"Maybe it was itching because it was fading away?" Tracey offered as I stared at myself, dumbfounded, in the mirror.
"I suppose that makes sense," I said, intently looking at the skin around my eye to make sure it truly wasn't red anymore.
Last night's excursion to the greenhouses with James was an overall success. I had retrieved the final ingredient for my polyjuice potion, and we did not get caught by anyone — except by Wyatt who didn't seem all that bothered by our sneaking around anyway.
"Aw, too bad it's gone," Wyatt said when he saw me arrived at the Slytherin table this morning. "I was just telling Isaiah about it."
"I was really looking forward to seeing it too," Isaiah added with light disappointment.
"Yeah, I won't have to see Madam Pomfrey in the end," I said, pleased with the outcome. "I have to get back at Aiden for it, though. That bastard."
"Nooo, I have to ask him to do it again — it was just too good," Wyatt cackled while Isaiah giggled through the toast he was about to bite. I groaned.
"It was embarrassing," I said as-matter-of-factly.
"It was endearing," James chimed in. He was previously engrossed in a conversation with Elijah, but the two had shifted their focus onto us instead. "My little fangirl."
I gaped. "Merlin, kill me."
"Oh? The fangirl is experiencing suicidal ideation — should we send her to Madam Pomfrey?" Elijah quipped with fake concern. I threw daggers at him with a scowl while the others laughed at his hilarious suggestion.
I restrained myself from retorting with something unpleasant, so I winced a spurious wide-eyed smile and said through gritted teeth, "Wow. Thanks, Elijah, for being so concerned about me. Are you one of my fanboys?"
"Oh! It's a love triangle!" Wyatt jumped in enthusiastically with laughter. "Elijah's Maeve's fanboy, but Maeve's James' fangirl—"
"What? No, if anything, I'm James' fanboy," Elijah quickly interjected. He turned to his friend and gave him a playful coy smile. James snorted when Elijah started flirtatiously wiggling his eyes at him.
"James is so popular," Isaiah said with a giggle. "And here I thought Elijah was the one with all the secret admirers."
"Oh, it's not a secret that I deeply admire James," Elijah said confidently. He looked at James with exaggerated fondness and bit his bottom lip seductively. Wyatt and Isaiah laughed at Elijah's sudden display of affection towards James.
"I'm so flattered," James chuckled, glancing at me slightly awkwardly.
"I would love to be the maid of honour at the wedding," I added, trying not to look bothered by the idea of James being married to someone else.
"I'll be the best man!" Isaiah chimed in.
"There can only be one maid of honour, Maeve. You can be the officiator," Wyatt said.
"So you'll be the maid of honour?" I queried.
"Yeah. What? Are you sexist? You think men can't be maids of honour?" Wyatt retorted.
"I — no, of course I support it — I was just hoping to have a more important role—"
"Actually, I'll be the officiator, Maeve," Isaiah cut in. "You can be the best man. I certainly feel that officiator is a more significant role—"
"Maeve's best man, I'm maid of honour, and Isaiah's officiator — all that's left is picking out a wedding date!" Wyatt enthused.
"I haven't even agreed to marrying Elijah," James said, shaking his head playfully at us all.
"I haven't even proposed yet," Elijah said with an eye roll. "Let us go on a few dates first, at the very least."
"Oh, Elijah. You're so romantic," Wyatt cooed sarcastically. "I didn't think you were the type to take anyone on dates. I thought you were just the type to go straight to shag—"
"Alright. We've still got a child at the table, Wyatt," James interrupted Wyatt.
"What? Me? I'm only two years younger than you all. I'm not that young," I reasoned, feeling slightly miffed with being cut off from whatever Wyatt was going to say.
"Thirteen is a bit too young to be exposed to those types of topics, I'd say," Isaiah said with a bit of concern in his voice.
"I'm turning fourteen in two weeks," I replied, feeling slightly foolish for using that as an excuse, but still hoping it'd be enough to convince them. "Besides, if thirteen is too young, then fifteen is also too young."
"And you would be right," James said after clearing his throat.
"Are you slut-shaming me?" Elijah gasped dramatically but sarcastically.
"Yes, I am," James said as if it were obvious. He ruffled Elijah's hair, making Elijah's face melt into a look of disappointment.
"My beautiful hair," he nearly whimpered as he struggled to fix the mess James had done to it. "That's it. The wedding's off. I'm breaking up with you."
We all laughed at what Elijah said, especially Wyatt who cackled especially loudly, drawing attention from other Slytherins nearby. I caught Malfoy's curious gaze, but I avoided lingering my eyes on him too long as to not get caught into an another awkward staring contest with him.
That evening, I didn't wait to finish brewing my polyjuice potion. With my last final ingredient added to the cauldron, all I had to do was let it simmer. The potion looked exactly how it ought to, according to the book: thick and murky mud, bubbling sluggishly.
Although my initial idea for brewing this potion was to restore my illegal potion brewing activities under Malfoy's appearance, I realized I was just going to cause more irksome drama between him and I by doing this. But brewing this extremely complex and difficult potion did help restore a part of my sanity. Brewing polyjuice potion was not about messing with Malfoy anymore. I realized that after failing to create a potion to heal James' scar, I needed to accomplish a project such as this one to restore faith in myself and prove to myself that I was skilled at potion-making afterall.
