Sooo… I have taken the liberty of inventing/ changing around Hogwarts staff and students' family trees to suit my own story, I guess making this slightly AU… however I do hope that my key characters are consistent in terms of canon personalities.
Chapter 5: Potions
Rosier was staring blankly at the green and silver patterned wallpaper of the Common Room when the owl found him.
He yelped in alarm as tawny wings buffeted his head, and then the bird landed with an officious-sounding hoot, it's wickedly sharp talons biting into the plush upholstery of the couch next to the space his head had recently occupied. Which it occupied no longer, since he'd tumbled rather ungracefully off the couch in shock.
It was the middle of the night, and he tried to keep the volume of his cursing down as he shakily righted himself, glaring weakly at the offending bird, who glared right back at him. It had impressively aristocratic-looking feathers sticking out of its head, much like over-sized cartoonish eyebrows, fixing its expression into one of perpetual disdain. He half expected the owl to roll its eyes, but it merely hooted impatiently once more, and stuck out its leg.
For the first time, Rosier noticed the small white scroll tied there.
"That's… for me?" he asked perplexedly. The owl narrowed its eyes coldly at him, and twitched its outstretched leg in irritation, as if to say, Duh.
Rosier pulled himself upright and glanced around carefully, but he was utterly alone. The dormitory was silent - it was the middle of the night, after all. He quickly untied the note and unfurled it.
Upon being relieved of its burden, the owl immediately hopped off the back of the couch and launched itself into the air, disappearing with agile, powerful strokes of its wings back into the passage that led to the girls' dorm.
The parchment was blank, but after a moment words surfaced like a spreading stain - he suspected Vanishing Ink. He could guess who had sent it - but why?
It read, in a messy, distinctive hand:
I'm good at keeping secrets.
Let's be friends! (thereafter followed a sketched cheerful face which alternated between winking and grinning somewhat creepily up at him).
If you ever find yourself in some kind of trouble, don't hesitate to ask me for help. What else are friends for?
That was all.
He collapsed back onto the couch and sagged, running a frustrated hand through his fair hair. What kind of game was she playing? Was the first line meant to be a reassurance or a subtle threat…? She wanted to be friends with him…? That was unlikely. But she seemed to have made Tom her enemy, and so having something… or someone she could use against him was useful. He bit his lip. The truth was, as loyal as he was to Riddle, the consequences of the dangerous youth finding out about his own… feelings… towards him did not bear thinking about.
Suddenly Rosier felt like he'd just been skilfully manoeuvred like a pawn on some great, invisible chess board... And there wasn't much he could do about it.
The next day…
Herbology greenhouses, 9:24am.
Riddle smirked as he watched Amalia's expression turn from mild disgust into full-blown horror at the task Professor Beery had assigned them. Of course, it wasn't like he particularly enjoyed fertilising sprouting bubotubers with mooncalf dung himself, but he could handle it. Amalia, on the other hand, clearly seemed to object with every fibre of her being.
She eyed the pulsating tuber in its clay pot and held it at arm's length. "But why do I have to touch it," she whined, to her unsympathetic friends. The three girls merely laughed.
"Now, now, Ms Gray," chuckled Professor Beery, sweeping over with a dramatic flourish, "It's only dung and a tuber, not an incurable disease."
"I can use a spade to repot it, can't I?" she cried out, thrusting the pot away from herself onto the table and withdrawing a step. She wrinkled her nose and turned her face away from the strong-smelling pile of dung next to it. "Or… or magic?" hope kindled in her eyes and she looked imploringly at the guffawing professor, "I could use a levitation spell that-"
"Absolutely not, my dear," Professor Beery cut her off with a reproving shake of his head. "Magic effects magical plants in… interesting ways. I'm afraid some elbow grease is the only way."
"You have gloves." Pointed out Callidora pragmatically, repotting her bubotuber with brisk efficiency. She seemed unconcerned by the smudge of something unmentionable on her cheek, or the smell.
Amalia's face was a comical study in despair, and Professor Beery was suddenly struck by an exciting thought.
"You seem to have quite a gift for dramatics, Miss Gray," he commented, trying not to sound too eager, "I happen to be putting together a little acting troop for this year's Yuletide production. Would you be interested in taking part?"
"A play?" Amalia was taken aback, and somewhat flattered.
"Indeed!" beamed the professor, "You could audition for the role of the beautiful heroine…?"
A not insignificant part of her rather liked the idea of being on a stage. Though she despised being the centre of attention, like at the Sorting feast, playing a character that was not herself was different It sounded quite amusing. It was so much more her style. "…I don't know…" she said thoughtfully, hesitating.
"I have the script already worked out." The professor continued, "Just consider it for now. But if you are interested, I'll need your reply within a fortnight."
She nodded. He beamed at her again, and opened his mouth to say something else, when he was suddenly distracted by something happening over her shoulder.
