The Pursuit of Phenomenally Unlikely Payoffs
II. Potions
Clint comes down to the Hufflepuff common room one Wednesday morning to find Darcy Lewis in a tattered scarf and tears.
"Darcy? Hey, what's wrong?"
"I can't find Elspeth! She's been missing since last week and I thought she'd just gone off hunting for a bit because she sometimes does that, but I haven't seen her and I can't sleep and I keep thinking that one of those horrid Slytherin pets must have hurt her or eaten her!"
It takes nearly an hour of searching the school - an hour during which he misses breakfast - to find Elspeth padding down the hallway, tail in the air, with a newborn kitten hanging from her mouth. Darcy squeals fit to break eardrums, and seizes newborn and mother, hurrying off to find a house-elf to help find the rest of the litter.
"Well," says Clint to Phil Coulson who turned up for the last fifteen minutes of the search, "she could at least have said thank you."
"You helped a damsel in need," Phil says, slapping him on the back.
"Tell that to my stomach when it starts rumbling in Potions. Breakfast will be over by now."
And, yeah, Potions is hell - all precise instructions and gnawing hunger. Clint is thinking longingly of lunch when he mistakes henbane for mugglewort and adds the former to his potion, resulting in his cauldron being enveloped in blue fire.
Professor Washburne deals with it with a wave of her wand and a cool lecture. "Potions requires your full and absolute attention, Mr. Barton. Without it, you're likely to get yourself injured or killed when your potion goes wrong. I expected better from you. Five points from Hufflepuff."
Clint wants to sink into his chair; worse still is the sympathetic looks from the Ravenclaws, all of whom are brewing perfectly perfect Potions.
Okay, so the fumes from Bruce Banner's potion turns him a shade of green and makes him puke, the combination of which occasions an early evacuation from the class and means they're sitting in study hall when the other students drift in from their classes.
"Barton. Coulson." Maria Hill plants herself opposite them with a cool smile. For some reason, she seems to like them, and Clint isn't about to argue. Maria is kinda scary. "Got an early mark?"
"Banner yakked in Potions," Phil explains, scratching industriously away with his quill. "They took him up to the infirmary for fixing."
"He needed fixing after vomiting?"
"It wasn't the puking that needed fixing," Clint cross-hatches at the drawing which is all the 'work' he's managed to do so far. "It was the part where he turned green."
He tries not to look around to see where Natasha is and whether she's coming along. She and Maria have become close – two reserved Slytherin girls who keep their emotions close and their wands closer.
"I'm sure he'll be okay." Maria begins pulling out her books, then stops as Clint's stomach rumbles loudly. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Natasha asks as she slings her satchel to the bench.
"He didn't get any breakfast," Phil offers before Clint can say anything.
Natasha looks at him, not without some sympathy. "Why not?"
"Cliiiiiiiint!" Darcy's squeal heralds her run down the row of benches before she flings herself at him, arms around his neck, almost straddling him as she babbles about litters and kittens and tells him that he's the most amazing, most awesome, most wonderful guy in the world for finding her kitty.
He tries to smile at Natasha and Maria, who are looking speculative and amused respectively.
It comes off as more of a grimace.
tbc