The year after her brother James graduates, Teddy Potter returns to Hogwarts for her final year. With the Marauders gone, it should be a quiet, peaceful year despite the mounting tensions in the world outside of school.
The problem, naturally, lies...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Teddy sits in Potions and seethes.
"I thought you'd be better at this, considering your father is a famous Potioneer." Regulus sneers, watching her mess up the ingredients for their Calming Draught yet again.
Teddy's plan to avoid Black after Slughorn's party had been a failure almost from the get go — the Wednesday after the party Slughorn had decided to partner everyone up in Potions to work on a project for their NEWTs. When the old Potions Master had paired Teddy and Regulus together, he had done so with a secret little smile that made her think he knew exactly what he was doing.
"Will you piss off." Teddy bites out, her frustration getting the best of her. "If you have a problem with the way I'm doing things, you do it!"
"Maybe I like to watch you struggle." He says. His chin is resting in the palm of his hand, and he looks bored as he watches her fiddle with some powdered unicorn horn.
Gritting her teeth, Teddy turns her attention back to the potion. It's bubbling and beginning to a turn a deep purple, which is making her nervous — it's meant to be periwinkle. Across the dungeon, it looks like Mary and her partner are failing even worse than Teddy is as their potion is emitting thick, foul-scented smoke. Alice is partnered with Antonin Dolohov, and looks to be avoiding him to the best of her ability. Evan Rosier is at the desk beside them, though just like Black he's sitting back and watching as his partner works away. He looks their way and grins, clearly amused at the sight of Teddy struggling with the potion as Regulus relaxes next to her.
"Hey, Potter," Rosier calls in a hushed whisper, leaning over between their desks. When she ignores him, he throws a piece of crumpled up parchment at her. "Oi, Potter!"
"What."
"You going to the Quidditch match on Friday?"
Teddy looks up from the potion so she can glance over at him in mild disbelief. Beside her, Regulus also looks over at his friend with a strange look on his face.
"What's it to you?" Teddy asks, eyes narrowed.
"Just curious," says Rosier. "I wanted to know if you were coming to cheer us on against Hufflepuff."
"Cheer you on?" Teddy repeats. "You think I'd be cheering for you?"
"Sure, why not?" Rosier says cheerfully. His partner sends him a filthy look as he toils away over their potion, but Rosier doesn't seem to notice at all. "You don't want to see me and Reg play?"
"Shut up, Evan." Regulus finally gets up from his chair and steps up to the cauldron, sending his friend a dirty look through the smoke. To prevent any further conversation, he snatches the large wooden spoon that Teddy is stirring the potion with right out of her hands. "Give me that, you're doing it wrong."
Teddy glares at him, but steps back to let him take over. Everyone knows that Regulus gets practically all O grades in all of his subjects, which is what makes it so annoying when he sits back and watches Teddy struggle her way through potion-making. Now that he's actually willing to do some work though, she is happy to step back and let him fix the mess she's managed to make.
