CHAPTER FOUR
The next morning, Lara woke slowly, only speeding up when she saw she was a few minutes late. She dressed quickly before heading downstairs, her robe unclasped and the top buttons of her blouse undone. Hermione was sitting on the couch, reading a very thick book.
"About time. I was about to go up there and wake you."
"Sorry, were you waiting?"
"Yeah." Lara smiled. No one had ever waited for her before.
"Thanks." She said genuinely thankful for what Hermione had done, before following Hermione out the portrait hole. *****************************************************
"So what have we got this morning?" Ron asked as Lara attacked a very large breakfast of toast, bacon, egg and an apple. Hermione glanced down at her timetable on the table. She blanched slightly as she scanned it.
"Someone's screwed up this timetable." She said after a while.
"Why?" Lara asked at the same time as Ron.
"We're with the Slytherins for most classes." Harry, who had been deeply immersed in a talk about Quidditch with Seamus, stopped and turned to Hermione.
"What?"
"Look at this, Potions, Care of magical Creatures, as usual, but then we have Transfiguration, DADA, History of magic, Charms and Herbology with them. In fact the only time I'm free of them is in my electives." Ron and Harry where looking very alarmed at this piece of news.
"What's wrong? They're just Slytherins." Lara asked.
"Just Slytherins?" Ron echoed faintly. "Wait till you meet these people, they're arrogant, slimy bastards."
"Yeah, I don't know why Dumbledore didn't put you in there Black." Harry said.
"I think you'd do better in Hufflepuff Potter, I've heard they're a load of duffers, the lot of 'em."
"I was rightfully sorted into Gryffindor." Harry decided not to mention the fact that he was almost sorted into Slytherin. The rally of insults would have continued had the hall not filled with the screeching of owls at that moment, signaling the arrival of the post. An owl soared low over the quartet and dropped a letter in front of Lara and another in front of Harry.
Both of them dropped what they were eating and ripped open the letter.
Hey Hun, I think Dumbledore's told you the news by now. I hope you don't mind looking after Harry, it was my idea. I'm worried about him. I hope you guys are getting on, cause I think when i'm cleared he could come stay with us. What do you think? Hope you enjoy your first day at Hogwarts Love Dad
Lara almost choked on the toast in her mouth.
"No!" She cried in desperation.
"What is it?" Hermioe asked, worried something bad had happened.
"Dad... he's going to..."
"He wrote to you too?" Ron asked, peering at Harry's letter over his shoulder.
"What does yours say?" Lara asked
"Nothing much, just talking about you, sorry he couldn't tell you sooner, hope you get on, hope you stay outta trouble..." Ron supplied, as it was obvious Harry wasn't going to. Lara nodded.
"Yours?" Harry asked, looking up from his letter.
"Same." She said simply, deciding not to divulge her father's plan of taking Harry in as yet. Maybe she could still convince him otherwise...
"You still haven't answered my question Hermione." Ron said, as he tore his eyes away from Harry's letter and resumed his breakfast.
"What question?"
"What have we got now?"
"Oh!" Hermione said, obviously having forgotten. "Transfiguration." She said, casting another glance down at the timetable.
"Not that bad, McGongall won't favour the Slytherins over us." Harry looked doubtful. Anything with the Slytherins was bad enough.
****************************************************
"Oi Weasley, nice to see you have new robes this year. How many extra years did your dad have to work in the ministry to buy them?" Malfoy yelled over the crowd of students waiting outside McGonagall's classroom. The trio and Lara had been talking to a few of their Gryffindor friends when Malfoy had interrupted.
"Piss off Malfoy." Harry said, trying to hold back a livid red Ron. "At least his father's decent."
"At least mine is alive." Malfoy sneered back. Now it was Harry who was livid red.
"That was low Malfoy." Hermione snapped, as she struggled to hold back her two friends.
"You know I don't play by the rules you filthy little Mudblood." Lara had been eyeing Malfoy during this display, summing him up. He sure was a jerk, just like the others had said. But they had never mentioned the fact that he was drop dead sexy. His blonde hair was no longer gelled back, but hung in loose bangs over his forehead. His ice-blue eyes were gray with anger at the moment, but his broad shoulders and well formed muscles failed to be hidden by the robes, which he left unclasped. Hermione narrowed her eyes in anger. She probably would've hit Malfoy if Lara hadn't stepped in and placed a hand on her shoulder, holding her back.
