2nd chances (Scorose)

Chapter 24

Feeling tired, I changed out my robes in a daze and the moment my head hit the pillow I was asleep.

The next morning I found out just how quickly Professor McGonagall was able to talk to the other teachers about Scorpius and me. The moment he passed me on his way to the Ravenclaw table, all the teachers turned and stared at us, Professor Lofting being the one who glared disapprovingly more so than the rest.

Sighing, I ate my toast and stared into my cup of tea until people started moving. Dom, Al and Lucy lead the way to Potions while I followed behind, wrapped in my own thoughts. Would Professor Slughorn be nice enough to allow Scorpius and me to continue to sit next to each other? He was known for being one of the more lenient teachers, so if he didn't what hope did we have for the others?

When I walked into the room, I found out. Where the desks were normally arranged in rows of four, they had been moved so that everyone was forced to sit at an individual desk. Dom, Al and Lucy all shrugged and took a seat, while I stared sadly at Scorpius stranded on the other side of the room, all the seats near him already taken by Ravenclaw students. As students filed in past me, I blinked and found that I would have to sit in the back of the room.

Professor Slughorn entered and looked at us, "Excuse the moved seats, class. It's temporary, I assure you."

Scorpius turned and smiled at me.

"That is until we find something more appropriate, of course."

His smile shrank and he turned back to face the front of the classroom as Professor Slughorn waved his wand and made the instructions for our lesson appear on the board. We would be brewing a Taste Perfector Potion. I opened my book to the right page while everyone else started setting up their cauldrons. Sitting at the back, there was no way I could read the small, wobbly print Professor Slughorn used to write out the ingredients.

Silently, I worked my way through the steps, pulverizing the horned snail's shells with my pestle and mortar. By the time Slughorn passed by my cauldron, it was simmering at the right shade of lilac the book described and was even emitting sparks, just as it should have been.

"It seems without Mr Malfoy's distractions you are once again going to be getting top marks, Miss Weasley," Professor Slughorn commented, almost in an aside just to make sure no-one else heard.

I glanced at Scorpius, only seeing the back of his head as he worked to make his cauldron hotter, jabbing his wand at the flames. He was stuck at the fourth step, unable to bring his potion to the boil for some reason. Everyone else was one step behind me, adding their sugared mice.

Slughorn returned to my cauldron with his mark sheet five minutes before the end of the lesson. He had already marked the rest of the class, added their potion to a bottle of Pumpkin Juice to test how well it worked, and they were packing up their things. Scorpius had received his lowest mark ever in potions, a P. He smiled and ladled a spoonful of my potion into his cup, smelling it appreciatively before taking a sip, which he then immediately spit it out, retching and turning green in the face.

Confused, I looked at my potion.

It looked completely normal and I could have sworn I'd done everything I was supposed to.

"I don't understand..." I murmured.

"You must have stirred clockwise, not counter-clockwise, Miss Weasley," Professor Slughorn told me, holding his stomach and breathing deeply through his nose.

I frowned; sure I wouldn't have made a mistake like that. It wasn't something I usually did. I always read each line of the book three times.

He wobbled back up to the front of the classroom and poured something out of the tall jug on his desk into his cup and took a large drink, his face turning back to the right color.