Chapter 4 - What do you need luck for?
"Come in, come in!" Professor Slughorn enthuses, his booming voice carrying easily across the expansive potions classroom.
The room is brighter and more neatly organized than it was under Snape's tenure, and Hermione finally gets a taste of that first-day-of-school flutter of excitement as she sits down at a bench and waits for Harry and Ron. They are getting books and supplies from the store cupboard, having failed to plan ahead for taking the class.
The rest of the class files in gradually and Ernie MacMillian joins her and Harry and Ron at their station. There are four Ravenclaws and four Slytherins as well, each group taking up a bench to themselves. Well, Theo joins the Slytherins, and she's at the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff table, but if she ignores the colours of everyone's ties, it's just like normal.
A new term of classes, a shiny new copy of Advanced Potion Making, a competent-seeming professor, and her best friends beside her. She pulls out her favourite quill.
Slughorn starts his lesson by introducing the class to several advanced potions he's prepared. Hermione recognises most of them, and finds that she can answer the first two of his questions easily.
It's nice to know she's still herself, no matter that she's dressed in green and silver. Maybe this year won't be quite as bad as she feared.
And if she gets to see Malfoy scowling about being bested by a muggle-born, well, that's just a bonus.
"It's Amortentia," Hermione says, identifying Slughorn's third potion. "It's the most powerful love potion in the world, with a distinct smell that changes from person to person depending on what attracts them. For instance, I smell freshly mown grass, and new parchment, and –"
She cuts herself off and very nearly dives under the table. There is a difference, she scolds herself, between giving a thorough answer and admitting to a classroom of students and your brand-new professor what smells you find most attractive.
But gosh, it's hard to ignore, isn't it? That cauldron, and the waves of earthy grass and clean parchment and the wet, warm smell of a rainstorm billowing off it. She'd rather like to swim inside it. Airy and fresh and positively intoxicating.
That'll be it. She shakes her head. The intoxicating fumes, they're messing with her mind. That's why she embarrassed herself. And also why she's gotten so distracted as to miss the end of Slughorn's lecture about Amortentia.
She zones back in just in time to take a few notes on Felix Felicis and to listen to Slughorn set their assignment for the day – Draught of Living Death, with a vial of Felix Felicis to be won by the student with the best potion. The professor makes a beeline for their table as soon as they begin.
"Ms. Granger, is it?"
"Yes, sir. Hermione Granger."
"And you're a friend of Harry's?" he asks eagerly, switching his focus from her to Harry. "Could this possibly be the friend you mentioned over the summer? The best in your year?"
"Oh, er, yeah. I did say that, " Harry tells him, flashing her a grin. Hermione flushes.
"Oh ho! And a new Slytherin to boot! My old house, you know," he says conspiratorially to Hermione. "Very pleased to have you in my class, Ms. Granger. Very pleased indeed."
"Thank you, sir," she replies politely. "I'm looking forward to it."
She can feel Malfoy's glare boring into her back as Slughorn wanders off, chortling.
Hermione shifts her focus to her potion, making sure to follow the directions precisely. She'd want to brew a good potion no matter what, but the possibility of a vial of liquid luck… She would need to research it some more, but she wonders if one lucky day would be enough to get her back to Gryffindor where she belongs.
At first she thinks she'll manage it. Her potion appears to be the best in the room as they get about a third of the way through the lesson.
Malfoy, she notices, seems as intent as she is on winning the potion. He's focused, with the same shocking level of intensity he had when he was looking at books in the library earlier.
But he's struggling, she notes with hardly any vindictiveness. His potion is not nearly as successful as hers at this stage. He's chopping his valerian roots much too roughly.
Either Harry's right, and Malfoy's up to something — something that would benefit from a little extra luck — or he's decided to take an interest in his schooling. Perhaps with his father in prison, he's come to the realization that he might have to work for something at some point in his life.
Or maybe he just wants the potion to help him charm witches, or cheat at quidditch, or rob an orphanage, or whatever it is Malfoy does in his spare time.
Though, perhaps she's spoken too soon. Her own potion is going downhill. She can hardly get any juice out of her Sopophorous bean.
Meanwhile, Harry, who's ignoring the instructions, is practically drowning in juice.
"Crush it with the side of your knife," he says. The instructions say to chop it.
She peers over Harry's shoulder, wondering if his borrowed book is an older edition with different instructions, but it's not, he's just cheating off someone else's notes. (To be clear, there is a precedent for this behaviour with which Hermione is intimately familiar.)