"It's not worth it Mione." Lara whispered, giving her new friend's shoulder a tight squeeze.
"Hello hello...who's this? Another of Potter's little girlfriends?" Malfoy asked, smirking at Lara as his eyes flickered up and down her frame.
"He wishes." Lara drawled. Malfoy was obviously surprised by this reply. "Now leave 'em alone peroxide boy."
"Leave the hair alone."
"Don't, vanity doesn't suit arseholes." Draco couldn't help but smirk at this. He stepped closer to Lara, so his face was only a few inches from hers.
"Fiery." He whispered seductively in her ear.
"Bastard." She snapped back loudly, before turning around and walking back to her friend. She didn't turn back once, but she could feel Malfoy's gaze burning holes in her back.
"What was that about?" Hermione whispered once they were seated in class and going over some revision from last year.
"He finds me attractive." Lara said, sniggering.
"You don't seem too upset by it." Hermione hinted.
"He's a jerk, but it is flattering when the sexiest guy in school wants you." Lara said simply, without a trace of shame.
"Sexy? Malfoy?" Hermione echoed. Lara grinned.
"Look at him, he thinks he's God's gift to women, and in a lot of ways he's right. He's gorgeous."
"He's Malfoy."
"Okay, so the whole jerk thing is a bit of a turn off, but I don't like him, and I'd never go out with him. I'm just saying, he's sexy." Hermione glanced over to Malfoy, who was leaning back in his chair and watching the kettle in front of him turn from a tortoise into it's original state over and over again with a loud popping.
"Okay, so maybe he is." Hermione admitted reluctantly, as Draco raked a hand through his hair. Lara chuckled at this.
"What are you girls looking at?" Ron asked from where he was seated next to Harry in the row behind them.
"Malfoy." Lara said simply. Ron made a face.
"Why?"
"Don't say it..." Hermione pleaded.
"Cause he's drop dead sexy." Lara said without hesitation. Hermione sighed.
"You said it." The bushy haired girl said exasperatedly. Ron looked like he was going to be sick.
"Ew!"
"For you maybe, because you're a guy. But you won't find many girls around here that disagree." Ron seemed determined to prove this wrong as he turned around to Lavender and Parvati behind him.
"Do you think Malfoy's hot?" He asked them bluntly. Parvati gave him a weird look, but answered all the same.
"Hell yeah." Ron turned back to the front, looking thoroughly sickened and surprised at the same time.
"Hermione doesn't like him, do you?" Harry asked. He had witnessed this conversation distractedly and only now made an input.
"I don't like him. But he isn't completely unfortunate looking." Harry's eyebrows disappeared beneath his hair.
"Mione, this guy called you a Mudblood."
"I still hate him Harry, he's still a jerk; but it doesn't change the fact that's he's cute." Harry made a face similar to Ron's.
"I'll never get girls." He said exasperatedly. Lara smirked at this as she transfigured Pansy Parkinsons' hair into worms. The girls shrieked in horror, trying to rip out the wriggling worms that inhabited her head. Lara sniggered as with a quick wave of her wand her hair reappeared, now a vibrant shade of purple.
"Larrissa Black! Stop that this instant and return her hair to it's original state." Lara obeyed, not successfully hiding a smile.
"Five points to Gryffindor on an excellent human transfiguration though." The Slytherin's scoffed in rage at this.
"It's would've been more if you'd chosen a more tasteful way of showing your skills." McGonagall finished, holding up her hand to silence the furious Slytherins. Very few people caught her smile slightly as she glanced at Pansy, who was clutching her hair in horror and shivering like a rabid dog.
"Lara!" Hermione reprimanded.
"What?" She said innocently.
"Can you teach me how to do that?" Ron asked, eyes shinning with excitement at the thought of the possibilities.
"Ron!" Hermione said, even more outraged.
"Admit it Hermione. That was cool." She didn't trust herself to reply.
