constellation ✧ marauders

Chapter Fourteen

The Christmas holidays had finally arrived at Hogwarts castle, with just one more week until the students were free for winter break. A heavy dropping of snow had fallen over the castle, and a gloomy, grey sky was seen as a regular occurrence.

Noelle sat in Potions class, distantly thinking about these things, and wishing for it to be Christmas morning already. She had finished brewing her perfectly concocted Pepperup Potion early, and was left to sit with her own thoughts for the last thirty or so minutes of class. The only thing interrupting her thoughts was the loud and bashful chatting and laughter emulating from the seats behind her, in which the marauders had taken up residence for the class period.

"Finished already, have you, Noie?" Sirius teased lightly, chuckling with James as he purposefully added the incorrect Potions ingredient with hopes to make a small explosion. Noelle broke into a small grin as she heard Remus's sigh as the boys already terribly made Potion turned an ugly green color, the opposite of what was wanted as a final product.

"Yup, in done. I see that you have managed to ruin yet another Potion?" Noelle responded, without turning to look at them. She didn't particularly understand why Sirius and James didn't try in their classes; they were perfectly equipped with the brains to do well, yet instead they chose to ruin Potions and distract the class with horribly crafted puns.

"It's our specialty, ruining Potions. I was so hoping for an explosion though, so I'm slightly disappointed with the lack of them this class," James sighed with an over-dramatized remorse as he dropped in more wrong ingredients. After adding four pickled frog toes, two lacewing flies, and a spoonful of leech juice, he was finally gifted with a tiny explosion of green gas that puffed up from his cauldron. The boy sat back in his chair, a smug grin plastered to his face as he admired the mess he had made.

"Wonderful work, Jamesie!" Sirius high-fives his best friend just as Professor Slughorn cane rushing over to the table madly.

James and Sirius left that class twenty minutes later with a detention each and extra homework due the following Monday; it was lucky it was the last class of friday, because otherwise they would have never had time to finish all the homework.

Noelle rushed to the library, placing herself at the very back and pulling out Tom's diary. She had finally found a way to balance her Hogwarts friends and Tom; during classes and after dinner was spent with friends, and breaks and lunches were spent studying in the library and writing to Tom. She desperately wanted the best of both worlds, but it was hard to balance her time, and most of her day was spent in a state of anxiety of whether she was doing enough. She couldn't wait for it to be break, when copious amounts of free-time to do as she pleased would be a well-needed gift. Just one more week of school and hard classes.

Tom had become quite a contradicting figure to Noelle. He was harsh and ruling at times, but also gentle and understanding towards her. Ever since she first found herself in Moaning Myrtles bathroom on Halloween, similar occurrences of gaps in her memory and finding herself at the bathroom had happened many times. It was infuriating to her that she could not recall nor understand why this kept on happening, but any time the subject was brought up with Tom, he would shut her down. Whenever that topic was brought up with him, the harsh words and frightening tone would flow from the diary.

So Noelle decided to ignore her feelings of unrest from the continuing situation of gaping gaps in her memory. She didn't have anyone to speak with about it, as Tom refused to and her other friends would think her daft.

The girl sighed. So many things were happening so quickly, she wished everything would slow down. But at the same time, Noelle felt so useless, as she wasn't doing anything to change.