The Tale of Azure - Book I: Shades of Green and Blue

Chapter Eight: The Importance of Changes

Disclaimer: I do not own "Harry Potter", "The Vampire Diaries" or "Black Butler".

Trigger warnings: self-harming and suicide attempts (implied)

Some weeks after changing the third-years pairings, Horace decided it was time to give his students a new assignment: to choose a potion that they would have to recreate with the ingredients available on the school's grounds and the classroom - they were forbidden from using the pantry- and write a report on it. It was a challenge that would employ creativity, knowledge, and commitment, three qualities he favoured on every student of his "collection". With a quill at the ready, Horace slowly read the reports, halting when he came across the Ashlane -Warren work before continuing its appraisal.

"Truly astonishing!" He said out loud after reading the pair's assignment, writing a bold "O" on at the right top corner of the first of 10 pages of parchment; the text was clearly Miss Warren's – her calligraphy was the most elegant of her year – and the complex illustrations were the handiwork of the talented young Azurelia.

Pairing up Azurelia with Miss Warren was probably the best decision he had made in the last months.

Calmly sipping his tea, he recalled the newly-formed pair composed by the third years' best student and his former worst student doing an impeccable work in recreating the Girding Potion in 15 minutes less than the others. After the class had ended, both had helped to collect and to put back in their proper places the vials, bottles of herbs, poisons and the like. It was refreshing to see the pitiful-looking Miss Warren with a different expression.

At last, that lonely girl seems happier!

The following weeks, it was not uncommon for Horace to see Miss Warren with a light green book in her hands called The Hobbit – his colleagues and some students had praised the book's scenarios and the author's perspective of magic and magical races, which ultimately made him buy and read said book after a well-spent afternoon on Bardsley Island – and in the company of her new Potions partner.

Someone who also reminded him of a young lady he had met many years ago and who had the strange ability to dispel one's inner loneliness just by standing close to that person.

"When you feel miserable, you want to make others feel the same as them...if that is true, then the opposite should work, Sluggy!"

Horace sighed as he recalled his late friend's words from when he was suffering from a broken heart. Placing back the quill on its usual place, he looked at a framed moving picture of himself and her when he was twenty-three years old and holding proudly the Potions Master certificate. She was at his side, smiling brightly before flinging her arms at him and surprisingly managing to lift him from the ground. She had explained to him that it was because of "Mother's teachings".

More happy memories started appearing in his mind: Master Arsenius Prince awarding him his Potions Master certificate, a ceremony attended by Horace's friend and her husband; the trio celebrating it in Cambridgeshire with a tea party where they had eaten lots of crystallized fruit, pineapple being his favourite of course.

He also had received from them a curious gift whose magical properties appealed to him immediately.

"The sand on it runs accordingly to the flow of the conversation," her brother-in-law Charles had explained, tapping lightly the glass of the object whose sand was running quicker than in a common hourglass. Allegedly, the hourglass had been found in an old temple dedicated to Hecate before ending up in an antique bazaar located in Wizarding Athens. "If the topic is interesting, it will run slowly...to the point that seems to freeze."

"Sluggy, emerald green and silver are your House's colours, right?" She had then smiled a smile that made her look decades younger. Edward's favourite colour is green. But I doubt he would go to your House."