The dungeon felt too large and too small all at once. Draconia stood by the workbench, her fingers tracing the edge of a single, dry vial while she waited for the sound of footsteps. The vapour had long since settled, leaving the air clear and uncomfortably stagnant. Harry stood beside her, looking remarkably composed for a man who had just spent the last hour lost in a trance of steam and skin. He was scrubbing a cauldron with a ferocity that suggested he wanted to erase the very memory of their contact. Everything was back in its proper place, the jars were aligned, and the potion sat in its tray, looking entirely wrong.
"Do you think he will actually believe us?" Harry asked, his voice low and slightly rough. He did not look up from the metal surface he was scouring.
"He will believe what we tell him to believe," Draconia replied. She adjusted her robes, smoothing the fabric over her hips to ensure no stray traces of the night remained. "The key is not the truth, Potter. The key is the consistency of the lie."
"It was a mutual failure," he muttered, a small, crooked grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "We should emphasize the mutual part. It makes you look less incompetent."
"How dare you. My technique was flawless until you decided to stop stirring."
"I stopped because the potion stopped responding to the rhythm. It was a technical decision."
"It was a catastrophe," she corrected, her voice as flat as a stone. "A total, unmitigated disaster of a potion."
The sound of the heavy door creaking open echoed through the stone corridor. They both froze, though they made sure to move with a studied, mundane grace. Draconia turned her back to the door, pretending to inspect a pile of dried herbs, while Harry bent low over the workbench. The footsteps were slow, measured, and heavy. Severus Snape entered the room, his black robes sweeping against the floor as he approached the workstation. He did not look like a man who had just discovered a ruined concoction; he looked like a man who was perpetually disappointed by the very existence of life.
"The report was supposed to be submitted an hour ago," Snape said. His voice was a low drawl that seemed to vibrate in the small space.
"The potion required more time, Professor," Draconia said. She kept her gaze fixed on a jar of pickled newt eyes, her face a mask of calm, professional boredom. "We encountered a significant complication in the final stage."
Harry cleared his throat, standing up straight and wiping his hands on a rag. "It was a problem with the heat, sir. The reaction became unstable."
"Unstable?" Snape asked. He stepped closer to the cauldron, his dark eyes scanning the surface of the liquid. "The consistency is quite peculiar. It lacks the translucency of a successful Draught of Living Death."
"It is a failure, Professor," Draconia said, her voice unwavering. "A complete collapse of the molecular structure. It was a mutual lack of synchronicity. We both failed to maintain the required tempo."
"A mutual failure," Harry repeated, adding a note of feigned frustration to his tone. "We tried to adjust the stirring speed to account for the vapour, but the timing was off. It is entirely our fault."
"It is a shame," Draconia added, her voice dropping an octave. "The transition from the penultimate stage to the final simmer was far too abrupt. We simply could not find the rhythm required to stabilise the mixture."
Snape leaned over the cauldron. He did not touch the liquid, but he hovered close enough that she could see the flicker of the candlelight in his dark pupils. The silence stretched, long and uncomfortable. Draconia did not blink. She did not even breathe too loudly. She kept her expression as blank as a fresh sheet of parchment, refusing to let the memory of his hands on her skin or the way the steam had obscured their faces break her composure.
"You are telling me," Snape said, his voice dangerously quiet, "that the potion was ruined because of a lack of... synchronicity?"
"Precisely, sir," Harry said. He sounded entirely convincing, his brow furrowed in a look of intense, academic regret. "The stirring became erratic. We were both trying to compensate, but the more we adjusted, the more the liquid reacted. It was a chaotic interaction."
"It is a very specific way to describe a botched brewing," Snape observed. He straightened his back, his eyes moving from the cauldron to Harry, and then to Draconia. "One might almost think you were distracted by something more than the temperature of the cauldron."
"The distraction was the vapour, sir," Draconia said, her voice perfectly level. "The density of the steam made it difficult to see the reaction clearly. We were both working blindly to maintain the process, but the lack of visual feedback led to the error."
"A very convenient excuse," Snaв said. He looked at the cauldron again. "The liquid is opaque. It should be clear. This is not a matter of timing, it is a matter of fundamental error."
"We agree, Professor," Harry said, his voice earnest. "It was a mess. We both lost control of the process."
"The two of you," Snape said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at them both, "seem remarkably united in your incompetence tonight."
"It was a collective lapse in judgement," Draconia said. She finally allowed herself a small, weary sigh, the kind one might give when discussing a particularly difficult maths problem. "The potion simply ceased to follow the instructions."
"It did not cease to follow instructions," Snape corrected. "It was driven into a state of permanent instability by your own clumsy hands."
"We know," Harry said. "We are quite aware of how badly we did."
"The question is," Snape said, his voice dropping to a near whisper, "how you managed to fail so spectacularly in such a controlled environment."
"It was a moment of pure, unadulterment chaos, sir," Draconia said. She felt a bead of sweat roll down her spine, but she did not move. "The rhythm was lost, and once the rhythm was gone, the potion was gone."
"The rhythm," Snape repeated. He looked at the cauldron, then back at the two of them. His expression was unreadable, a dark wall of shadow.
"The timing of the last three stirs," Harry added, leaning into the lie. "That was the moment we lost it. It just fell apart."
"It was a tragedy of timing," Draconia said, her voice a calm, flat line of truth wrapped in a lie.
Snape did not move. He did not look at the cauldron anymore. He stood perfectly still, his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze fixed on the space between them. He looked as though he were weighing the very air in the room.
Snape looks at both of them for eleven seconds and says nothing at all.