"Where were you?" Susan squealed when I sat next to her in Transfiguration the next morning. "I don't remember you coming in last night and your bed was empty when I went to get you for breakfast this morning. I don't want to be all motherly but I was worried sick."
"It's nothing." I tried to convince her.
"Then where were you?" She demanded.
"I was…er…in the hospital wing." I mumbled the last part so it was not understandable.
"What?" She asked and leaned in.
"I was in the hospital wing." I sighed knowing she was never going to let it go.
"You were...wha…why were you in the hospital wing?" She sputtered.
"It's nothing really, I didn't really even need to be there but Madame Pomfrey made me stay."
"Why did you need to be there in the first place, Ruby?" She said through gritted teeth, annoyed that I wasn't giving straight answers.
I gave a defeated sigh. "Okay, so I kind of…almost bled to death yesterday during detention." I knew there had to have been a better way to tell her but that's the way it came out. I avoided looking at her and focused on loose string on a bandage around my finger.
There was a long pause during which I became nervous before Susan said in a monotone voice, "I'll kill him."
I raised my eyebrows and slowly turned my head to look at Susan whose face was wiped of all emotion and was looking straight ahead at the wall on the opposite side of the room. I placed my hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off.
She didn't say anything to me for the rest of the class period. I explained what happened and that it wasn't entirely his fault. She didn't even look at me or really acknowledge anything I was saying. I became nervous and after class I grabbed her arm and made her look at me.
"Don't you dare to anything to that man." I ordered. "I don't need you to be in the same kind of trouble as me. It's nothing. I think it scared him enough that he won't do anything like that again. So just leave it alone."
She opened her mouth but I placed my hand over it. "Just leave it alone, Susan." I said again. She nodded her head and we parted ways. I was nervous and excited to see if Potions would be any different for me after what happened last night.
After Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts I rushed to the library to get some serious studying done. I sat in the silent section of the library and lost myself in my work. I finished my third assignment and looked at the time.
"Shit." I muttered under my breath. I only had a few minutes before Snape would leave the Dining Hall and I would have to go to detention. I packed up my things and ran to the Great Hall.
Susan was still sitting at our normal spot and I slid into my place, panting from the sprint there, and began loading up my plate with whatever food was closest.
"So." Susan began as I shoved food into my mouth. "How was potions?"
She looked over her shoulder at Snape. "Do I need to hurt him?"
I shook my head and gulped down the food that was in my mouth. "No. He's back to pretending I don't exist instead of making me an example every class. I only have to get through another week of detention and I'm done and then I can just make my potions with my mouth shut and graduate."
"Good, because you know I would have smacked him." Susan ensured me.
I smiled. "I'm sure you would have." I laughed a bit, Susan was all talk. I loved that about her.
I looked over my shoulder and Snape was gone. I sighed and said goodbye to Susan and made my way to the dungeons.
I opened the classroom door and stepped inside stopping in line with the last row of tables. Snape sat at his desk but there were parchments or vials that needed grading, he merely sat there and stared at me for a moment.
"Sit down." He said in his normal chilled tone.
I scurried to sit in my normal seat expecting him to tell me to sit in the front again but he said nothing. I sat down and placed my bag next to my chair and stared at him waiting for him to tell me what he had planned for my detention.
"In consideration of last night's events I think it would be best if we have you fulfill the rest of your detentions by studying." He informed me.
"Oh." I sputtered. "Uh, thank you."
"Clearly you are incompetent and can't be trusted to finish even the simplest task without your life being in danger." He continued.
I pressed my lips together to keep from retorting and pulled my Transfiguration book from my bag and began reading the assigned text.
"Miss Winston." Snape said.
I snapped my head up to look at him.
"What were you saying last night before you fainted?" He asked.
"I'm sorry?" I implored caught off guard by his question.
"You were talking about your fear of your family being attacked and you started saying that if you were there you wouldn't something." He recalled. "You wouldn't what?"
I stared at him with my mouth open for a moment shocked that he had been paying attention to what I had being saying. I blushed with embarrassment at the answer I was about to give him.
