Stargazing With Beilah

Scarf (Happy Birthday! <3)

Beilah hadn't understood the significance behind the scarf that Spencer had gifted her on her first birthday at Hogwarts. She had always assumed that the only purpose of it was to keep her warm while donning a favourite colour combination of hers- gold paired with royal blue- in the form of the soft, fluffy yarn used in the scarf. Despite her very ordinary beliefs about the scarf, she wore it nearly every day- at least during the colder times. It was extraordinarily comfortable and kept her warm when she was cold as well as being from a close friend of hers that she didn't get to see as much due to the difference of sorting between the two. 

It wasn't until nearly a year later when she discovered the true purpose of the scarf. 

Heavy footfalls thudded behind her loudly as the rushing people gained on her, making a surprising amount of headway on her despite her best efforts to escape them. Beilah wasn't built for this kind of physical exertion, though, and was quickly growing more and more tired racing about at full speed over the rocky, uneven terrain of the Hogwarts grounds. 

In an attempt to see if she was losing the upper-class bullies in any way, she turned her head to look back at them. A fatal mistake. 

The second she looked away, her foot hooked on a loose root sticking out of the ground, sending her tumbling to the ground in a painfully agonizing crash that knocked the air from her lungs. 

Squinting through the pain and the glaring brightness of the horrible angle of the sun beating down upon her and her perpetrators, she couldn't clearly see much aside from the glimpse of a vile, jagged-toothed smile. 

Okay, maybe his teeth were only jagged in her mind due to the panic of the moment, but the fear of the entire situation hit her like a sack of bricks nonetheless. 

When he reached down for her though, something stopped him. As he triumphantly lunged towards her to hit her with some strike easily landed on a smaller, younger witch such as herself, he was flung backwards. When his hand drew too close to her, a burst of royal blue light tinged with golden undertones exploded from her throat, sending the man flying backwards suddenly. 

Beilah had been taken aback, only able to gape open-mouthed with shock until the backup of her friends found her and the others, coming to her aid at last.  

At the time, she didn't completely understand what had happened and hadn't had time to ask any questions regarding it before being distracted by other things going on in Hogwarts. She never forgot, not allowing the happenings of the moment to slip from her mind, but higher priorities did take over her mind, pressing the confusion and wonder associated with that moment to the back of her head without completely allowing her to forget about it. 

She rationalized it, telling herself that it was far from the strangest occurrence at their school. For a while, that thought worked, allowing her to disregard the strange magic for a while. 

Until it happened again. 

The next time she witnessed the oddity that was the unknown magic was whilst she was in her potions class. As it was so cold in the room in question, she was still bundled in a warm, thick sweater beneath her Hufflepuff robes among other warm, cuddly things in an attempt to ward off the frigid air surrounding. 

That day, she wasn't the most attentive while completing her classwork and found herself mostly doodling instead of taking notes on the potion she was supposed to be learning about. She tuned back into the discussion at the front of the room just in time to hear her professor's announcement, "Now, as you all have adequate notes regarding the potion at hand, I shall have you all try your hand at completing the potion with your lab partner. It is a fairly simple potion, so I am sure you will all do splendidly. You may begin now. You have the rest of the class period to complete the potion."

"...shit."

It was just Beilah's luck that her lab partner hadn't shown up to class on the day that she had to complete an assignment that she hadn't been paying attention to in the least. She pushed her glasses out of her face to drag a hand across in an attempt to calm herself. She did not know what she was doing. With a deep breath, though, she steeled herself. The professor had said that it was a simple enough potion and the notes she had written on the blackboard seemed easy enough to follow, even without the additional help of the professor's explanation of the material. She could handle this, she was sure of it! (She was not sure of it.)

Following the instructions as closely as she could, she began adding the ingredients listed. She poured in the water, set it to a boil with a simply spell, added in the first two ingredients, and then, unsurprisingly, everything fell into chaos. 

The brew turned a vicious shade of green before slowly melting into a deep purple, bubbling with increased intensity as the seconds ticked by. Beilah moved to spring backwards, but, alas, she was too late. The potion not only overflowed but exploded sending the sizzling liquid hurtling straight towards her face, bits of the not yet dissolved ingredients acting as shards of shrapnel flying at her in tandem. 

She flinched back, screwing her eyes shut tightly and throwing her hands up in front of her face to protect herself, waiting for the feeling of the acidic potion to meet her skin. 

But it never came. 

Instead, after a few moments of fear, she looked up. Upon doing so, Beilah was greeted with a blue halo of light and energy surrounding her. The light shone, reaching outwards. As her vision focused on the direction the light was spreading, she saw the potion receding, slipping away from her until it became a tamable puddle on the table before her. 

With that, the light vanished. 

Beilah had no clue what had happened under either of those circumstances, but after witnessing both of them with her own eyes, she realized that the scarf she had was not what it had seemed at face value, and a test run by administration confirmed her suspicions. 

(After the explosion ordeal, Beilah was taken to the infirmary to check for injuries (there were none), which was then followed by tests to see what had caused the Potion Bending. Once it was discovered that it was the scarf, the administration made sure that it was, in fact, a harmless and safe article for Beilah to possess- which it was.)

"So... how?"

"Wh-?" a look of realization crossed Spencer's face briefly, "Oh! The scarf? I enchanted the wool I used with a few spells before I knitted it."

"You knitted it yourself?"

He deadpanned, causing Beilah to laugh. 

"What did you enchant it with?"

"Just some simple spells. Protection mostly, and a little bit of magic to make sure that it stays the perfect temperature no matter the weather."

"Aww! Dude, that's awesome!"

He grinned, glad that she not only liked the scarf even more, now, and that it had helped her on more than one occasion, but that she seemed impressed by his actions, as well (Spencer was a slut for validation).

~

As their years at Hogwarts wore on, Beilah continued to wear the scarf nearly every day. It helped her on several occasions, keeping her out of trouble in more than one way- and keeping her incredibly comfortable while doing so. Anytime it suffered any damage throughout the years, Spencer would attend to it, fixing the snags in the wool or re-enchanting it as he learned newer and stronger spells to apply to it. It acted as a way to protect her, but, more than that, it reminded her that the Slytherin would be there for her no matter what. it served as a reminder of the same thing to Spencer, reminding him that he was loved and that he was useful, appreciated. 

Neither of them could be more thankful for the scarf.