp," Vivi said.

"Colorful Mantis Shrimp, native to Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean." Snape fished a fresh one out of the bucket. "When alive, it can shatter crab shells with its appendages, with an impact force equivalent to a small-caliber Muggle firearm. After death, the chitin structure of its carapace remains active and serves as a stabilizer in more than a dozen advanced potions. If you had spent a little more time listening in Potions class at Hogwarts instead of whispering sweet nothings in the corridors with that bespectacled boy, you would already know that."

Vivi did not particularly feel like talking. In any case, Professor Sharpe had always given her a score of 0 back then.

As for Professor Snape's personal standards of judgment, she did not consider them objective.

"I'm just curious why you're processing these ingredients yourself. If I remember correctly, you always had students in detention handle potion ingredients, didn't you?"

"Because I do not want students who cannot even tell Porcupine quills from hedgehog spines touching my ingredients." Professor Snape's mockery was icy. "In last year's sixth-year Potions class, Lavender Brown poured an entire bottle of African Tree Snake Skin into a Swelling Solution because she felt it was not green enough. If you think I would hand Colorful Mantis Shrimp