The rest of the week went without hiccup. The Gryffindors got used to having the Slytherins in their class, and found it wasn't so bad when the teacher wasn't obviously biased towards them. The new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, who they met on Wednesday afternoon, turned out to be a wizened old man who knew his Dark Arts, and also how to make them boring as hell. Malfoy had stayed away from the quartet throughout the week, and he had not talked to Lara since the first lesson. She would, however, often find him staring at her in the middle of class, a practice she found unnerving.
However what the trio dreaded most of all (and what Lara quickly learnt was worth dreading) was Potion's last thing Friday.
"Seems we have a new student in the class. Larrissa Black." Snape said her name with spite, the malice absolutely dripping from his voice. "Don't think you can take it easy in this class. If I see you failing I might have to talk to Dumbledore and ask him to remove your potions NEWT.
"I sat the test. I passed. I earned it. You have no right to take it away."
"Don't I?" Snape said viciously, before turning his back on her and walking to the front of the class. "And ten points from Gryffindor for talking back." He said, with a half smile. Lara was about to protest when Ron and Hermione reached out and pulled her back down.
"It's not worth it." Ron whispered into her ear. She crossed her arms in impatience and slumped back in her chair, but she followed her friends advice. She didn't want to get detention on a Friday afternoon.
"Now class, today we are going to brush up on our hair loss potion that we did last year. Your final results were less than satisfactory, so I will repeat the assessment today. You are to work in pairs, I want a bottle of a successful hair loss potion by the end of the lesson from every pair." Now it was Hermione's turn to open her mouth in protest. Lara instinctively reached out and grabbed her.
"Don't."
"But that's so unfair! He taught us this potion last year! How are we supposed to remember it?"
"Like you don't." Hermione didn't reply.
"Well speak for yourself Mione, I have no idea." Ron said gloomily.
"Neither do I!" Harry whined from the other side of Ron.
"Do you seriously remember Mione?"
"Yeah I do."
"So do I, so how about we split up and go with the boys for this, to make sure they pass?" The bushy haired girl nodded.
"If it's cool with you guys." Hermione asked Harry and Ron.
"YES!" The boys cried. Apparently neither was looking forward to failing the assessment.
"So who do you want to work with?" Lara asked. Hermione gave her new friend a look that plainly said isn't it obvious. Lara sighed. She knew her friend wanted to work with Ron, but that left her with Harry. I suppose I'll have to make a sacrifice, in the name of love. She thought to herself, as Ron and her switched places.
"I'd complain, but I wanna pass." Harry said simply as Lara sat down in the chair next to him and he set up the cauldron. Their relationship had gotten gradually worse throughout the week, ending in four fights. One had even gotten them detention the previous evening, in which they were forced to scrub the suits of armor on the second floor for so many hours they smelt of rust even today. They only hung around together because of their mutual friendship with Hermione and Ron.
Half an hour later Ron and Hermione had reached the final stage of their potion. But Mione couldn't remember what the final ingredient was.
"Boomslang? No... wolfsbane? Damnit! What was it?" She whispered, biting her nails in frustration. Lara and Harry had finished their potion a few minutes ago and had already handed it to Snape in a neatly labelled bottle. Harry was pleased that he had finally passed a potion's assessment, despite having to work with Lara.
Lara was itching to tell Hermione the final ingredient, but Snape was prowling around and if she so much as made a sound he would be on her like a hawk. When he had his back turned to them and was admiring Malfoys potion, Lara used the opportunity to lean across to Ron.
"It's eye of newt." She said, so softly that barely Ron could hear. His eyes lit up and he muttered a small thank you.
"Mione, I know, I remember! It was eye of newt!" He said, faking surprise at having remembered the final ingredient. Hermione looked at him weirdly, but one glance at Larrissa, who had a guilty look on her face, answered her unasked question.
At the end of the lesson, the quartet were strutting out the door feeling very proud of themselves. They had only lost ten points, and they were all pretty confident they had passed.
"By the way, Black, twenty points from Gryffindor for helping Weasley and Granger. You just assisted them in failing today's assessment." Snape said just as they were about to leave. Lara was so tempted to turn around and curse him, however with a bit of convincing from her friends she refrained.
"That was so unfair!" Ron whined.
"Not really, we did cheat." Hermione said
"I mean the assessment Mione. As if we'd remember! I mean if you couldn't, what hope do we have?" Hermione blushed at this. Lara smiled knowingly, her matchmaker instinct bubbling over.
