[HP] Astringent

The afternoon sun scorches the mottled stone road, but this does not stop people's enthusiasm for shopping.Vanessa, in a white polka-dot dress, sat under a parasol in front of Florin's Soda Shop, writing a book, this time about traveling with a lava monster on Mount Vesuvius.There was no need to be so anxious, but she received a reply from Dumbledore the day before yesterday. Since the former professor of Muggle studies decided to retire, she successfully took over the job.In order to ensure the progress of teaching work, she must complete most of the content before the start of school.

Dahei—the new name of the big black dog—was lying at her feet, lazily basking in the sun, panting with his tongue out.The whole dog has gained a lot of fat, and its fur is black and shiny, thanks to Harry's help. Dahei is not willing to let her take a bath, so only Harry can restrain it.

Harry greeted him friendly: "Good afternoon, Ms. Weasley." He walked through the crowd in twos and threes, squatted next to the big black, and gave it a roast leg of lamb, "How are you, buddy? "

Dahei rubbed his face, lowered his head and gnawed on the bone contentedly.

Vanessa tidied up the parchment and ink to make room for Harry.Harry spread the potions book on the table and sighed: "I really can't believe that Snape asked us to write "How to Correctly Distinguish the Similarities and Differences of Tranquilizers and Eases and Briefly Describe More Possibilities of Their Applications" To write 25 inches!"

Vanessa corrected without looking up: "It's Professor Snape, Harry."

She had heard him tell many stories about their feud, and she could only say that it was all fate.How should he face the son of the person he hates the most and the person he loves the most.But even so, he was still following Dumbledore's instructions to take care of him.But just imagining her heart hurts like being pulled.

"We haven't learned palliatives yet." Harry clattered through the "Intermediate Potion Making" at hand, and said with a sad face.

"Be patient, my dear, your mother's potion grades are very good." Of course, this is inseparable from the fact that she was once the most talented person in Hogwarts potions and was a good friend.Considering the man's vindictive character, it is estimated that Harry has suffered a lot.

A cloud covered the sun and cast a brief shadow on the earth. When the breeze came, Vanessa stretched comfortably.Dahei turned over in his sleep, exposing his belly.

"Tranquilizers are used to calm excited emotions, and palliatives are used to..." He began to turn to the book again.

"It is used to calm emotions such as irritability and anxiety." Vanessa said.

"Then what's the difference?"

"They target different emotions of people. You can understand that excited emotions are more positive and superficial, while irritability and anxiety are more negative emotions in the heart."

Harry hurriedly wrote down her words on the parchment, and sighed sincerely: "You still remember these? You must have learned the potions very well."

In fact, Vanessa's potion grades were not good, it should be said that all her grades were not good.If it wasn't for chasing Snape, she might not even be willing to open such a thick book once. Anyway, some boys who claim to be good at potions are willing to be with her in class and give her a pretty good score .

Vanessa still remembers that afternoon when she, Alice, and Annie sat lazily by the Black Lake that afternoon at the beginning of fifth grade.She had just gotten rid of the entanglement of several so-called ex-boyfriends, and she was in a particularly relaxed mood.She was idly leaning on the tree trunk beside her, carefully outlining the perfect lip shape in front of the makeup mirror.

Alice suddenly exclaimed: "Merlin, Potter and the others are coming. Look, Black turned around, is he looking at us?"

Vanessa admired her own beauty in the mirror, and smiled brightly in satisfaction, her cheeks were flushed from the sun, like a bright spring light.The four people were getting closer and closer, Potter looked this way, and quickened his pace foolishly.

Anne whispered, "They must be looking for Vanessa, who else here is more beautiful than her, and can attract the attention of Prince Gryffindor?"

Amidst their flattery, Vanessa became more confident, raised her chin proudly, and waited eagerly.

Potter, however, brushed past them and headed straight for the thick undergrowth behind.She turned around in astonishment, embarrassment mixed with anger welled up in her heart, but she didn't show it, and there was still a just right smile on her face.

