Emma Parker woke with a start as the morning sun peeked through her bed hangings. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was already 7:30am. "Oh no, I'm going to be late for Potions!" she thought to herself as she leaped out of bed and began throwing clothes on.
Emma was a third year Hufflepuff student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Potions was one of her least favorite classes, as Professor Snape was notoriously strict and took points from Hufflepuff at every opportunity. She knew she couldn't afford to be late and give him another reason to dock points.
As she rushed downstairs to the Great Hall for a hurried breakfast, Emma bumped into someone and her books went flying. "I'm so sorry!" she said as she began gathering her things. When she looked up to see who she had run into, she was surprised to see the annoyed face of Draco Malfoy staring down at her.
"Watch where you're going, mudblood," Malfoy sneered at her. Emma clenched her jaw but didn't say anything, not wanting to further anger the Slytherin prefect. She knew better than to get into it with Malfoy, as he seemed to derive pleasure from tormenting anyone who wasn't in his house.
Emma quickly gathered the last of her things and rushed off to the hall, grabbing a piece of toast to eat on the run. As she power walked down to the dungeons, she pondered Malfoy's use of that despicable word. Her parents were both muggle dentists, but Emma took pride in being a witch nevertheless. She hoped that one day, blood purity nonsense would stop dividing the houses at Hogwarts.
Emma arrived at the Potions classroom with only a minute to spare. She took her usual seat next to her friend Hannah Abbott and began getting out her supplies, breathing a sigh of relief that she hadn't been late. Professor Snape swooped in shortly after, his black robes billowing behind him as always.
"Today we will be brewing the Draught of Peace, a potion used to calm anxiety and soothe agitation," Snape announced in his silky yet threatening voice. "The ingredients and instructions are on the board. You have one hour...begin."
Emma set to work carefully chopping and measuring out her ingredients. The Draught of Peace was a complex potion, and she knew she couldn't afford any mistakes. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Malfoy aggressively stirring his cauldron, no doubt trying to get finished first so he could show off for his Slytherin friends.
Just then, there was a small explosion from Neville Longbottom's cauldron across the room. His potion had turned a violently bright pink color and was bubbling over the sides of his cauldron onto the floor. "Longbottom, you incapable fool!" Snape hissed. "Twenty points from Gryffindor for your useless bungling."
Neville hung his head in shame as the Slytherins snickered. Emma felt bad for him - Potions was clearly his weakest subject and Snape never cut him any slack. As she stirred her own potion carefully, she noticed it had turned a light periwinkle color, just as the instructions described for this stage of the brewing process. Emma smiled, feeling confident that for once, she might actually get Potions right.
Suddenly, Malfoy bumped into Emma from behind, jostling her arm and causing her to spill half her chopped valerian roots across the floor. "Oops, looks like you wasted those," Malfoy sneered down at her. "Too bad, wonder what will happen to your potion now without the proper ingredients?"
Emma looked desperately between her ruined valerian roots and her quickly darkening potion. Sure enough, without the key ingredient, her Draught of Peace was curdling into an ugly brown lump at the bottom of her cauldron. She felt tears of frustration welling up but refused to let Malfoy see her cry.
"Professor!" she called out to Snape. "Draco sabotaged my potion, it wasn't my fault it's ruined now." Snape glided over and peered into her cauldron, his lip curling into a familiar sneer.
"I see no evidence that Mr. Malfoy did anything but have an accident near your station, Miss Parker," Snape said coldly. "However, it does not change the fact that you have clearly failed to brew this potion correctly. That will be 20 points from Hufflepuff."
Emma glared at Malfoy, who was smirking at her triumphantly. She knew he had deliberately botched her potion just to get her in trouble. It wasn't fair that Snape always favored his own Slytherin students. She gathered her things angrily as class was dismissed, but paused when she noticed Neville had left behind one of his Potions books.
Looking around to make sure no one was watching, Emma cast a quick switching spell she had read about. Neville's book silently morphed into the appearance of her own Potions book. Smiling to herself mischievously, Emma picked up the disguised book and headed to lunch, planning to return it to Neville later without Snape noticing the switch. It was a small act of defiance against the unfairness in the Potions classroom, but it made Emma feel a little better.
After a hurried lunch, Emma had Divination next, her favorite class of the day. She climbed the ladder up to Professor Trelawney's smoky classroom in the North Tower, taking a seat at one of the small circular tables. "Good afternoon, my dears," Trelawney greeted them dreamily as usual. "Today we will be practicing tea leaf reading. Get into pairs and take turns interpreting each other's leaves."
Emma paired up with Hannah as usual. She emptied her tea leaves into Hannah's saucer for her friend to examine first. "Hmm...it seems you have the sun symbol, which means happiness and success coming your way," Hannah said squinting at the soggy leaves. "And is that...a skull? Oh my, the skull means danger or a crisis you'll have to face soon."
Emma shuddered - a crisis was the last thing she needed after her disastrous Potions class. When it was her turn to read Hannah's leaves, she spotted something intriguing. "There's a weird symbol here that looks sort of like...a triangle with a circle inside? I don't think I've seen that one before."
"Let me see," Trelawney said, swooping over suddenly and peering dramatically into Hannah's saucer. "Why, my dear, that is the very rare symbol of the Hallows! The triangle represents the Cloak of Invisibility, the circle is the Resurrection Stone, and together they form the legendary Deathly Hallows!"
The entire class gasped in amazement. Even Emma, who was usually rather skeptical of Trelawney's more outrageous predictions, had to admit finding such a unique symbol was intriguing. She pulled out her copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard to compare the image, and saw that it did match the illustration of the symbol the Peverell brothers discovered representing the three magical objects they each owned.
"The appearance of the Deathly Hallows in your leaves, my dear, surely means you are destined to uncover great magical mysteries!" Trelawney declared to Hannah. Emma smiled at her friend, finding it exciting even if she didn't fully believe in Divination herself. At least this class had given her something interesting to ponder besides her disastrous Potions grade.
As Hannah and Emma chatted animatedly about the significance of the symbol on their way out of class, Emma failed to notice someone coming up the ladder behind her until they bumped into her from above. She stumbled and her bag slipped off her shoulder, spilling her books and parchment messily across the floor. "Watch it, you clumsy mudblood," Malfoy sneered down at her from the top of the ladder.
Emma's fists clenched in anger. "Why do you insist on bothering me, Malfoy?" she demanded. "Can't you find someone else to torment for once?" Malfoy simply smirked, clearly enjoying getting under her skin.
"Maybe I enjoy reminding you that you don't belong here," he said softly but threateningly. "Better be careful, mudblood...wouldn't want any more...accidents in Potions class." He pushed roughly past her down the ladder, nearly knocking Emma over the side in the process.
Emma watched him go, shaking with fury and worry over what Malfoy could be implying. She knew she had to find a way to stand up to him before things escalated further. But how could one small Hufflepuff ever hope to outmaneuver a cunning Slytherin like Malfoy?
That evening in the Hufflepuff common room, Emma pondered her dilemma over