Seeker of my Heart

6. Step One, All Over Again

I stared angrily as Professor Slughorn walked from one end of the potions classroom to another. He was blithering on and on about how he had both Harry Potter and Hermione Granger to his Christmas Slugclub dinner one year. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what that had to do with potions and even worse, I couldn't force myself to pay attention.

We'd had double Defense Against the Dark Arts this morning and Yoongi was more insufferable than normal. I was also more irritated with myself because despite my angry promise from this past weekend, I couldn't actually make myself speak up around him. Or curse his stupid black hair to turn into snakes or any of the other things I thought about doing to piss him off.

He always just made me feel so... small and insignificant and it was nearly impossible for me to fight that assertion. I sighed as I stared into the boiling contents of my cauldron, knowing that my Essence of Insanity would turnout fine with very little effort from me at this point. I'd have to add something like sloth brain mucus to make it go wrong.

I felt an evil idea sprouting in the back of my mind as I looked across the small space to the table where Yoongi sat alone, working diligently on his potion. I scowled at his perfect, pale skin and dark hair and the cute curve of his cheek or the way his brows scrunched together in concentration. I shook my head and focused on the anger that usually had me acting against my own self-interest and magnified that until I didn't care what happened.

I had to make sure that nothing about my movements gave away my intent as I carefully leaned over the edge of my desk and ruffled through the ingredients in my potions case. I found the sloth brain mucus and quickly uncorked the phial. It had an atrocious smell but that was thankfully muted by everything else that was stinking in the room today.

I set it carefully down on the floor and righted my position, fighting a wicked smile on my face as I did so. I slid my wand hand under the table and silently pointed it at the brain mucus, levitating it into the air until it nearly touched the ceiling.

It took me a long five minutes of careful concentration to get the ingredient directly over Yoongi's slowly bubbling cauldron without drawing attention to myself. I watched him for a moment, trying to convince myself that I was only doing it to spot the perfect time to ruin his day.

Instead, I watched how his dark lashes brushed the top of his pale cheeks whenever he slowly closed his eyes. I saw his jaw clench in concentration as he carefully stirred the contents of his potion exactly five times in a counter-clockwise motion. I felt my heart flutter at the barely there smirk that lifted a single corner of his mouth when he finally finished.

No doubt his potion would be perfect. Everything he did was perfect.

I scowled at my thought and lost concentration on my spell, making the sloth brain mucus plop loudly into Yoongi's cauldron. He jerked back in surprise and looked up in time to catch my look of shock before I quickly lowered my gaze. I wanted to ruin his potion and piss him off but I didn't want him to know it was me who did it.

Before he could react and call me out on my meddling, his cauldron started to bubble and boil so furiously that it began to bounce on the surface of the table. Professor Slughorn turned toward the noise just as the liquid started to slosh over the sides and hiss loudly as it hit the surface of the desk and began to melt it.

I bit my lip as I raised my gaze high enough to see the fury on Yoongi's face. He was using his wand to stop the magic reaction between ingredients, or at least contain the disaster, but he was staring hard at me. His eyes were narrowed and his lips a bare line in his handsome face. His rage hit me like a sledgehammer to the gut and my gaze dropped again as my cheeks flamed.