"Longbottom!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up, "Just what do you think you're doing with that Pungous Onion?! It's not actually edible, you know…" He flounced off to berate the now-gagging Gryffindor.
"Thinking of a career in the dramatic arts, are you?"
Amalia looked over at the sound of Riddle's friendly-sounding comment.
She shrugged.
"It would suit you."
"Should I take that as a compliment, or an insult?" she demanded, narrowing her eyes slightly at him. The horrendous smell of mooncalf dung had put her in no mood for verbal fencing.
He gave a light laugh, and raised his hands as if in surrender. "It was just an observation."
Amalia threw a look of pure hatred at the bubotuber she was supposed to fertilise, and stripped off her gloves irately. "Well, it looks like I'll be failing Herbology." She said, with no trace of regret, folding her arms stubbornly.
Anne, who'd stayed out of the entire conversation to concentrate on her own plant, looked up with a deeply shocked expression. "Oh, you can't mean that!" she protested, as if she was personally offended by the off-hand remark. "You can't give up in your first class!"
Amalia shrugged. "I'm a student of magic. There's nothing magical about gardening - it's ridiculous."
Riddle placed his newly-fertilised bubotuber onto the table and stripped off his own gloves, satisfied to see that no trace of dirt had soiled his robes. He, too, disliked dirt, but unlike Amalia, he would accept nothing less than an "Outstanding" OWL in all his subjects this year. It seems he had misjudged her yet again. She was proficient in magic, but did not care for grades. That was an interesting contrast. Well, she has spent two years on the run from the ministry, he reminded himself. And even stole a Time-Turner, to boot. She's a thief and who-knows-what-else? Of course she doesn't care for grades.
To his surprise, none other than Rosier stepped forward. "I'll take care of it for you, Amalia." He offered nervously.
Tom stared at him. So even Rosier had fallen to her charms? Pity.
Amalia beamed. "Why thank you, Rosier." She said, "I really appreciate it."
Rosier avoided her eyes, and Riddle's. "N-no problem." He muttered.
Riddle's gaze flicked away from the shorter boy and back to Amlia. "And how are you feeling about Ancient Runes?" he asked her, careful to keep his voice polite and genial.
She shrugged. "The textbook seems straightforward. And I've dealt with Runes before..." Her eyes flickered as if she hadn't intended to say that last thought.
His interest was piqued. "Oh? And why is that?"
She raised her eyebrows at him. "That's none of your concern."
"As you wish." He said, although his eyes had taken on a rather scary, covetous gleam.
As if he wants to eat my brain, Amalia thought uneasily, as he gazed at her forehead with an odd intensity.
"Anyway." She said hastily, keen to change the topic, "The class I'm really worried about is Potions. You said you'd help me, right?"
He blinked and shook his head slightly, refocusing on her. "Sorry, what?"
"We're partnering up in Potions?" she repeated, speaking with exaggerated slowness. She looked expectantly at him.
He almost sneered at her, but then his eyes travelled passed her to look at Anne, Callidora and Charlotte, who were listening with wide eyes to their conversation. He forced a smile instead. "But you'll be leaving one of your friends without a partner," he pointed out, "Seeing as there are only three of them."
She simply smiled back at him. "Oh, don't worry about that. I'm sure I can find another friend somewhere to take my place."
Something about the way she'd said that made him highly suspicious, though he missed the way Rosier twitched while he was repotting Amalia's bubotuber.
Later that day, Potions…
As Riddle led the group of Slytherins into the passage of the dungeons where the classroom was located, raised voices and laughter could be heard, as well as the acrid smell of burning. He stopped and the others clustered around, listening curiously. Amalia and Callidora pushed themselves to the front to see what was going on.
Suddenly the door to the classroom banged open, bouncing off the wall, and Professor Slughorn stalked out, muttering bad-temperedly. Amalia was surprised, since he'd always seemed to be in a jovial mood whenever she'd seen him around the castle.
A class of dishevelled-looking sixth years filed out after him, still laughing, though they tried to stifle it under Slughorn's disapproving glare.
"Sir?" asked Riddle mildly, standing aside to let the older students pass.
Slughorn's expression brightened considerably at the sight of his favourite student, and he sighed theatrically. "Tom, m'boy, you don't know the half of it! Apparently, some of the sixth year boys thought it might be funny to slip one of their friends a badly-brewed Love Potion. I swear, this is the last time I teach this to students!"
A bulky Hufflepuff boy was towed out by two of his friends, almost crying with laughter as he kept trying to shake them off and turn back, with a glazed-over expression of longing. Riddle noticed some nasty-looking burns across his face and chest.
After him, none other than Walburga Black strutted out, looking smug. The end of her wand was smoking. As she passed Callidora, Amalia noticed her eyes narrow into a malicious sneer, which Callidora responded to with a frosty glare.
