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Old 11-25-2009, 08:50 AM   #75 (permalink)
MalfoyzBeloved
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Chapter 18
The Potion


I sat behind the table, tapping my pen in a quick ticking rhythm against the top as Professor Slughorn continued to lecture about the potion we were about to make. It was the first week back and classes were already insufferable.

“Whichever partnership finishes their potion first doesn’t have to do tonight’s homework. You have until the last 10 minutes of class,” Slughorn announced, turning is back to us so he could go back to his desk and get out of our way for the moment.

The first person to bounce up and get their things was Granger. Everyone else started moving slower, except for me... and Draco.

“Well?” I looked at him.

“What?” he looked up and to me, an eyebrow raised.

“You have the book,” I said flatly.

“So you get the ingredients.”

“But they’re in your book,” I retorted, crossing my arms indignantly.

“Take it then!” he snapped, shoving the book towards me.

Sighing irritably, I yanked it up and stomped towards the shelf of ingredients. After getting everything required in my arms and piled on top of the book, I walked back over and started unloading it before my place behind the table. Draco didn’t bother to help, he just watched with a proud smirk on his face as I barely managed to keep everything from spilling onto the ground and breaking. When I finished, I stepped in front of Draco and slammed the book down rather loudly, the resounding smack echoing around the room. It made the entire class, even Slughorn, jump.

“Calm down, Ms. Black,” Slughorn reprimanded.

“Sorry, it slipped,” I responded, smiling. Slughorn smiled back and went back to reading whatever was in his hands. He was like putty in my hands.

“Yes, Rosa, would you calm down?” Draco asked, using a rather polite, calm tone.

“Would you do something for yourself for a change?” I snapped back without a second to spare, shoving the book back to its original place.

Glaring at me, Draco took the beet root and a knife and started dicing onto a board.

“Very good, Draco,” I said, clapping my hands together quietly enough to not draw too much attention from around us just yet.

He scowled and finished dicing the first half. He looked at the book and then at me.

“Well?” He demanded.

“You did a fine job, dicing that root. Only another half to go. I’m very proud of you,” I added the last bit with a tone similar to baby-talk.

“Start doing something!” he snapped. “You need to get the wormwood bark in there before this.”

“Start doing something,” I mimicked under my breath and started to strip the bark and rip it to finer pieces. I was on the second layer when I felt my nail bend and snap. “Ah...”

“What? A splinter?” Draco scoffed as he started on the second beet root.

“I broke my nail...” I pulled my hand from the bark and saw it broke off enough to start bleeding.

“For Merlin’s sake, it’s not the end of the world,” he snapped, looking at my hand out of the corner of his eye.

“It’s not like you’d know!” I curled the finger in between my thumb and hand, applying pressure to make the bleeding slow to a stop.

Exhaling in annoyance, Draco dropped his knife and pulled out his wand. He yanked my hand from me, removing the finger from where I lodged it.

“What’re you doing? Stop it!” I tried to pull away, but his hold was rather strong; my arm barely budged when I made my attempt to reel away. A light emitted from the tip of his wand, stopping the bleeding, and the pain went away within moments. I looked at him for a few moments, amazed he actually did something... nice. For someone else.

“There. If you complain about that again I’ll personally break another one of your precious nails.” Draco pushed his wand back into his pocket and continued dicing.

Shaking my head in disbelief, I turned back to the wood and continued stripping it. Once I finished and dropped it all into the potion, which immediately steamed with a hiss, Draco levitated the two diced beet roots until it was over the potion, dropping it into the steam. As soon as they touched the potion, it stopped steaming and looked like it was starting to lightly boil. The liquid was a light tint of red. I went over and started to stir as Draco continued to cut up the ingredients.

6 clockwise... one counter-clockwise. 6 clockwise...


“What’re you doing?” Draco demanded, looking up from the weed on the board to me.

“It says one counter-clockwise in the book,” I replied.

