Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
What was wrong with me? Why was I so stupid?
The second I got back to my senses, I pulled myself away from Malfoy, and without giving him as much as an "I have to go," I darted out of the common room and dashed into my dormitory.
I couldn't believe what I had allowed myself to do tonight. I couldn't believe I had willingly danced with Malfoy. It was one thing to be forced to for the activity, but it was another thing entirely to agree to dance with him again once the activity was over with.
And worst of all. I felt... nervous. About dancing with him. And about being seen by James. No, regarding that, I felt terribly anxious instead. I felt like I was betraying him somehow. Even though he probably didn't think twice about it.
But here I was, cleaning myself up in the washroom of my dorm, wishing I could undo the whole night.
And yet...
I had enjoyed myself. I had enjoyed Malfoy's company, his incessant teasing and even his arrogance. I had enjoyed our banter and our quips. It felt like we were friends again.
But it was wrong. He was the Slytherin King of Prejudice. He hated my friends, all the nice Gryffindors and muggleborns. He'd been a terrible friend to me. I'd even been a terrible friend to him. I couldn't be friends with him again.
My emotions were a swirl of confusion and I didn't have the energy to unravel them right now. But it was so hard to fall asleep when I couldn't take this stupid mask off until midnight, and I could still hear students in the common room enjoying themselves.
The next day, I woke up with my mask up to my forehead. I had taken a sleeping draught the night before to fall asleep faster, and I slepted like a rock. All of my other roommates were still fast asleep in their beds, likely having crashed out much later than I had.
After a long shower, I got dressed and left the dorms. The common room was almost eerily silent. There was even a student who had fallen asleep on the couches.
Oh. It was Wyatt.
Probably because of the "haunted" nature of his dormroom, or whatever it was he claimed a few weeks ago. None of his dormmates felt the same way he did, but perhaps they were judging him too harshly and there was indeed some ghostly phenomenon going on in the fifth-year boys' dormitory.
There weren't many Slytherins eating at breakfast in the Great Hall, which didn't come as a surprise. Though, I wondered if it looked suspicious to Snape that most students of Slytherin house, except for the first and second years, weren't here to eat. Except that Snape wasn't at the staff table, this morning. Lucky us.
I thought I was going to eat all of my breakfast alone, but Jamieson Lancaster joined me before I could finish my last bite of toast.
"Good morning, Blackwood," he said, serving himself some porridge.
"Good morning, Lancaster," I replied awkwardly.
The events from last night suddenly began replaying in my mind. I willingly danced with Draco Malfoy, and James had seen us. I tried not to let the guilt consume me as he casually ate his breakfast.
"Congratulations, by the way," he said earnestly.
"Oh. Malfoy and I aren't together," I said quickly, my stomach churning uncomfortably. I couldn't believe he was congratulating me on that. "We were just dancing as friends."
"Sorry?"
He looked confused, which confused me.
"We aren't dating. You don't have to congratulate me for anything," I explained, feeling my cheeks heating up.
"What? No, I meant for winning the prize," he said, his eyebrows raised in surprise, and his lips smirking ever so slightly from amusement. I wanted to punch myself in the throat.
"Oh. Good then. Yes, thank you. Although, it's not like Malfoy wants to share the prize with me — they really should have given us one vial each," I went on, hoping that would make him forget about what I'd just said.
"It's probably best if you don't keep the prize anyway," James said, wincing, as if he were about to tell me some devastating news. "I reckon they stole it from Snape's stores."
"They didn't," I said in disbelief.
"Where else would they have found one? I wouldn't take my chances if I were you," he warned. I nodded, realizing I may have dodged a bullet there.
"Well, then. Good thing Malfoy wants to keep it. Hope he gets caught with it," I added cheekily. James laughed.
"You could always try brewing it yourself," he said.
"That's exactly what Malfoy said. Maybe I could try. But it's extremely difficult. And the ingredients are so expensive, if not nearly impossible to find."
"I could help you find them."
"Really?"
"Sure. Sounds like an interesting project."
"Thank you," I said, my lips curving upwards immediately. He returned my smile, shrugging as if it were nothing and then went back to eating.
I couldn't help but notice for the millionth time that when James smiled, the corners of his eyes smiled as well.
"Just let me know what those ingredients are. We'll figure it out," James added before taking a bite from his peach. I nodded, beaming.
Slowly, as James and I kept conversing, more and more Slytherins filed into the Great Hall. Elijah was the first of our friends to join us. He slipped into the chair next to James and mumbled something about being tired.
"Where's Isaiah and Wyatt?" I asked him. Elijah shrugged, serving himself some marmalade on toast.
