Love at First Sight (Harry Potter)

The Unforgivable Curses

|ALEXANDRIA WEASLEY'S P.O.V|

The following two days passed without great incident, apart from Neville melting his sixth cauldron in Potions class. Professor Snape, who had somehow become even more agitated by the existence of us students over the summer holiday, promptly gave Neville detention.

Poor Neville had been terribly embarrassed. His cheeks rosy pink and his shoulders trembling as all of the people in the room, wearing maroon and green ties alike, cast him glances and sniggered.

Neville returned to the common room from said detention later that same evening, in a state of nervous collapse.

His robes were in absolute disarray, his right sleeve hanging much lower down his arm than his left. His light brown hair stuck up wildly toward the ceiling. He was also holding his hands out in front of him, as though afraid to let them touch any part of his body or clothes.

"Are you alright?" I had asked after he had climbed through the portrait hole, an expression of horror on his plump face. Hermione, who was sat on the armchair beside me, clapped her book shut with a nearly silent click.

Neville shook his head once, grimacing at his hands. I quickly stood, rounding the couch that Harry and Ron — engaged in a game of Wizard's Chess atop the small table — were sitting on. The two of them stopped to look at Neville as well.

Now, upon reaching Neville, I saw that there was a great stain spread across the chest of his button-shirt. It was green, thick, and sticky-looking and seemed to be giving off a slight odor. He glanced down at the stain himself, upon catching my notice of it.

"Had me disemboweling a load of horned toads," he said with a disgusted wince. I forced a small, pitiful smile at him and pulled my wand out from within the pocket of my robes.

"Scourgify!"

The stain across his chest began to shrink in at its centre. Smaller and smaller it became, until it had vanished entirely as though it was never there. His shirt was now pure white again, perfect aside from the wrinkles that lined the thin fabric.

Neville stared down at his chest in awe. He said, delighted, "How did you manage that?"

"I can teach you, Neville," said Hermione kindly. I glanced back to find that she had was stood slightly behind me, her wand tucked into the crook of her elbow.

"You know why Snape's in such a foul mood, don't you?" came Ron's voice in a mutter to Harry as Hermione began to teach Neville the Scouring Charm to remove the frog guts from under his fingernails. I pressed myself against the back of the couch, between their shoulders, to listen.

"Yeah," said Harry with a nod, his emerald eyes mischievous. "Moody."

It was common knowledge among Hogwarts that Snape fancied the Dark Arts job. Despite trying for it year after year, he failed to get it. He had disliked all of our previous Dark Arts teachers and shown it, blatantly, but he seemed to be strangely wary of displaying overt animosity to Mad-Eye Moody.

Indeed, whenever we saw the two of them together — at mealtimes, or when we passed in the corridors — there was the distinct impression that Snape was avoiding Moody's eye, both magical and normal.

"I reckon Snape's a bit scared of him, you know," Harry said thoughtfully, his arm slithering around the back of the couch slyly. It pressed into the front of my hip and lower stomach, his fingertips toying with the plush cushion beside Ron's shoulder.

I rolled my eyes, stepping back an inch to place a small wedge of open space between Harry's skin and the hem of my blouse. Harry's robes had been discarded as soon as classes had finished for the afternoon, and his sleeves were now rolled to the elbows exposing the pale colour of his forearms.