The Half-Blood Prince (princesnivellus) wrote in aparecium_log, @ 2008-04-07 11:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | mary macdonald, severus snape |
RP: (Almost) Failing Herbology
Characters: Mary MacDonald, Severus Snape
Date: 7 September 1977
Place: Herbology Greenhouses, Hogwarts
Summary: Mary and Severus have to work together. With unpleasant results.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mandrake Death. Jinxes. Languages. Mild violence.
Mary pulled her gloves on and eyed the pots with consternation. The Mandrakes were little still, and due to be repotted. Even though Professor Sprout had said that they should be safe without earmuffs this first repotting they were both wearing them. Somehow the pink earmuffs on Snape's head cheered her even as nothing else did. This was not a day she had been looking forward to. In fact she'd been dreading it all week. There was a whole table to be worked through and little else to do but just slog through it. When they were done though there would be note taking and all sorts of other frivolities she would have rather dispensed with.
She hated Professor Sprout. Really.
Her eyes flicked over to where Snape was working. Perhaps if she just didn't pay attention to him.
Severus was staring at the mandrake he was repotting, wondering if it was too young to be taught insurrection. He had amused himself imagining an entire table full of mandrakes jumping on Sprout and screaming, maybe waving little flags with the Slytherin crest on them as they did so.
He poked the mandrake's stomach, watching as it writhed. It was very strange, the way it looked like an ugly little person. He imagined it was James Potter he was burying in soil and went back to work, potting it with relish and pretending he didn't notice that MacDonald kept shooting him disgusted glances. It was like she was waiting for him to say something vile. That amused him, too.
God these things were disgusting. Like dirty, rotten versions of miscarried babies she'd seen once at a strange museum in Berlin. They'd been the subject of some sort of study and that was even worse. Right now they closed their eyes and made little mewling noises and tried to cuddle with her hand and she was rather disturbed by it. And Snape was playing with them... typical.
She gently placed one in the pot, prying her finger from its iron grip and then began to shovel dirt over it. This could take a long time. Then the little bastard bit her, and it stung even through the glove.
"Shite."
Severus looked up from his pot. "Smack it."
Mary gave him a look. "I'm not going to smack it." She tried to shove it in the pot and it went to bite her again. "Bugger." So she smacked it and then winced as the thing started to cry. "Oh here. Have some dirt."
Severus smirked. "Oh don't worry," he said dryly, "Mandrakes are such fierce, difficult creatures. I'm sure it's not pathetic that you can't best one."
Her head snapped up and she glared at him. "Shut it, Snape. I didn't ask you." And then she did shove the creature down in the pot and whacked it over the head with the trowel for good measure. For a moment she thought she killed it but then it started to move again and she quickly filled the pot with dirt and followed it up with a dose of fertilizer.
She reached for a second pop and considered the next one. This time she wouldn't let it get the best of her.
"Oh, did I give the impression of caring what you thought? Pardon me," Severus uttered sarcastically. He pulled out the next mandrake, but was watching hers as he plopped it into the bigger pot. "Come on, MacDonald, this shouldn't be difficult for a seventh year."
Mary looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. "I ask you to shut it and yet you still keep talking to me, don't you?" It was enough for her to forget she was a prefect. The next Mandrake she unpotted, shoved hard into the other pot, and hit down with the gardening trowel before it could budge. There. Better. Damn Snape.
She reached for another pot just as he reached for his. Fine then. He wanted a contest. Brilliant.
Severus' eyes narrowed, and he grabbed the pot, slamming it down on the table and yanking the next mandrake out of its pot. It didn't like that, judging by the way it carried on, but he stuffed it in the pot along with some soil and fertilizer and moved to the next, each time quickening his movements as he watched her try to speed up her own re-potting. Even he realised it was childish, to make a contest out of re-potting mandrakes, but it was much less boring than what he'd been doing, and whacking them with the trowel when they misbehaved was enjoyable. It was even rather amusing to watch her smack away at them - mostly because he liked that he was making her angry. Not that it was hard.
Damn the mandrakes were squirmy little things. And they made such pathetic noises. She tried to remind herself they were just plants and that in a short time they'd be able to hurt them and be much larger. Something to keep in mind.
They had done ten each and there were ten left. She reached for one just as Snape did and pulled it out of his grasp, plucking the mandrake out by its stalk and ignoring the squalling.
When she reached for her pot it was gone and she looked up to glare at Snape before taking another.