The next morning, Lara woke slowly, only speeding up when she saw she was a few minutes late. She dressed quickly before heading downstairs, her robe unclasped and the top buttons of her blouse undone. Hermione was sitting on the couch, reading a very thick book.
"About time. I was about to go up there and wake you."
"Sorry, were you waiting?"
"Yeah." Lara smiled. No one had ever waited for her before.
"Thanks." She said genuinely thankful for what Hermione had done, before following Hermione out the portrait hole. *****************************************************
"So what have we got this morning?" Ron asked as Lara attacked a very large breakfast of toast, bacon, egg and an apple. Hermione glanced down at her timetable on the table. She blanched slightly as she scanned it.
"Someone's screwed up this timetable." She said after a while.
"Why?" Lara asked at the same time as Ron.
"We're with the Slytherins for most classes." Harry, who had been deeply immersed in a talk about Quidditch with Seamus, stopped and turned to Hermione.
"What?"
"Look at this, Potions, Care of magical Creatures, as usual, but then we have Transfiguration, DADA, History of magic, Charms and Herbology with them. In fact the only time I'm free of them is in my electives." Ron and Harry where looking very alarmed at this piece of news.
"What's wrong? They're just Slytherins." Lara asked.
"Just Slytherins?" Ron echoed faintly. "Wait till you meet these people, they're arrogant, slimy bastards."
"Yeah, I don't know why Dumbledore didn't put you in there Black." Harry said.
"I think you'd do better in Hufflepuff Potter, I've heard they're a load of duffers, the lot of 'em."
"I was rightfully sorted into Gryffindor." Harry decided not to mention the fact that he was almost sorted into Slytherin. The rally of insults would have continued had the hall not filled with the screeching of owls at that moment, signaling the arrival of the post. An owl soared low over the quartet and dropped a letter in front of Lara and another in front of Harry.
Both of them dropped what they were eating and ripped open the letter.
Hey Hun, I think Dumbledore's told you the news by now. I hope you don't mind looking after Harry, it was my idea. I'm worried about him. I hope you guys are getting on, cause I think when i'm cleared he could come stay with us. What do you think? Hope you enjoy your first day at Hogwarts Love Dad
Lara almost choked on the toast in her mouth.
"No!" She cried in desperation.
"What is it?" Hermioe asked, worried something bad had happened.
"Dad... he's going to..."
"He wrote to you too?" Ron asked, peering at Harry's letter over his shoulder.
"What does yours say?" Lara asked
"Nothing much, just talking about you, sorry he couldn't tell you sooner, hope you get on, hope you stay outta trouble..." Ron supplied, as it was obvious Harry wasn't going to. Lara nodded.
"Yours?" Harry asked, looking up from his letter.
"Same." She said simply, deciding not to divulge her father's plan of taking Harry in as yet. Maybe she could still convince him otherwise...
"You still haven't answered my question Hermione." Ron said, as he tore his eyes away from Harry's letter and resumed his breakfast.
"What question?"
"What have we got now?"
"Oh!" Hermione said, obviously having forgotten. "Transfiguration." She said, casting another glance down at the timetable.
"Not that bad, McGongall won't favour the Slytherins over us." Harry looked doubtful. Anything with the Slytherins was bad enough.
****************************************************
"Oi Weasley, nice to see you have new robes this year. How many extra years did your dad have to work in the ministry to buy them?" Malfoy yelled over the crowd of students waiting outside McGonagall's classroom. The trio and Lara had been talking to a few of their Gryffindor friends when Malfoy had interrupted.
"Piss off Malfoy." Harry said, trying to hold back a livid red Ron. "At least his father's decent."
"At least mine is alive." Malfoy sneered back. Now it was Harry who was livid red.
"That was low Malfoy." Hermione snapped, as she struggled to hold back her two friends.
"You know I don't play by the rules you filthy little Mudblood." Lara had been eyeing Malfoy during this display, summing him up. He sure was a jerk, just like the others had said. But they had never mentioned the fact that he was drop dead sexy. His blonde hair was no longer gelled back, but hung in loose bangs over his forehead. His ice-blue eyes were gray with anger at the moment, but his broad shoulders and well formed muscles failed to be hidden by the robes, which he left unclasped. Hermione narrowed her eyes in anger. She probably would've hit Malfoy if Lara hadn't stepped in and placed a hand on her shoulder, holding her back.