"I, er, I wouldn't be able to do anything to help." I blurted.
He raised his eyebrows at me. "You would perform a defensive spell."
"I know." I interjected. "I'm not very good with those."
"Aren't you in the N.E.W.T. class for Defense Against the Dark Arts?"
"Yes, but the thing about that is I am excellent with theoretical use of defense which is really the majority of the class. Practical use hasn't been the main objective of most of my professors."
"Can you make a Patronus?"
"Well, it doesn't take any particular form but I can make one."
"Stand up." He ordered, rising from his own seat. I looked at him my heart pounding in my chest. "Stand up and come here."
In one swift movement I pushed myself from my seat and rushed to the front of the room and stopped a few feet in front of Snape.
"Take out your wand." He instructed. I looked at him blankly. He gave a frustrated sigh. "Your wand! You do have your wand, don't you?"
Startled by the sudden raise of Snape's voice I plunged my hands into the pocket of my robes and withdrew my wand.
Snape took dueling stance and raised his wand at me. My heart plunged to my toes and my stomach flip flopped. "Expelliarmus me." He asserted. "I'm sure you can do that spell."
"Er, sometimes." I said shakily raising my wand.
He dropped his dueling stance. "Sometimes?"
"It's not really a big deal." I shrugged. "As a healer I'll need knowledge of dark spells and their defenses but I'm not really going to need to use them."
"So you think that you don't need to be able to perform these spells?" He asked.
I nodded my head with apprehension.
"Let me make up a scenario for you." He began. "You are working on the floor treating patients with spell damage. Especially right now it is not out of the question to believe that one or more of these patients, once healed to a certain point, could have information about the person who put the curse or jinx or hex on them. That person may be a Death Eater. What if they decide they don't wish to be caught and decide to infiltrate the halls of St. Mungo's to try to finish the job? You are the first person to see them for what they are. Are you going to have time to find another healer who might be better at defensive spells than you or are you going to do your best to keep them from harming more of your patients or even one of your fellow healers? You have a moment to react and you risk too much by doing the first. So your quickest and first course of action would be to use expelliarmus. Try to get their wand away from them. A wizard is never more vulnerable than when they are missing their wand. So again I am telling you to try to rid me of my wand."
He moved back into his dueling stance and nodded his head at me once. I had never left my stance and took in a deep gulp of air to calm myself, though it did little to do so.
"Expelliarmus." I choked, but nothing appeared to happen.
"Pathetic." Snape grumbled. "Try again."
"Expelliarmus." I said with a bit more strength behind it.
"Can I tell you a secret?" He asked. "I let Peter Gregorian keep his potion that day just to make you angry."
His lips curled into a challenging smirk. My jaw dropped and my eyes bulged at his manipulative confession. Anger exploded in my chest.
"Expelliarmus!" I shrieked.
Snape's wand flung from his hand and landed with a bouncing clatter and rolled into the wall.
"Acceptable." Snape droned as he turned to fetch his wand. "I've seen how you hold back your emotions. The key is to not keep them bottled up but to release them at the right moment. I suggest you use your pent up anger, frustration, and even sadness and release them with your defensive spells. I have found in my own experience that emotion can strengthen spells."
I dropped my wand to my side confused about why he was helping me and giving me tips about defensive spell casting.
Snape took dueling stance again and said, "This time I don't want to have to make you angry. Think about something that makes you angry or sad. It could be something I did to make you angry in the past or something someone else did it doesn't matter as long as you can pull the emotion into your spell.
Memories ran through my head and I settled on the time in class when Snape 'accidentally' spilled Bubotuber pus on me causing me to have huge pus filled bumps where it made contact for a few days.
I took my stance and pointed my wand at Snape. "Expelliarmus!"
His wand flew from his hand again and hit the blackboard where he wrote potion recipes. He smiled at me, not his normal smile that made me want to punch him in his hooked nose this smile was more genuine and yet it made me more suspicious of him than ever.
"Shall we move on?" Snape asked after he picked up his wand. "We could try the Knockback Jinx."
