Set in the fifth year, if there had been no Umbridge. Have been playing with the idea of a potion-centric fic for awhile now, and this is just the beginning of that coming to fruition.

As always, I own no part of the Harry Potter universe, I just enjoy playing with their lives.

Harry made his way quickly to the dungeons with Ron close behind him. It was a beautiful day in early September and both of them had been flying around the quidditch pitch with Ginny from the moment they woke up and they had lost track of time. They wheeled into the potions classroom and quietly took their seats in the back of the room beside Hermione.

"Where have you two been?" she hissed as Harry pulled his potions book from his bag.

"On the pitch," he said, remembering a particularly precise save that Ginny had made.

"You almost missed it," she said, turning back to the front of the classroom.

Harry looked up to figure out what "it" was and he saw Snape frowning at him. That in and of itself was not particularly unusual, however, he was accompanied by a very small, very young witch with hair that looked like the night sky - dark blue, almost black, with shimmers of purple in it. Something about her was slightly mesmerizing.

"As I was saying," said Snape, looking away from Harry, "I have been summoned to a conference in Bulgaria for the next two weeks. The conference is on potions and I expect that I will learn quite a lot from both the atmosphere and the conference itself. In my absence, the ... talented Miss Everett will be covering my classes." He gestured to the witch beside him who beamed and waved at the class. Snape sneered slightly before continuing. "She was the most talented witch in her year within the discipline of potions, has since made many strides within the profession of Healer at Saint Mungo's and was personally responsible for a more powerful, stronger, and better tasting version of Skelegrow just last year. I feel that several of you will benefit greatly under her instruction. Since the news of this conference reached me so last minute, I must make my leave today if I am going to make it to the conference on time. I leave you in her very capable hands."

He nodded vaguely in her direction before striding out of the classroom.

There was a slightly awkward silence before Miss Everett spoke. "Well then," she said with a toothy smile. "Since I know very little about you all and your potion making skills, I'd like to spend the next couple days trying your hands at varying difficulties of potions. So let me just ..." she trailed off and turned to the black board beside her. She whacked it once with her wand and Harry expected the instructions to appear on the board as they had so many times before.

However, nothing happened. A Slytherin on the other side of the room snickered.

Miss Everett leaned quite close to the blackboard, scrutinizing it, apparently. After a few moments and a few more snickers, she said, "Ah," and rapped her wand on the board twice. The board turned a vibrant purple, which Harry doubted she had done on purpose, but the instructions also appeared in a delicate scrawl upon it. Harry skimmed the directions and was glad that he found them to be quite simple. Perhaps he wasn't as bad at potions as Snape had led him to believe.

"Close enough," she said with a laugh, "you lot have until the end of class to finish this more or less simple potion. It's called the Fortification potion, and acts a bit like a good swig of Firewhiskey does on certain people. Just an extra boost of heartiness or courage, should one need it. All of you should complete this with little struggle. However, if you have any problems or questions or need anything at all really, please raise your hand! I'd rather help you with something during class than see a problem with your potion at the end."

Neville let out an audible sigh. Harry vividly remembered several times where Snape had made fun of Neville in front of the class for asking for something clarified and he smiled slightly to himself. Neville needed a break from that, after more than four years of that kind of treatment, Harry felt that it was safe to say that they all did. Except for perhaps Malfoy, who was off on the side of the room, scoffing towards Crabbe who was trying and failing to not look relieved.

Miss Everett smiled out at the room and said, "Alright, if you could all read carefully over the instructions before we begin, I'll wait a couple minutes to see if there's any questions."

Hermione's hand shot up, nearly piercing the air.

Miss Everett looked slightly bemused, but gestured towards Hermione, saying, "Yes, Miss ..."

"Granger," finished Hermione with a nod. "The potion looks simple enough, so my question isn't about that, actually. However, I did want to know what about this potion you thought could showcase our abilities rather than another?"

