Come Together

19. take on me - a-ha

December 21, 1988

You began your Care of Magical Creatures practical exam feeling uncharacteristically confident. The written portion of the test had gone absurdly well, leaving you with an inflated sense of self confidence that could only end in disaster.

Even though midterms typically caused much less pressure within the student body than final exams did (as they were the N.E.W.T. exams, while midterms were only for course grades) they were still difficult enough tests to prepare each student for their real N.E.W.T. at the end of the year.

As such, you knew you should have attempted to humble yourself a bit for the practical.

Professor Kettleburn informed the class only minutes before the second part of the midterm what the practical would consist of: locate a fairy that he had hidden within the forest and return to the designated spot in the outskirts of the woods, without any outstanding injuries to your body or the creature, relying only on previous knowledge from the course to successfully capture the creature.

You had to quell the urge to make a fuss about the morals of abducting another living being for the sake of not pissing off everyone around you. After, though. You would say something after.

As you walked through the forest, swathed in protective gloves and your wand poised for casting in your hand, you thought, this is simple. You thought, this is too simple, because suddenly, you spotted the fairy within ten minutes of walking. The fairy - a mean, vain, fluttering creature that kept biting you - was hiding inside a log. She could be overlooked quite easily, though, so you figured you had just gotten luckier at seeing her than Kettleburn perhaps anticipated.

You lured her out with promises of jewels and assurances of her beauty. You would've gotten her out faster with cream and berries, but you had to make do with the resources you had. It had taken you less than fifteen minutes to fully coax the bugger out of the log she inhabited and into the cage, and you hoped that would be acceptable enough, time-wise.

All in all, you were feeling better about your knowledge of handling magical creatures than you ever had before, and that was how you knew the inking of wrong had been right.

So, as you walked away from the log with damn near a skip to your step, caged fairy in hand, nearly unscathed (damn the bubotaurs, spewing their pus far enough to hit the back of your neck), you kept looking over your shoulder. Something bad would happen- you knew it.

To distract yourself, you considered the best way to respectfully bring up how the exam was honestly quite cruel - taking a creature from their natural habitat for the sake of education was simply morally unjust - when you collided with a tree.

You were still looking behind yourself when it happened, so quite understandably, your neck felt cricked in a way it never had been before. In fact, you were concerned you had somehow dislocated it, but that also seemed impossible, so you just silently cursed nature instead.

"Blast," you muttered, pushing yourself up from the sludgy dirt. You began wiping the grass and foliage remnants from your robes and cloak, plucking the bits of rock from where they stuck to the skin that had been exposed after falling. You cracked your neck a few times to try to correct the ache, when you somehow made eye contact with the tree.

"Oh, shit!" you exclaimed, and clutched the caged fairy to your chest. She had somehow gotten away without injury, merely scowling at you and sticking her tongue out. "Professor!"

Because of course it was.

Snape wasn't really looking at you, but he wasn't walking away, either, and your breath was caught in your throat. You forced out a small, "Sorry," and proceeded to scrounge around in the leaves, like a rat searching for crumbs, for your wand.