Chapter 11:
A/N: Just another reminder – Blaise is a girl in this story! Thanks!
A week after returning to Hogwarts, everyone was back into the 'swing' of things. Schoolwork was mounting on everyone's schedules and the teacher's migraines had returned. For Leah, life had become better than before except for Pansy acting more and more malicious towards Leah by the day. This was probably because Blaise had gone past their compartment the day they were returning to school and mentioned to Pansy that Draco had gone back in there.
Leah knew that Pansy was preaching to her friends of her 'bad influence'. However, she didn't think that Pansy's preachings would actually be taken into action – that was until one time during charms.
Professor Flitwick had been teaching the sixth-years body enchantments and had decided to put people together in pairs to work these charms on each other. Professor Flitwick stood on his towering pile of books and paired people together by random name picking from his roll. "Miss Parkinson, ah yes, I'll put you with Miss Gashmorre here, Mr Malfoy, you will pair up with Mr Crabbe and Mr Goyle, I'm sorry to part you away from your work buddy but I'll put you with Miss Zabini. Miss Bullstrode will go with Miss Harrison and…" he went on until everyone was paired up with someone in the class. Even before Leah moved from her seat, she could see that Pansy was hurriedly whispering into Millicent's ear and taking sidelong glances towards Leah. She felt her self become nervous as she faced Millicent with only a long stick protruding from her clenched hand.
"Everyone, face your partners. Now, now, there's no need to look so scared Mr. Goyle. Now, face your partners and you will do so civilly and will take it in turns to put charms on each other. On the count of three. One, two three!" he squeaked.
Millicent swished her wand and with a violet light, Leah's view was instantly magnified. She had been put the Bubblehead Charm and everything around her looked oblong and near by, Blaise's head was stretched from the ceiling to nearly the floor. She quickly put the reverse charm on herself and the bubble surrounding her head disappeared with a pop.
Leah faced the broad shouldered, square-jawed Millicent and incanted a charm with a swish of her wand. From Millicent's eyes, popped out binoculars strong enough to see what would be happening fifty miles away if there was a clear view. Leah doubted that Millicent couldn't see the pores in her skin. But Millicent quickly changed her eyes back to normal and returned to the task at hand.
The class went on, but time went by quickly as everybody tried getting ample goes at charming their partner. Leah noticed that Pansy had kept a close eye on her and Millicent, sneering every time a charm was put on Leah. Millicent had performed the nastier of the charms on Leah, as instructed to do so by Pansy, Leah had no doubt. But by the time Leah had walked out of the classroom door, she was quite glad to get rid of her.
But this wasn't the last time Leah would be paired up with Millicent. Double Potions was the last lesson for the day and not surprisingly, Professor Snape paired people up in the class and once again, Leah was landed with Millicent. She caught Pansy winking at Millicent and Leah had a gut feeling that she wasn't going to enjoy this particular lesson.
Today's potion was the Animatus Potion, where added a few drops of any essence from any animal, could change you into the exact replica of the animal for two hours. He tapped on the board with his wand as done each lesson and magically appeared with the exact measures of ingredients and the method of creating a handy potion, given that it is used at a minimum. While drawling on about the usefulness of this potion, Snape cautioned everyone that taking more than ten drops of the potion in a space of less than 24 hours would result in you staying the animal form for ever.
Preparing the ingredients, Millicent leant close and hissed, "Psst."
Leah looked up. "What?" she asked and Millicent answered with her eyes lowered and her lips hardly moving. "You know I'm not meant to talk to you, right?"
"Yeah," Leah whispered. "Captain Pansy's orders, huh."
Millicent kept on cutting up her daisy roots while she spoke, "Yeah, something like that. Listen, you'd better be careful – Pansy's planning to do something that would make you regret you were even born. And some good advise – stay clear of Malfoy. You don't want to be caught hanging around Malfoy with Pansy close behind you."
"I've heard. She's really in love with him, isn't she? Don't you guys ever get sick of her?"
"Of course we do! She yapps on about him 24/7 and she just doesn't get the signs coming from him, that poor guy. But we don't have the heart to tell her that though, especially with her type of family backing her up. All of our parents are close friends but the Parkinsons aren't very popular among us, I can tell you. They always seem see themselves as more superior than the others and like to walk all over us. But the Parkinsons are experts on curses, so you don't want to get on the wrong side of them."
"I can imagine," said Leah. "Pansy loves to control people, doesn't she?"
"Oh yeah," Millicent said. "Anyway, I should stop talking in case my cover blows. Just remember to watch yourself – Pansy's capable of murder if it's what she thinks is right."
Leah silently nodded as a shiver ran up her spine.
At the end of the class, as Leah was packing Elise came up to her and started whispering in her ear. "Do you know what Pansy was trying to make me do? She tried to persuade me to stop being friends with you. She had this crummy reason that you're bad influence and stuff, but she's definitely not the convincing type. I mean, she should speak for herself, for crying out loud."
Leah wasn't surprised. But she didn't make any comment but fill her glass bottle with the potion that just scraped the barrel for marks and put it with other submitted bottles of student's potions. Before emptying her cauldron, she got out her spare bottle and quickly dipped it into the potion and filled it. She wedged the cork in and slipped it into her pocket. Seeing that this may come in handy one day, she took it.
