"Did you hear about Joseph Ickes, the cute Ravenclaw who left last year? Only gone and got himself a starting spot for the Magpies, the rogue!"
Chapter Four
Head high, I entered the Transfiguration room, ignoring the students around me whispering to themselves about some gossip or other. Very few stopped to watch me, so it clearly didn't concern me. That made a nice change.
I was to Slytherin what Lily Potter should have been to Gryffindor: their princess, so to speak. Naturally, that led to more rumours than were necessary about my every action. It stemmed from mama, who, as the first female descendent of the First and Oldest House of Brethwick in nine generations, had been royalty herself at school.
It didn't hurt that our status hadn't been tarnished in any circle by her family's lack of commitment to the Second Wizarding War.
In many ways, I've always thought that was what had drawn her to Uncle Zabini. He, too, had been neutral, mama used to say. It had been years since I'd last seen him, but I knew that hadn't been our ending. My mama's best friend wouldn't leave me. He'd be back soon, once he'd grieved enough.
My regular seat besides Jamie was on the far side of the classroom, beside the windows. Already I was beginning to regret not asking Grace to throw an extra cardigan onto the pile of clthese she'd picked out. I could just make out the first snowflakes beginning to settle as Professor Forbish used his want to set off the customary sparks to call us to attention.
"I'll need you focused today, seventh years," he called over the slowly quieting ruckus. "We're continuin with human transfiguration. By the end of the hour, I want you all to have managed to alter at least one feature on your partner's face."
He took a pause to charm a list of incantations onto the board. Then, "Well off you go," and that was it.
Great teacher, that one. Really cared for his students' education.
There came immediately the low hum of two-dozen students excitedly conversing with their partners over the opporunities the task presented. Jamie and I were no different.
"What you want, Horlons?" he asked cockily, "A pig snout, or something more inventive?"
I smiled, considering the possibilities.
"Surprise me," I replied. "I'm having too much trouble deciding which part of your face needs improving most deperately."
"Let's get this over with then," he said with a scary amount of enthusiasm. "Fancy going first?"
We turned to face each other, and Jamie was quite unashamedly struggling to keep his face impassive as the textbook instructed – I presume it was a result of the scrunched up look of concentration on my face. My eyes became rather squinty when I thought too hard.
The theory for human transfiguration was like nothing we'd studied in lower years. Altering the features of another human was completely different to the act of changing your own muscles and skin and hair – the things you'd been acquainted with intimately for seventeen years. This was an all-new ballpark. This wasn't anything my mama had explained to me, and it seemed something that to understand required you to be either a natural, or to have had hours and days and months of practice. We'd started this on Friday. I'd had a grand total of 20 minutes rehearsal for this moment.
This bloody stupid sodding moment in which I humiliated myself in front of the class.
"Woman wept!" the git yelled – a little melodramatically, in my opinion. "What did you do?!"
He'd caught the rest of the room's attention with the outburst, and I could only watch hellplessly as the eyebrow I'd been attempting to transfigure into a handlebar moustache (start simple, I'd thought) instead grew and grew. It didn't show signs of stopping, even as it began to shroud his face, even as it surpassed the legendary length and bushiness of Dumbledore's beard, with his only nose poking through safely.
"Don't just watch it, Horlons!" he shouted. He sounded panicked. Dammit, that really didn't help.
I was frozen to the spot, shocked and utterly embarrassed. It was like being back in second year again, the dunce of the class (and okay, that was a slight exaggeration, but I wasn't the one people came to for homework help). I was a tiny wee thirteen year old again, incapable and incompetent, a disgrace and disappointment to the House of Brethwick. In my head, I was suddenly all the things my mama had tried to teach me I was not.
"I don't know what to do, Jamie," I admitted, flustered.
He couldn't speak to reply though, the hair having taken over his mouth, his face resembling a tar-coated Pygmy Puff. The boys in the class were laughing, I could hear them; the girls were nearly skrieking with worry that the 'sexy' Quidditch captain would perish.
