Hateful Love

Chapter Fifty-Two

          I realize that’s the first time I’ve ever completely lost control, that that’s the angriest I’ve ever been. And it wasn’t even at someone else—it was with me. I’m not at all surprised Cassie’s beyond pissed. I don’t blame her. In fact, I agree with her.

          I really fucked up.

          Reaching up to rub my eyes, I let out a dull sigh because I’m too exhausted to get angry with myself again. I suddenly feel so drained, like being that furious took up most of my energy. Stepping around the coffee table and occasionally tripping over a shredded book, I carefully make my way out of the destroyed room.

          The trip down to the dungeons takes a lot longer than it usually does, and the whole time I’m lost to my own thoughts. I’m doing everything I can not to get angry again. By the time I finally make it to the Slytherin common room, my head is spinning.

          I get up to the boy’s dormitory and collapse onto my bed, drawing the curtains shut because Goyle and Crabbe are talking in hushed whispers on the other side of the room. I don’t even think to get underneath the covers—all I want to do right now is sleep and forget about everything that happened today.

          But the thoughts stay with me even as I try to fall asleep, and the last thing I think before I fall into a restless sleep is, How the hell am I going to fix this…

 

I knew going to classes the next day would be extremely awkward and would mostly be spent trying not to blurt out an apology to Cassie every time I saw her—even though I knew she’d just be avoiding me as best she could. But I hadn’t been expecting the teachers to actually make us work together.

          “Alright, and you’ll pair up with Miss Jackson,” Slughorn says, hastily pointing to me and looking between the two of us. My stomach sinks as he turns to face the rest of the class, telling us to stand up and get with our partners. As people get up and shuffle around, I look over to see Cassie still sitting defiantly. I roll my eyes and reluctantly stand up from my seat to walk over to her table. I sit down next to her and make sure my seat is a safe distance from hers, knowing she won’t want me to get too close.

          Neither of us says anything for a moment, Cassie glaring down at the table and me fidgeting uncomfortably. I take a deep breath and open my textbook to the right page, then reach under the table to get the first ingredient out. I’m too nervous to look over, but it sounds like Cassie’s reluctantly taking out a cauldron for us to share and setting it to a boil. Keeping my head down, I quickly skin the frogs’ legs. I can hear Cassie chopping up the lemongrass that’s going in next beside me—by the sounds of it, she’s bringing the knife down harder than necessary.

This is going to be a long class…

We make it through the first few steps of the potion without anything extremely awkward happening, expect for the one time our hands brushed dumping ingredients in and Cassie flinched away from me with an angry snort. Other than that, things are going okay. I haven’t blurted out an apology to her so far; I’m biting my tongue to keep from doing it. To start talking about that now could be very, very bad if someone overheard.

But then Cassie puts in the wrong ingredient, and everything goes downhill.

I’ve just looked up from the recipe to see her dumping in the wrong type of beetle into the cauldron, and I try to say something to stop her, but all she does is give me this cold glare for talking to her. But then she looks down and sees that the entire cauldron is melting.

“It’s alright, Miss Jackson, just back away from it,” Slughorn says hastily, pointing his wand at the bubbling potion that’s now spreading down the table and onto the floor. Cassie quickly moves away from the deteriorating cauldron and mumbles several apologies as Slughorn clears the entire mess away with a flick of his wand. “Not to worry, Miss Jackson, these things happen. I’ll just get you two another cauldron from the back.”

           The professor leaves to rummage through the back closets, leaving Cassie and I to sit awkwardly as other students turn curiously to see what happened. I glance up to see that Blaise is giving me a sympathetic look, and all I can do is shrug. Slughorn comes back with an old looking cauldron and puts in down in front of us. He steps back and says, “Here you go, this’ll do. A student must have left it here earlier in the year—I’m not entirely sure where it came from. But no matter, I’m afraid you two will just have to start from the beginning. Go on now, you haven’t got much time.”

          As Slughorn returns to making his way around the classroom, I sigh heavily and get some more frogs’ legs from under the table. Cassie repositions the cauldron in front of us and leans down to light the fire underneath it with her wand. I’m just starting to skin the first leg when I hear her give a small gasp and drop her wand.

          Despite myself, I turn curiously to see what’s wrong. Cassie’s frozen with her hands over her mouth, gaping down at the spare cauldron in shock. I look down to see that she’s staring at an engraving near the bottom of the cauldron, where most students would carve their names with magic to let others know who owned it. I have to bend my head down a little to read the name that’s etched into the surface of the cauldron, and my breath catches in my throat when I realize whose name it is.

          Matt.

          I look back up to see that Cassie’s starting to cry, tears forming in her eyes and a few running down her cheeks. My heart breaking inside me, I make sure no one’s paying attention and say as quietly as I can, “Cassie…”

          But when she looks up at me, her gaze is cold. She shakes her head and chokes out in a flat voice, “You’re the last person I want to talk to right now.”

          I blink as Cassie stands suddenly and walks out of the classroom without another word to anyone, ignoring Slughorn’s questions. A few people noticed that she was crying, and they turn in their seats to glare at me accusingly. I press my mouth into a hard line and look down at the cauldron that had belonged to someone Cassie really cared about. Someone who died.

          I sit, completely alone at the empty table, as the rest of the students coldly turn away from me. I finger the edge of my seat as I try desperately to convince myself that everything’s going to be okay. Things will work out with Cassie, she’ll be fine and I’ll be fine. Cassie will have to forgive me eventually for what happened, and I’ll be able to make it up to her somehow. And in the meantime, maybe some space is a good thing.

          …I’m lying. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.