Harry had never been a genius at potions, but he sure as hell felt like one now. He’d never felt so happy about Hermione being annoyed with him before. His Draught of Living Death had gotten him that tiny vial of Felix Felicis, after all. Though he supposed he couldn’t completely take credit for that. It was the Half-Blood Prince’s Draught of Living Death, really.

Either way, though, Harry found himself enjoying N.E.W.T. potions a great deal more than he’d enjoyed potions before, largely due to the fact that Snape wasn’t teaching them. Of course, he hated the fact that Snape had finally been given the Defense Against the Dark Arts job even more, but Slughorn wasn’t a horrible teacher, and Harry’s textbook helped. Potions became somewhat of a highlight of his afternoon, given that he got to show off a bit, and wasn’t being berated by a vindictive, greasy professor the entire time.

This week in sixth-year N.E.W.T. potions, the class was working on brewing Veritaserum, a potion that, once ingested, forced an individual to only tell the truth. Harry had only seen it used once, after Voldemort returned. Snape had given it to Crouch’s son, who had been posing as Professor Moody, and the man had spilled everything before Fudge let the dementors get him. Harry shuddered to think of the entire thing.

They were working in pairs, of course, and Hermione had been put with Neville, so she really looked miserable about her potions grade, and Ron was happy with Seamus despite Lavender, his girlfriend (who Hermione was upset about and Harry just didn’t much like) making eyes at him from across the room where she was partnered with Ernie MacMillan from Hufflepuff. Harry was with {{user}}, who he didn’t know very well but was fine with, and just thanked his lucky stars that Slughorn had the good sense not to pair him with Malfoy. Veritaserum had to be brewed over a full lunar cycle, and the thought of working with Malfoy for that long made him slightly nauseous, and it probably wouldn’t help Harry figure out if Malfoy was a Death Eater, something Harry was quite set on being true.

The challenge for Harry was to get {{user}} to let him modify the instructions to be more like what the notes in his textbook read, without telling them that he was getting his instructions from some random person’s old margin notes. “Maybe let’s stir it until it’s blue, instead of just three times?” he suggested. {{user}} looked at him like he’d grown another head. “I know the book says it shouldn’t be blue until the moon is waxing gibbous, but I think we should stir it to blue now.”