"Evans!" Potter said excitedly.

"I don't think you're welcome here." Lily gave him a cold look.

Alice curled her lips in dissatisfaction: "It's her again, huh."

"Are all the boys in this school blind?" Anne chimed in, "She's not as good-looking as you, Vanessa!"

Although Vanessa didn't express any dissatisfaction on the surface, she actually disliked Evans a long time ago.She looked at Lily critically and snorted haughtily.

Lily and Potter quarreled, and Lily knocked Potter's hand off.

"I don't know what capital she has to be proud of, isn't it just that her grades are better, what's the use of it." Alice said eccentrically, "While hanging Potter and Snape, maybe she is enjoying it." .”

"It's time to teach her a lesson."

"Do you have any good ideas?"

Anne looked at Vanessa excitedly, and said, "Didn't you have little interest in Gryffindor boys recently, do you want to change your taste?"

Following her fingers, Vanessa noticed the boy in black beside Lily.He was holding a heavy book in his hand, and the schoolbag was full, which seemed to crush his thin back at any time. He was wearing a baggy black school uniform.The most obvious is the greasy hair, hanging on both sides of the pale cheeks, blocking his eyes, but the huge hooked nose is particularly eye-catching.Usually, she wouldn't even take a second look at such a boy.

Alice saw that she was not interested, and persuaded her, "Anyway, you don't have any new goals. It's not bad to change your genre. I heard that he is the only boy who is so close to Evans."

Vanessa sneered, "Evans' little follower?"

The two of them saw that she was not interested, so they stopped talking and started chatting about the latest skin care potion of this season.

The movement not far away caused Vanessa to take another look. Lily angrily led Snape around Potter and the others. Potter was still talking reluctantly, but did not catch up.

After taking two steps, Snape quietly took out his wand and silently cast a curse over there. Potter fell to the ground and scratched his back frantically.And Snape had followed Lily away.

Look, it turns out that it's not a little follower who doesn't have a sense of existence.She became a little interested: "That man's name is Si...what's the matter with Si?"

"Snape," Alice replied, "what? Changed your mind?"

Vanessa looked at her wine-red nails, and raised the corners of her mouth: "Anyway, I have nothing to do recently. Spend a month playing a small game." In the past, most of the boys she fell in love with would come to her door by herself, and a few were difficult to deal with. It only took half a month to get a little bit of it.This time it doesn't look too difficult.

"Snape is not such an easy guy to deal with."

"Don't you believe my charm?" Vanessa raised her eyebrows confidently, "May I make a bet?"

Things were far from going as planned, and Vanessa found that nothing seemed to attract Snape's attention except her study and Lily. Standing swayingly in front of Snape, she couldn't even change his expression—if If frowning counts, then she has gained a lot.

But Vanessa is not discouraged, the harder it is to get, the more she wants to get it.She cleverly changed her route and started by learning potions.

After class, she ran to the library with her potions textbook, walked through rows of bookshelves in an orderly manner, and saw Snape in front of the bookshelf classified as Dark Arts and Defense near the first section.He buried his head in the obscure spell book in front of him in a trance, his overlong hair hanging down the yellowed pages.Holding a quill with a fork at the end, he wrote something quickly on the parchment, and after a while he crossed out the few lines he just wrote.His eyes were locked and he was lost in thought.

I don't know if people are naturally attracted to people who are completely opposite to themselves.

Vanessa felt a strange emotion that she had never experienced before. In the past, wherever she went, she would deliberately brush her hair or clatter her high heels, but now she deliberately slowed down and walked lightly. to his side.

Snape was clearly still engrossed in the problem, and didn't notice that someone else was sitting next to him.The quill was out of water, and he impatiently scratched a few strokes at the corner of the paper, dipping the ink on his right hand without lifting his head.

Vanessa noticed that the bottle of ink had bottomed out, she didn't think much about it, she just thought he shouldn't be interrupted, and quietly opened her own ink and put it aside.

