I've decided to update this story, too, after a year and some of leaving it out in the cold.

Slowly, but surely, my fics will be completed.

There are a lot of things that are no longer canon in this story because I started it before HBP came out. For example Draco and Snape are still at Hogwarts.

But I just need to finish what I started.

Enjoy! And review!

-squibbles

Chapter Four: A Blessing In Disguise

Mandy had never been so excited to serve a detention.

Well, she'd also never served one in general, but that was beside the point.

Four hours, alone, with Terry Boot. What else could a girl (with a hopeless crush) ask for?

To get ready, Mandy skipped supper. Samantha was kind enough to stay behind as well. The pair went through possible outfits as if they were choosing which poor, orphaned puppy to take home from the pound.

"This one is so cute…"

"Yes, but don't forget about this one…"

"Oh yeah… well, did you see these?"

This went on for about twenty minutes before Mandy decided on light blue jeans and a simple black shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves. Samantha bemoaned the outfit's conservativeness, but Mandy reasoned that she didn't have much of a figure to show off, anyway. Still, she managed to spice up her look with some sparkly lip gloss and colorful bangles, lifted from Padma's collection of make-up and accessories (which resembled a small department store).

It was five minutes to six. Mandy surveyed herself one last time in the dormitory's full length mirror. She smoothed her top. She pressed her lips together. She re-braided one of her plaits because a few strands were sticking out. At long last, she felt ready. Smiling appreciatively at her dorm-mates, Mandy bid them farewell and headed for Snape's dungeon.

Terry was already there when she arrived. Seated at a desk in the front row, he looked as though he wanted nothing more than to strangle the professor who stood before him. Snape smirked all the while, basking gleefully in his power-trip. Mandy sat down without a word.

"Now that we've taken our sweet time to get here, allow me to give you your punishment," drawled Snape with a glare in her direction. "Believe it or not, these desks used to be new and shiny."

Out of the corner of her eye, Mandy spotted Terry wrinkle his nose incredulously as he scratched some ashy matter from his desk's surface. The stuff got stuck under his fingernails.

"That is, before hundreds of lousy and careless potions students came through, yourselves included," the professor continued. "The task tonight is to clean them, by hand, until they look new again. Wands, please." He extended a sallow palm. Mandy nearly squealed when Terry's hand grazed hers as they both reached out to drop their wands in Snape's grasp at the same time. The boy didn't seem to notice, however—he just went right on scowling down at his desk.

Snape paced toward the door. "You will stay until the task is complete, even if it takes additional hours. Which I suspect it will, so I advise you to begin."

He disappeared out of the classroom in a billowing of black robes.

"That greasy git."

Mandy watched Terry as he approached the teacher's desk, where the cleaning supplies were laid out. She followed him.

"We didn't even do anything," she responded softly, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. The bangles clinked against each other on her wrist.

Terry's pair of gloves was on, too. He snatched a rag and some cleaning solution, which was blue and contained in a spray-bottle, then started scrubbing a desk aggressively. "I know. It was that bleedin' Malfoy."

Mandy picked up the other set of cleaning supplies and began to work on the desk next to Terry's. "Yeah, Malfoy… he's, erm, bad news," she replied, feeling nervous and awkward. They couldn't very well bash Snape and Malfoy for the entire detention—what else could they talk about? Mandy wracked her brain for conversation topics.

"But I guess there's no use in staying angry," the boy shrugged, looking completely at ease. Mandy wished she could be half as mellow and confident all the time. "It's not like there's anything we can do to get out of this."

"Uh… yeah."

Mandy kicked herself. Sweet Merlin, say something interesting for once, she scolded internally.

Lost in her thoughts, it took her a while to realize that she'd scrubbed the center of her desk clean. The cherry wood shone through with an unfamiliar brightness. Mandy smiled, running her hand over the smooth surface.

"I can't believe all these desks once looked like this," she commented.

Terry, who was almost finished with his desk, glanced over. "Yeah, I know. Maybe this place won't feel as much like a prison once we're done."

"You still take Potions?" Mandy inquired. Most of the seventh years in NEWT Potions were Slytherins. Even though it was difficult for Snape to deny most Ravenclaws the qualifying OWL to take the advanced course, few of Mandy's fellow Housemates willingly continued.

"Yeah. It's my dad's doing. He wants me to be a Healer."

"Oh." Mandy scrubbed through a layer of greenish goop. "I take it that's not what you want to be?"

Terry advanced to the next desk. "Not really. I hadn't decided as of fifth year, so my dad took the reins and decided for me."

"Fifth year? Nobody has it all figured out by fifth year!" The words blurted out on their own accord. Mandy felt her cheeks grow hot. "I mean, erm, I didn't really mean that. Uh, I just meant…"

Chuckling, Terry waved an easy-going hand. "Don't worry, I agree with you. If I find something I'm really passionate about, my career path will change, no matter what my dad has to say about it. But as of now I'm just going with the flow because I don't know what I want to do."

Mandy nodded. She admired his ability to be reasonable. Surely he's never had a six-year crush on someone way out of his league. Then again… who is out of Terry Boot's league?

"What about you? Any plans for the future?" he asked.

"Well… I guess I'd like to go farther with Herbology. Although, since class last week, I don't know if that's such a good idea."

