Ginny glared at her cauldron, where her Aloe Gel was steadfastly refusing to gel. Usually she was good at Potions. Today –

Potions took focus, and today she had none. The twins’ sense of humour and Ron’s overprotectiveness tended to wear after a while. So did Harry’s utter oblivion. So did Neville’s shy attentiveness ever since the Yule ball. In fact, boys in general were just plain annoying. But brothers were the worst.

She was tired of worrying about Harry in the Triwizarding Tournament and what he and Ron were going to have a spat about this week. Ron was acting strangely anyway, prying into her life if she asked how he was, blushing about nothing, and sneaking off. It couldn’t possibly be a girlfriend; someone would have told her that ages ago. Fred and George taking bets on Harry and trying to cheer her up with the ridiculous odds they were making from one day to the next weren’t doing her any good either. Neither were their researches on creative toffees and fake wands.

Her potion had turned blue instead of tan, smelled faintly of butterscotch, and was seething in a most ominous manner. It was far beyond salvaging. She extinguished the flame beneath her cauldron, hoping at least to keep the mess from boiling over.

The heat apparently had been quelling a tendency to foam. The blue mess erupted outward, flowing over the edge of the cauldron with a hiss and advancing in all directions. Ginny jumped back, not wanting to find out what the froth would do to her.

The mess vanished all at once, leaving behind shiningly clean surfaces wherever it had touched. It seemed she had invented a powerful butterscotch-fresh soap, which hadn’t exactly been the point of the lesson. Ginny looked up into the disapproving black eyes of Professor Snape.

“What seems to have happened here, Miss Weasley?�

“I wasn’t paying attention, sir.� Unlike most Gryffindors, she honestly disliked disappointing the Potions Master.

“That much was obvious. Come to my office after class.� He swept away. Ginny’s heart sank, and Colin Creevy’s sympathetic look didn’t help at all. She had managed to avoid making the professor punish her until now. Miserably, she packed up her things. Ten minutes later, she entered the gloomy office full of mysterious things in jars. The professor closed the door, which made no reassuring click of a latch, but instead a heavy thud. Usually he took points and assigned detentions publicly. If he had to take her aside like this, he had to be awfully angry…

He gestured that she should sit in front of his desk, then circled in a flow of black fabric to take his own chair. “Is there a problem, Miss Weasley?�

She studied the question carefully from all angles, considering its source, then felt a great wave of relief and foolishness. He could hardly ask Are you being possessed by Lord Voldemort again? “Oh, goodness, nothing like that.�

He merely raised an eyebrow and waited.

Ginny now felt even sillier. The problem was, after all, very trivial. “It’s just – brothers.�

She thought she saw a faint increase of tension around his mouth. “In that case, you are well-supplied with problems.�

That seemed true enough at the moment. She blended a shrug and a nod.

“I can hardly advise hexing your brothers.�

Ginny blinked. Professor Snape’s tone suggested exactly that course.

“And you should make quite sure I never catch you doing any such thing.�

He fell silent then, one finger against his lips. Ginny realized she was expected to say something. “Of course not, sir.�

“Our Mr Filch has managed to get the more useful books of jinxes banned from Hogwarts, and confiscates them whenever possible. Most of them wind up on that shelf— � He pointed to one beside his desk. “— in suitable discreet bindings. It is a very complete collection, and I have no use for duplicates.�

In other words, she shouldn’t order any of them, even if she could afford to. “I would expect not, sir.�

“And, of course, I would have to be properly upset if any of them were to go missing, even temporarily. A sufficiently clever student could take a few useful notes without my being any the wiser, though, if everything were put back properly. I can hardly be held accountable for anything that might happen when my back is turned.�

His expression was forbidding as always and gave nothing away. His words, and their careful, thoughtful inflection, suggested a great deal. “I wouldn’t think so, sir.�

He considered her for another long minute, then rose suddenly to his feet. “There is a staff meeting this afternoon to waste at least another hour of my time. Write a few notes on what went wrong with your potion today, leave them on my desk, and make sure the door closes properly when you leave. There should be no – unauthorized – thefts of information.� He swept out. The door thudded shut again.

Ginny sat in quiet amazement. Had Professor Snape really just given her an hour alone with his collection of jinxes? Minus the time to scribble a few specifics of how, exactly, she had not been paying attention? She wrote a few lines about her mess, and clockwise versus counterclockwise stirring, while working over his statements. If he really meant what he’d seemed to, why? It couldn’t be that he liked her; he didn’t seem to like anyone. Certainly not Gryffindors, and certainly not Weasleys – oh.

Aha. Over the years, her brothers had probably annoyed Professor Snape at least as much as they had annoyed her, and for roughly as long. He couldn’t hex them himself, but he might very well believe they deserved it. Reassured by this thought, she left her satchel on the floor and went to the bookshelf.

Ally Amsterdam’s Compendium of Practical Pranks. Fred and George already had that one. She could hardly use something on them that they already knew. Beguiling Befuddlements didn’t seem colourful enough. Cantrips for Collywobbles looked vaguely mis-shelved. Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying and Much, Much More)… Now that looked promising.

Nothing screamed, exploded, or attacked her when she took the book from the shelf. She nudged her chair closer to the desk – sitting behind it was beyond all imagining – and began to browse. Acne Attack? No. Aching Ague? Too harsh. Baldness? That one was horribly tempting.

Ginny bent for an old homework to make notes on the back, pulled out quill and ink while she was down, and rose to find that a page or two had turned in some errant draft. The perfect spell lay before her. She giggled softly, imagining the results as she read the description. “Bat-Bogey Hex,� she copied carefully. “Causes the target’s bogeys to turn into Long-Eared Bats, which will attempt to return to their roosts in the victim’s nose…�

Ginny flipped quickly through the rest of the book after that, finding two more little gems: one caused a subtle, persistent, and mobile itch and another made the target’s clothes reverse themselves. She half-regretted the absence of a Rhinoceros-Bogey Hex, but had to admit to herself that it might be a little much for the hallways of Hogwarts, and far more than the Burrow could handle. Time was passing. She would have to leave soon if her spell-copying was to go without Professor Snape being, as he put it, any the wiser.

She put the book away neatly. Somehow she would not have expected the professor to be so -- honest -- about the project. He would be able to say, if anyone dared to ask, that he had suggested nothing to her and had never seen her near his books. If she had expected any such conspiracy in the first place, she also would have expected him to lie, as she planned to do.

She made certain she had all of her belongings, then slipped out, closing the door firmly behind her. Unless she had shed a telltale long red hair, she had left no evidence of her visit besides the noted potion mistakes. Now all she needed was a cover story or two and a sulky look. What had he said to her after class? Where had she gotten the wonderful hexes?

The first was easy enough. Professor Snape had kept her after class to write out exactly where her potion had gone wrong, in detail. She had, after all, nearly invented something. Making her Aloe Gel predictably into Aloe Soap instead would probably be useful and profitable, and therefore worth noting down. Professor Snape – at least, in every other Gryffindor’s view of him – would not be against profiting from someone else’s error.

Ginny wasn’t so certain of that, herself.

As for the other story, well, six brothers could hold each other accountable for a long time. If she doled out her new spells carefully, they would assume she had learned them in ordinary ways: each other, the library, Hermione. They might even believe her clever enough to have invented them herself. She rather wished she had.

The rest of the way back to Gryffindor Tower she wondered what jinx she ought to invent for herself. She thought it should be something worth a good long discussion at a staff meeting, to make sure Professor Snape heard about it and, privately, smiled.