"Last I checked, they weren't in their beds," he said. "I thought they'd be here already."
"Odd. They were in bed when I left," James said. "Maybe they skipped breakfast."
"What do you mean? Both of them were in bed? I swear I saw Wyatt sleeping on a common room couch just before I left," I interjected, perplexed.
"Maybe someone got confused and slept in the wrong dormitory," James said with a chuckle. "Didn't look too closely at who it was though. I just assumed it was Wyatt."
"Speak of the devil," Elijah said, eyes locked behind me. I spun around in my seat and found the devil: Wyatt. Isaiah and Amirah were with him too.
"There you all are. We were just eating at the Ravenclaw table with Amirah," Wyatt said, slipping into the seat next to mine. Amirah and Isaiah sat on my other side.
That's when it clicked.
Amirah was at the ball last night. There was no way she would have been able to slip out of the common room without being stopped by the Slytherin prefects lurking at the entrance. She was the one sleeping in Wyatt's bed while he slept in the common common. Funny no one in their dormitory noticed — or at least pretended not to notice.
"Ah. So, that's who was sleeping in your bed, last night, Wyatt," Elijah said. Well then, now I knew Elijah definitely was not the kind to pretend not to notice such things. He had an amused look plastered on his face.
Isaiah's face flushed while Wyatt looked completely unbothered. Amirah looked down, immediately covering her face with her hands.
"Ahem," I said, seeking to save them from more embarrassement — I didn't see it as embarrassing, but Isaiah and Amirah's reaction stated otherwise. "I have an announcement to make."
This was a bad idea because I didn't even know what announcement I was going to make.
"Merlin, it's finally happening," Wyatt said with bubbling excitement.
"What?" I said, confused as to what he was referring to.
"Oh, don't let me spoil the surprise," he said almost giddily. I frowned, really confused as to what in the Hells he even thought I was going to announce, but I ultimately just shook my head and went on with an idea that had just popped into my head.
"I will be working on creating a Liquid Luck. James has already graciously offered to help me find some of the ingredients, and I was wondering if... uhm... well, if some of you would like to help me too."
"That's not at all what I thought you were going to say..." Wyatt mumbled to himself.
"Liquid luck?" Elijah queried before I could ask Wyatt to elaborate. "Didn't you just win one, last night?"
"I technically did, but Malfoy won't share it with me, so..."
"So you took it upon yourself to brew it instead," Elijah said. "A little ambitious, don't you think?"
"Well, of course, I know it's extremely hard to brew Liquid Luck, but I've successfully brewed veri — uhm, other complicated potions, so I believe that I can do this one too," I asserted. Elijah raised a curious eyebrow at me but didn't comment.
"I believe Maeve can do it," James said approvingly.
"I'd love to help you brew it, if you need my help with anything," Isaiah said, his ears still pink from Elijah's comment about Amirah earlier. Amirah nodded in agreement next to him
"Thank you!" I enthused.
"Frankly, I thought that announcement you were going to make was a love confession," Wyatt said, even though no one asked.
The others giggled awkwardly at that while I rolled my eyes at him. I did not need him to elaborate on who he thought that imaginary love confession would've been for: James. Everyone thought I fancied James, but I wasn't sure I wanted to find out what would happen if I did fancy him.
And of course, upon taking a closer look at the list of ingredients for Liquid Luck, I got a little discouraged. It would take six months to brew! Not to mention that murtlap tentacles were extremely rare to come by, and occamy eggs were quite expensive. I could do with the other ingredients, even though squill bulbs were rather annoying to harvest, but murtlap tentacles and occamy eggs... this had to be a joke. Even with James' funding, how was I supposed to find a murtlap around Hogwarts. They strictly lived around the shorelines, not to mention that they weren't exactly the kindest of creatures. Bloody water rat...
My thoughts were entangled with the Felix Felicis ingredients as I arrived in potions class the next morning. I slipped into a random seat at the back and took note of what I could do to acquire the ingredients, focusing on the easier ones first.
"Writing in your diary, Blackwood?" Malfoy drawled as he walked by me, his two goons with their arms crossed behind him.
"You would know all about that, now, wouldn't you, Malfoy?" I shot back. He quickly halted in his steps and returned to me, while Crabbe and Goyle just went on and took their usual seats at the front.
"I'm not much of a diary-writer, Blackwood. But if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were writing my name with hearts all around it," he teased. I snorted, rolling my eyes at him with amusement.
"Yes, because I've got nothing better to do with my time," I said sarcastically. He smirked, eyes darting between me and my notebook.
"What are you writing?" he then asked. I hesitated, but figured it didn't matter if he knew.
