𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘛𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘳~ 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦

Chapter 3: Help

"Where has he gone?" I shifted nervously in my seat. Harry was gone. After we finished discussing Malfoy, he wanted to head to the candy stand to get more chocolate frogs for Ron, even though Ron hadn't asked for any. He hadn't shown up since then, not even after we got off the train and went to school with the others. Now I sat with Ron in the great hall, desperately searching the room for Harry.
"Don't worry, he'll be right there," Ron mumbled with a chicken drumstick in the mouth.
"Are you going to stop eating?!" I snapped, slapping his arm with the book I was holding.
"Your best friend is missing, Ron!"
"Easy, turn around, there he is, you maniac." I turned my head toward the entrance to the great hall. Indeed, there he came running, with Luna in tow. When he arrived at our table, I saw a red stain on his shirt and blood on his nose.
"Hi, sorry for the delay folks," Harry said, sitting down.
"What's wrong with your face? Happened?" I asked him.
"Nosebleeds," he replied. That must have been a pretty bad nosebleed, though, because my best friend looked awful. I didn't get to say anything else as Dumbledore began his speech. He explained that Snape was our new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher and that his old friend, Professor Slughorn, would replace Snape in Potions. He also warned us about the dark forces that had returned and that we should beware.
"Do you know who benefits the dark forces the most?" asked Dumbledore. "Your students are your greatest weapon." Unconsciously, I reacted to this sentence with a look at the Slytherin table. I found the mop of white-blonde hair between Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini. Malfoy looked completely lost in thought. What was on his mind?
"Take some time to think about it," Dumbledore instructed.
"And now off to bed."

"That was a happy speech," said Ron, walking out of the hall. I turned back to the Slytherin table. Draco was still sitting there, staring straight ahead.

///

My first lesson of the school year was Potions class with Professor Slughorn.
"I have prepared some elixirs here, does anyone have any idea what they are?" Of course, a hand immediately shot up. "Yes Miss..." Slughorn began.
"Granger, sir." She walked over to the table with the three potions that Sluggy had set out on a table and pointed to the one on the far left.
"This one is Veritaserum, it's a truth serum. And that one..", she pointed to the next broth, "...is poly juice potion. It's very tricky to make. And that..." she introduced herself in front of the third magic potion and picked it up, "...this is Amortentia. The most effective love potion in the world. It smells different for everyone, depending on what attracts them. That's how it smells to me..." She stopped, as she sniffed the brew.
"Rose and Vanilla." She quickly put the potion back on the table and stepped back. Slughorn gave us more facts about Amortentia, it was supposed to cause strong infatuation and even obsession and was arguably extremely dangerous, which I couldn't imagine. There were definitely more dangerous things than this funny love soup.
"And this is a very special little potion," Slughorn said now, holding up a small vial of green liquid for us all to see. "Felix Felicis, better known by the name-"
"Liquid Happiness."
"Yes, Miss Granger, very well. One sip of this, and you imagine that whatever you set out to do, you will succeed." I listened. That was fascinating. I made a mental note to find a way to get hold of one of those vials. She could still be of great use to me. Slughorn seemed to want to make it easy for me.
"Anyone who manages to make a potent potion of living death will receive a small bottle of Liquid Luck as a prize. The recipe is on page 10 of your textbooks. Get to work!" I had never worked so ambitiously in class. However, making this cursed potion of living death proved extremely difficult. Even the nerd witch Granger seemed to despair. Potter, who was working next to her, was making good progress.
This little bastard. He had hidden under his funny invisibility cloak on the train and overheard me. I exposed him after the train stopped and taught him a lesson in the form of a juicy kick in the face.
Now noticing that Granger was having problems, Potter whispered something to her. Granger smiled gratefully at him. Great, of course the trio helped each other again. I could forget about the vial. Frustrated, I threw my book on the table and put the ingredients away. That's when Granger came up to me and grabbed some ingredients from the shelf himself.
"Give up already, Malfoy?" she asked suddenly.
"Yeah, that junk doesn't work," I snapped back. She took a step closer to me. I drew my eyebrows together. What did the mudblood want because now again?
"You have to crush the beans, not cut them, then it will work," she whispered and then went back to her workplace. Crush? I picked up my textbook again and reread the instructions for preparation. It specifically said 'cut up', not crush.
Nevertheless, I tried it and in fact the juice of the bean came out much better. I looked at Granger in amazement. Why did she help me? She noticed me looking at her and looked up from her work. When she realized that her tip had helped me, she smiled at me briefly. I smiled back gratefully and then looked back down at my work supplies.
Wait, did you just SMILE AT Granger?

///

Did I just smile at Draco Malfoy? And had he returned the smile?
What was that? I didn't even know why I told him about the bean. I had them received information from Harry. Malfoy had looked so frustrated that I was just trying to tease him about it, but I'd helped him instead.
It didn't matter now, I had to keep working on my potion. But that was in vain in the end. Harry finished faster than everyone else and received the award at the end of the lesson.
Malfoy angrily stormed out of the room. I ran after him, no idea why. When I stepped into the corridor, he was about to take the stairs up. "Malfoy," I called. Startled, he turned to look around
"What?" he hissed.
"Have a look in the library, maybe there is a recipe for the potion there, then you can brew one yourself."
He quirted an eyebrow, then ran up the stairs without another word.