Of Constellations → 𝘥. 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘧𝘰𝘺

vi. broken mirrors

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chapter six

broken mirrors

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Flitwick told me that Sunday evening my Astronomy Tower privileges were revoked. Though, he assured me I was not in trouble like I had been expecting. It was more to do with the petrified cat thing than it was the falling asleep in class. That was understandable.

Snape, however, made good on his promise to tell Flitwick about my issue. According to Flitwick, they were devising a solution to my problem. I think he was expecting it to make me feel better, but it was mostly just humiliating.

When I woke up the next day, it took me quite a while to force myself to get out of bed. My head felt too heavy to lift from my pillow. After a few minutes of sitting up and staring at my blankets, trying to get my limbs to move, I told Luna to go ahead to breakfast without me.

She muttered something about the Wrackspurts getting to me—which was her favorite made-up creature to blame things on—and gave me a sad look before leaving.

Potions was my first class that day and I wasn't feeling up to facing Snape again. Really, since he had apparently told the rest of the teachers what I'd told him, my chest burned with embarrassment whenever I thought about it.

Finally, I got myself out of my bed and standing up. From there it was easier to get dressed and ready for the day. Luna met up with me on the way to Potions and handed me a buttered piece of toast—my standard breakfast, as I was usually not hungry enough to eat much more. Only, she'd put so much butter on it, it was dripping onto my hand. I wasn't hungry even slightly, but I felt grateful for the kind gesture, so I forced myself to eat it anyway, nearly gagging with each bite. It was like eating a butter-soaked sponge.

The Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were waiting to be let into the potions dungeon and when Snape opened the doors, he already had his eyes narrowed at me. Maybe his solution really was to crack a cauldron over my head if I fell asleep.

We all got settled into our seats. My stomach was churning both with nerves and with the excess amount of butter I'd just made myself choke down.

"Luna, no matter how peaceful I look, if I start to fall asleep, please wake me up," I said.

She gave me a placid grin. "Of course," she said.

Before class started officially, I decided to test Luna by faking drowsiness. But, she was staring into the distance and didn't even glance over at me. I internally groaned and covered my face with my hands. This was going to be a long day.

I honestly wasn't sure what I was expecting Snape to do to keep me attentive, but what he actually did was a lot more painful than the cauldron thing. It wasn't physically painful, sure, but it was so humiliating that I began to visualize taking my textbooks from my bag and chucking them one by one at his face.

During his lecture about the many uses of moondew, he would call me out in front of the entire class whenever my head began to droop.

"This ingredient is instrumental in the brewing of a vast array of potions, including Wiggenweld—Fossen, this will be on your exam, I would suggest paying attention—potion and in many common antidote potions."

He would slam the glass jar of moondew on his desk to punctuate the scolding.

Thankfully, many of my classmates seemed to feel bad for me. But, there was some snickering the first couple of times Snape did this. I was too busy staring at my table trying not to make eye contact with him so I didn't know who was laughing, but I would've bet ten galleons on one of them being Justin.