She huffs.
Harry finishes early, with a perfect potion, and wins the Felix Felicis.
Malfoy looks extremely upset. Or, at least, his hair is out of place, which Hermione figures is probably the same thing.
He's the only other student in Potions who is also taking her next class, Arithmancy, so they walk there together.
Well, they completely ignore each other and stay ten feet apart at all times, but still.
They have to wait to be let into the classroom and end up standing in the hallway, just the two of them, in uncomfortable silence.
Malfoy speaks first. "So, how'd Potter manage that one?"
"Pardon?"
"Well he wasn't cheating off you for once, was he? Or your's wouldn't have been such a disaster," he drawls. "How's it feel, Granger? Not being the best in the class?"
"Rather the same as it feels for you, I would guess," she says, not un-smugly.
He looks, for a moment, remarkably like he wants to laugh.
"Anyway, you seemed pretty determined to get that potion yourself," she observes.
He shrugs.
"What do you need luck for?" she presses.
He deflects. "What does Potter need luck for?"
"I would think that's rather obvious," Hermione says. "You know," — she gestures broadly — "considering."
Malfoy scoffs.
"You disagree?" she asks.
"Potter's got plenty," he mutters. "All that fucking Chosen One bullshit."
"Wow," she says under her breath. The idea of someone – Malfoy – considering Harry, of all people, lucky.
"What was that?" he sneers. "Speak up, Granger."
"It's just – pretty rich, coming from you, that's all."
He sniffs angrily. "You know nothing about me."
"Sure. Whatever." She leans back against the wall, ready to drop it and go back to ignoring each other until the rest of the class arrives. She should have known better than to try to talk to him anyway.
"Don't pretend you have any idea about my life, Granger, because you don't," he continues, stepping forward and pointing a finger at her. "You don't."
She raises her hands in mock surrender and takes a step to the side, away from him.
"You fucking don't," he mutters for emphasis, pushing himself even further into her space, his new-found height looming over her.
For a moment, she thinks he's going to spit in her face.
But he just sneers, his eyes flashing dangerously. Hermione's breath quickens and her jaw goes slack, her mind totally blank as he traps her against the wall. He's so close she can smell him, waves of boyishness and cauldron metal rolling off of him. A hint of parchment wafting from his fingers.
It can only be a few seconds, but it's like time stretches out and curves around in the moments before she recovers herself.
"Move," she orders firmly, reaching for her wand with a steady hand.
"Whatever," he sneers and stalks dismissively across the hall.
He leans casually against an archway, and Hermione is left with the darkness of his grey eyes and the feeling of his hot breath against her face searing into her mind. She's shaking.
Malfoy pulls a snitch out of nowhere and tosses it into the air, catching it lazily. He releases it again and does the same. Nonchalant, like nothing happened.
He doesn't spare her a single glance when class starts and they file into the classroom, or at any point during the lesson.
Hermione on the other hand, can't stop looking at him – the back of his head, his hand on his quill, the elegant drape of his robes. What is his problem?
Is he doing something for Voldemort, like Harry thinks? But even if he is, that doesn't explain his sudden, terrifying, fascinating interest in her. What does he want?
He's like a puzzle she doesn't know how to solve.
Hermione has always liked puzzles.
It's a long walk from Potions to Divination.
Theo's already sweating by the time he climbs through the trap-door, his red and gold tie a noose around his neck. And that's before he gets to the oppressively humid classroom.
There is, predictably, only one seat left when he arrives. And it is, predictably, next to Neville.
Neville smiles jovially when Theo sits down and mouths a greeting as Trelawney starts the lesson.
She assigns them a warm up exercise (also known as an excuse to disappear behind her beaded curtains and drink half a bottle of sherry). "Meditative crystal gazing" — an activity that refers, not to crystal balls as one might expect, but to regular crystals (also known as rocks).
Theo manages to stare solemnly at his pile of rocks for roughly 6.5 seconds.
"These doing anything for you, Neville?" he whispers.
Neville shakes his head, looks nervously at Trelawney's curtain, and sets his gaze firmly back on the rocks. He manages to hold out for an impressive 23 seconds, which Theo knows because he's been counting.
"It really is just a pile of rocks, isn't it?" Neville remarks quietly.
"Yup." Theo doesn't bother to speak softly this time. The rest of the class has given up too. He picks up a rock and flips it end to end, walking it along the edge of the table. "So, what brings you to Divination, Neville?"
