Scars

Eliza pushed her eggs from one side of the plate to the other as her mates talked casually around her. She was hardly paying attention to them. Instead, she was replaying her conversation with Malfoy from the night before. In general, she felt like things went really well. Sure, during their Sunday detention he would probably go back to ignoring her, but for now, she was satisfied with what she had accomplished. Really, she couldn’t wait to tell Harry. Even though she hadn’t actually learned anything about Malfoy, there had definitely been progress. Maybe, she wasn’t that bad of a spy after all.

“Earth to Liza!” Susan said, pulling Eliza from her reverie, she offered her friend a half smile.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, biting the inside of her cheek. “I’m just so stressed about…school, and all that.”

“Tell me about it,” Hannah agreed, exhaling dramatically. “It feels like I never have time to sleep.”

Susan shrugged. “It hasn’t been that bad for me.”

“Well, we can’t all be blessed with natural smarts.” Hannah replied, rolling her eyes. Ernie laughed, causing a bit of Pumpkin juice to dribble on his chin. She wasn’t wrong, though. Sure, Susan had the work-ethic of a dead person, but she truly was a genius. Yet, because she refused to actually try, she didn’t always get the highest marks, but she more than passed with ease, and that’s all that mattered to her. Eliza wished she could be that lucky. At this point, she was pretty confident she was going to fail Potions, which would completely diminish her hopes of becoming a Healer. She just couldn’t get it. Even when she followed the Potion’s book exactly, it still came out wrong.

“It’s amazing you aren’t in Ravenclaw,” Ernie said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Oh stop! You’re making me blush.” Susan replied with a wide grin.

Hannah nudged Eliza. “We should get going. Professor Slughorn is known to grade easier on his students that arrive to class early.”

Eliza sighed. “I could show up to class yesterday and it still wouldn’t matter.”

“Don’t say that!” Ernie insisted, reaching across the table and grabbing her hand. “You are brilliant.”

Eliza smiled half-heartily. “Thanks, mate.”

“Let’s go,” Hannah said, standing up. Eliza pulled her hand from Ernie’s and did the same, waving goodbye to friends as she made her way out of the Great Hall.

On the way to the dungeons, Hannah spotted a group of Slytherin boys with a plethora of objects from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezers, which are, as she said about half a dozen times, banned at Hogwarts. So, of course, she had to confiscate all of them, and take down the students’ names to tell their respective prefects in order for proper punishment to be given. Eliza tried telling her that it was no use. Slytherin prefects were not very adamant about punishing the members of their house. In fact, she could recall, on more than one occasion, Pansy Parkinson actually encouraging bullying and bad behavior.

Because of their pit-stop, Hannah and Eliza actually ended up being late to class. Usually, they sat with Harry, Hermione, and Ron, but today, their table was already full. In fact, all the tables were filled except for one—the one with Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy. The girls sat done reluctantly. Eliza could feel Malfoy’s grey eyes on her, but she didn’t dare look at him. Instead, she focused on Slughorn. He looked rather displeased by their late arrival, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he cleared his throat and continued on with the day’s lesson. They were learning to make Polyjuice Potion.

After talking for what seemed like forever, Slughorn finally dismissed them to begin working on their potions. Slughorn provided them all with lacewing flies that had already been stewing for 21 days, as well as fluxweed that was picked during the full moon. This way, they would be able to complete the potion in a couple days instead of the actual month it normally takes.

At first, everything was going smoothly. Eliza completed Step One easily and got to spend 60 minutes gossiping with Hannah while the potion brewed. Step Two is where she started to find trouble. Crushing the lacewings flies was the most difficult. The flies kept sticking to the pestle and she could never get the entire thing off into the brew.

“You’re doing it wrong.” Malfoy said from across the table. Eliza looked up at him, completely surprised he was talking to her outside of detention. Hannah was evidently surprised too, because she suddenly seemed to have no interest in her potion.

“What do you mean?” she asked so quietly, she wasn’t even sure he was able to hear her.

“Don’t use a pestle. Use the flat edge of your knife-”

“But it says in the book-” she interrupted him, and he quickly shook his head.

“To be successful at potions, you have to know when to tweak the instructions. Here, watch me.” He turned his knife on its side, and pressed the flat edge to the flies. When he lifted the knife, the flies were successfully squished against the blade. Then, he walked around the table, and picked up Eliza’s knife before using it to scrape the crushed lacewings into her brew. Instantly, the potion started to boil. “Snape taught me that last year.”

Hannah repeatedly glanced between the pair, completely puzzled by what was happening. Even Eliza wasn’t sure why he was helping her, but she wasn’t complaining. She welcomed any help she could get, no matter who it came from.

“Thanks,” she said before biting the inside of her cheek. He shrugged and walked back to his seat before returning to work on his own potion.

“So how have your detentions been going, Liza?” Hannah whispered. Eliza quickly glanced at Malfoy who was busy crushing bicorn horn as him and Zabini whispered back and forth—to her pleasure, she was seemingly off his radar now.

“They’ve been fine.” She replied quietly, her eyes focused on her potion.

“I only ask because Malfoy has never willing talked to us before, and to be helpful nonetheless? It’s a little suspicious, if you ask me.”

