Strangely enough, Care of Magical Creatures was one of few subjects that Clara could tolerate. Maybe it was because she didn't have to work at a desk or collaborate with anyone, or maybe just since animals were much better company than humans.

She'd hoped that the Triwizard Tournament wouldn't interrupt her school year too much, but it seemed that the more she hoped for something, the less likely it was to happen. Harry Potter had been chosen as a 4th champion, and the uproar in her house was frankly unreasonable. Some people were starving. Worse things happened every day.

Frustratingly — although she said nothing about it — her roommates had spent most of the night ranting about how "unfair" it was that Cedric hadn't been chosen as the Hogwarts champion, and that Harry was "taking their glory away". Maybe their argument would've been more interesting to listen to if it wasn't the same point drilled over and over again like a broken record.

Clara arrived at Hagrid's Hut with no company as always. She found the solitude to be very peaceful, especially after the night she'd endured.

Many of her classmates were already there, including Ron Weasley and his small group of friends, a few of her housemates, and the group of Slytherins led by the boy from 2 days earlier, Draco Malfoy. He was too busy mocking Harry to notice her.

Hagrid exited his hut, accompanied by a box filled with blast-ended skrewts, some kind of giant slimy scorpion-crab-lobster hybrid. Apparently, they had so much pent up energy that they'd begun to kill each other.

"So," Hagrid said, addressing the inattentive class, "any guesses as to how we get these young ones to calm down and release their energy?" No one offered an answer. "Er . . . Davies? Any ideas?"

Adrenaline shot through Clara's veins. Her heart pounded into her ears until she could hear nothing but her own anxious breathing. She swallowed back her discomfort and shrugged nervously.

"Take them for a walk?" she suggested under her breath.

The class burst into hysterical laughter. She cast her eyes upwards and found that Hagrid was the only one not so much as cracking a humoured smile.

"Excellent, Davies, well done," he praised her. "Each of you take one of these," He placed the box and a handful of leashes down, "and take your young ones for some good old exercise, eh?"

The class went silent when they realised that he was being completely serious. Clara was more shocked that she'd actually managed to get an answer right in a class. She'd never been academically gifted, so to be picked on and answer a question correctly too was a totally new experience.

Malfoy was the first one to approach the box, peering down at the contents. "Take this thing for a walk?" he repeated in disgust. "And where exactly are we supposed to fix the leash? Around the sting, the blasting end, or the sucker?"

"Around the middle," Hagrid responded, followed by a vague explanation that left more questions than it answered.

Clara waited until everyone had selected their 3 foot long creatures to finally take the remaining one out of the box. Fortunately, hers was very small, but still it looked inexplicably angry with her.

Once she'd gently attached a leash and removed her dragonhide gloves, she stopped and watched her classmates walk their skrewts.

Actually, that was the wrong term for it. The skrewts walked them. Hannah was running to keep up with hers, while Justin's had decided to blast off within seconds, propelling both of them forward so quickly that he was dragged through the mud on his side for a few metres.

"Ready to go?" Clara murmured to hers.

Her skrewt blasted with a deafening bang and zoomed across the lawn. The leash twisted her wrist at an unnatural angle. She fell flat onto her stomach as her skrewt carelessly dragged her through the wet grass.

Justin leapt forward, finally having control of his own, and managed to free her wrist from the leash she was tethered to. The unruly skrewt sprinted around on its own like some kind of rabid dog, tripping people up but all within the confines of the lawn. Maybe it was trained after all.

"Are you alright?" Justin asked her.

Realising she was still laying down across the ground, Clara hurriedly sat up and dusted herself off, trying to ignore her aching wrist. A few still on their feet watched her struggle while others grappled with the unruliest of the creatures.

Justin seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. "If you want something to do to make things less awkward, take mine."

Moments like this made her remember why they'd gotten along so well in the first place. He understood her silent cues in a way no one else did.

She took his leash using her uninjured hand. "Thanks."

Over lunch, Clara plucked up the courage to visit Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing and ask about her sore wrist. She awkwardly relayed details of the Care of Magical Creatures class that morning and how it had led to an injury she'd honestly tried to ignore.

Apparently ignoring it had done more harm than good. Clara's wrist was properly sprained. Pomfrey provided her with a wrist brace — she claimed that those kinds of injuries healed much easier naturally — and scolded her for not visiting sooner. Clara had never gone so red in her life.

She made it to Potions just in the nick of time and fluttered over to her seat. Avoiding Snape's attention was a fine art, one she was sure she'd perfected by now. If only her exams were an assessment of that skill.

Just as she shifted the empty stool beside Hannah, Snape slammed a book against the table. She jolted, nearly losing her balance in the process.

"Not so fast, Davies," Snape sneered. "Just as I said at the start of this lesson, which Miss Davies felt she was too advanced to be present for, should anyone arrive late, I will assign a seating plan to the entire class which we will use for the foreseeable future."

