POV of Parvati Patil
The weekend definitely went by too quickly. In contrast, Tuesday dragged on, especially with the double Potions class: Snape must simply hate Bella and me because he only gave our potion a B-. At least the effort was somewhat worth it. I could live much better with a B- than with the C- we got last time. But Bella and I were puzzled about what we could have done better. When we heard that Veatrix and Draco received the only A again with an identical-looking potion, I couldn't hold back any longer: 'What did we do differently?! It can't be that they get the better grade again, even though the potions are exactly the same!' 'First, address me as Sir, Miss Patil, and second: It is hardly within your competence to judge the potions. The grading criteria are set by the teacher, by no one else. One point deduction for Gryffindor for this unqualified opinion.' With that, he continued the lesson and told us which potion we would have to brew today. I felt absolutely miserable that Gryffindor lost a point because of me; I really didn't want that. I worked silently with Bella on our potion for the rest of the lesson, and I hardly spoke a word for the rest of the day until James took me aside after dinner.
'Par! Talk to us again, it's just one point, and Hermione has already earned it back many times over with her achievements in Charms today!'
'That's not the only thing that's bothering me; the grading is just incredibly unfair! He can't do that!'
'Life isn't fair. But in this case, it's hardly within our power to change it alone. Your parents are on the school board, right? Then write to them, ask them to complain. My parents will do the same,' he suggested.
'If only it were that simple. The Malfoys have far too much influence on the school board,' I sighed.
'Yeah, probably... It was just an idea...' James admitted dejectedly.
Silently, we continued walking towards the common room. James mentioning my parents reminded me of the letter I still hadn't read. If I was being honest, I simply wasn't particularly motivated to do so because I wouldn't know what to write back to them anyway. I just had the feeling that there was nothing I wanted to tell them. Despite them being my parents, I felt like I barely knew them and therefore didn't want to confide in them. Asking them to use their position on the school board to criticize Snape was absolutely out of the question. I had learned to cope on my own years ago, so why shouldn't I be able to manage now? Nevertheless, I would have to read this stupid letter sooner or later, but today I was definitely not in the mood for it. It was incredible how much homework had piled up after just one day again. I felt like the most time-consuming tasks were once again from Snape and Professor Binns, who apparently had no sense of how long it took a first-year to write such essays. And Snape was just spiteful. Since it worked so well last time, James and I divided the research work again. This earned us a shake of the head from Hermione, who believed that homework should be done alone and not with others' notes. However, she said nothing about it, focusing on her own homework, as we had ignored this objection last time. It simply saved an incredible amount of time to work together. We could then use this time for other things while the others were still struggling with their essays.
When James and I played chess after finishing our homework, I actually felt better. It was a nice feeling to have someone here who cared about me. 'James?' I began, 'Thanks for not letting me stop talking to everyone.' 'No problem, but don't be so hard on yourself. And don't forget: No matter how unfair everything sometimes is, you have friends who stand by you. Checkmate, by the way, focus more!
