It was one of those mornings when one simply did not want to get out of bed. Dawn had brought with it a bitter cold, and an all encompassing mist that creeped like a living thing into every bedroom, bathroom, classroom and corridor of
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The covers of Harry Potter's bed seemed extra warm today, as if they were spitefully aware he had been up all night catching up with potions Homework that he'd left to the last minute, again.
Lack of sleep and lethargy from the bitter cold meant that Breakfast was a quiet affair, Harry was content to sit in silence and allow the warmth of the sausages piled on his plate to slowly warm his insides. He simply allowed his two best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger to bicker between themselves. In fact, the only communication he made at all was the death-glare he shot at Hermione when she had loftily reminded him that if Harry had followed the homework plan she'd given him then he would have slept at least a little more than the pathetic four and a half hours that he'd ended up with.
Potions was first lesson and, for the first time this year they were having to share their class with another house's students.
The Hufflepuff teacher had recently managed to turn himself into a carrot after drinking some badly made VegiGrow potion placed in his coffee by a vengeful student. Despite the hilarity of someone becoming an orange vegetable, the teacher's life most certainly hung in the balance and until he recovered the poor man was confined to St. Mungo's.
Harry made it to the classroom a few minutes late, the heavy blanket of exhaustion weighing down his pace to little more than a snail's, and discovered that extra tables had been added to the room but there was only one table free. Ron and Hermione were sat together two rows behind the free table. He sighed. This day keeps getting better.
Snape hadn't arrived yet and Harry, grateful that he'd managed to at least get to his desk without having points taken from his house, sunk behind the desk and took the chair closest to the wall. He was just considering whether to use blue or black ink to pretend to take notes with when he became aware of a presence next to him. "Is it okay if I sit here?"
The voice was soft and lilting, sounding almost like music in the air.
It annoyed Harry that anyone could sound so happy when he himself felt like a walking corpse and as he looked up to respond grouchily he couldn't help but intake his breath a little too harshly.
The boy stood next to him was.. Well..he was.. He was gorgeous.
His skin was very pale, not in a way that hinted at an illness but in a way that seemed to give the smooth blemish free skin an almost luminescent quality in the half light of the candles that adorned the classroom. His curious, shy eyes were a cold shade of steel that contrasted against the copper red hair that was carefully styled in an "I don't care" style.
Harry's brain came up with a blank on the 'how-to-speak' front and he just nodded and moved some of his stationary further onto his side of the table. There was a furious blush creeping into Harry's cheeks and he didn't look at the boy as he thanked him and sat down, quickly retrieving his own quill, parchment and book.
Not ten seconds passed before the greasy, strikingly bat-like Severus Snape swept into the room. His wand flicked briefly at the blackboard and instructions began to write themselves on the board as he walked briskly to his desk and sat down without saying a single word. Clearly he was in just as good a mood as Harry today.
Harry sighed and began to read the instructions on the board;
Draught of Waking Nightmares
A poison known to drive those who ingest it mad with terrifying visions before the victim eventually suffers a fatal heart attack 13 hours and 13 minutes after ingestion. There is an antidote to this potion in it's final form, but many of the ingredients themselves do not have antidotes when ingested separately so BE CAREFUL.
3x diluted Venomous Tentacula juice as potion base
¾ of a single Venomous Tentacula leaf for toxicity
4 clockwise & 2 anti-clockwise turns every 30 seconds for 5 minutes
1 part Datura mixed with 5 parts Mugwort added into the centre of the potion and stir as above for 15 minutes.
Crush together 1 part Aconite, 1 part African Violet, 2 parts Belladonna and 1 part Be-Still flower in your pestle and mortar and add to the potion when the potion turns to a faint green colour.
Final potion should be a murky purple with a faint odour of burning.
Work in pairs, you will be assessed on your work at the end of the lesson.
Begin.
All at once people began to rise from their seats to collect their ingredients from the store cupboard, and in the face of the particularly difficult potion him and the boy whose name Harry didn't know had to make, his fatigue immediately began to dissipate. He turned to ask the boy his name and was shocked to see that he was no longer in his seat.
Harry scanned the room to find him and saw that the boy must've been first in line to the cupboard and was already returning to the desk with an arm full of ingredients. He was perilously balancing the vial of Venomous Tentacula inside the bowl of the pestle and mortar and it seemed as if it would topple out of it at and shatter at any second, but the boy managed to somehow carry everything else and still keep the vial steady at the same time.
It had been less than thirty seconds since the black-board had completed writing itself, and the boy's shocking speed stunned Harry. It must have showed on his face because the attractive boy smiled and answered his unspoken question.
"Seen this one in the book already, memorised it so I didn't even need the instructions." He nodded his head towards the board as he explained and set the ingredients down on the desk next to the cauldron that had now appeared next to them.
Harry heard a haughty hmph from behind them and immediately recognised the sound had come from Hermione. Clearly, she had not memorised this spell. Everyone knew how much Hermione hated to be outdone. Anywhere. For anything.
"I'm Cedric Diggory. You're Harry Potter." His words weren't a question, but the way there were spoken gave an air of uncertainty that hadn't been there in the previous sentence. He seemed uneasy, and shy.
"Nice to meet you" Harry smiled at the boy, and then began to add ingredients to the pestle and mortar.
And it was nice to meet him, very nice indeed, thought Harry.
They continued to work efficiently for a while in companionable silence. Every-time Cedric reached across Harry for something Harry caught the strange scent of this new boy that Harry was quickly beginning to like.
It was a subtle smell, like the combination of several expensive colognes on top of each other. It smelled like Vanilla with a sharper undertone of Mint, while at the same time smelling distinctly floral. It was a heady, addictive smell and Harry found himself breathing deeply, almost perversely every-time he had a chance.
Once or twice, Harry looked up from his cauldron-stirring to glance at Cedric's face, and he had caught him looking back at him. Looking down slightly because Cedric was quite a bit taller than Harry, but he was looking at him none the less. And he'd looked away the moment Harry had looked at him.
Soon, the lesson was almost at an end, and Harry and Cedric's potion was a dull, almost mundane purple that belched out little silvery clouds that smelled like burning plastic every thirty seconds or so. Snape had risen from his chair several moments ago and was now flitting around the classroom, tutting and hmming as he went. He grudgingly awarded five points to a Hufflepuff girl, the only other student who had perfected the Draught. Hermione and Ron's potion had gone a strange blood red colour and smelled faintly of roses. When Snape finally made his way to Harry and Cedric's table he simply glared at Harry, seemingly vexed that he couldn't find anything to fault with the potion.
When Snape dismissed the class and Harry began to rise from his chair, Cedric cleared his throat and opened his mouth as if to say something, but then he closed it and rose from his house as well.
"I'll see you later, Harry?" Cedric's voice was thick with something that Harry couldn't identify. Strain and something else, like longing.
"Sure, I look forward to it" Harry smiled.
He meant it, and hoped that they would indeed see each other again later.
They parted ways and Harry hurried to catch up with his friends.
When he reached them, Hermione had seemingly forgotten all about being outdone in Potions and had instead taken to immediately asking all about Cedric and if they enjoyed their flirting.