"It's not worth it Mione." Lara whispered, giving her new friend's shoulder a tight squeeze.
"Hello hello...who's this? Another of Potter's little girlfriends?" Malfoy asked, smirking at Lara as his eyes flickered up and down her frame.
"He wishes." Lara drawled. Malfoy was obviously surprised by this reply. "Now leave 'em alone peroxide boy."
"Leave the hair alone."
"Don't, vanity doesn't suit arseholes." Draco couldn't help but smirk at this. He stepped closer to Lara, so his face was only a few inches from hers.
"Fiery." He whispered seductively in her ear.
"Bastard." She snapped back loudly, before turning around and walking back to her friend. She didn't turn back once, but she could feel Malfoy's gaze burning holes in her back.
"What was that about?" Hermione whispered once they were seated in class and going over some revision from last year.
"He finds me attractive." Lara said, sniggering.
"You don't seem too upset by it." Hermione hinted.
"He's a jerk, but it is flattering when the sexiest guy in school wants you." Lara said simply, without a trace of shame.
"Sexy? Malfoy?" Hermione echoed. Lara grinned.
"Look at him, he thinks he's God's gift to women, and in a lot of ways he's right. He's gorgeous."
"He's Malfoy."
"Okay, so the whole jerk thing is a bit of a turn off, but I don't like him, and I'd never go out with him. I'm just saying, he's sexy." Hermione glanced over to Malfoy, who was leaning back in his chair and watching the kettle in front of him turn from a tortoise into it's original state over and over again with a loud popping.
"Okay, so maybe he is." Hermione admitted reluctantly, as Draco raked a hand through his hair. Lara chuckled at this.
"What are you girls looking at?" Ron asked from where he was seated next to Harry in the row behind them.
"Malfoy." Lara said simply. Ron made a face.
"Why?"
"Don't say it..." Hermione pleaded.
"Cause he's drop dead sexy." Lara said without hesitation. Hermione sighed.
"You said it." The bushy haired girl said exasperatedly. Ron looked like he was going to be sick.
"Ew!"
"For you maybe, because you're a guy. But you won't find many girls around here that disagree." Ron seemed determined to prove this wrong as he turned around to Lavender and Parvati behind him.
"Do you think Malfoy's hot?" He asked them bluntly. Parvati gave him a weird look, but answered all the same.
"Hell yeah." Ron turned back to the front, looking thoroughly sickened and surprised at the same time.
"Hermione doesn't like him, do you?" Harry asked. He had witnessed this conversation distractedly and only now made an input.
"I don't like him. But he isn't completely unfortunate looking." Harry's eyebrows disappeared beneath his hair.
"Mione, this guy called you a Mudblood."
"I still hate him Harry, he's still a jerk; but it doesn't change the fact that's he's cute." Harry made a face similar to Ron's.
"I'll never get girls." He said exasperatedly. Lara smirked at this as she transfigured Pansy Parkinsons' hair into worms. The girls shrieked in horror, trying to rip out the wriggling worms that inhabited her head. Lara sniggered as with a quick wave of her wand her hair reappeared, now a vibrant shade of purple.
"Larrissa Black! Stop that this instant and return her hair to it's original state." Lara obeyed, not successfully hiding a smile.
"Five points to Gryffindor on an excellent human transfiguration though." The Slytherin's scoffed in rage at this.
"It's would've been more if you'd chosen a more tasteful way of showing your skills." McGonagall finished, holding up her hand to silence the furious Slytherins. Very few people caught her smile slightly as she glanced at Pansy, who was clutching her hair in horror and shivering like a rabid dog.
"Lara!" Hermione reprimanded.
"What?" She said innocently.
"Can you teach me how to do that?" Ron asked, eyes shinning with excitement at the thought of the possibilities.
"Ron!" Hermione said, even more outraged.
"Admit it Hermione. That was cool." She didn't trust herself to reply.
