Make Me.

Book 3 - Chapter 7

As the first week of classes moved forward, Ellie began to grow more and more anxious in wake of Friday evening, when she would have her first scheduled remedial lesson with Professor Snape. She had no idea what they would be doing and Ellie had been unable to catch her father in order to ask him about it, as the first week of classes had them both very, very busy, and together, those two facts were making everything ten times worse. Thankfully, Ellie had been so busy during the days, however, that at night, she was managing to catch a few hours of disjointed sleep. 

Since the hippogriff incident on the first day, Ellie and all of her friends, Slytherin and Gryffindor alike, were glad to have Malfoy off in the Hospital Wing. Though their peace didn't last long, as Malfoy reappeared in classes late Thursday morning, halfway though double potions. He swaggered into the dungeon, his right arm covered in bandages and bound up in a sling, acting as though he were the heroic survivor of some dreadful battle. 

"Told you he'd survive," whispered Harry to Hermione, an annoyed tone under his breath. Ellie overheard him from the table over. 

"Unfortunately," she whispered across the gap. Ron tried suppressing a snigger. 

Malfoy put on a brave sort of grimace as eyes trailed him over to an empty spot at a table. Crabbe and Goyle greeted him with pats on the back as he walked through the maze of chairs and cauldrons, causing a lot of loud slapping noises and cheerful murmurings. 

"Settle down, settle down," said Professor Snape idly. 

They were making a new potion today, a Shrinking Solution and Malfoy set up his cauldron right next to Ellie and Neville, who after two years, had secured a table with only the pair of them, seeing as many times Neville's potion would spill or explode, having disastrous effects that kept most other students away. Ellie was just finishing up preparing her ingredients and had a very nice pile of chopped daisy roots sitting on the table in front of her. 

"Sir," Malfoy called, "sir, I'll need help cutting up these daisy roots, because of my arm -"

Snape looked up from the table at the front of the room, scanned the faces around him, and promptly spoke. 

"Miss Dracula, cut up Malfoy's roots for him," he said, looking back down to the table. 

Ellie stilled, looking at the top of Snape's greasy head of hair. She turned to Malfoy, who had the world's largest smirk plastered across his face. Ellie's hand clenched tighter around her knife as she pulled Malfoy's roots in front of her, beginning to chop them rather violently. 

"There's nothing wrong with your arm," said Ellie. Chop. Chop. CHOP. Even in Ellie's anger, she couldn't help but chop the roots into perfect, identical, cylindrical bits. 

"Oh, but there obviously is, or else you wouldn't be chopping my roots, would you?" said Malfoy. The dramatic boy who was rolling down the front steps of the castle three days previous was gone and replaced with normal, cocky, arrogant, Malfoy.

"I preferred you when you were crying on the front steps of the castle," Ellie said, reminiscent. She was carelessly flinging her knife around as she talked, as if it wasn't sharp enough to take off all ten of her fingers. "Remember, you looked at me and - what was it you said? Oh, yeah - something like, leave me here to die. I should've. I really should have." 

"I wasn't crying," Malofy spat. Chop. Chop. CHOP.

"Sure," said Ellie with a laugh. Chop. Chop. CHOP. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, blondie." 

With Ellie's proficient knife skills, it took her only ten minutes to completely chop Malfoy's daisy roots, and she had finished cutting up both of their roots before most of the class had finished chopping their own set.