He shrugs. "I got an O.W.L. in it."
"But do you like it? Are you good at it?" Theo presses, curious. It doesn't seem like it would be Neville's thing.
"Not really," he mumbles, eyes on the table. "But my Gran likes it when I get good marks… and it's easier to fake than Potions or something."
"Right," Theo says, tossing his rock in the air. "You weren't a big Potions fan, were you? Or was it just Snape you didn't like?"
"Yeah. Both, I guess."
"Sucks he's teaching defence this year then." Theo grins wryly. "No escape."
"Yeah," Neville mumbles. He mumbles a lot.
"I remember when he was your boggart in third year." Theo levitates his rock and idly spins it around. "That was wicked."
Neville goes bright red. Aw fuck, that's probably something he's embarrassed about.
"Sorry. It was cool, though. Honestly."
Neville still looks unsure. "I wondered why I was in Gryffindor for a while after that. I mean, everyone else had demons and giant spiders and snakes and stuff. Snape's just a teacher."
"I never got a chance to do one," Theo confesses, "but I bet mine would have been my father."
"Oh."
He can't blame Neville for not having more of a response. He shouldn't have said anything. Damn Neville and his mumbling and niceness and excessive vulnerability. It brings things out of him.
"That must be hard. I'm sorry you've had to go through that." Neville speaks with the utmost sincerity.
Theo almost chokes. "Er, right, thanks. You, uh, don't need to —"
"No, it's fine. I mean, my Gran can be tough but… it's a different kind of thing with your father, isn't it?"
Neville's voice is gentle, soothing. And even though Theo's only really known him for a day, he can imagine pouring his whole heart and all his secrets out to him. Stuff he's never told Daphne or Draco or anyone. Not now, not here in the middle of class, but someday.
Call it a prediction, since they're in Divination.
"Yeah," Theo says, letting the rock he's been levitating glide softly back to the table. "It's a different kind of thing."
He actively does not think about the echo of his father's voice through the halls of Nott Manor. He does not remember crying under his bed. He doesn't feel the ache of hope in his chest, long abandoned, that he might someday manage to be good enough.
"Anyway," Theo says after a moment, forcibly brightening his voice, "tell me more about this whole being-a-Gryffindor thing."
"Well," Neville starts, his face splitting into a proud grin, "it's great! It's fun, everyone's really loud and outgoing and it can be a bit much sometimes, actually, but everyone's nice too, like — good people? Gryffindors fight for what's right, you know?"
Theo had been looking for something more like popular evening activities and details about the quidditch team, but whatever. He'll need to learn to be more specific with Neville if he ever plans on having a casual, easy conversation with him.
"So, not like where I come from, then?"
"Oh, I didn't mean that!" Neville says hurriedly. "I'm sure Slytherins are very…erm…uh…"
Theo's face burns. If someone as kind as Neville can't think of a single good thing to say about his former house, that's probably a bad sign.
"Don't hurt yourself," Theo bites. "Slytherins fight for the wrong things, that's what you think. You can say it."
Neville says nothing.
"We're — they're — not all as evil as you think. Doing the 'right thing', taking sides on these huge issues… it's not the only thing that matters. And it's not like there is such a thing as one single right side anyway."
"I think…" Neville considers his words carefully, speaking softly, "that there is only one right side when it comes to Voldemort."
Theo gasps at the name.
"Harry says it," Neville offers by way of explanation.
Theo shakes his head, bringing his focus back to the conversation they're having.
"It's not that I think you're wrong about him. But, you have to understand how people get caught in the middle, how people's families affect them. And there is a middle ground. It's possible to support pureblood traditions without being a literal Death Eater."
"Hm," Neville says, unconvinced.
Theo has no reason to care what Neville thinks of him, or his beliefs, or his friends. He doesn't need to defend himself.
"It's just not my fight," he says.
Neville is quiet for a long moment during which the oppressive heat of the tower classroom threatens to overwhelm him again. Theo pulls at his tie, loosening the death-grip of the red and gold fabric around his neck.
"I think it's everyone's fight," Neville says with conviction, his eyes rising to meet Theo's.
It's the loudest, most well-articulated thing he's heard him say all day.
Theo's heart stutters as he fusses with his tie. He can feel Neville's gaze following the movement of his hands at the base of his throat, and he wonders if he regrets helping him put it on that morning. If he wishes he'd never touched him, never welcomed him to Gryffindor, never said a word and just left him standing, stranded like a lost puppy in the common room.