The entire class groaned. Snape did this sometimes — he'd completely go into one and rearrange a perfectly good seating plan, or hand out punishments like Dumbledore handed out points to Gryffindor, or force the entire class to work in silence for a week straight. Usually these responses were triggered by a short list of people. Somewhere near the top of the list was Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom, and Clara.

Clara had yet to figure out what exactly she'd done to upset him so much.

The class stood against the wall with their belongings gathered in their arms. They exchanged looks of sadness. Two Ravenclaw girls were clinging to each other like being separated for a few hours would destroy their lives irreversibly.

"But Professor, we already changed the seating plan 2 weeks ago," Seamus Finnigan complained.

"If your classmates cannot keep to their own very easy-to-follow timetable," Clara could feel Snape glaring at her, "then that is not my issue, is it, Mr Finnigan?"

Snape tapped on each desk as he called out names at "random". He had a knack for pairing up people who didn't like each other or who were going through a squabble, which often gave him even more excuses to do things like this. She had no idea how his intel was so infallible.

"Potter, Weasley . . . Granger, Parkinson . . . Bones, Goyle . . . Brown, Crabbe . . . Malfoy, Davies . . ."

Clara didn't want to sit down. She wanted to run out of the classroom and beg Sprout to expel her. Her grades could justify it — they were awful. Any excuse would do, anything to get her out of being sat next to Draco Malfoy.

She stamped down the fight or flight instinct and sat down in her designated seat beside the very blond boy she'd been trying to avoid all week. She shuffled her stool as far from his as reasonably possible and placed her things down. She hid her face from view with her injured hand against her forehead.

There was a very small blessing that came with this seating plan. That blessing was Crabbe, a very large boy with a rounded face, blank expression, and stubby hands. Malfoy and Crabbe were virtually inseparable — as long as they could interact with themselves and ignore her for as long as possible, she could make this arrangement work.

During the course of the lesson, they mostly covered the Pepperup Potion. She wrote notes until her good wrist ached worse than her injured one. At some point, Clara had stopped and resigned herself to the fact that she simply wasn't going to get all of this content noted down. And then she started getting distracted.

Being easily distracted was in her nature, but not like this. She couldn't keep her eyes off the boy beside her. She wasn't sure what it was, but he fascinated her, and her fascination only increased the longer she looked at him. A little voice at the back of her head warned her of how creepy this was getting, and yet she couldn't hear it over the sound of her own intense captivation.

He was mean, he was arrogant, he was known to be plain nasty to anyone who wasn't a Slytherin, but his appearance was completely out of the ordinary. Never had she met someone with hair that white, or skin that pale, or eyes so silvery, almost metallic in tint.

Malfoy casted a sideways glance in her direction. Her gaze flew back to her page faster than was humanly possible.

1st November 1994

Dear diary,

I've decided I never want a Blast-Ended Skrewt as a pet. Not only did one almost take my hand off, but they also explode spontaneously, murder each other out of boredom, and need to be walked daily. I don't vibe with that.

Potions was horrendous. I'd write about it but I think I'll start crying as soon as my quill hits the paper. If given the chance, I know for a fact that Snape would gladly kill me and make it look like an accident. I think I'm his least favourite. Either me or Neville, anyway.

However, there's something else. After that embarrassing encounter on Halloween, I've found myself uncomfortably close to Draco Malfoy. I've seen him around before, and from what I've heard I know he used to be the absolute worst during the first couple years, but today I couldn't stop staring at him when I sat near him. For context, I never stare at anyone.

But he has such a strange appearance. I mean strange in a good way. His hair is so white it looks like it's been artificially coloured that way, but it's not, that's just how it is. He's always running his fingers through it, but somehow that doesn't make it any greasier or anything. A few times, I've heard passing comments people have made about his greasy yellow locks, but weirdly that's not the case at all.

And his eyes are this fascinating yet confusing shade of silver. I didn't spend long looking at his eyes specifically or otherwise he'd notice, but they're such a strange light grey colour, so much so that they have a kind of metallic sheen to them. Near the centre I noticed were even little gold specks in the classroom lighting.

He isn't bad-looking in himself either. Some of the boys in that house aren't exactly eye candy to the rest of the school, but Malfoy ticks all of the boxes, which would explain why so many girls in Slytherin fawn over him constantly — and other houses too, apparently. He's tall, taller than me anyway, he's slim, he has a strong jawline, and he has quite sharp and dare I say handsome features.

Am I obsessing? Maybe, but I don't know what to do. I've gotten through this many years of keeping a low profile, so surely I can continue, right?

It can't be that difficult.

Clara was so tired that she almost found herself signing off the diary entry with her name. Words couldn't describe how disastrous that would've been.

Her eyes were starting to close on their own accord. She needed sleep, and desperately. Especially after a day like this. She'd been to hell and back, multiple times.

With a sigh, she gathered up her belongings which were spread out across the table in the library and began to stumble back towards the Hufflepuff common room.

It was a shame she didn't realise that she'd left her diary behind in plain view.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Author's note: I'm so disappointed that the blast-ended Skrewts weren't added into the movies because that just would've made it so much better.

[Edited 17/06/2024]