The rest of the week went without hiccup. The Gryffindors got used to having the Slytherins in their class, and found it wasn't so bad when the teacher wasn't obviously biased towards them. The new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, who they met on Wednesday afternoon, turned out to be a wizened old man who knew his Dark Arts, and also how to make them boring as hell. Malfoy had stayed away from the quartet throughout the week, and he had not talked to Lara since the first lesson. She would, however, often find him staring at her in the middle of class, a practice she found unnerving.
However what the trio dreaded most of all (and what Lara quickly learnt was worth dreading) was Potion's last thing Friday.
"Seems we have a new student in the class. Larrissa Black." Snape said her name with spite, the malice absolutely dripping from his voice. "Don't think you can take it easy in this class. If I see you failing I might have to talk to Dumbledore and ask him to remove your potions NEWT.
"I sat the test. I passed. I earned it. You have no right to take it away."
"Don't I?" Snape said viciously, before turning his back on her and walking to the front of the class. "And ten points from Gryffindor for talking back." He said, with a half smile. Lara was about to protest when Ron and Hermione reached out and pulled her back down.
"It's not worth it." Ron whispered into her ear. She crossed her arms in impatience and slumped back in her chair, but she followed her friends advice. She didn't want to get detention on a Friday afternoon.
"Now class, today we are going to brush up on our hair loss potion that we did last year. Your final results were less than satisfactory, so I will repeat the assessment today. You are to work in pairs, I want a bottle of a successful hair loss potion by the end of the lesson from every pair." Now it was Hermione's turn to open her mouth in protest. Lara instinctively reached out and grabbed her.
"Don't."
"But that's so unfair! He taught us this potion last year! How are we supposed to remember it?"
"Like you don't." Hermione didn't reply.
"Well speak for yourself Mione, I have no idea." Ron said gloomily.
"Neither do I!" Harry whined from the other side of Ron.
"Do you seriously remember Mione?"
"Yeah I do."
"So do I, so how about we split up and go with the boys for this, to make sure they pass?" The bushy haired girl nodded.
"If it's cool with you guys." Hermione asked Harry and Ron.
"YES!" The boys cried. Apparently neither was looking forward to failing the assessment.
"So who do you want to work with?" Lara asked. Hermione gave her new friend a look that plainly said isn't it obvious. Lara sighed. She knew her friend wanted to work with Ron, but that left her with Harry. I suppose I'll have to make a sacrifice, in the name of love. She thought to herself, as Ron and her switched places.
"I'd complain, but I wanna pass." Harry said simply as Lara sat down in the chair next to him and he set up the cauldron. Their relationship had gotten gradually worse throughout the week, ending in four fights. One had even gotten them detention the previous evening, in which they were forced to scrub the suits of armor on the second floor for so many hours they smelt of rust even today. They only hung around together because of their mutual friendship with Hermione and Ron.
Half an hour later Ron and Hermione had reached the final stage of their potion. But Mione couldn't remember what the final ingredient was.
"Boomslang? No... wolfsbane? Damnit! What was it?" She whispered, biting her nails in frustration. Lara and Harry had finished their potion a few minutes ago and had already handed it to Snape in a neatly labelled bottle. Harry was pleased that he had finally passed a potion's assessment, despite having to work with Lara.
Lara was itching to tell Hermione the final ingredient, but Snape was prowling around and if she so much as made a sound he would be on her like a hawk. When he had his back turned to them and was admiring Malfoys potion, Lara used the opportunity to lean across to Ron.
"It's eye of newt." She said, so softly that barely Ron could hear. His eyes lit up and he muttered a small thank you.
"Mione, I know, I remember! It was eye of newt!" He said, faking surprise at having remembered the final ingredient. Hermione looked at him weirdly, but one glance at Larrissa, who had a guilty look on her face, answered her unasked question.
At the end of the lesson, the quartet were strutting out the door feeling very proud of themselves. They had only lost ten points, and they were all pretty confident they had passed.
"By the way, Black, twenty points from Gryffindor for helping Weasley and Granger. You just assisted them in failing today's assessment." Snape said just as they were about to leave. Lara was so tempted to turn around and curse him, however with a bit of convincing from her friends she refrained.
"That was so unfair!" Ron whined.
"Not really, we did cheat." Hermione said
"I mean the assessment Mione. As if we'd remember! I mean if you couldn't, what hope do we have?" Hermione blushed at this. Lara smiled knowingly, her matchmaker instinct bubbling over.