Severus glared right back, waiting so he could childishly grab the next mandrake she was reaching for. He dumped it in its new pot and thwacked it over the head, though he scarce looked away from MacDonald long enough to throw the dirt on, and then he was trying to snatch another away from her.
Mary's mouth dropped open in shock, because what the hell was Snape playing at? And besides. Those were her mandrakes. They were on her side.
"That one's mine!" She pulled the pot towards her and glared at him over it. "Hands off it Snape." They were close in height and he was nearly as skinny as she was. The mandrake in the pot squealed in protest and she shoved the pot towards Snape and then pulled it back quickly before he could grab it.
Before he could do anything else she had the mandrake out of the pot and securely in her grasp as it twisted, mewling.
"How exactly is it yours?" Severus demanded, then dropped the trowel and grabbed his wand, hitting it with a stinging hex to make it angrier, hoping it would manage to bite her again.
The mandrake squealed and sunk its fangs into her hand, biting through the glove and making her cry out and drop it. Before Snape could react she shoved it at him, still raging and angry, and headed directly for him. "Here. Then you have it." She took her glove off and stepped away. It was bleeding and there was dirt in it and fuck it stung.
Damn Snape. She bit her lip and applied pressure to her hand.
"Bloody hell," Severus swore as he caught it and it bit his thumb. His first reaction was to throw it - which he did - and though they weren't so loud that the earmuffs were a complete necessity, he found out just how loud it could yowl at this age when it hit the ground on the other side of the table. "Cow."
"Arse." She knelt down despite her bleeding thing and caught the thing in a burlap potting sack before carefully placing it in its pot and covering it up. By now she had dirt all over her hands and in her bite and there were a few more to do.
She wiped the dirt off with her hands.
"Let's just finish, shall we. And I thought we intended to avoid each other." Her eyebrow quirked up in irritation. "Unless this is your way of avoiding, in which case, well done only not."
"You're not doing a very good job of avoiding either," Severus pointed out. He set his wand back on the table angrily and grabbed one of the few remaining mandrakes. "I thought you lot were only happy to pretend I didn't exist," he added, sneering.
Mary gave him a withering look, wondering where that had come from. "It's rather hard to do that, isn't it, when you're such a complete bastard all the time." She took another mandrake, this time being more careful to take it out. She felt a pang of guilt for the others. Hopefully they wouldn't suffer from such rough treatment.
"I try," Severus bit out, repotting the next mandrake with jerky movements. He hoped all her mandrakes died.
"I can tell." She patted the dirt over that one and began to put fertilizer on all hers. Hopefully it would sort of lull them into thinking it had all been a bad dream. Maybe she should sing to them?
"Do you think we should sing to them? One of the books said they like that." It was a complete lie but wouldn't it be funny if he did? Would serve him right too.
Severus narrowed his eyes at her. "Don't be insipid. We are doing no such thing."
"Oh. I don't know. It might be fun. And besides. I'm a Gryffindor. You already think I'm insipid." She reached for the watering can and began to hum. Strangely, the Mandrakes began to settle down in their pots. Of course she might have been humming the theme from Snow White. Interesting to see if Lily was right.
"That's because you are - don't hum," he insisted, looking over his pots to make certain they all looked right. Thanks to their competition, they'd finished quickly.
"Alright then. I can sing." She had a rather wretched singing voice, and she hoped the mandrakes didn't all die from it. Still, if it irritated Snape. "Someday my prince will come. Someday some something some. Bugger. I don't know the lyrics just the -" She broke off to stare at Snape. "Are you alright?"
Severus' surprise at that had somehow translated into an all-over, giant twitch, and he'd knocked his pot over. Then, when he looked up and saw her staring at him like that, he turned sharply and knocked it with his elbow, and the pot shot off the table and shattered on the ground. "Piss off," he blurted, and dropped to the ground, embarrassed and using cleaning up his mandrake as an excuse to hide. Salazar, that stupid song should not be able to provoke such an awkward reaction!
Mary's eyebrows shot up and she wondered what Snow White had to do with Snape. The Mandrake was squalling on the ground and she shoved a new pot at him before turning quickly away and hoping he wasn't going to hex her.
"Here. And mind the broken pottery. Sprout will dock us points." She repaired the pot with a wave of her wand and began to arrange the others on the greenhouse shelf. Giving him time to do... whatever he was doing down there. Impersonating someone at the wailing wall, perhaps.