The swish of Professor Trelawney's beaded curtains signals her re-entry into the classroom and draws Neville's eyes away from him, putting an effective end to the moment.
"I trust your meditations were illuminating," Trelawney says with a flourish, swaying a little on her feet as she approaches her desk at the front of the room. "With your inner eyes opened to the divine, we shall press forward with the first topic of term."
She hiccups as she shuffles for her notes. Theo risks a glance at Neville, only to find that Neville is looking back at him in the same instant. Theo looks away first.
"Divination of Desires," Trelawney continues, "is a branch of fortune-telling that underpins some of the world's most prized magical inventions. It is a difficult branch of magic that some individuals do not consider to be divination at all. This insult is not based in legitimate academic disagreement, but in the magical establishment's continued denial that anything useful could come from something as trivial as divination."
She peers at the class over her wide round glasses, as if daring them to contradict her. The pause in her lecture lasts a moment too long, long enough for Theo to feel uncomfortable continuing to stare at her, but he refuses to keep doing this stolen-glances-at-Neville thing. He loosens his tie a little more.
"The Divination of Desires, or the process of accessing the mind's inner-most wants, has been used in the creation of such common products as daydream charms, which tap into the user's deep desires, then make those desires accessible in the form of a daydream," Trelawney reads off her parchment. "The same process is rumoured to be at play in the magic of the fabled Room of Requirement here at Hogwarts. If such a room exists, it would work by accessing the desires of the user, both stated and implicit, and giving them concrete form. Another example from here at Hogwarts is the Sorting Hat."
Theo sits up straighter in his chair and leans forward a few degrees. Is it possible, for once, that Trelawney's lecture might contain something useful?
"While many believe the Sorting Hat is a tool of personality measurement, there are others, myself among them, who believe that the Hat's magic is in the realm of desire. That the Hat's decisions are not about the traits one has, but the traits — or perhaps the social and learning environment — that one wishes to have. However, the magic that created the Sorting Hat was not documented by the founders, and as such cannot be known for certain."
Theo slumps. He's quite certain he had no latent desire to uproot his life and move to Gryffindor. Even if he did, which – again – is impossible, the Hat couldn't have known that before he put it on, could it?
Trelawney moves on, speaking about the role of Divination of Desires in something called the Mirror of Erised, and potions like Amortentia and Felix Felicis.
"It is obvious then, at least to those of us with an appreciation for the profundity of divination," Trelawney sniffs, as she gets to the end of her lecture, "that desire and the tools that bring it to life are useful and powerful magic. Now, some say that understanding desire is not the same as true divination. But to them I say, what is desire if it is not future-facing?"
She pauses for apparent dramatic effect, stepping forward around her desk, somewhat steadier on her feet than she was before.
"Desire, by definition, concerns itself with the things we do not already have. It is about the future, or at least, a possible version of the future. Divination of Desires then, allows us to understand what versions of the future we actually want, and in combination with other magic, allows us to bring those futures to life. It is, in essence, an intermediary step between the mundane and true prophecy. A deep understanding of desire is essential to the development of the true seer."
Theo spins his quill between two fingers. It's been one of her better lectures, drunkenness and obvious bias notwithstanding, and he has a solid page of notes.
Theo's always liked Divination. It's something you either can or can't do, for the most part.
Theo can, a little. He has a knack for interpreting star charts, and last year he saw things in his crystal ball pretty regularly. Not prophecies or anything, just the faces of people he knows, everyday objects, one time a thestral. But seeing as most of the class just saw mist, Theo's aware that he has something of a gift.
His mother did too, before she died. Or so he's heard.
Trelawney assigns them some reading for homework and dismisses them shortly after. It's a relief to climb back through the trap door and away from the stifling heat. Or, it would be if it weren't dinner time.
Meaning another Gryffindor dining experience. Meaning a walk all the way down to the Great Hall during which he will be unable to avoid Neville.
Which would be fine, except he's pretty sure Neville hates him now. Theo's not brave enough — or strongly convicted enough — to join an army and fight for the so-called right cause, so he's a complete tosser in Neville's eyes.
Not that Theo cares what Neville thinks. Obviously. But he did accidentally pour a small part of his soul out to him, so.
Theo ducks into the first bathroom he can find. He'll go down to dinner in a bit, but that walk is not happening.
He'll probably end up sitting with the fucking second years again.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!
For those with tumblr, come hang out with me over there (diana-skye) anytime!
Beta love, as ever, to sunshineceline.