29 Chapter 29
Myrtle continued to pirouette around Severus, looking at him in amazement. "I can't believe my eyes... you've changed too much!" Finally stopping right in front of him, the girl nodded gloomily.
And the Archmage, oddly enough, was even a little amused by this reaction. "All people change over time ...It's pretty normal."
"No one changes this much in such a short time." Myrtle denied his point.
"It's magic, Myrtle. By the way, where did you go? Usually you won't go out of here even at the threat of death."
Smiling, she again joyfully began to circle. "I help my house with freshmen, and the prefect with some things as well."
"That's it, I'm glad for you, but still don't overdo it, and if they start offending you, then just say it to me."
"Actually! Even though I look fourteen, I'm older than you!" proudly lifting her chin, the girl exclaimed menacingly, bringing a smile to the face of the Archmage.
"Of course, you're older, it's better to tell me what you did during the holidays.
"Hm! Before that it's time for you to go to class."
"I have time, so I'm listening to you carefully, Miss Myrtle."
"Why do I feel like you're mocking me?" pouting, the ghost drawled with displeasure, but nevertheless the childish spontaneity won out in her, and her face again lit up with a radiant smile...
***
The rest of the day turned out to be the hardest for Severus, because he could hardly hold back his sleep on all the subjects, and in one he really slept all over, throwing an illusion on himself.
The Wizard could not even imagine that such an interesting topic as divination could be so badly fucked up, and when an elderly teacher predicted impotence to him by fifty, he almost sent her, but restrained himself, because he was above this ... he just cursed, and now she all day after each phrase will repeat: "I'm a charlatan, spank me."
And it was not even worth talking about protection from the dark arts: apart from the theory completely according to the textbook, there was nothing, so he slept through the whole lesson under an illusion, and the teacher didn't even notice this, which confirmed the Archmage's thoughts about his incompetence.
But Severus did not blame the Headmaster for this, after all, every year he had to look for new ones. Due to Voldemort's curse, none of them could hold the position for more than a year, so many worthy Wizard s were afraid to take this position and only "these" remained.
The last subject was Apparition, which was taught by a real instructor from the Ministry of Magic, but basically the whole lesson was also devoted to theory, like the previous ones. This is how the whole day of the Archmage went…
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At around 9 o'clock after dinner, the young man finally decided to look at Slughorn to find out his opinion on those potions. And even though he knew that they would work, Severus still wanted to show him his trust and respect for the skills with this.
Even though Slughorn was a simple peak master, Severus, oddly enough, liked him, and in some ways Slughorn reminded him of his teacher from the past life, although their characters were radically different.
When Snape approached Slughorn's office, he was going to knock on the door but before he could do that, he was picked up by a gust of wind and simply dragged inside. and in front of Severus appeared the potion professor, but there was something different from his usual look and that was he was looking very young. As if he was back in his 30's.
"Severus, how to undo this potion!"
Finally, without holding back any longer, under the very angry look of the young Slughorn, Severus laughed out loud.
"Mr Snape! Stop laughing! It's not funny!"
"P-I'm sorry~pf! ~ ahem! ~ ahem!"
"Severus, stop laughing already! You better help me!"
"Professor, this is impossible, I have not yet come up with a potion that can remove this effect, but don't worry: it will last only twenty-four hours," Severus tried to calm the potion master, and at the same time Nagini crawled out, which nevertheless cooled Slughorn's ardor a little , but her hissing, similar to laughter, caused him slight annoyance.
"Oh! And what should I do now?! I have classes tomorrow! How am I going to show myself in front of my students!" exclaimed Slughorn with a rueful sigh as he sank into a chair and clutched at his luxuriant hair.
"Why did you even use it? Couldn't you have tested it on something else?"
"I tested it on a rat…" At the sight of Slughorn's slightly embarrassed face, Severus couldn't help but hit his forehead with his palm.
"I didn't think that it wouldn't work, I should have tried it on something else such as pixies or fairies, since they are closer to humans."
"I didn't expect such a thing from you professor, it's your own fault, I can't do anything, you will have to wait twenty-four hours… By the way, what do you think about potions?" Severus decided to change the topic, so as not to put Slughorn in an even more awkward position.
"Eh… I'm surprised that you could create them, but at the same time I'm proud that I taught you potions, and on the other hand, I want to kill you… but still, this potion interests me," a turquoise colored bottle appeared in Slughorn's hand.
"Once I had to work on something similar to this, and I noticed in it about a dozen ingredients from various beauty potions: fairy wings, morning dew, rose petal, dried cuff, unicorn hair, ginger root …"
"You are right, this is a beauty potion, but it affects not only external beauty, but deeper as well."
"Yes, it works from the inside , completely renewing the body and maintaining it in perfect condition for exactly a week, without side effects. The advantage of my potion is that you do not need to take a dozen others, but just one is enough."
"Hmm… understandable, clever… I take it you are going to bankrupt Madame Pimpernel?"
"Don't embarrass me, professor. I'm alone, and she has a whole team and a huge number of regular customers," the archmage languidly dismissed.
Slughorn pretended to believe him, and Nagini just snorted contemptuously, because she knew much more about Severus's plans for that shop.
"But I'm still amazed ... I can't even believe that you were able to create such a variety of potions in these three months …"
"I just had a good teacher...." Severus said.
"Sneaky"
'I learn from the best." Severus said with a half lidded smile.
"So you think I'm 'sneaky'?" the man drawled, narrowing his eyes unkindly, and Severus, stroking Nagini's head with a smile, looked at Slughorn with a challenge.
"Okay, today I'm in a good mood and I'll let this pass my ears ... Better tell me how you came up with the recipe for this potion."
"Of course. After returning to the Muggle world, the very next day, I decided to look into Diagon Alley in order to buy ingredients for practice, and there I saw Madame Primpernel's Rejuvenating Potions store, I was interested, and I went inside..."
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Five minutes before lights out, saying goodbye to Slughorn, he left the office and headed towards the living room with a strange feeling, as if forgetting about something... And at the same time, one Black kicked with all his might on the door of Snape's room, while puffing unhappily, and under the perplexed glances of other Slytherins, he went towards the stairs... "And he himself suggested that I meet him in the evening…."
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The next day, strange rumors were circulating around the castle about a new handsome potions teacher who was the eye of many upperclassmen, as well as about a poor divination teacher who was cursed by some terrible wizard, and because of this she was taken to Mungo.
But the Archmage didn't care much, because his day was almost completely spent in the library for the reason that, in addition to the discipline of the spell, which taught the correct waving of the wand and the pronunciation of the spells themselves, his whole day was completely free.
Severus mainly studied the information about the Basilisks in the forbidden section in order to know what these monsters were capable of in this world, and oddly enough, there was no big difference between them.
All the same abilities: a deadly look, and the creature that catches it immediately turns to stone; poison; strong skin, capable of blocking magical attacks, but this was not somehow confirmed, only the words of one author of the book, taken from an ancient manuscript; as well as huge size, strength and speed.
It can be said that it was a real weapon against wizards, kept in the school of magic. And the more Severus thought about Basilisk, the more it seemed to him that Salazar was a psycho who wanted to kill all the Wizard s, and hostility towards Mudbloods was just a mask to hide the real truth.
After all, what kind of idiot would keep such a dangerous little animal right next to the children? And if the monster goes mad, it will easily kill half the school before the teachers and Headmaster can intervene.
Of course, the Archmage had no "tender" feelings for students, teachers and the school in particular, with a few exceptions, but still, even in his opinion, this was real madness,
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Thank you for reading.
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