Serpensortia
Chapter One: European Asp
Since the inception of the Hogwarts, there had been strict prohibitions on the brewing and use of love potions of any kind on school grounds. For good reason, as love potions had been a notoriously recurring epidemic of humiliation on the students since its doors had opened. Year after year, students particularly gifted at discreet, advanced potion brewing set to the task of supplying it for profit. If brewed correctly, the more unsavory students paid an exorbitant amount of galleons for the potion in hopes of embarrassing or coercing their fellow students. If brewed incorrectly, a long visit to St. Mungo's was surely in your future should that brew find itself in your goblet.
Pansy Parkinson had long suspected the existence of such a greedy potioneer in her year, but had yet to confirm her suspicions on the identity of the culprit. She revisited her thoughts on love potions as she observed her classmates from her station at the back of the potion classroom. Today, their assignment was to brew an acceptable antidote to love potions which Pansy couldn't help but think was probably to take some of the burden off Madam Pomfrey who had to keep such stores stocked at all times.
Next to her, Draco added the Wiggentree twigs to their simmering cauldron while she considered him out of the corner of her eye. Draco didn't realize he was being watched. That misstep was Pansy's first inclination that Draco had some preoccupation going on mentally. He never missed an opportunity to catch her staring so he could feel smug or leer at her because he liked the attention. He was crushing Gurdyroot as finely as possible now, but every now and then his guarded expression would slip into a vulnerable, perplexing one. He'd sneak peeks over to the station at the front of the room when Pansy would add ingredients, but his fleeting looks didn't go unnoticed. The open face he made was one Pansy had yet to see transform his features ever before, probably due to the fact that he always monitored his expressions as did most Slytherins. It wouldn't do to have your feelings on your sleeve in this snake house. You'd be an easy target, and by the end of the year, you'd be begging to be resorted into Hufflepuff as Slytherins had zero capacity for compassion. Following his line of sight, she found the source of his thoughts to be none other than Hermione Granger, and Pansy felt her fists clench. Granger has overstepped this time, Pansy thought.
This year, she decided angrily, I'll prove it's her once and for all. She has everyone fooled, but not me. The sudden line of suitors who pursued Hermione Granger wasn't lost on Pansy, and a love potion was the only reasonable explanation. After all, someone as homely as that muggleborn had to do something to improve her prospects. Pansy could have even overlooked this type of misbehavior had it not been for the sheer audacity of Granger this year. To have falsely ensnared so many pureblood males, it was unforgivable. Granger could have just kept to mothering her two idiot boyfriends, scar faced Harry Potter and blood traitor Ronald Weasley. No respectable pureblood girl of any means wanted those two dim imbecilic boys. She'd sooner marry Greggory Goyle or Vincent Crabbe at an all you can eat buffet. However, the burning injustice was that Granger's greed didn't stop there!
Lately, Gryffindor's Cormac McLaggen was trailing Granger in the hallways after their respective classes as Granger dashed away playing coy and making ridiculous excuses to escape him. While he wasn't Pansy's type as he was a Gryffindor, he was a well off, pureblooded wizard whose family has big influence in the Ministry. She could see his uses. She could even recall that laughable time an internationally renowned Quidditch player took Granger to the Yule Ball. Frankly, a star athlete that could have taken any girl at Hogwarts to the dance taking that bookish shrew should've been the end of her love potion spree. Now, she was supposed to endure her Draco's sudden potion induced infatuation with that freakishly smart mudblood? Over my dead, decomposing body, Pansy grumpily thought as she practiced her calligraphy by drawing her Pansy Malfoy signature on the margins of her parchment and thought of all the misfortunes she could have befall Granger should the Dark Lord soon take power.
"Proper names on your parchment only, Parkinson," emphasized Snape as he slithered by to observe their cauldron. "Two points from Slytherin for pointless daydreaming. Both of you." Snape gave Draco and Pansy dark looks before briskly walking over to the station where Weasley and Potter sat.
Snape was obviously unimpressed by what he found, as he announced to the class, "Fifty points from Gryffindor for Weasley's inability to refrain from eating his potion ingredients. Had you been paying even a slight amount of attention, you would remember my warning. While the leaves are addictively sweet tasting, bowtruckles ferociously guard Wiggentrees in the wild, and such an action would prompt attack. This would likely end in your untimely death given that you no doubt paid just as much attention to how to diffuse confrontation with a branch of bowtruckles in your Magical Creatures class." Collective sighs erupted from the Gryffindor half of the class while giggles erupted from all others, and Ronald turned red in embarrassment and tried to pull the leaves from his mouth. Hermione hissed Ronald's name in reprimand from her station behind him as Snape commanded the class to bottle and label what dribble they'd made for him then leave his classroom.
Pansy hurriedly grabbed a plain bottle to put their potion in, but as she glimpsed the antidote potion in their cauldron, she was struck with a quick plan of self proclaimed evil brilliance. She ladled a few servings of the potion into the bottle before purposely spilling some on herself and the ground around her. In her pretend surprise at her clumsiness, she feigned slipping into the puddle, and as Draco gallantly turned to right her from falling forward, she took the opportunity to use the momentum to chuck the bottle's contents at Malfoy's startled face. She hit her mark, but he didn't do her any favors by sputtering like a drowning victim.
"Pansy! Look what you've done!" Malfoy growled as he stood before her with the potion staining his face and robes. He grabbed his bag violently, and shoved his parchments within it before stalking out of class with a door slam. Pansy watched him leave and wondered if her practiced look of innocence passed inspection. Taking stock of the class mates who had stopped to watch her spectacle, she leveled them a glare to stop their scrutiny. Only, one student hadn't stop staring in return. Blaise Zabini gave her a long look of such knowing that she filled with dread at being so transparent to his gaze. As she bottled the remains of their assignment, all the humiliating scenarios of Blaise using this information against her ran through her head as she berated herself for such a hasty plan.
A/N: Hello! Thanks for reading! I'm writing for my own frivolous and therapeutic purposes and not with professional intent, so please feel relieved of the duty to harshly critique my story. Otherwise let me know what you think (in English or Parseltongue), and I'll update regularly! Hissssss hissssss until next time, Sneksssss!