"Someone you don't like?" Amalia asked her, watching the taller girl passing. She was skinny, but had a broad frame, so that she seemed to be made of angles and wiry muscle. Her dark hair was chaotically curly like Callidora's, but she'd tamed it in a tight, rope-like braid. Her eyes were small and mean over a rather beakish nose.
Callidora grimaced. "My least favourite cousin. Try to stay out of her way – she's kinda crazy."
Amalia nodded. "Noted."
Slughorn motioned Riddle to come closer, and laid a friendly hand on his shoulder, as if they were best buddies. Only Amalia seemed to notice how uncomfortable this contact made him.
"Tom, I need to go brew a cure for that idiot, Bones, and make sure he gets those burns sorted out in the infirmary." He raised his voice and addressed the waiting fifth years, "Get settled in and start- the instructions are on the board, and in your textbooks. I assume I can trust you all to keep your hands to yourselves for fifteen minutes…? Good. Riddle's in charge while I'm not around."
"Leave it to me, Professor." Tom said confidently, every inch the perfect little prefect. Amalia had a sudden urge to roll her eyes.
Filing into the class, Riddle got them all seated and set up in relatively short order. He surveyed the potion on the board - a medium-difficulty Restorative Potion - meant to sharpen the senses and induce wakefulness.
The rest of the class, even those not in Slytherin, seemed content to follow his directions and settled down quickly, getting their ingredients and starting work in their pairs.
Turning, he came face to face with Amalia, who was waiting by a table in the front of the class, and empty space beside her. She raised an eyebrow at him expectantly.
He kept his face inscrutable, noticing that his usual partner, Rosier, was setting up somewhat miserably with the mouse-ish Yaxley girl at the back of the class. He briefly wondered why he had suddenly become to compliant to Amalia's wishes.
But at least it gave him an opportunity to get to know her a little more.
"You set up our equipment and I'll get the ingredients." Riddle ordered. She grinned and started immediately.
Riddle steeled himself as he went to the ingredients cupboard, joining the throng there. Why did he have the sudden feeling this was going to be a long class…?
Amalia's problem, Riddle was rapidly discovering, was that she had a complete inability to follow directions. Slughorn had arrived back, but was offering no help, seeming amused the few times he'd walked by their table and heard them engaged in arguments over their cauldron.
"No, it's just three fireweed roots," he exclaimed, intervening before she ruined the potion for what seemed like the hundredth time, "Then you add essence of sandalwood, and then the other two roots…"
"But that doesn't make sense!" she protested, gazing at him earnestly. The steam from their cheerfully bubbling concoction had made bright spots of colour on her cheeks and the ends of her hair go slightly curly, "Why does the order matter… it's not like the mixture changes after adding the essence-"
"Of course it does!" he exclaimed, exasperated.
"How?" she demanded, looking genuinely bemused.
He caught himself before he said, "It's magic", but it was a near thing.
"It's just… the properties of the ingredients react to each other." He explained, but she didn't look convinced.
To be honest, he'd had the same reaction she'd had when he first arrived - things just didn't make sense in the magical world sometimes. But she had grown up in the magical world- hadn't she? She should be used to it by now. He froze for a second. Unless… she hadn't been in the magical world that long…? But she was so skilled. That couldn't be.
Amalia hadn't noticed his sudden silence, and was preoccupied with glaring at the page in the textbook again. "Shake the poppy seeds in a ceramic container with your left hand for fifteen seconds before adding it to the mixture…" she read incredulously, and then huffed, "Oh, well, now it's just getting ridiculous."
"Stop." He caught her wrist before she could carelessly dump the unshaken seeds into their potion, which through some miracle had just reached the ideal colour described in the textbook. He pushed the intriguing thoughts of her origins out of his mind, for now. He forced the irritation out of his voice too, and tried reasoning with her, "You said you wanted to learn, didn't you?"
She looked sheepish. "Well… yeah…"
"Then just do as I say, and trust me, it'll work out."
Riddle waited as his words finally seemed to reach her, and she nodded reluctantly.
"Good." He held out the ceramic bowl. She looked at it and scowled, and then back at his expectant expression. Sighing, she took the bowl and began shaking the seeds under his watchful gaze.
Amalia was feeling quite taken aback.
Working with Riddle in Potions wasn't turning out to be quite what she'd expected. She'd been prepared for him to be either achingly polite and attentive- as part of his fake, nice-guy persona, or perhaps cold and controlling, as she knew lay beneath that friendly façade.
But right now…
She looked at his expression, intensely focussed as he compared their potion's progress to the list of indicators in the textbook, a small unconscious frown in between his dark eyes. His usually perfect hair had fallen forward onto his forehead, and he hadn't even noticed. His usually inscrutable face was animated, engaged… human.