He pointed his wand in my direction. I sealed my eyes tight, tensed my body, and prepared for the impact of the spell. I heard the hollow crack of wood on stone and I opened one eye and looked around. I dropped my shoulders and opened my other eye. I turned around and saw a chair laying on the floor. It flipped itself back up and stood still.
"You try." Snape said. "Use flipendo."
I tried to think of something that made me angry or sad. I thought about the time my brothers ruined all of my make-up to put American Indian style war paint on each other. They broke my lipsticks and gouged out my eye shadows. They used my eyeliner down to the wood and then snapped the pencils for no reason. They ran outside to play their game and left the mess in the bathroom for me to find. But however angry that memory made me it was far outdone by the nervousness and skepticism I felt towards Professor Snape's new attitude towards me.
"Flipendo." I yelled but the chair only wiggled.
"What did I say about using your emotions?" Snape urged.
I took a deep breath and gathered the courage to say what I wanted. "I tried." I said in a wavering voice. "But any emotion I feel is overpowered by how nervous you are making me feel. What I mean is, what are you planning to do to me? There has to be some trick. Yesterday I almost…well, you know, and today you're helping me with defensive spells? What are you playing at, professor?"
"No one should be as horrible at defense as you are." Snape snarled. "Yesterday you said you didn't laugh at my worst memory and I believed you. I'm not playing at anything but if you don't want my help then I'll be more than happy to return to your regular detentions. I just thought Miss Perfect would want to be even more nauseatingly flawless."
People always teased me with that word; perfect. Like being good at things was something to be made fun of. A group of boys brought me to tears when I was seven and they made up a rhyme about me. It seems like a stupid childish matter now but it really hurt when they sang 'perfect prat' at me and the others laughed. They finished it off by pushing me into a mud puddle and they all roared with laughter. I came home with cheeks stained red from crying and my mother's only consolation was that sometimes when boys like a girl they make fun of her. I don't think that's why they did it.
"Don't call me perfect." I warned through gritted teeth.
"Would you prefer faultless?" He asked. "Perhaps immaculate or supreme are more to your liking."
"Flipendo!" I bellowed.
Snape flew backwards through the air and hit the floor. He slid to a halt not far from the door to his office. A wave of elation flooded over me followed by a harsh crash of mortification at what I had just done to Professor Snape. My eyes widened and I opened my mouth but I was unable to make any words come out. I watched as the professor hoisted himself up onto his elbows and gaped at me with an equal look of shock.
"So this is what you want?" He asked. I didn't understand. "Flipendo!"
My feet left the floor and I was soaring through the air. I had no time to comprehend what was happening before I landed on a table and slid to the ground. I hit my head on the fall but I lifted myself up slightly dizzy.
Snape was standing and began striding towards me.
"Locomotor Wibbly." I gasped.
His legs went wobbly and he collapsed onto the ground. I had never before been able to use two different spells like this and had them both work. I was on high alert when Snape lifted his wand at me.
"Steleus." He quipped.
"Finite Incantatem!" I shouted as soon as his lips began to move. His sneezing hex was blocked.
Snape lifted his eyebrow in a mixture of surprised and impressed. "Very good, Miss Winston."
I dropped my wand to my side in confusion. "You aren't angry? But I used the Knockback jinx on you. You…" I faded out before I could finish my thought.
"I'm impressed that you were able to knock me back. Generally people are harder to move than objects. You seem to be an…" He searched for the right word. "Adequate witch, Miss Winston. That is when you focus your energy correctly."
What was happening? Was that almost a compliment? I wasn't sure how to handle this situation with Professor Snape so I turned on my heel and raced to my bag. I quickly stuffed my belongings inside and lifted the strap over my shoulder. I moved to the door and placed my hand on it.
"Miss Winston." Snape's deep voice spoke. I turned to look at him still on the floor with his legs sprawled out awkwardly in front. Even in this position he still intimidated me. "I expect you back tomorrow night and the entire next week to finish out your detention."
"Of…Of course." I mumbled and began pushing on the door again.
"And Miss Winston, work on your spell casting." He added. "You're going to need it."