Dr. Pomfrey spends another hour checking my vitals; making sure I'm okay. Well, physically at least. My mental state is a whole other can of worms and I can't be bothered to find a can opener right now.
After she's sure I'm fine, she discharges me and lets me return to the dorms.
As I climb down the stairs to the basement, I pray that no one's in the common room. Not even the guys. I just want to slip into bed undetected, put a pillow over my head, and block out this entire disaster of a day.
I push the antique wooden door to the common room open. There's a group of 8th graders I don't know in the corner arguing over some TV show, but other than them, the room is empty. Thank God
I turn left past the bedroom of our Heads of House; Professor Snape and Professor Sinistra and slip into my dorm. As I enter I get a whiff of myself, and cringe. I guess having a panic attack and passing out in math class does no favors for bodily odor. Noted.
I don't usually like to go to sleep with my hair wet, but I'm so exhausted, that getting up early to shower before breakfast tomorrow just isn't an option.
I grab my towels and head into the bathroom adjoined to Pansy and I's dorm and turn on the water. After my shower, I do my haircare and head to my bed. I fall asleep before my head even hits the pillow.
The next day my alarm goes off on time, already an improvement from yesterday. I wake Pansy and we start our morning routine. She crawls out of bed and over to her "makeup counter" (that's what she calls it but it's really a desk...ya know...for STUDYING).
She begins putting on her foundation before suddenly gasping dramatically. I turn to her. "What?... Why are you staring at me like that?" I'm getting super tired of people staring at me weirdly and creeping me out!
It looks like her eyes are about to jump out of her skull. "I..." Pansy touches her hand to her mouth. My stomach drops. Never in the 6 years of being roommates with Pansy have I ever witnessed her being speechless. "Your hair...it's curly?" It takes me a second to process what she just said.
SHIT!
I race to my vanity mirror to check. I was so tired last night I must have forgotten to straighten my hair after I took a shower.
There in all its messy glory is my natural hair. No one at school has ever seen my natural hair except Enzo. Not even Pansy! For the past 6 years, after every shower, I would hide out in the bathroom to blow dry and then straighten it. Until today nobody even knew I had curly hair. I cringe. Ugh, this is going to bring so much attention...
"Since when do you have curly hair?" Pansy questions.
"Do you think I have time to straighten it before breakfast?"
"We've been roommates for six years and I've never seen you with curly hair."
"I can't believe I let this happen!" Two days into junior year, and my life is already a hectic mess.
"I didn't even know you knew what a straightener was! But you have-" Pansy checks her phone. "10 minutes until breakfast. And judging by what happened yesterday, skipping breakfast is not a good choice for you."
She's right. I really can't afford to skip breakfast again. I sigh and hold back the tears I can feel building behind my eyes. Pansy and I finish getting ready and head down to the Great Hall.
As we pass through the giant doors I can already feel people's heads turning and eyes on me. My cheeks burn and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the tears at bay. I take a seat at my unofficial spot, in between Enzo and Pansy.
Without thinking I reach out for Enzo's hand and squeeze it for support. This makes him look up from his cereal. He smiles brightly at me. "Hey! You're wearing your hair natural today! How come?"
Theo interjects, his mouth wide open, "You knew about this?"
Enzo shrugs casually, "Yeah it's no big deal." Thank you, Enzo! You beautiful godsend you!
All the boys are staring at me now. "Ana, why didn't you tell us you had curly hair?" Draco asks eyeing my hair with a skeptical look.
I take a deep breath and with my eyes down, respond, "Like Enzo said, it's no big deal." I reach for the yogurt, hoping that my nonchalant response will put an end to this discussion.
"I know! Isn't it a miracle? Ana owns a straightener. She's a girl after all!" Pansy exclaims in delight. Or maybe not... And I can't admit that comment didn't hurt a little.
"Who knew you were a wilder beast underneath all those A's and good girl behavior." Theo jokes.
Blaise continues to stare at me but his gaping mouth turns into a wide smile. "Now this is GOOD tea! I can't wait to tell everyone about this!"