"Gray," he suddenly addressed her, looking up and pinning her with that sharp gaze of his.
She shook herself out of her thoughts. "What?"
"Where's the extract of rue?"
"The what?"
He sighed. "It was in a small bottle, about this big?" he motioned with his long, pale fingers.
"Ooh, that." She gave an embarrassed laugh. "I, er… I thought that was the essence of, eh… the essence of-"
"The essence of foxglove? So, you already added it during… step six?"
"Um, yes. But it's still the right colour, so maybe it's not so bad…?"
He shook his head. "No, the potion is useless without the extract at this stage, in order to counteract the side-effects of the other ingredients."
"Oh." She looked down, feeling bad after all their efforts. Mainly, his efforts.
He tapped the textbook thoughtfully. "Well, we still may be able to salvage it…" she watched as he walked over to the ingredient's cupboard and rummaged around in it for a while, before returning.
"This," he said triumphantly, holding up a small wooden box, "Is the flakes of redwood." His voice took on a lecturing tone, "It has the properties of healing, fire resistance, immunity to stun effects and is most efficacious during a full moon…- What?"
Amalia shook her head, smiling. "Nothing. You're just… kind of… incredible, do you know that?"
He frowned, unsure whether she was mocking him or not. She certainly looked sincere. He decided to ignore her, and opened the box, taking out a carefully measured pinch before adding it to their concoction. "I believe it may act as a substitute for the missing ingredient." He explained, and handed her a ladle. "Here, you do it."
They both watched the potion intently, as Amalia stirred it twenty times in a clockwise direction, as per the textbook.
On the twentieth stir, the potion turned a brilliant green - just as the textbook described the ideal end stage.
Amalia gave a delighted laugh, and even Riddle managed a small smirk at their success.
Slughorn swanned over and announced their Potion was "just about the most perfect Restorative Draught he'd even seen", before awarding them both hefty points for Slytherin.
Amalia watched as little-by-little, Riddle's mask slipped back into place, a fake smile on his face and a calculating look in his eye. But now she knew what lay beneath.
"You're actually a good teacher," she remarked as they packed up their work table. And she meant it, too. Of course, he had been impatient with her, and rude, too, but he'd taken the trouble to explain everything he was doing. And he'd given her a chance to do everything herself, helping her when she was confused, correcting her when she was making a mistake… and throughout it all, there had been a kind of unguarded honesty about him that she'd never seen before. He was brilliant at Potions - well, he was brilliant at most things, it seemed - but more than that, he genuinely enjoyed it, too.
His eyes widened in surprise at her off-handed comment, before his blank mask re-asserted itself. "Well…I can't say you're a good student." He replied coldly. The rest of the class was loud and preoccupied, so he didn't bother being polite.
She just laughed, gazing at him with something like admiration. He was used to seeing that look in others' eyes, but not on Amalia's. When his classmates and teachers looked at him like that, he felt nothing but contempt for them. But now a tingle of pleasure ran through him, and it confused him no end.
"I'll practise," she promised, "And next time, I'll be better." She tipped him a wink and swung her bag over her shoulder, before sauntering out of the classroom.
Next time?
How ridiculous. As if I care what she thinks of me…!
"You're just… kind of… incredible, do you know that?"
Lestrange sauntered over to where Riddle was irritably clearing his table with a clenched jaw. The rest of the class was empty, and even Slughorn had disappeared into his office. "That little girly giving you a headache?" he remarked in his gravelly voice, smirking.
Riddle stiffened, and shot the bigger boy a dark look. Lestrange had never treated him with quite the same amount of deference as the others. And yet, he had a malicious streak that the others didn't, a willingness to go as far as was needed… and that made him quite useful. "Watch your tongue." He said coldly.
Lestrange was not immune to intimidation, however, though he was better at concealing it. He nodded, accepting the rebuke, and lowered his gaze from Riddle's challenging stare. "Is there something I can do?"
Riddle snapped the clasp of his bag shut decisively. "There is." He said, then lowered his voice. "I've changed my mind. I want it happening on Friday."
Lestrange's eyes widened. "…You're sure?"
"Of course I'm sure." Riddle snapped. He needed to get to the bottom of just who Amalia Gray was, before she worked her way into his head any further. "You remember what we discussed? Just do your part, and leave the rest to me."
A truly wicked smile lit up Lestrange's usually heavy-lidded expression.
"I look forward to it."
Author's note:
A note on Love Potions:
So, I had this idea for their first Potions class because it feels like every single Tom Riddle fanfic out there does some variation of the "Tom and OC pair up and brew a love potion in Potions." So I thought it would be funny to write an alternative :)
Leave a review and I'll try to fast-track the next chapter! (which, btw, is entitled "Friday"). What do they have planned? Something nasty, I'm sure… And just when Amalia was starting to warm up to him, too.