A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews, favorites and follows! I am really excited to see what you think of this one and what you think of Theo! You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions!
Please let me know what you thought of chapter two and be on the lookout for chapter three soon!
By the end of their first week back at Hogwarts, Hermione was excited for her first potions class. She was intensely curious about the new potions master, Slughorn, and she was interesting to see how she would do in the class without Professor Snape constantly swooping around and breathing down her neck, waiting for her to slip up. She'd always liked Potions, and she was interested to see how she would do this year without having to help Harry and Ron along. Or Neville, she thought privately, feeling very uncharitable for including him. He always tried so hard.
So few of her classmates had achieved the required OWL score in potions to continue with the advanced classes, so they were only holding one class for the sixth years. It felt weird to Hermione to be the only Gryffindor in the class, but she knew that she could do just fine on her own. She scanned the rest of the students to see who all was there.
She gave a friendly wave to Ernie Macmillan, the sole Hufflepuff. Ravenclaw and Slytherin had sent four students each. Typical, Hermione thought to herself, the Slytherins would do well at potions with Snape coddling them along.
Swallowing, she pushed that kind of negative talk out of her mind, reminding herself that the OWL exams were not scored by Professor Snape, so they must have done well enough on their own to get into the class. Of course, she knew from her intense rivalry with Malfoy that he was right hand at potions, so it was no surprise to see him there. Parkinson kept close to Malfoy's side, chatting his ear off while they waited for the class to start, though she seemed to be oblivious to the fact that he was ignoring her.
Theo Nott talked quietly with Zabini, his long fingers toying with the sharp corners of his new textbook cover. Hermione noted with interest that he was really looking much better than he had at the Welcoming Feast. Color had returned to his cheeks, and it made his new scar seem far less noticeable on his face. He also seemed to have a bit of scruff on his cheeks, and she wondered if he was trying to grow beard to distract from it. It seemed a bit silly that any of their classmates should have a beard.
Seeing him now looking so full of life only made Hermione realize how attractive he really was to her. She wondered why it was that she'd never noticed him before, with his soft looking brown hair. Perhaps it was because he was so shy and quiet, she decided.
Realizing that she had been staring at him again, Hermione quickly looked away, not wanting to caught by her newly-interesting classmate. Instead, she reviewed the Ravenclaws. She was very friendly with Padma Patil and was glad to see her. She was standing with Lisa Turpin and Terry Boot, chatting quietly. Anthony Goldstein stood off to the side, reviewing his notes.
Professor Slughorn walked into the room with a jolly laugh, startling Hermione out of her daydreams. "Good afternoon class," he said jovially. "I am sorry there are so few of you, but I know that only the most dedicated students chose to continue onto the NEWT level. So, congratulations to all of you."
He had just begun to explain how the class would be run - a period of lecture followed by a period of lab work - when Harry and Ron stumbled into the classroom. Hermione whirled around and glared at her two noisy friends, hoping that Harry hadn't decided to stalk Malfoy during class.
"Sorry Professor," Harry apologized, his face bright red when he realized the ruckus they had made. "Professor McGonagall has only just rectified the mistake of potions being left off of our timetables."
Hermione pursed her lips at that, seeing as it was the first that she was hearing of any mistake. She was certain that Harry hadn't wanted to step foot near another cauldron ever again. Perhaps this was some ploy by Dumbledore and Harry to get closer to Professor Slughorn?
Professor Slughorn instructed her two friends to pull a textbook from the back cabinet and Hermione turned to the front of the room, mortified by their behavior. It sounded like they were jostling for a textbook, slamming into the metal of the cabinet. Flushing, Hermione wondered if they knew how it reflected on her when they acted like such savages?
With her focus back on the front of the room, she let her eyes look towards the potions bubbling way behind Professor Slughorn. "Does anyone have any idea of what these potions are?" he asked, his hands resting at his stomach.
She didn't have to be asked twice, immediately throwing her hand up in the air. Slughorn called on her and asked her name. She told him on the way to the front of the room to inspect the potions that were waiting for her.
"This one is polyjuice potion," Hermione said, a hint of a smirk on her face. Of course she had intimate knowledge of that potion, but her classmates wouldn't know about that. She wondered what they would think if they knew that she'd been partially stuck as a cat when she was just a second year having brewed the potion herself. She described the potions most basic qualities.
"Well done, Miss Granger," Slughorn said with an intrigued smile on his face. "And the next one?"
Hermione nibbled at her lower lip while she looked in the cauldron and observed the vapor coming off of it, before giving it a delicate sniff. "This is veritaserum, if I'm not mistaken," she said coolly. "It compels the drinker to tell the truth, and has no discernable smell or taste."