She spread out the potions book, without any notes, but the empty space was filled with vignettes she drew when she had nothing to do in class.Turning to the chapter on palliatives, she tried to read it, but couldn't get a single word of the boring potion formula into her mind, so she simply pushed the book forward and looked at the boy beside her.The warm yellow light from the desk lamp sprinkled softly on his face. A long piece of parchment had been written to the end, but he was still writing intently, his obsidian-like eyes shining brightly.

He was the most special person she had ever met.

That concentration, that attachment to the matter in front of her, was like a match, igniting her empty heart.

She has never been a person who has goals and is willing to work hard. She is like a butterfly, flapping her beautiful wings and lingering among the flowers day after day, but she doesn't even know which flower she likes the most.

The naked stare interrupted Snape's thoughts. No one had looked at him so blatantly for so long. He stared back angrily, only to see a pair of warm brown eyes that were harmless.The girl looked at him, as if looking at the world through him.

Vanessa was lost in her own thoughts, unable to recover even though Snape's impatience had become so obvious.

Snape had to say, "Miss Weasley."

Vanessa came back to her senses, her face was embarrassed because of the gaffe just now, and her cheeks were blushing: "You, are you out of ink?"

Only then did Snape realize that he turned his head uncomfortably, and said slightly sarcastically, "I didn't ask you to lend me ink."

"I thought what you wanted was to say thank you." Vanessa returned to her usual casual look, and smiled softly, "Or you can help me guide this potion paper, since I borrowed your ink for the sake."

Snape almost got up to leave, but sat back down again, looking at Vanessa reluctantly.She accidentally forgot what to say.Snape snorted impatiently again, expressing his dissatisfaction with the girl's IQ.He looked at the blank parchment in front of her, his eyes darkened, and his slender fingers tapped on the table: "I can't tell from a paper that only Miss Weasley can see that you have anything worth thinking about." The problem."

Even though she didn't care about her grades, she couldn't help being a little ashamed, and scrambled, "I don't know the difference between a pacifier and a tranquilizer, they look exactly the same."

This time even the corners of his mouth curled downward revealed contempt, pulling over Vanessa's book, sketching something.After a while, he closed the book heavily and fell into the girl's arms.He picked up his things and stood up, passing by her, said: "If you don't spend your time on useless things, at least you will know the difference between a palliative and a tranquilizer."

Vanessa found that all the knowledge points needed for this thesis were drawn in the book, and even the details such as the difference in the amount of evening primrose that caused the two potions to have different effects were circled.Lines of black ink pierced through the back of the paper, enough to show how angry he was—someone was so stupid that he couldn't even write such a simple paper.

With the key points in mind, Potions didn't seem so obscure, and she unexpectedly understood some of the fun of potions.

So many years have passed, and the potions textbook is still the same as before. Vanessa opened the book, easily found those knowledge points, and pointed it out to Harry: "You need to add 13 grams of evening primrose to the balm and Only 5 grams are needed in the tranquilizer... which affects the potency of both potions..."

Harry drew these, crooked a corner of the page, and said to her, "If only Snape...Professor," he added the suffix reluctantly, "could speak as carefully as you Well, he doesn’t say anything and asks us to know everything.”

Dahei deliberately agreed, barking twice.

Vanessa chuckled lightly, and maybe only she would remember those tiny and bright fragments, but the tiny joys beat in her heart through the long river of time.

"My professor didn't teach me anything either."

"Are you all self-taught? You must have a talent for potions."

"I don't..." Vanessa was about to clarify, when a sneer came from behind her, as if she had heard the funniest joke of the century, that sarcastic voice said: "I never thought that Miss Weasley is very talented in potions." He Deliberately slowing down the speed of speech, the humiliation became stronger, "But I'm not surprised that Potter sees that everyone has a talent for potions, because his little head dazzled by fame simply can't hold more complicated things."