This causes panic to rise inside of me. "NO!" I shout. Heads from all across the Great Hall, ones who hadn't noticed my hair up until now, swoop around to see what the commotion is about. Great! Now even more people know about my hair. "I just..." I stutter lowering my voice. "It's not a big deal, so please don't go around telling people about it. It's not an event-worthy thing to spread" I plead.
The conversation dies down a little so I silently thank whatever God is up there as I eat my yogurt. I'm afraid to look up in case every single Slytherin's eyes are on me, but against my better judgment I do anyway. I hadn't noticed but Mattheo is sitting directly across from me. As expected, he's staring at me. But not in a judgmental way like the rest of the boys. He's looking at me quizzingly like he's trying to study me. Like this is the first time he's seen me clearly. I blush and immediately look back down at my yogurt.
After a moment of other conversation, Draco interrupts. "It's probably a good thing you straighten your hair every day. This-" he makes a face and gestures at my head, "does you no favors. You look like that teacher from Magic School Bus."
Theo slaps Draco's arm. "Thank you! It was on the tip of my tongue!
Okay, this is too much, even for me. I squeeze my nails into my fists and blink aggressively so they don't see me cry. If I cry in front of them, it'll only make it worse.
I stand from the Slytherin table. "You know what? I just remembered. I need to go to the library to get that...uh...book for my English paper. Um, I'll see you guys later." Okay, not my best lie, but I just needed to get out of there.
As I speed-walk away I can overhear Enzo lecturing the guys. "Why do you always have to be such assholes to her?" It does nothing to make me feel better.
I run to my favorite crying spot, the third-floor science wing bathroom; nobody ever goes there, so I can cry in peace.
My first period of the day is gym, which just adds to the misery of this morning. I swear to God, if even one popular, athletic, decent-looking guy treats our game of badminton like it's the Olympics I will lose it. Today is not the day.
I quickly get changed in the locker room and head out to the gym to wait for Professor Hooch to call attendance. I don't know who's in this class, so I scan the room for friendly faces. The only familiar faces are Draco, Theo, and Blaise. Great, just great...
I'm not in the mood to talk to any of them, but once we make eye contact it's too late. They're already on their way over.
"Hey Ana, how was the library?" Draco asks.
"Good" I scan my fingers and start picking my cuticles to ease the ache in my chest.
Theo coughs and rubs the back of his neck. "Look, we just wanted to apologize for this morning. We were kinda dicks to you. Well, not kind of, we were complete dicks to you."
His apology almost makes me laugh. Enzo forced them to do this, no doubt. "Guys, it's fine. You don't have to apologize just because he made you."
Blaise's mouth falls open. "How did you know?"
This time I do chuckle. "You guys are assholes like 100% of the time. You'd never apologize to me unless someone made you or you just, like, cut off my arm or something. And since my arms are still intact..." Okay, maybe that was a little much. They're not assholes all the time, otherwise, I wouldn't be friends with them. But, I'm still hurt, and "Ms. Frizzle" wanted to get a jab at them to hurt their feelings.
To be honest, though, I am curious as to why they listened to Enzo. He usually doesn't have that kind of pull over the group. "Why'd you listen to him anyway?"
Draco snorts. "Have you met Mattheo? That's one scary-ass dude!"
Huh? I must have heard that wrong.
"Yeah, he's my best friend and all, but I would not want to be on the receiving end of his anger." Theo agrees.
"And I like my tongue exactly where it is. I trust Mattheo to make good on his threats" Blaise adds.
My brain can't comprehend this information. Mattheo made them apologize to me. Mattheo threatened them for me. To make me feel better.
Why would he do that? Sure we're friends, but he's not the soft, emotional type. He laughed when Blaise broke his foot last year! He tried to humiliate me at the Slytherin party two days ago!
Why would he suddenly care so much about my feelings? As far as I know, he's never done something like this for the other guys or other arguments. So why now? Why me?
Just then, Professor Hooch walks out of her office and announces to line up alphabetically while she gives us instructions. Everything she's saying goes in one ear and out the other. I'm too busy thinking about the boy who's suddenly been on my mind a lot since school started.