“You’re mad that he helped me?” Eliza asked, arching a brow.

“No, no I was just wondering if you two were…friendlier… now.” She corrected herself, slightly defensive.

“O-oh no, w-we aren’t. We barely even talk.” Eliza muttered, avoiding Hannah’s gaze. She’s never been a good liar. Not that she was lying, exactly, they’d really only had the one conversation, and then there was today—again, nothing remarkable or worth documenting.

Hannah narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing her friend. She couldn’t help but feel there was something she wasn’t telling her.

“Okay, students, please start cleaning up. You will finish your potions next class period.” Slughorn announced, standing up at the front of the class. Eliza and Hannah hurried to clean up their belongings before exiting the room; they only had 15 minutes to get to their next class, Transfiguration, which, unfortunately, was on the other side of the castle.

Hannah was walking way head, determined to get to Transfiguration early, or at the very least, on time. Eliza, on the other hand, didn’t really care if she even went to class. She was utterly disappointed about her performance in potions. Being a Healer was something she’d wanted since she was a little girl, and it was quickly slipping through her fingers. Like Malfoy said, to be successful at potions, she needed to know when to alter the instructions, but she had absolutely no idea how to do that. She wished someone would help her, but Hannah was already so stressed with school and prefect duties, she definitely didn’t have time to tutor her, and neither Susan nor Ernie were in Advanced Potions. She supposed she could ask Harry—he seemed to be having a lot of success this year, but he also seemed pretty preoccupied with extracurricular activities like Quidditch and saving the world. And then there was Malfoy.

The fact that she was even slightly thinking about asking him was beyond surprising. It wasn’t something she would have ever considered before this year, but now, after the promise she made Harry, as well as having detention with him, it no longer seemed like a completely outrageous idea. Of course, she assumed he would say no, but she figured it didn’t hurt to ask. Luckily, he was also in Transfiguration. Hopefully, she could catch him before class started.

She waited outside the classroom door. There were only a handful of students inside, Hannah being one of them, but there were no Slytherins. A minute or so later, Malfoy turned around the corner, but he wasn’t alone; Pansy was hanging from his arm while Zabini and Theodore Nott trailed behind them. Eliza’s stomach tightened into knots. She couldn’t ask him in front of his mates. If there was even a slight possibility that he would say yes, it wouldn’t be in front of them, and Liza doubted she’d even be able to get the words out to ask in front of them all anyway—she’d always struggled with finding the right words, especially in a crowd. She needed to find a way to take him aside.

“Malfoy,” Eliza said, stepping in front of the four Slytherins. Pansy slanted her eyes as she tightened her grip on her boyfriend’s arm. Eliza inhaled sharply, and Malfoy eyed her suspiciously. For a moment, no one said anything, but finally, Liza spoke again. “Can I speak with you?”

“Why,” Pansy replied, and Eliza bit the inside of her cheek. She looked at Malfoy, who still hadn’t said anything; instead, he lifted his brows in response.

“Filch,” Eliza blurted out, causing everyone looks of confusion. Malfoy appeared amused, though, and she could have sworn she saw his lips twist into a quick smirk before returning to their natural state. “Filch asked me to ask you a question—privately.”

Malfoy’s grey eyes met hers for only a second before he turned to Pansy and grabbed her hand in an attempt to remove it from his arm.

“Give me a moment,” Malfoy said. “I will meet you inside in a second.”

Pansy looked skeptical, but did as he asked and headed into the classroom with Zabini and Nott on her heels. She made sure to give Eliza a nasty look as she walked by, but Liza didn’t pay her any attention, she was too focused on what she was going to say now that she’d succeeded at getting Malfoy alone.

“Filch has a question for me?” Malfoy asked as soon as the others were out of earshot.

“Well, no,” Eliza said, but Malfoy didn’t seem very surprised by this. “I do have a question, though.”

“What?” he replied, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“You’re really good at potions.”

“That’s not a question.”

Eliza bit the inside of her cheek. “True,” she said, rocking back on her heels. She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous, but if she was going to ask, she needed to do it quickly because class would be starting soon. “I was wondering if you could help me with Potions.”

Malfoy arched a brow. “When? During class?”

“Well, no, actually whenever really. Like a tutor. I’m just completely rubbish and could really use some assistance.”

“And what will I be getting out of this?” he asked, his expression completely flat.

Her cheeks flushed. She hadn’t expected him to ask that. She expected a straight answer, not a proposal to swap favors.

“I-I mean, what do you have in mind?” she asked, staring up at him.

He shrugged. “I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

She didn’t get the chance to say anything else before he walked past her into class. She couldn’t tell whether or not that went well. He hadn’t said no, which was a good sign, but he didn’t say yes either. When she finally entered the classroom, Hannah eyed her suspiciously. She had probably been wondering where she’d wandered off to considering, last she checked, Eliza was right behind her on her sprint to Transfiguration, and then, on top of her disappearance, she walked in only seconds after Malfoy. To avoid having to answer any awkward questions, Eliza deiced to sit next to Ernie. He always went out of his way to make Eliza feel as comfortable as possible, and would definitely not spend the class period interrogating her—she couldn’t say the same for Hannah.