The dungeons of Hogwarts were designed to evoke fear. They were damp, freezing, and perpetually cloaked in a heavy, greenish gloom. The stone walls sweat moisture, and the shelves lining Professor Snape's classroom were packed with grotesque biological specimens floating in cloudy, formaldehyde-scented jars.
To the eleven-year-old badgers of Hufflepuff, who preferred the warm, sunlit earth of the greenhouses, the Potions classroom was a waking nightmare. Hannah Abbott was trembling so hard her cauldron rattled against her desk.
To Sunshine Addams, who had grown up taking tea in a family crypt and whose mother routinely harvested venomous tentacles before breakfast, the dungeon felt shockingly cozy. It smelled like nostalgia.
She sat at a heavy wooden workbench near the back corner, her brass scales polished and her ingredients meticulously arranged. Unlike Charms or Transfiguration, Potions was the one class where a Squib was theoretically required to participate physically. The preparation of ingredients—the slicing of roots, the crushing of beetles—was a mundane, manual task.
It was also the class Sunshine had spent years preparing for with Morticia.
The heavy, iron-bound door at the front of the classroom banged open.
Severus Snape swept into the room, a terrifying, oversized bat composed entirely of black wool and suppressed fury. He moved with a sharp, aggressive elegance, his dark eyes instantly pinning the terrified first-years to their seats.
He reached the front of the room and turned, his gaze sweeping over the Hufflepuffs and the Ravenclaws sharing the period.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," Snape began, his voice barely more than a whisper, yet it carried effortlessly to the back of the room. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic."
Sunshine sat perfectly still, her hands resting in her lap. Her adult mind analyzed the Potions Master with clinical detachment.
In her previous life, she had viewed Snape as a tragic, misunderstood hero. A man driven by unrequited love to play a dangerous double-agent game.
Sitting in his classroom, breathing the same air as the bitter, sneering man, that romanticized illusion evaporated. Snape was an abuser. He used his position of absolute authority to terrorize children because he was too cowardly to resolve his own adult trauma. He projected the hatred he felt for James Potter onto any vulnerable target he could find. He was exactly the kind of man Sunshine had spent sixty years cowering from.
But she was not cowering now. She was observing.
Snape's dark eyes locked onto her for a fraction of a second. The sneer deepened. He remembered the evaluation in the Addams sitting room. He remembered diving into her mind and finding only a vast, pathetic, beige void. To a man who prided himself on intellectual superiority and magical prowess, a Squib in his dungeon was a personal insult.
"I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death," Snape continued softly, his gaze leaving her to drag across the terrified Hufflepuffs. "If you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
The instructions for the Cure for Boils appeared on the blackboard with a sharp flick of Snape's wand.
"Begin," he snapped.
Sunshine pulled her copy of Magical Drafts and Potions toward her. She read the instructions.
Her sixty-year-old mind, honed by Morticia's masterclasses in chemical lethality and ancient alchemy, immediately recognized the profound, structural flaws in the British brewing method.
They add the porcupine quills before removing the cauldron from the fire, Sunshine cataloged, picking up her silver knife. A foolish, unstable reaction. It relies on a localized Stasis Charm to prevent the quills from melting and producing toxic gas. Furthermore, the entire recipe requires a channeled burst of magical intent—a wand tap—to catalyze the binding agents at the final stage.
Morticia had taught her how to brew without a wand. A true alchemist did not need a magical spark to bind a potion; they used blood, intent, or the precise manipulation of lunar phases and ambient temperature to force the chemicals to merge.
Sunshine had the Basilisk venom, the Golden Widow spores, and the Peruvian Viper roots hidden in the false bottom of her bog-oak trunk. She possessed the knowledge and the steady hand to brew a neurotoxin that could drop every living creature in the castle in under five minutes. She could brew a Cure for Boils with her eyes closed that would be ten times more potent than anything Snape's textbook demanded.
But perfection draws the eye. Competence invites scrutiny.
If she brewed a flawless potion using non-wand, ancient alchemical methods, Snape would immediately suspect that her 'Squib' status was a lie, or worse, that she was practicing deeply restricted Dark Arts. He would alert Dumbledore. Her cover would be blown on day one.
