Stalking into the d amp and dreary classroom, I gifted the new students with the darkest glare I could muster. The start of another year had crept up on me, and I was not pleased with that fact. Few of these inept students would appreciate the subtle art that was potion making, and even fewer would possess the appropriate talents. This was going to be an agonizingly long year.
A myriad of anxious faces stared at me, my face carved into stone and the furthest thing from welcoming. Their eyes feasted upon my black robes and menacing stance as I glared at them from the front of the room. My eyes swept across this new batch of the finest brats in all of Wizarding Britain, when I spotted the one face I had been dreading for eleven years.
Harry bloody Potter.
He was staring up at me, a guarded expression on his face. And his eyes – his eyes. To look at his eyes was to look into the green depths of Lily Potter's eyes, and I could not bear to do that. Her eyes were the very orbs that plagued my dreams, the eyes that turned my refreshing sleep into a nightmare. She had been the one and only person I had ever trusted – the one and only person I had ever loved. But she had chosen James Potter over me; me, her best friend since our childhood in Spinner's End. In the end, I had tried desperately to protect her. I had begged at the feet of the ever powerful and unforgiving Dark Lord to spare her life. Surprisingly, he had heeded my request. But when it all played out, she chose Harry's life over her own; just as she had chosen James over me.
No, I could not look upon the face of Harry Potter.
Rage at the boy suddenly filled my very being. It was his fault that Lily had died; his fault that I had spent the past eleven years alone. It was because of that scrawny little boy that I had spent the last eleven years in mortal danger spying on the Dark Lord, to protect him - to protect Lily's child. The ranks of the Death Eaters were far from kind and if my deceit was ever discovered I would be unable to escape the Dark Lord's wrath. My life would come to a painful end. He would never know of this treacherous game that I played to keep him safe. He would never appreciate nor understand, and all of a sudden I could not help but succumb to the anger of this injustice.
"Potter!" I snapped viciously. The boy nearly fell out his chair. "What would I get is I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
"I don't know, sir." The boy's green eyes were wide as saucers, boring holes into me. Lily is dead, I reminded myself. She is never coming back.
"Tut, tut – fame clearly isn't everything." It had been cruel, but Potter seemed fairly unaffected by the insult. The brat was probably proud of his fame, just as arrogant as his father. This created another surge of rage, for the fame was not his. He had been merely one year old – it had been his mother who had saved him, it had been his mother who truly defeated the Dark Lord.
Glaring venomously, I ground out another question the contemptuous brat could not possibly answer.
"Let's try again, Potter," my voice was ice, and it was clearly having the desired effect. Potter was ashen as he looked at me. "Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"
Rightfully timid, he replied, "I don't know, sir."
Satisfied that I had reduced him to an acceptable size, at least for the time being, I turned from him. As much as I would have liked to continue to shrink his colossal head, I could not bear to look at his distressed eyes any longer. I stalked to the chalk board and began to scribble long and precise notes on it.
Forcibly crushing the chalk into instructions for the boil cure potion, my thoughts whirled. My heart seemed to have found permanent residence in my throat; I didn't know how I could possible survive seven years with the eyes of Lily Potter constantly staring into the soul that she had left behind.