An American At Hogwarts: Book Three

Chapter Sixty-Six

"Okay, that felt good. I understood what you said, and I feel like I pronounced those words at least half right?"

Myrah nodded, taking a sip of her tea. She and I were posted up in an empty classroom, along with our other non-Gryffindor friends, practicing mermish on Friday morning. AP tests started for me on Monday, but right now, I was more focused on getting my ambassadorial speech right. My fellow Gryffindors knew having us all together without the twins would get to me, so instead they'd promised to see me and hype me up in our first period.

"I think it was good. But you're not planning to speak to them in mermish the whole time, are you?"

I shook my head and sighed. "I wish, but I can't. I haven't been learning it long enough, I don't have the vocabulary for that. I'm just gonna have to hope this makes a good enough impression that they'll be willing to engage with me in English."

"Maybe they'll just switch the minute they hear your terrible accent," Jackson chimed in from the chair across the room. He had his feet kicked up on the desk, and he didn't even bother to look up from his book. "I had a barista in Paris do that to me once."

I scowled. "Hopefully my accent won't be bad enough for that."

Jackson raised his eyebrows at me over the top of his book, and I narrowed my eyes right back. I turned to reach for something in my bag to throw at him, but stopped dead when I noticed Cedric going to take a sip out of my mug instead of his own.

"NO!" I shouted, quickly snatching the mug out of his hands. I breathed a sigh of relief while he just looked at me with wide eyes.

"Alexa, what-?"

"It has veritaserum in it," I said, sighing as I set the mug back down in front of me. "It's mine, not yours, and I've been putting veritaserum in mine."

Cue bewildered looks from everyone in the room.

"Alright, I have to ask: why?" asked Adrian, judgement clear in his tone. I just sighed.

"After... after everything with the DA, Umbridge tried to ask me some questions while not-so-subtly having slipped veritaserum into my tea. It didn't affect me, truth serum really doesn't ever since this prank my uncle pulled, but I just want to make sure I don't lose that immunity. Especially now that she's headmaster and can go even more mad with power than before."

Cedric still looked a little bewildered, but all three Slytherins nodded sagely, like I'd made the obvious choice.

"That's a good idea," said Jackson. "We might have to start doing that."

I shook my head. "I'd wait until after we graduate. The effects hit in full while you're building up the immunity, and I don't think it'd be good for any of us to be running around the castle with no filter on secrets while that pink monster is in hearing range."

Jackson gave a long, dramatic sigh, throwing his head back. When he looked at me again, he was back to normal, and gave a little shrug.

"Yeah. You're probably right."

I huffed a laugh, then went back to practicing with Myrah. I noticed Cedric shaking his head out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked back at him he had a smile on his face. I mirrored his smile and nudged him with my shoulder, but before either of us could get particularly carried away, Myrah was coughing loudly and pointedly in my direction.

We spent the rest of the morning before classes hanging out and, in my case, working on mermish. By the time the class bell rang, I felt as good as I thought possible about my upcoming speech to the mermaids.

The rest of the day seemed to fly by. For each of my first three periods, I barely focused on class. Cedric even helped cover for me with Snape so I could review my notes instead of paying attention to him. Even better, on the other side of lunch, I had Charms with the Slytherins. My last hour before going to talk to the mermaids was spent with one of my favorite, very chill teachers and Myrah, who only rolled her eyes a little when I made her practice over and over with me in the back of the class despite no real change coming from each new repetition.