She needed to fail. But she needed to fail in a way that perfectly aligned with her camouflage.
Sunshine picked up her silver knife. She deliberately adopted a clumsy, hesitant grip. She began to slice the horned toads, making the cuts uneven and jagged. She crushed the snake fangs with too much force, turning them to a coarse powder rather than a fine dust.
She played the part of the nervous, inadequate, tragically non-magical child.
Snape began his prowl around the dungeon. He swept past the Ravenclaw tables, offering sharp, biting critiques that made several students flinch. He drifted toward the Hufflepuff side, his black robes whispering against the damp stone floor.
He stopped directly behind Sunshine.
The air grew significantly colder. Hannah Abbott, working at the station next to her, whimpered softly and dropped a nettle.
Sunshine did not look up. She kept her eyes fixed on her pewter cauldron. The liquid inside was currently a muddy, unappealing brown, rather than the clear, sky-blue it was supposed to be.
"Tell me, Miss Addams," Snape drawled, his voice dripping with venomous sarcasm that echoed loudly enough for the entire class to hear. "What exactly is the purpose of occupying space in my dungeon, wasting perfectly adequate ingredients, when you lack the fundamental biological capacity to complete the assignment?"
The classroom fell dead silent.
Sunshine stopped stirring. She knew exactly what was required. She reached into the depths of her mental labyrinth, pulling out the raw, visceral memory of being humiliated by her ex-husband in front of his friends. She took that profound, genuine feeling of absolute worthlessness and pushed it directly to the surface of her face.
She turned her head to look up at Snape.
Her lower lip trembled. It was a masterpiece of muscular control. Her bright blue eyes widened, rapidly filling with thick, shimmering tears that she stubbornly refused to let fall. She looked like a kicked puppy attempting to be brave.
"I... I followed the instructions, Professor," Sunshine whispered, her voice cracking perfectly. "I weighed the nettles. But... but it says it needs a wand tap to bind."
She gestured weakly to the muddy brown sludge in her cauldron. It was a failure of catalyst, not a failure of preparation. It was the exact, pathetic failure a Squib would experience.
Snape stared down at her. He sneered, a look of unadulterated, triumphant disgust crossing his sallow features.
He had wanted to prove her uselessness, and she had handed him the evidence on a silver platter. He felt the absolute, validating superiority of a bully who had successfully crushed his target.
"A tragic waste of air," Snape murmured softly, dismissing her entirely. He turned his back on her, his dark robes swirling, and swept toward the front of the classroom. "Five points from Hufflepuff for this... pathetic display. Evanesco."
With a flick of his wand, the sludge in Sunshine's cauldron vanished, leaving it empty and clean.
"The rest of you, continue! Unless you wish to end up with a cauldron as empty as Miss Addams's magical core!" Snape barked.
Hannah Abbott let out a small, choked sob of sympathetic outrage. Susan Bones glared at Snape's back, her fists clenched. Several Ravenclaws cast pitying, uncomfortable glances toward the golden-haired girl in the corner.
Sunshine sat perfectly still. She lowered her head, letting a single, meticulously timed tear slip down her rosy cheek, landing silently on the wooden desk.
She looked broken. She looked devastated.
Internally, the sixty-year-old survivor was smiling a cold, terrifying, blood-soaked smile.
The performance was flawless. She had given Snape exactly what his bitter, twisted ego demanded: superiority. By leaning into the humiliation, she had completely disarmed his suspicion. Snape would never look at her cauldron again. He would never scrutinize her ingredients. He had categorized her as a pathetic, non-magical waste of space, meaning she was now entirely invisible in his domain.
The Potions Master believed he had won a cruel victory over a helpless child. He had absolutely no idea that the Golden Child of the Addams family had just effortlessly manipulated him into granting her total, unmonitored autonomy in the most dangerous classroom in Hogwarts.
Let Snape bully Harry Potter. Let him terrorize Neville Longbottom.
Sunshine Addams wiped the fake tear from her cheek, staring down into the empty, gleaming bottom of her pewter cauldron. The trap was set. The camouflage was sealed. And if she ever needed to use the Basilisk venom hidden in her trunk, Severus Snape would be the last man on earth to suspect the crying Squib in the back of the room.