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"Oops."

Just for a moment, the sixth year Gryffindor/Slytherin Potions students /froze/.

Severus Snape had once thought that the worst thing that had ever happened to his classroom was Neville Longbottom. This had been true up until the beginning of the boy's sixth year.

Somehow, over the summer Harry Potter had come to the conclusion that experimenting with potions in class was a good idea.

Severus had let the boy do it, simply because after the first lesson he had been amazed at the more efficient version of the burn healing salve that Harry had invented.

However, Severus's leniency had its downsides.

Like any potions researcher, Harry made mistakes. The only problem with that was that it was Harry making the mistakes, and Harry does nothing by halves.

Severus turned his eyes, slowly, to Harry, who was looking somewhat sheepish. This was, Severus thought, a better sign than if he were staring at the cauldron in horror.

"What did you do?" he asked the boy in resignation. The rest of the class watched and listened apprehensively.

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I was about to add the lion's mane and it started smoking."

Severus blinked. "It's not smoking now."

"I put the lion's mane in." Harry looked down and eyed the cauldron's contents warily. "It was smoking blue and bubbling, and I wasn't going to put it in, but I dropped it. And now...well..."

Sighing, Severus strode over to look into the cauldron, glancing over his class as he moved.

Crabbe and Goyle were sitting in the very back of the room, attempting to become one with the wall. It wasn't working.

Lavender, Parvati, Pansy and Millicent had gathered in a corner and were slowly shifting 'unobtrusively' towards the door. He didn't really blame them; he would leave himself if he weren't the teacher.

Neville, Seamus and Dean were just watching, half amused and half worried.

Ron, resigned to the fact that his best friend was a /moron/, was methodically thumping his head against the top of his desk. Hermione was torn between stopping him and frowning at Harry in disapproval. She'd been on his case all year about the experimentation, Severus knew.

The last three class members, Draco, Theodore and Blaise, were twitching. Draco and Blaise were twitching towards the door, desperately wanting to escape before Harry said 'oops' again and something did blow up.

Theodore, on the other hand, could see into Harry's cauldron, and was twitching from holding in his laughter. Severus got a very bad feeling about that.

Then he reached the cauldron, looked down, and decided that it had not been an unfounded fear.

Severus stared at the tiny purple kitten sitting in the cauldron as it blinked up at him innocently with large green eyes. "Oh dear lord, you've created life."

Again, the students froze, this time in shock and confusion rather than in fear.

That is, aside from Theodore, who had fallen from his stool in laughter. "It...it has...it has your /eyes/, Har!" he managed to choke out.

Severus just sighed as the students gathered around Harry's cauldron. He should have known it was going to be one of those days.