Terry laughed. Merlin, did she love his laugh. "I wouldn't worry about that. Professor Sprout tends to forgive and forget. I once knocked over an entire shelf of potted Mandrakes. Actually, it wasn't completely my fault. Michael shoved me because I got some dirt on his tie, heaven forbid. Anyway, I fell into the shelf and some of the Mandrakes escaped from the soil, and they were shrieking like mad. Only about half of us in the greenhouse covered our ears in time… let's just say the Hospital Wing was busy that day."

Breaking into a wide grin, Mandy nodded excitedly. "I remember that! I covered my ears but still had a pretty bad headache," she reminisced.

"Me too. Well, my point is, Sprout won't hold a grudge. As I recall, she said we were 'excellent students,' even though she was angry. She will have cooled down by now."

For a few minutes the pair didn't speak, but Mandy didn't really mind. She was feeling more confident now that she had engaged in a normal conversation with the boy and figured that they would start talking again soon.

Hopefully.

Terry moved on to his third desk. "I think there's a hole in my glove," he mumbled, more to himself than anything. Mandy heard him, though, and discreetly watched him from the corner of her eye as he removed the glove.

She noticed something on his wrist—a purple bracelet of some sort. It looked liked woven hemp with a couple of black beads set into middle. Mandy wondered why she had never seen it before. Maybe it was new, or maybe he didn't wear it often.

"That's a nice bracelet," she ventured, smiling over at him. "Where did you get it? Hogsmeade?"

Terry stared down at his wrist for a moment's hesitation.

Then, all of a sudden, he shoved the rubber glove back on.

"No… it was my mom's."

"Erm… oh."

Awkward silence of the century.

Mandy thought she would die. Right there, right then, she would collapse on the desk and expire from embarrassment. She hadn't meant to put Terry on the spot like that. Who would have guessed that the mention of his bracelet would trouble him so? Positive that the rest of the evening would be plagued with an uncomfortable air, Mandy hung her head and concentrated on a particularly stubborn spot of something-or-other.

Part of her became more intrigued with Terry (if that was even possible). As sheepish as she felt, she yearned to question him further. What happened with his mother? Did this picture-perfect boy not actually have the fairy tale life that Mandy had always imagined?

Well, she obviously wasn't going to ask him about it. But that didn't change the fact that she desperately wanted to.

The quiet was broken by a strange sizzling noise… and Terry's laugh (i.e. music to Mandy's ears).

She peered across the room, where purple bubbles belched loudly from the surface of a desk.

"I think the cleaning solution is reacting with something here," Terry observed, a grin back on his face as if there had been no discomfort a few seconds ago.

Giggling, Mandy wiped the last smudge from the desk she was working on and walked over to Terry.

"Wow. That's wicked." She sniffed carefully. The steam smelled like a garden of summer flowers. "Weird, it smells good."

"Yeah, it does."

Mandy glanced up from the desk to find Terry looking at her. Upon meeting his gaze, she felt her heart begin to race.

His eyes were two different shades. His left one was a dark and mysterious brown, his right, a milky chocolate that shone with ambition. Mandy knew about this physical quirk of Terry's, but never before had she been close enough to see it, and never before had she faced him so directly. Most often she could only sneak glances from across crowded hallways.

They averted their eyes at the same time, both chuckling bashfully. Mandy didn't know what to think. Terry had just looked at her in a way she couldn't decipher. Was this a good thing?

"Right, so, we should finish up." He erased the dying bubbles with a few swipes of his arm, revealing the spot-free cherry wood. Mandy nodded in agreement and went to work on an adjacent desk.

The rest of the evening passed without any awkward disturbances or substantial eye contact, much to Mandy's relief and disappointment, respectively. She learned more about Terry during the detention than she knew from the past six years. And it seemed that as the evening went on, they became relaxed with each other. They joked and laughed and teased, and Mandy thought wistfully of all the good times she had missed being so reclusive.

Things would change. She was friends with Terry Boot now.

They finished their task in just under four hours. Snape thundered in at 10pm to inspect the desks. He found a few black marks to complain about, but Terry crisply retaliated that the marks were burns that could not be removed without magic. This must have reminded Snape that he still had the two students' wands, for he whipped them out of his robe pocket.

"I hope you two learned not to be so careless," he snapped.

Mandy glimpsed at Terry as she took her wand from Snape's hand. She could tell that the boy had a retort on the tip of his tongue but didn't fancy another detention.

They left with haste. The corridor was a refreshing change from the confines of Snape's dungeon.

"Thank Merlin, I can actually breathe out here. We probably have some brain damage from cleaning those desks for so long," Terry jested.

"Yeah, it was pretty brutal," Mandy agreed. "But… I enjoyed doing it with… with you, and all. I mean, it's worse to do something like that alone." She felt a surge of bravery run through her body. Just four hours ago she wouldn't have dreamed of saying those words to Terry.

The boy threw her a sideways smile. Mandy swore she felt her heart skip a beat. "Definitely. It was great to talking to you. I mean, we're the same House, same year… it's nice that we got to know each other a little."

Mandy blushed profusely. It was all she could to contain her excitement. She just wanted to shout to the world that her life was beginning to look up—in the best way possible.

When they reached Ravenclaw Tower, the pair slowed to a stop.

"Well, it was lovely working with you, Miss Brocklehurst." Terry held out his hand in a mock-professional manner. Mandy shook it.

"Indeed, Sir Boot."

They entered the common room and parted ways to their separate dormitories.

Mandy all but swooned when she reached her bed.

Detention: a blessing in disguise.