"Well... Seeing as you've decided to withhold my share of the prize, I've decided to do it myself," I said, carefully leaving out any indication that there was a party or that I was brewing a Felix Felicis potion, in case there were prying ears — namely Snape's ears. "So, now I'm just making a list of what I need."
Malfoy's eyes furrowed for a second as he contemplated my words.
"Do you really think you can... pull it off?" he said, just as careful with his words as I was with mine. I was thankful that Malfoy had the good sense not to let the word "brewing" or "Liquid Luck" slip out of his tongue. Perhaps he also had good qualities sometimes when the situation called for it.
"I am... not sure," I admitted, although I sort of wished I had pretended to be confident based the growing smirk on Malfoy's face. "Shut up. I'll figure it out," I added before he could say anything.
"Take a seat, Mr. Malfoy," Snape said as he positioned himself at the center of the class. Malfoy was the only student not seated as he was too busy goading me at my desk.
Unfortunately for me, he took the seat right next to mine. I looked around the room and found that Tracey and Daphne were sitting farther down. I was so focused on my potion-making adventure that I hadn't taken the time to look for them when I entered class and just took a random seat so that I could get back to work as soon as possible.
Harry and Ron were seated together and looking over at me with confusion while Hermione gave me a look of worry. I supposed Ron and Hermione made up about Hermione's cat trying to eat Ron's rat since they were sitting with each other again. Dunno why Ron cared so deeply about a stinking rat in the first place, but at least it looked like they were friends again.
Either way, Snape droned on about what we were to do today: work in teams to brew a Wideye Potion. Bloody too easy. Seeing as I was seated next to Malfoy — or rather, he seated himself next to me — we had to work together. The last time we worked together in Potions class was on our second year, weeks before the broom-borrowing incident (he would've called it the broom-stealing incident, but as the "thief" I knew this wasn't a case of thievery but rather a case of borrowing).
"I'll crush the snake fangs, you measure the herbs," I told Malfoy when Snape left us all to work.
The classroom was buzzing with urgency. Apparently Snape would make us test our potions on ourselves to see if they were brewed correctly. So, naturally, many students were worried, as always, about brewing it correctly. Knowing Snape, however, he would probably just test out the potions that didn't look like how they were supposed to. He loved punishing rather than teaching, that goon.
"Who said you were in charge?" Malfoy asked rather irritatingly.
"My grades. Now, go," I said before grabbing six snake fangs from the shelf right behind us.
Thankfully, Malfoy didn't protest and went on to measure the herbs. He was rather prompt and careful with the way he handled the ingredients, which sort of bothered me because I was hoping to boss him around in class today. But of course, Draco Malfoy was not a complete twerp.
"I'm surprised you haven't brewed this before to keep up with all of your sleepless nights," Malfoy said as I heated up the cauldron.
"What makes you think I haven't," I said as I crushed the snake fangs.
"Well, have you?"
"No," I said. He laughed.
"There."
"So, you can read minds, now, Malfoy?" I countered.
"No. But I have eyes. I see how tired you are sometimes. You could just take a Wideye Potion instead of falling asleep in class," he pointed out rather politely.
Without me having to tell him to, he began adding the dried billywig stings to the cauldron. I promptly turned up the heat to help boil the stings.
"What are you doing? It doesn't say to turn up the heat," Malfoy said, almost panicky.
"It's fine. I've worked with billywig stings before. We want the water to boil to extract the venom from the stings before they lose their potency. If we take too long to boil it, the potion won't be as strong," I said assuredly.
"If you mess this up, Blackwood—"
"I'll drink the potion. I don't care," I said. "There, see how it's already boiling. Look at the stings."
The stings had a dark blue liquid oozing out of them in the cauldron, which was perfect.
"Now, we can add the snake fangs," I said. Malfoy was hesitant, but grabbed the mortar with the crushed snake fangs anyway. "Put them in slowly. Some fangs may have been bigger than others, which may skew the accuracy of the potion, so you have to watch the way the mixture reacts to smaller quantities at a time."
Malfoy didn't say anything, but narrowed his eyes at me as he slowly pushed some of the crushed fangs into the cauldron.
"That's good. Put a little more," I said, noticing how the potion was slowly turning pale blue, which was a good sign. "Keep going... Okay, stop. A little more and it could become imbalanced."
Quietly, Malfoy set aside the small leftover amount of crushed snake fangs.
"Now, clockwise, clockwise," I muttered as I stirred the potion. "Counter, counter..."
"Put the herbs now," I said. "Put all of them, this time. They're not too potent so they can't overpower the other ingredients."
Malfoy did as I said, still as quiet as ever. It was as if he was terrified that by following my instructions, the potion would blow up, but also that he was immensely curious to see what would happen if he listened to me.