"Well Miss Granger," said Miss Everett, "I do think that this potion is simple enough that all of you in the class should be able to brew it without much struggle as fifth years, but there are a few small fiddly bits within the potion - such as a it necessitates the brewer to add two different ingredients at the exact same time in this third step, or here in the sixth step, that the brewer wait a full eighty-eight seconds without touching the potion or adding anything. While these directions are somewhat simple to follow, they're ... well, they're fiddly, and I believe that I can see who's not paying attention as well as perhaps they ought to be with this potion, without any particularly adverse effects."

Miss Everett seemed pleased with her answer, and Harry could see others around the room nodding in response to her statement. It did seem like good reasoning in choosing a potion. However, Hermione was not done, "What do you mean specifically by adverse effects?"

"Well, when brewing certain other potions, such as the Draught of the Living Dead or even the somewhat easy Bitter Drink, if the brewer were to screw up one of the more pivotal steps, some bad things could happen. These things could be mild, such as an acrid smell, or severe, such as turning into an actual poison or emitting a toxic gas."

This seemed to satisfy Hermione, because she nodded, and Miss Everett looked around the room, obvious signs of relief on her face. Later, Ron asked her why she had to go and do that on Miss Everett's first day and Hermione looked appalled that Ron would even ask her that. She claimed that she was just seeing if Miss Everett really was fit to teach them.

"Now, if anyone else has any questions ... no? Good! Please begin. Bring a small sample of your potion to my desk upon finishing and you may leave for the day. And remember, any questions, just ask!"

Harry got to work on his potion, getting a few ingredients from the cabinets and pulling out his potion kit.

"Did you have to ask a million questions?" Hissed Ron at Hermione as she pulled out some ingredients of her own.

She didn't look up from sorting her ingredients, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Never ending questions!" exclaimed Ron, lighting his cauldron with his wand, "Don't you think it was a little ridiculous Harry?"

Harry looked up and saw that they were both looking directly at him, Ron's face perplexed and annoyed and Hermione's indignant. "I mean, sort of," Harry said, looking down.

"Yeah!" said Ron, clapping Harry on the back, "She said to ask questions if you were confused, you weren't confused Hermione!"

"Well excuse me," Hermione said, dropping a pair of bright yellow beans into her cauldron, "for trying to assess if this teacher that Snape seems to have plucked from nowhere is fit to teach us. I would think that you two ought to be a little more concerned about your education, and even your safety! I mean, Harry, what if she's some maniac that Snape has set here to poison you or something, it's not as though things like that haven't happened before."

Harry must have looked slightly sheepish, so Hermione stopped her rant, but when Harry turned to Ron he looked moderately terrified. Harry was just about to ask him what was wrong when he heard a voice behind him, "Don't worry, I haven't been sent by anyone."

Hermione had the good sense to look slightly ashamed, "No, I'm sorry, I didn't ... Honestly, I ..."

"No," said Miss Everett, "Don't be sorry, if my friend was the Great Harry Potter, I'd want to look out for him too. Tonks told me he might be in this class, and honestly that's one of the reasons I decided to take up Snape on his offer."

"You know Tonks?" asked Harry in surprise, turning to look at her. He supposed she was about the same age as Tonks.

"Yep, we were both Hufflepuff. She was in the year below me, but she made a great impression on me and we knew each other quite well for a time," said Miss Everett, rounding the desk. She made to continue her rounds of the room, "I hope to see good things from all of you." Her face was turned from them and the words themselves were kind, but for some reason they made Harry feel ever so slightly off, as if he were being drizzled on or possibly he'd stepped in puddle that was much deeper than he thought it'd be.

They finished up the lesson without much difficulty and Harry thought that he'd done quite well, honestly. Hermione's potion turned a pretty, blue grey, like an overcast sky and his was just a bit bluer than hers. Ron's was more of a slate grey, but not that far off, either. Even Neville's was a dark blue-grey, though his did seem quite a bit thicker than any of theirs. In fact, the person who seemed to have done the worst was not Neville, or even Crabbe, but Draco Malfoy, who had somehow ended up with a substance that was inky black but looked like water - Harry saw him grumbling to himself as he placed his vial of potion on Miss Everett's desk. Harry smiled to himself, quite tickled by the idea that Draco might be not excelling at something for once.

He, Ron, and Hermione left the dungeons all quite looking forward to their next potion class for the first time that any of them could remember.