Little Bird

Chapter Seventeen

Eve

            The next two months at Hogwarts passed by impossibly slowly—and were painfully uneventful. Even though the Quidditch match against Gryffindor had been ages ago, people would still sometimes talk about how I had surprised nearly everyone with my flying when I took Flint's place. I didn't think Ginny would ever let me hear the end of it, because she would constantly remind me of how 'kick ass' I'd been at Quidditch. I was just glad I wouldn't have to fill in for Flint a second time and go through that stress all over again.

            After what happened with Malfoy at the end of the match, I'd promised myself I would never talk to him again. I'd told myself that I would never have to do anything more than glance at him for the rest of the year, and nothing he said to me from then on would affect me in any way.

            Unfortunately, my plan didn't go accordingly.

            The first time it failed was during Care of Magical Creatures just a few days after the match. Hagrid split us up into pairs, and I think he was trying to be nice to me when he placed me with Malfoy—if only he knew. It was completely awkward at first, but it eventually melted into what it usually was; Malfoy acting condescending and me only responding to him in a quiet, snappy tone. And this type of interaction between us continued on for the next couple of months, and I eventually got used to it.

            So now all I had to do for the rest of this year was not let my temper get the best of me when it came to Malfoy, and just do everything I could to ignore Blaise when he looked at me. I had thought this wouldn't be completely impossible, but Potions made it ten times more difficult.

            "You're doing it wrong, Hawkings," Malfoy sneered, taking the ladle from me and bending forward to inspect the cauldron. "It clearly says to stir quickly, not at the pace of a sloth."

            I huffed angrily and decided not to respond, rolling up my sleeves and grabbing my textbook to look at the instructions one more time. Snape had paired us together against my will to brew a memory potion, and I was silently trying to tell myself that working with Malfoy was at least better than being paired with Blaise.

            "Now it isn't turning blue fast enough," Malfoy complained, exhaling in annoyance. "Honestly, did you even read it?"

            "I did, actually," I snapped. "Forgive me for stirring too slowly. Since when do you care about this class anyways?"

            "My grade is shit," Malfoy responded easily, busying himself with the ladle as the potion slowly turned into the correct color. "And I only have this week to bring it up, because that'll be it after Christmas break. So I don't need your poor stirring skills to mess me up."

            I rolled my eyes and tried not to laugh out loud at how annoying he was being, wondering how his Potions grade could be so terrible when he'd been trying harder for the past couple of months. Across from us, Goyle added ingredients to their potion as Blaise looked over at Malfoy and laughed, saying, "Yeah, I heard your father's gonna kill you if you don't get it up. I'm telling you mate, if you stopped skipping so often—"

            "Yeah, yeah," Malfoy interrupted, dumping in the roots I'd just sliced. "It's just hard to show up every day for a class that I don't give a shit about."

            Malfoy put down the ladle and leaned back in his chair casually, and I realized with annoyance that he was clearly done trying to help out. I flipped the page of my textbook with a bit more force than necessary and scanned the instructions to find the next step, since Malfoy was obviously going to be of no assistance.