January left and February arrived, bringing with it a somewhat dreary Valentine's day. Leah was now single and couldn't share the festive season with Elise, but took time in noticing small attempts for a chance of love from the people around her. Pansy of course, had brought up chocolate boxes and red roses all to give to Draco alone, and Crabbe too had tried achieving something by giving a wilted bunch of daffodils to Millicent. Elise shared her festivity over the post to her sweetheart and the post even brought Leah something special for the day. It was a card, from Chris but only signed at the bottom as, "Your friend, Chris." No hard feelings, Leah thought.
Throughout February Leah had developed a habit. This habit of hers was to sneak into the broom shed and take some of the brooms out for a fly. Leah had been flying in her backyard for sometime now, but had never been a fantastic flyer. Ever since the Quidditch match, Leah had an urge to fly and the only way to satisfy herself was this. This though, was getting quite hard to do, since the next Quidditch match was coming up; Slytherin versus Ravenclaw. To the Slytherins, this was no big deal and most on the team was feeling pretty cruisey. Ravenclaw on the other hand, was training harder, earlier and longer by the day and Leah was finding it hard to get a time to fly on her own and in secrecy. About a week before the match, it was near to impossible for Leah to find a vacant spot in which she could use the stadium and eventually gave up to wait until the match was over.
That week was probably the most agonising for Leah because of her 'cravings' for flying. She longed to have the wind hissing in her ear and playing with her hair. She longed to be moving from up high and then plummeting down to the ground the next second. She loved having control over the broom and taking swerves and doing loop-the-loops. Flying was Leah's dream, her love and her life; ever since she was small, she would dream of flying in her sleep and would always play with the birds in the back yard.
The day of the Quidditch match arrived and Leah want with the Slytherin crowd to spectate and cheer on the team. Though, this was probably not needed as the game started and finished in the space of 15 minutes at the most. It seemed to Leah that as soon as the players kicked off the ground, Malfoy went diving from an extremely high spot and swerve halfway to the ground holding up the golden ball fluttering helplessly in his hand.
On return from the Quidditch pitch, there was a minor celebration held in the common room, but since it was no big feat, the party only lasted only as long as the food did.
That afternoon, Leah went into the library to look up essence potions. The book was easy enough to find, but what essence of animal you wanted to make was a hard choice. First of all, the ingredients from some animals were just too hard to get hold of and secondly, the choice was too large. Obviously you wouldn't want to change into a dragon, since it would be too big to roam around the school grounds but you didn't want to change into an ant or a mosquito where you would most likely be squashed by someone. Someone like Pansy, thought Leah and she shivered at the thought.
Common pets were of Leah's interest but it seemed too ordinary to change into a cat or a dog. A mouse was out of the question as she would probably be Krysta's dinner. No, birds were what stopped Leah. Ravens, parrots, budgies, pigeons and doves – the choice was up to you. Leah opted for the eagle as it suited her best and turned to the page.
The method was easy enough. The problem though, lay with the ingredients; dozen eagle tail feathers, an onze of finely chopped daisy roots, armadillo bile, scarab beetles… where was she going to get these things from? This answer lay with Blaise.
While Leah sat around the common room later on, talking to Elise, Blaise walked in, the stomach of her robes bulging. She scurried in and gave a sigh as she dumped the hidden objects on the coffee table. Little bottles of liquid, unidentifiable dried up objects, a few fangs and some roots tied in a bundle fell out and scattered about the table. Leah gaped at Blaise's loot and asked her where she had gotten these things from.
Blaise had a mysterious smile and answered, "Oh, just got a couple of things from Snape's storage cupboard. It's not too hard to get in there; you just have to make sure that he's not there. Fortunately for us, he never locks it and he doesn't tend to notice some things have gone – he just goes ahead and fills it up again."
"Would you be using some of those things?" Leah asked.
"Uh, I might be. What sort of things were you after – because if you want I can take you there to get some more."
"Um, I'll need daisy roots, eagle tail feathers, scarab beetles, armadillo bile, and a couple of other things," Leah went though the list of things written on a piece of parchment. She hoped that none of them would be questioning her, and fortunately none of them did. In fact, it seemed quite normal for students to make secret potions in their own time.
"I haven't got some of those things here, so let's say tomorrow? We can go in and get a couple of things. I thing I forgot to get some snail shells anyhow…"
It was precisely 6:00 the next day when Leah and Blaise crept into the darkened dungeon. There was no sign of anybody in the room and the desks lay in shadow of the afternoon. At the furthest end of the room was the dark object just distinguishable as the cupboard in which Snape kept special ingredients needed to make the more complicated of potions. The door of the cupboard was unlocked but creaked eerily as they opened it, the echoes bouncing off the stone walls.
Everything was neatly labelled and nothing stood where it didn't belong. To the right was little glass bottles of liquid; blood, bile, tears and other concoctions, and to the left were baskets of dried objects; plants, roots, fruits, leaves and unidentifiable dried up thingies. In the centre was a space where bundles of various potion ingredients hung; feathers, claws, strings of teeth and garlic. Glass jars stood underneath them, strange things bobbling in the liquid; mushrooms, eyes, foetuses, intestines, even whole snakes. Just looking at the snake gave Leah shiver and jumped when Blaise whispered to her from her daydream. "Come on, don't dawdle!"
Leah scanned through the alphabetically labelled objects and picked out small amounts from the bundles. Once they had gone through the list, they shut the door of the cupboard and quickly exited the dungeon.
A/N: Please R&R! Just a warning for those people who like shorter stories… I'm not like you – I like stories that take a long time to boil. I'm going to make sure that Leah and Draco are going to go through "hell and high water" (thanks for that Sona Camdyn!) before they're going to realise that either of them exist. Hope you enjoy!