“It says 9 times clockwise, two counter-clockwise. Learn to read!”

“You didn’t even look at the ruddy book!” I dropped the mixing spoon into the bowl and clenched my hands on the cauldron’s rim.

“Look!” He grabbed the book and threw it at me, letting it skid to a stop right on the edge of the table. He watched me read it, his eyes piercing onto my head.

“6 clockwise, two counter-clockwise," I read aloud in a deliberately slow manner. "I’m sorry you cut into my stirring!”

“You and your lies! Do you ever stop?”

“Hey you two, quiet down.” Slughorn came up next to me. “What seems to be the problem?”

“She’s not following instructions,” Draco said, his attention now on Slughorn.

“At least I read them,” I retorted, glaring at him.

Everyone had stopped their work to watch us.

“Right,” Draco scoffed.

My hand clutched my wand.

“None of that!” Slughorn snapped, looking at me. “Mr. Malfoy, Ms. Black is right, 6 clockwise, 2 counter-clockwise.”

“Malfoy has math problems!” I recognized Harry’s voice call out.

Half the class chuckled. Draco spun around and glowered at Harry. Pansy joined in with him, while the other Slytherin just didn’t laugh. I was the only one to chuckle.

“Mr. Potter, if you’d please!” Slughorn turned to Harry.

“At least I’m not colour-blind, Potter,” Draco snapped back.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Harry demanded.

“I don’t mistake green for red.” His mouth set beneath his cold eyes into a sneer.

My eyes widened in shock; how dare he! Harry’s wand came out next.

“Mr Potter, put that away! This isn’t Charms class. Now GET BACK TO WORK!”

Everyone jumped and did as Slughorn said. The moment Malfoy turned around, Harry’s wand went back into his pocket and he picked up his knife again and continued, the thud of the sharp, metallic knife of the table resounding in the room. The professor never did yell. He was never much of an authoritarian for that matter, he was too busy trying to be our friends.

“5 points from Gryffindor. And you two...” Slughorn sighed and shook his head. “5 points from Slytherin.” As he walked away, he mumbled, “I never thought I’d live to see the day I’d take points from my own house.”

I snatched up the spoon with a glare at Draco before I turned my full attention back to stirring. Draco’s chopping became more loud and hard. When he did levitate the next batch of ingredients, they fell with a bigger splash. Nothing spilt, but it was noticeable.

“Grow up,” I grumbled as I started on my second round of turning twice clockwise.

He ignored me and kept chopping at the same annoying volume and feeding in ingredients with the same bigger, more immature splashing. The moment the last thing was added, some rat droppings, the potion sizzled and turned into a dark green and continued to bubble. I grabbed the book off the table before Draco and took it right off.

“It’s my book!” he snapped.

“That you gave me permission to take earlier,” I responded with a smile as I read the ‘final result’ section. “If we did it your way it would’ve turned out a lavender colour.” I tossed the book to him, deliberately aiming towards my seat so he would have to reach for it. Draco reached out to grab the book but ended up falling out of his chair. There was a thump and a groan.

I only heard a sigh. “10 points from Slytherin. And I will talk with you after class, Ms. Black.” Slughorn went around our table and lifted Draco up, who was holding his left arm awkwardly close to his body.

“Oh lay off it,” I snapped, knowing the stories of how he overdramatized his arm in 3rd year – a story I couldn’t stop laughing at, a hippogriff lashing back at him is something I wish I personally saw – and his arm in 2nd year when he bought out the Slytherin team so he could be a seeker and play against Harry.

“Merlin’s beard...” the professor groaned. “Could someone take Mr. Malfoy to the hospital wing?”

Pansy jumped up and came to Draco’s side. “I’ll do it, Professor.”

“Perfect.”

Pansy slid a more than willing arm around his waist and led him out of the Potions room. The moment the two were gone, Slughorn started speaking.

“Well, I believe your time is up, so let’s start with...” he turned to me. “Ms. Black.”

