Paper Confines

xix. Resignation

They didn't.

"Oh, those little things? I'm surprised you can read them, what with my poor cursive—"

She couldn't.

"—But I'm glad to know someone in this class takes my word into consideration!"

Rosier snickered at the table over. Slughorn's head turned owlishly, and she covered it with a cough. "Sorry, sir. I think some of the smoke from Nadya's table got in my throat. It's persistent, this potion, don't you think? Can't stay where it belongs."

She was so boringly predictable Nadya couldn't resist rolling her eyes. "There's an empty table in the back, if you want." Her false sincerity was believable enough for Slughorn, who glanced between their conversation with a crooked, unsure smile. Rosier's lip twitched.

The empty table was Tom's.

"Oh, I don't know that there would be a point. That one's so close to Claude, and this potion really is—"

"I must say I don't mind the smell of it." Slughorn moved to Rosier and Greengrass's table and knelt over the cauldron. "There are worse potions to be so pervasive, don't you think? Imagine a cloud of Fungiface!" He shuddered for good measure and then made a face at the string of blue balsam that clung to his wand as he pulled it from the cauldron. "Hm. Light on the honeywater next time, Rosier. It's a bit thin."

He moved onto the next table and Nadya smiled to herself. She had no idea how Horace Slughorn managed to be her favourite professor when she didn't even like him, his taste for gossip and general cluelessness considered, but it was a damning truth against the other staff at this miserable school.

She tidied her workspace slowly as the class came to an end, eyeing each student that shuffled by on their way out the door. The wonderful thing about Slughorn's third period N.E.W.T class was that on Wednesdays he left in such a hurry to steal mallowsweet from Madame Codde's stores while she ate a late lunch that it left Nadya alone in his classroom to steal from his.

And, as per routine, off Slughorn went among the fleeting crowd of seventh years with a few empty vials tucked under his arm. Nadya swept the remainder of her things into her bag and waited for a drawn-out moment of quiet before moving to his cupboards. She took the key from under his pot of starthistle (which he'd charmed to be invisible when he suspected no one was looking, but Nadya was always looking) and quickly unlocked the door. It opened to scattered shelves, a disarray of bottles labelled with smudged ink and powders spilling from their receptacles. Nadya hadn't stolen from Slughorn in two years. It took a great effort and a greater burial of distress over what had happened last time to find what she was looking for with a level head. He'd settled them with the eggs previously—occamy eggs, runespoor, ashwinder—and then the sopophorous beans. Nadya's nimble hands found easy passage pulling the tin from the back of the shelf. She twisted the lid and poured three into her palm.

Tucking them into her robe pocket, she slinked out of the half-open door and into the corridor with all the inconspicuousness of a student who had simply forgotten something in class and left a few minutes later than the rest.

There was a scratch in the side of her favourite saddle shoes that was all she could stare at as she followed the route Rosier took to History of Magic. She made a mental note to write her mother for a shiny new pair—and maybe a box of her favourite chai. Colette's little batches gifted by her aunt weren't quite like the tea back home, and Nadya was conscious not to mention the tins getting smaller as her parents' bezants dwindled. She'd considered a gift of her own once or twice, something to speak what her words couldn't, but Nadya didn't have the first clue how to translate a sermon that long into something tangible. She used to treat it like a sport. For Banks: a map of constellations, a book on Celtic runes and another on Uagadou to remember her grandmother by, a little wooden sailboat and a hairpins like stars and moons. For Colette: artwork of the French Alps, soaps from India because she always said she liked the smell, new baking spoons and a golden coffer enchanted to polish her jewellery. And when Nadya would catch Banks trailing along Cepheus pinned to her wall or smell marigolds in Colette's embrace, that felt like a first place prize.