Severus' hands trembled as he tried to get hold of the mandrake, but after dodging its snapping jaws several times, it sank its surprisingly sharp teeth into the fleshy part of his hand, and in a fit of rage he grabbed the fallen trowel and stabbed the pointy end through its forehead. It jerked and stopped moving, and he hissed when he realised he might've killed it. "Piss it," he hissed, yanking the trowel out and stuffing it into the new pot anyway. He was not getting docked points for that.
He popped back up a moment later, dropping the hastily covered mandrake back onto the table. Its stalks were sort of slumped over in the pot, but he wasn't going to bother fiddling with it and draw attention to the fact that it might be dead. Fuck, if they were down a mandrake, Sprout would probably mark them lower on the assignment. "Congratulations, MacDonald, no one's singing has pained me as much as yours. I've heard better voices from the mandrakes."
"I never said I could sing." Mary looked at him suspiciously. The mandrake looked a bit off. Very off. She reached for the pot and poked it with her wand. It didn't move and she looked back up at Snape.
"You killed it! These things are supposed to be near impossible to kill." She dug it out of the pot and looked at it. It was just a plant of course, and it was set to be chopped into pieces and used for various things but she still felt a little badly about it.
She stared down at it for a moment, lips pursed. "If we get a lower grade, I'm blaming you."
"Put it back," Severus snapped, trying to glance around at the other tables without appearing to do so. "We'll make a switch with someone else's."
Mary's eyes widened. The prefect in her who had a very strong sense of fair play was warring with the over achiever who couldn't stand to get a lower grade than anyone else. And her Herbology grade, at least, had always been one of the highest in the class.
She met Snape's eyes and then put the dead Mandrake back in its pot, putting dirt on top. "I can't believe we're doing this," she hissed as just then Professor Sprout walked by, smiled at their work benignly, then continued on her way as Mary tried to look innocent.
"Not with Frank and Alice though. Fenwick? He's a complete nutter. He'll just blame it on the Ministry." She tried to not feel guilty about it. But this was her grade. And it was Snape's fault. If he hadn't been such an arse.
"Well then," Severus uttered, grabbing the pot, "time to join the Ministry conspiracy. Do you know him? Go talk to him." He gave her a cursory glance, surprised she wasn't making more of a fuss. Little Miss Perfect Prefect cared more about her marks than integrity. He'd make a comment later, after their assignment was no longer in danger.
"I'm not going to.." He was looking at her strangely and Mary felt a sudden stab of uncertainty. "He'll want to talk about Pigeons. Supposedly there was one wandering around the dorms and scaring people. And.." She took the pot away from him. "It's too much of a risk. We'll just have to pretend we didn't know what happened to it."
"Don't be stupid," he insisted, snatching the pot back. "I am not getting a lower mark, and I'm certain you don't want one either. Do you know what happens if one dies? She'll probably give us a T."
Mary met his eyes, feeling her stomach sinking. A T? She'd never even gotten an A well except the one and they weren't going to talk about that were they? She was trying to block it from her memory.
"I know," she snapped. "And I'm not stupid just... it's Fenwick. He probably has alarms set around all of his or something!"
"Well if he set up wards, break them," Severus said dismissively, as if it were just that easy. He lowered his voice, afraid they could be overheard. "Who better to get our T than Fenwick?"
"SNAPE!" Now he was irritating her. "We are not discussing this. Period. I'm not going to give someone else our T."
"Tea dearies? Why it's barely even lunch." Professor Sprout swanned into view and paused beside them, beaming.
Mary's eyes widened and she was very glad Snape was currently holding the pot. "Professor Sprout. We have a -" she was going to say a problem or a dead mandrake or something, but instead she blurted out, "finished."
Severus quickly set the pot in with the others, relieved that she hadn't told Sprout what happened.
"Finished with the repotting," Sprout repeated, smiling. "Well then, you've got more work to do, haven't you?"
"Yeah we were just about to start the rest of it," Severus said.
Mary just nodded and they had to listen to Sprout go into a long conversation about the benefits of different fertilizers and the appropriate types of graphs to use to chart their Mandrake's growth. Usually Mary didn't mind Professor Sprout, but right now she really wanted her to walk the other way.
When she'd finally left, Mary looked over at Snape with narrowed eyes. "I bet i can predict how that Mandrake is going to grow."
"Which is why we've got to foist it off on someone else," Severus uttered insistently, ignoring that it was his fault to begin with. It was her singing that damn song that did it, not him.