"Perfect," I said. "Now, one sprig of wolfsbane."
The last ingredient immediately melted into the mixture. Now, it was a nearly-clear solution, with only a hint of blue. I turned off the heat and beamed at our accomplishment.
"See what happens when you listen to me, Malfoy?" I goaded. Malfoy rolled his eyes, which was a first because I rarely saw him doing that.
"Shut it, Blackwood. Your ego is inflating; you'll blow up to the ceiling," he said. I snickered at the imagery of that.
"Finished, already?" Snape said as he arrived at our table.
I looked around the classroom. We were the first team to be done. One group was still working on crushing the snake fangs while another hadn't even turned on their heat.
Snape peered into our cauldron. I couldn't tell if he was impressed or disappointed, but in the end, he said, "Excellent. Ten points to Slytherin for following instructions."
And then he carried on to the next table. I tried not to laugh. He gave us points for following instructions, but ironically, I completed this potion by skewing away from the instructions just a little bit.
"Well, would you look at that? You've actually won us some points, Blackwood. I was beginning to think you weren't really an asset to our house."
"Did you just... compliment me, Malfoy?" I asked innocently.
"No. Absolutely not."
"Right, because that would be a crime against wizard-kind," I drawled.
"Precisely."
I made no effort to hide my chuckles and neither did he. Our laughter died down very quickly, however, as Snape went on with the lesson. As expected, only the teams whose potions looked or smelled weird were tested — not on students, but on Neville's toad, which was unnecessarily cruel nonetheless.
When class was over and Malfoy went off with his goons, I couldn't stop thinking about the night of the ball as well as our conversations from today's class.
I couldn't tell if I was being foolish or not, but I was starting to believe that maybe being friends with Malfoy again wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe our friendship was salvageable, and maybe he wasn't so bad. Maybe he could change as I had. Maybe he had change.
"Maeve!" Hermione called from behind me. I quickly slowed down my pace so that she, Ron, and Harry could catch up with me. Each of them had a look of concern on their face.
"Hey, guys," I greeted. "Been a while since I spoke to you lot. I take it you two made up?" I pointed at both Ron and Hermione.
"Yes, but that's not why I came to see you," Hermione said urgently.
"Malfoy is having Buckbeak killed," Ron blurted out. "Is that why you were getting all cozy with him in class—?"
"What? I — I didn't know. This is the first time I'm hearing about this," I said honestly. "And I wasn't getting cozy with him. He just decided he felt like berating me today, alright? I didn't know about Buckbeak—"
"Berating you? You two seemed like you were getting along," Ron insisted.
"If he's ever bothering you, Maeve, you can come sit with us, instead," Hermione said kindly over Ron's accusatory words.
"I can handle Malfoy," I said. "Don't worry about me. I know how to get him to be nice to me. And no — I'm not friends with him. It just — it gets exhausting always having to be enemies with someone from my house."
Ron grunted something about Malfoy being rotten just as Harry said, "Well, whatever it is, Maeve, we just wanted you to know that because of Malfoy, Buckbeak's getting executed. It's official now."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know," I said earnestly.
"It's okay, Maeve. Though, I think Hagrid needs more sympathy than us," Hermione said.
"I'll make sure to attend his classes from now on," I told her. I had been skipping his classes a lot since he never got me in trouble for it. But maybe now was the time for me attend care of magical creatures classes more often.
"We're going to see him after class, will you come with us?"
"Can't," I said. "I've got plans, already." Those plans being working on my Felix Felicis potion, but they did not need to know about that.
"Well, we'll see you around, then," Ron managed to say, though I could tell he was still a bit miffed about me working with Malfoy in class today.
"Bye," I said, waving at them as they went in the opposite direction from me.
As I stood alone in the corridor, watching the Gryffindors disappear at the end corner of the hallway, all I could think about was Malfoy. How disgusting I felt for having even considered rekindling my friendship with him.
Sure, being on civilized talking terms with him felt like such a relief, but I felt a pang of disappointment in my chest as I realized that I could never truly be friends with him again, not unless he utterly changed his ways.
I had already mourned my friendship with him before, and I thought I was over it. I even thought I despised him. So, why was I mourning my friendship with him all over again? Why did I still want him in my life after how awful he'd been to Hermione and the other Gryffindors?
I was furious with him for getting Buckbeak an execution date, but I mostly felt angry at myself for even considering trusting him again. I wanted to be a good friend to Hermione and the other Gryffindors, but I also selfishly wanted Malfoy as a friend again.
Ugh. Why couldn't he just not be prejudiced anymore? Things would be so much simpler if Malfoy would just grow a brain.