the badger and the lion.

The Visitors

"Alright, quills down everyone!" the stout man bellowed from the front of the classroom.

It was Friday morning, and the Care of Magical Creatures exam had just concluded after one and a half hours of gruelling silence. You were satisfied with your performance, accounting for the lack of sleep you experienced last night that made you forget the last key use of unicorn blood, and hoped that you'd done enough to pass. But from the looks on the student's faces around you, not everyone seemed to feel the same.

You placed your quill next to the parchment where you had scribbled down your answers to the exam.

"Please wait for your parchment to be collected, and no talking. Once everyone's has been collected, you may be dismissed."

You watched your parchment levitate in front of you and fly up to the front of the room, and was shuffled into some sort of order with the others that whooshed over your head. Once the man collected the last parchment, he announced that you all could leave. You sighed, and pushed back your chair from your desk in unison with everyone else's screeching along the wooden floor. You followed the people in front of you to the door, eager to get some morning tea into your rumbling stomach before heading to the library for some solitary study.

As you rounded the corner, you saw Cedric leaning against the wall in front of you, smiling as he caught your eye. Your cheeks moulded a smile, and a flurry of butterflies moved in every direction through your nerves as he moved off the wall to meet you. He was looking good today. More scruffy than usual, but in the best possible way. You wondered if there would ever come a point where that expression of his wouldn't make your body react in the way it did.

"How did you go?" he asked you, now walking with you in the direction of the Great Hall.

"Okay I think," you told him. "How about you?"

"Me too," he said. "I was terrified that they'd ask us some weird questions since it's the Ministry writing the exam, but I think they went easy on us."

You nodded in agreement. "Could've been a lot worse."

"And hey," Cedric began. "If we all fail, Hagrid could get kicked out for not teaching us well enough."

"That's comforting," you said sarcastically. "And will definitely go down well with everyone."

You followed the mob of students up to the Great Hall, walking slowly as the group began to bottleneck close to the doors.

"I know I've already said it, but," Cedric began. "I can't thank you enough for your help last night. Honestly, without it I don't think I would've got past the first question."

You smiled slightly, your face muscles becoming wobbly under embarrassment.

"I doubt that," you said shyly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

"You're too modest, Y/N," Cedric scoffed.

You stood together as you waited to enter the Great Hall, the bottleneck moving the group even slower as more students began to join the lineup from other directions.

"Mr. Davies, tuck that shirt in," you heard Professor McGonagall snap up ahead.

You turned to watch her - she looked particularly frazzled with her lips taught and brows furrowed as she observed the students walking past her line of vision.

"And you, Miss Parkinson. Where on earth did you get that eye makeup from?"

"Professor, I-"

"Not to worry," McGonagall said, looking at the student with judgemental eyes. "Wipe it off before this evening, or you will be seeing me for a detention this weekend."