"Excellent work, Miss Granger," Slughorn added, confirming that she was correct. "It's no surprise then that you have ended up in this class. Go on, now, tell us what the last one is."
Peering into the final cauldron, Hermione felt her eyes widen when she saw the mother-of-pearl sheen on the surface of the potion. The spirals of steam all but confirmed what it was that was bubbling away, and she wondered if Slughorn wasn't a little bit irresponsible bringing this potion in a school full of hormonal teenagers. "It's amortentia," she said, disbelief in her voice.
She watched with a bit of amusement as all the girls in the class gave an almost imperceptible half-step forward towards the love potion, even Padma Patil. Hermione could admit that it was a bit intoxicating to think that such a powerful potion was within arms reach.
Hermione leaned forward, letting herself smell the steam that was coming off the potion, letting the scent wash over her. Her eyes slipped shut at such a lovely and welcoming scent. She thought that she could spend all afternoon wrapped up in the scent. "It's the most powerful love potion in the world and it smells different to everyone based on what attracts them most," she said, though her mind was a million miles away. "For me it smells like blood orange and spice...and the woods after a thunderstorm."
"Well, you've just earned Gryffindor fifteen points, Miss Granger," Slughorn complimented her, bringing her hurtling back to the potions classroom, no longer under the tricky pull of the potion. With pupils blown, she looked around the room, blushing to see all of her classmates staring at her. She nodded curtly, before returning back to her spot. "Of course, amortentia doesn't create real love, but a very dangerous, obsessive attraction."
Slughorn gave a little laugh, seeing how intensely curious the students remained by the potion. "Oh, alright then. Queue up and give the cauldron a whiff yourself," he said with a wave of his hand. "Perhaps you'll be surprised by what you smell."
Hermione had the curious vantage point of getting to watch all of her classmates smell the cauldron full of amortentia. Pansy Parkinson had to be shoved out of the way by Lisa Turpin, having spent too long with her little nose in the steam. Each of her male classmates reluctantly gave a sniff before their eyes grew large with surprise based on whatever it was that they found.
Theo Nott was the last to go and Hermione watched the quiet boy with far more interest than she should have. He leaned over imperceptibly, the steam barely hitting him in the face before his eyes were slipping shut, his face transformed by contentment and pure desire. His mouth fell open just a bit, and it looked like he would have been happy to stand there all day if he were allowed.
All too soon, though, he seemed to come back into himself, his eyes snapping open. Hermione wondered if he could tell that she'd been watching him curiously the whole time, because when his eyes opened, his blue eyes bored into hers.
She blushed and looked away immediately, upset at having been caught staring at him a second time in a week. Just what was wrong with her that she found Theo Nott so thoroughly interesting this year, she wondered? It wasn't as if she'd ever given him more than a passing thought before.
Luckily, there was no time for her to spend agonizing over being caught red-handed because Professor Slughorn was instructing them to create a Draught of the Living Death and that whoever had the best potion at the end of class would receive a vial of Felix Felicis.
Hermione quickly opened her textbook and read through all of the instructions. It seemed tricky enough and there were so many steps that she was immediately absorbed into the task at hand. She was glad that they were all working alone because she didn't want to be responsible to assist Ron or Harry if she was going to win the potion.
However, the further along she got in her tasks, the more Hermione realized that her brewing was getting out of control. Try as she might, she could keep control of her ingredients, the written instructions failing her at every turn. She was growing hot from the steam of the cauldron, her hair growing more and more wild.
Out of her peripheral vision, she noticed that Harry was quite absorbed in his own potion, for once completely forgetting that Malfoy was in the same room as him. Hermione took a small break, only to see that he was getting along very well with his own work. She frowned, noticing him deviating from the directions in his tatty old textbook.
"Harry, what are you doing?" she demanded, a tendril of jealousy wrapping around her stomach firmly when she realized that Harry was doing better than her. "That's not what's written in the directions," she insisted when he gave his potion one additional turn.
"I don't know, Hermione," Harry responded sheepishly. "Whoever had this textbook before I did left some helpful additions in the margins. And, my potion is obviously getting on rather well. Just look at it."
Hermione certainly did not want to agree with him about his potion being better than hers, when she followed the prescribed order of the book and Harry did not. However, by the end of the class period, when Professor Slughorn was just gushing on and on about how amazing Harry's potion was, she had to admit that his had been better. Not that she'd be mentioning anything about it to him - he was so full of himself that his head might explode.
And so, she had to watch with a bitter taste in her mouth when Slughorn handed over the vial of Felix Felicis to Harry with a fake smile on her face. It was silly to be so upset over something that she probably never would have found a use for anyway. It was just that she wasn't used to having her talent looked over that stung so much.