Harry Potter and The Boy Who Had No Choice

Not the Only One With Scars

Chapter Eleven

When Harry walked into Potions the next day, Ernie was already sitting at his table, saving his seat. He flashed the Hufflepuff a quick smile and sat down at the table, removing his potions textbook from his bag. There were still a few minutes until class officially started, so the only people in the room were Harry, Ernie, Professor Slughorn, and Malfoy, who was bent over his own textbook in concentration. Harry watched a small crinkle form above Malfoy's left eyebrow; he never noticed it before, but when he thought about it, that tiny crease was always present whenever the Slytherin was deeply focused on something. The sound of a clearing throat caused Harry to tear his gaze away from Malfoy.

"Do you think he's up to something?" Ernie asked, sparing a glance in Malfoy's direction.

"What?"

"I assume he's bound to be up to some sort of trouble if you're keeping such a close eye on him." The Hufflepuff whispered, leaning in closer to Harry. "Do you know what he's up to?" Harry thought for a moment and decided to go along with Ernie's assumption; he himself wasn't really sure why he was staring at Malfoy, but maybe his habit from sixth year was returning and he was subconsciously keeping tabs on Malfoy after all.

"No," Harry answered honestly, because in truth, he didn't know what Malfoy was up to. "It's probably nothing though," he found himself insisting. "Malfoy hasn't caused any trouble yet, and I doubt that he's going to."

"He's been keeping to himself though," Ernie nudged Harry's elbow. "That's awfully suspicious."

"Well it might be kind of hard for him to make friends when everyone is so obsessed with what happened during the war," Harry remarked bitterly, slightly surprised at how quickly he was jumping to Malfoy's defense. After all, only yesterday, he'd also assumed things about Malfoy because of his Death Eater past.

"Serves him right." Ernie nodded, completely ignoring the sharpness of Harry's tone. "Pureblood git."

Harry bit back a defense and instead started rifling through the pages of his textbook. A few non-hostile conversations with Malfoy and now he's jumping to the Slytherin's defense? He shook his head, trying to rid any thoughts of his former rival.

The last few students shuffled in as class began, and Harry stopped pretending to read his textbook in favor of paying attention to Slughorn.

"Good morning class," he greeted, hands held over his belly. "The month is almost over and we're almost finished with our Polyjuice Potions. Now, all they need to do is brew for the next few days, and then we can sample them at the end of the week."

Harry's potion certainly looked better than the first day of class; at least now it was behaving like the potions textbook said it should. But as opposed to the murky brown color it was supposed to be, Harry's potion was more of a deep burgundy. He only hoped that he was the only one who was going to be testing the potion, because he really would rather not accidentally poison anyone else.

Ernie's wasn't much better, although his was slightly closer in color to what it was supposed to be. In fact, most of the cauldrons around the room contained potions that may have looked similar to Polyjuice Potion, but were off in one way or another. Terry Boot's was closer to green than brown; Padma's looked about right, but smelled of roses, which Harry knew from experience was not correct; Zabini's appeared perfect at first glance, but it wasn't bubbling at all like the textbook said it should, and Michael's resembled something closer to a soup than a potion.

The only person who seemed to have gotten the potion right was Malfoy. His Polyjuice Potion looked like a snapshot right out of the book, and was boiling perfectly. Harry swallowed his annoyance. If only he still had the Prince's book, then he'd be able to beat Malfoy.