"I'm not foisting it off on someone else!" Mary glared at Snape. They just stared at each other and Mary folded her arms, not willing to budge. "And that's it." She turned away and began to clean up their table. "Now we need to finish the rest of the work."
"Why bother, we're going to get a T anyway," Severus uttered angrily, folding his arms and glaring at her back.
Mary waved her wand over the table, banishing the dirt into a neat pile. "We're not going to get a T. An E, maybe." She frowned at that and her eyes went back over to the pot. She'd not gotten all the grades she'd wanted in class, that was for certain. She'd been mortified to get an E on her Herbology owl rather than an O. So she'd been working extra hard in class to try better for the NEWT. And now this.
Her eyes looked up to meet Snape's. He was still glaring at her. "Fine." She let the dirt spill back over the table. "But you're the one that killed it, so you're doing it."
"I'll make the switch, but you ought to at least help," Severus insisted. "If I go round looking for someplace to switch this out, they'll think I'm up to something. Go talk about what a nasty git I am or something so I can figure out what to do with this thing."
Her lips turned up at the corners. "Now that I can do."
She brushed her hands off on her trousers and went over to ask something of some of the others. It certainly wasn't hard to complain about Snape and she came back with extra fertilizer a few moments later. He was working on something and she stopped next to him, leaning in and speaking quietly as she put the moon calf dung down.
"Well?"
Severus took a step away from her and gestured to the much healthier mandrake pot in front of him. "There."
Mary made a little face. "I don't even want to know."
"Yes, don't worry, your hands are clean of this dark deed," Severus said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
Her lips pressed together. "And what exactly is that supposed to mean? And I think you'd be used to dark deeds by now, considering."
Irritated, Severus turned to face her, folding his arms, his gaze challenging. "Considering what, MacDonald?"
Mary raised an eyebrow. "Considering who your friends are." She began to make notes, bent over the table. It was uncomfortable because she was so tall and her quill kept skipping.
"Oh yes, well, I suppose that makes sense," Severus said with forced casualness, watching her work and hoping it unnerved her. "After all, you're an irritating cow, just like all your friends."
"That stings, that does." Mary finished the notations and looked up, making a face. "I'll cry in my pillow tonight because you called me a cow. Now are we done?"
"I'd think you'd be a little more worried about irritating me," Severus uttered, his voice dropping, "considering who my friends are."
Mary froze at the sound of his voice. For a moment, she'd been so caught up in their stupid argument that she'd almost forgotten that even if he was just an irritating arse, his friends weren't.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, looking at him and trying not to let a flicker of discomfort cross her face. "Are you threatening me?"
Severus leaned against the table, eying her coldly. "I'm simply stating the facts as they are. I don't bother with threats."
Mary met his eyes. "Piss off Snape. You and your friends both." She turned away and began to gather up her things. Herbology was nearly over.
Severus was itching to hex her right there, but he didn't want to do so with so many potential witnesses. Besides which, they still had to get through this stupid project, and while fighting with her was more interesting than the mandrakes, he couldn't risk losing control of his temper and killing any more of them. Although it had been rather satisfying to stab a big hole in that one's screaming head. His gaze flickered up past Mary's eyes to her forehead, picturing what she'd look like with a bloody trowel sticking out of it.
"Don't say anything you might come to regret, MacDonald."
Her temper was getting the best of her and despite her fear of Mulciber, this was Snape. Toady little bastard that he was.
'What?" she hissed. "Would you rather I fall down and kiss your feet? What the hell am I supposed to say?" She had made a copy of her notes with a duplication charm and she tossed them at him. "Here. Just leave me the hell alone. We work on our project. We finish it. We're both happy again." She brushed by him and started to leave.
Incensed, Severus aimed a trip jinx at her feet, then jerked when the bell rang a moment later. He grabbed up the paper she'd tossed at him and grabbed his bag, but stared at her.
Mary was halfway to the greenhouse door when her feet caught on something, sending her as long as she was. She caught herself on her hands, scraping them up, then pushed herself up, glaring at him over her shoulder.
"Ten points from Slytherin, Snape," she said, standing up gingerly and wanting to hex him but stopping herself. "And detention. For jinxing a prefect."
Severus only smirked, grimly. "Good to know prefects are worth so much. I'll stick to hexing the lower classes from now on," he said dryly.
Mary started to say something, but it would only get nastier from here. Instead she pursed her lips and bit her tongue. "And another five. For threatening other students." And with that she walked away. Shite. How long was this module going to take anyway? It couldn't be over soon enough. She just might kill him first.