In the hubbub, I couldn't find any humour. My wand had dropped to the floor, my legs were jelly. James had his arms about his head in alarm, shouts emerging muffled and distorted through the shrubbery that had become his face.
"I don't... I don't know–"
"Finite incantatum!"
Professir Forbish's resilient incantation snapped me back to reality. As he calmly undid my mess, I spotted that disappointed glint in his eyes, the same one all adults had when someone of my generation showed any kind of fear.
"Back in my day, your fear was only of the Death Eaters, and panicking meant the killing curse at the hands of fifty or so of them," they'd drone. It was quite tiresome. Would the Death Eaters really have Avada -ed me for not knowing how to release James from the grip of his eyebrows.
Firbish was shoving his wand back up the sleeve of his robes when he next addressed me. He could take as long as he needed; I was still composing myself.
"Miss Horlons." Was he growling?
I gulped.
"Yes, sir?"
"What class are we currently in, Miss Horlons?"
I was really regretting staying up all night. It was hard to keep eye contact with the professor, let alone follow what he was saying.
"Class, sir?"
"This, Miss Horlons," he snarled, "Is Transfiguration. This is not a Charms class. The aim was to transfigure, not to engorge. So please, do tell how you went so drastically wrong."
With the eyes of the class on me, waiting for the Slytherin princess' eventual crack, I felt everything imploding. The odds were against me; my mind had gone blank; out of the corner of my eye, I could see James and returned to normal and he was looking at me with concern.
This was too much.
I met Jamie's gaze with a pleading look. Forbish wasn't one to go easy on a student for any reason – he was never going to let me off because of a rough day. He was no Professor Longbottom.
"Sir?" Jamie spoke up, questioningly. "I think it might have been my fault, Professor. I shouldn't have been moving when she cast the spell."
Never had I appreciated that boy more.
"In that case, Mr Potter, we'll have to assign some homework for this lesson, since you are all so clearly in need of more help. An essay, three feet, on the consequences of the caste or castee losing concentration."
The groans of the class echoed around the room. We already had mock exams to prepare for. There was barely any time left in the day to squeeze in a pointless essay, but then, Forbish had never been known for his fairnesss.
As I took my seat again, James still hadn't looked away from me. Forbish had launched into a spiel about paying attention in lessons. The rest of the class were pointedly ignoring him and glaring daggers at me.
"You okay?" James mouthed.
I shrugged. For once, there was no point lying outright; my warmed face and drooping eyelids were probably a dead give-away, no matter how well Evalina and Gracie had done me up.
"I will be," I mouthed back.
That was enough to spur Jamie into raising his hand.
"Professor, I think I should go to the Hospital Wing about my eyebrows. They're starting to, er, sting?" Forbish only nodded, distracted by Hannah Hague a few rows behind us – she'd begun snorting obnoxiously through the pig nose she'd been given by her partner.
"Can I take someone to make sure I get there in one piece?"
He was oozing charm now, pushing it as far as he thought he could get.
When Forbish again only gave a curt nod, Jamis grabbed my hand and hauled me from the room before I knew what was happening.
He didn't say a word until we'd made it down to the ground floor. My eyes were burning something dierce, my heels shuffling sluggishly. If I wasn't careful, I was going to lose control in the very public Entrance Hall.
"Can we slow down please, Jamie?" Merlin, I sounded pathetic. He glanced down, a soft look in place. For once, the grating smile was absent – definitely a relief. Giving my hand a squeeze, we descended one more staircase, ambled our way down one more corridor, and came to a halt only once we'd reached a familiar portrait of a bowl of fruit.
When we were sat inside at a table, the elves hastening to grab a few cookies at Jame's request, he turned on me.
"So what's up, darling?"
A/N I've been cooking a lot today. This wasn't meant to be... actually, what comes next is moreso. Not sure either of us know what I'm on about. Read ahead if you're still hear - we're not a quarter of the way through yet. If you're interested in Rose x Scorpius stories too, I've got one of those in a slightly different universe (Scorpius isn't a Slytherin), which is also based on real situations in my life. Try imagining me as a mesh of Aoife and Rose and you'll get a very messy twenty year old. Anyway, review!
