Loyalties | Barty Crouch Jr

The Book of Potions

September 12, 1977 - Monday

At times, Leonora could be incredibly impatient. Ever since she had gotten her hands on Moste Potente Potions, she was itching to open it up and scan through the pages. However, she was also true to her word, so therefore, she waited until Barty was able to look through it with her.

To minimize the temptation of opening the book, she stashed it under her bed, someplace where she never typically checked, where no one else would be snooping around.

Thankfully, Barty had told her Sunday morning that they'd be able to look through it Monday night, so she wouldn't have to wait much longer.

Her last class of the day, Care of Magical Creatures, felt like it had droned on forever due to her excitement for that night. Professor Kettleburn was currently teaching them about puffskeins, a small, spherical and fluffy magical beast. Leonora had to admit that they were quite adorable.

Kettleburn had paired the class up into groups of two, unfortunately placing her with an annoying Fern. The pairs were tasked with feeding and shaving the puffskeins. While Fern handled the shaving, Leonora worked on finding spiders hidden on the trees to feed it.

After spending twenty minutes searching for spiders, she returned back to their station with only a few in her tiny cloth bag.

As she set the bag down onto the table, she noticed that Fern had already finished shaving the puffskein.

"That was fast," she stated looking over to Fern who was currently playing with the tiny beast.

"Well, you were gone for twenty minutes, Nora," she responded raising her eyebrows and looking over to the girl. "Besides," she said turning her attention back to the puffskein, "Amalia's mum raises puffskeins, so whenever I'm at her house I always help take care of them."

Leonora responded with a hum and opened up her cloth bag. "I've only found five spiders; I hope that's enough."

The puffskein wriggled its way out of Fern's grasp to eye Leonora's bag. It shot it's tongue out into the bag, grabbing all five spiders at once, before retracting its tongue back into its mouth.

Leonora jumped back with a wrinkled face, grossed by the puffskein's long tongue.

"That's disgusting," she said, listening to the puffskein hum in contentment.

"It's not disgusting, it's adorable!" Fern squealed. "They can't help how they look or have to eat; you know."

"I know that," Leonora spat, "that doesn't mean that it can't be disgusting."

The puffskein glared at Leonora, almost as if it understood what she was saying, and whipped its tongue out once more, striking it across her face and shoving it into her nose.

Leonora instantly jumped back once more, screeching as she brought a hand up to cover her nose. Everyone in the class turned to look at her, wondering what the commotion was. Fern was covering her mouth, trying to stifle a laugh.

Embarrassed, Leonora grabbed her book bag and flung it over her shoulder as she stormed away from the class early, ignoring the shouts from professor Kettleburn calling out after her.

.........................................................

Leonora skipped dinner that night, paranoid that the other students in her class had spread around what had happened to her. The last thing she wanted to do was walk into the great hall as everyone pointed and laughed at her.

She was currently sitting in the common room, waiting for Barty to come back from dinner so that they could go through Moste Potente Potions together. She had already grabbed it from under her bed, hiding it inside of her robes. It took everything in her to not pull it out and read through it.