I smiled and moved further away. Slughorn came up and pulled a feather from his pocket. He dropped it from inches above the potion and it was eaten away instantaneously. He pulled out a rock the inside pocket of his robes and dropped it from a bit further up. The potion engulfed it with a sizzling noise, bubbling where the rock originally was.

“Perfect!” Slughorn was suddenly all happy. “10 points for Slytherin. Great job, Ms. Black. Give the same regards to Mr. Malfoy when you next see him.”

I inwardly fumed; he didn’t deserve praise. I just nodded and he continued on, continuing the same process for every table. Once he got to the final table, the one where Granger sat alone while her partner, Pansy, was still out leading Draco off to the hospital wing for what is probably nothing more than a bruise to his shoulder and his pride.

“Oh, two perfect potions...” Slughorn announced after he finished with Granger’s potion testing. He took Granger’s potion and brought it to my table. She followed him standing a few feet from me. He looked at both, examining them. After doing so, he hurried to his desk and pulled out two broken shards of glass from his cabinet. He dropped them in at the same time.

“Ms. Black, congratulations, you don’t have any homework tonight.”

“What?! What was wrong with mine? I knew I shouldn’t have stirred that one extra 6 clockwise 2 counter-clockwise. Does the size of the beet root cut matter? How many pieces of bark you put in the potion in the end?” Granger started going off. I tuned it out after that, not in the mood to hear it.

“Ms. Granger, it’s simply a matter of working together. You and Ms. Parkinson were a worse team than Mr. Malfoy and Ms. Black.”

Someone guffawed in the back.

“Mr. Weasley, this is no laughing matter!” Slughorn said sharply. “Class is dismissed.” He ambled back to his desk and sat down.

I started to gather my things. “I haven’t forgotten, Ms. Black.” I stopped and looked over my shoulder, already standing in the middle of the room, ready to leave. “Come here.”

I turned on my heel, sighing inwardly, and went up to his desk.

“How are you?”

I blinked, confused and rather taken aback. “No offense, sir, but if it’s pleasantries you wish to exchange, can we please do so after lunch?”

“No, no, it’s not for pleasantry’s sake. Is something the matter in your life right now?”

I stared back at him blankly, trying to decipher his intentions hidden within his words before replying with a simple lie. “Not particularly; why?”

“There must be some reason as to why you treat Mr. Malfoy as you do.”

“We don’t get along. It’s like how he and Harry don’t get along.” I shrugged. “No specific reason, it’s just gotten worse over the years.”

“Have you known Mr. Malfoy for years?”

“Not exactly; that’s hard to explain. Why does it matter?” Did this oaf have a point that would be coming sometime in the near-future?

“It’s hard enough having Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy act out the way they do. If you and Mr. Malfoy start to do the same, then I’ll have to do something about it.”

I didn’t respond. Were we as bad as Harry and Draco can be? I never thought about it that way.

“Is there a particular reason you don’t like Mr. Malfoy?”

“We butt heads.” I shrugged. This professor didn’t have any right asking about my personal life. No one did.

“Understandable. Could you try to tone it down, though? It’s hard to learn in a stressing atmosphere.”

“Sure.” I smiled and nodded. Slughorn smiled back, thinking he succeeded and did well.

“Good. You can go.”

“Thanks.” I readjusted the bag on my back and turned around, quickly making my way out of the classroom and down the dungeon halls.

“What did Slughorn want?”

Harry suddenly was walking next to me.

“He asked me how I was.”

I saw Harry raise an eyebrow out of the corner of my eye.

“Just making sure I won’t ‘make a big scene again next time’.”

“So there will be a next time?” Harry chuckled.

“There always is,” I mumbled as we turned into the Great Hall and went our separate ways for lunch.
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Last edited by MalfoyzBeloved; 09-28-2010 at 10:18 PM. Reason: deleting un-story-related comment
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