I decided to keep the polyjuice potion hidden in the bathroom instead of my bag as I had not yet met with Isaiah to redesign the privacy-protection enchantments on my bags. I did not need Millicent Bulstrode stealing another month's worth of potions. Here was to hoping she didn't also wander in the girl's bathrooms to pick at my projects either.
Brewing polyjuice potion had really inspired me to discover more ways of altering one's appearance. I realized I could draw from what I learned from polyjuice to experiment with shapeshifting potions. Of course, this also meant I had to research about shapeshifting at the library as well.
Instead of turning into Malfoy to avoid trouble for selling potions again, perhaps I could alter my appearance in another way and wear robes from another house to avert suspicions. I would essentially be creating a whole new secret identity, and that made it all the more exciting to work on this new potion project.
I thought I didn't have to worry about Malfoy for a while now ever since that duel between James and I. It seemed to have scared him back then, but the blond prick tailed me all the way back to the Slytherin dungeons after supper. I thought for a blissful moment upon arriving at the common room that he would leave me to retreat to my dorm, but the pratt followed me all the way back to my door.
I hurried to close the door behind me, but someone who wasn't Malfoy complained behind the shut door, "What the—? Maeve? I was right behind you."
I yanked the door open to see a miffed-looking Daphne Greengrass.
"Oh, sorry, Daph," I said rather quickly, throwing my gaze behind her. She huffed and walked past me into the dormitory.
Malfoy was, of course, leaning against the wall across the door, only a couple feet away from me. He had a stupidly arrogant look plastered on his face and his arms were crossed.
"What?" I said, crossing my arms back at him.
"You do realize that sooner or later... Astarion Lancaster will hear about what you did to his son, right?" he mused tauntingly. I tried not to roll my eyes at him and keep my cool, but my lips soured and my eyes narrowed at him anyway. "You're lucky you may not see him for another couple of months. I bet it will be quite the show when he finally meets you at King's Cross. He'll certainly bury you alive."
"Stop pretending to care about my wellbeing, Malfoy," I sneered.
"Oh, don't you worry, Blackwood. I couldn't care less about you," his eyebrows jumped at me as he said that, and I felt my stomach churn uncomfortably. "I'm just warning you. I need you alive before summer, otherwise Mother would blame me for not protecting you."
"I don't need protection, and I certainly don't need yours," I asserted, glaring at him.
"Clearly not. Your temper seems to be protecting you so far. Though I'd be careful if I were you. You can't win a duel against Astarion Lancaster."
"Do you really think this man would just publicly murder a student?" I scoffed, finding that to be a hilarious idea.
"Perhaps not, but the man does have great power in Diagon Alley — where your family's shop is located, that is..."
"Are you here to defend James Lancaster's honour or to wish failure upon my family's business?" I asked, boring my eyes into his. He smirked.
"Certainly not the former," he scoffed as if that would have been abhorrent. "No. I simply wish to warn you about Astarion Lancaster. My father says the man has gone to drastic measures to defend his family reputation — a sickly scar on his only son's face? That ought to enrage him..."
"Your words don't scare me, Malfoy," I said, hoping my doubt would not resonate in my tone.
"Sure they don't. But Mr. Lancaster does, doesn't he? You ever heard of the story about how he killed his own wife? Drove her to insanity, until one day, she cut her own throat," he said.
"What? Stop lying, Malfoy. It's not right to spread rumours like this."
"Don't believe me? Ask him. Ask your pretty boy where his mum is. He certainly wouldn't like to tell you—"
I shut the door on his face and locked it.
I did not want to hear any more of his taunts and lies— possible lies. Were they lies? Those were very serious accusations. James rarely spoke of his family life and it felt wrong to ask. And yet I had a gnawing feeling that Malfoy was not entirely wrong — maybe Mr. Lancaster was a dangerous man.
No.
I couldn't believe him. I had never met the man. I couldn't accept Malfoy's claims on the truth. He had to be lying.
"Good night, Blackwood," Malfoy said through the door, his tone gripped with amusement. "Don't have nightmares about Mr. Lancaster."
The idiot's steps echoed down the corridor and away from my dorm. I groaned.
"He's lying, right?" I turned to a open-mouthed Daphne.
"I — I dunno. It wouldn't be the first time Malfoy had private information about other wizarding families—"
"No. He can't have been serious..." I cut in.
"Well... It's pretty well-known that Lancaster's mother is out of the picture. I never heard the details of her death, though."
"It is? I didn't even know she'd passed... James never mentioned it."
"But it was in the paper a few years ago — Salazar, I don't know why I'm surprised you're clueless about something again."
I struggled to respond. I did not know what to make of that information. I felt guilty for not knowing. Maybe James never mentioned it because he assumed everybody knew already? It would feel rude to ask too.
I finally decided not to believe Malfoy's accusations about Astarion Lancaster. He had to be trying to mess with me again. James' father was not a murderer nor was he dangerous, and asking James about his mother's death would be a poor decision on my part. So I mentally stored what Malfoy had said in a distant box in my brain and chose not to overthink that one.
Or so I thought.
The following days were unbearably difficult for me. Everytime I would see James, all I could think of was what Malfoy had said. It was driving me slightly nuts. I could not ask James about it. That would surely drive an awkward wedge into our friendship, and I wouldn't want to remind him of such a horrible event in his life.
On Tuesday evening, I spotted Isaiah Ainsley and Amirah Flowers in a corner of the library doing what I could only assume was studying. Remembering that I needed Isaiah for the privacy enchantment on my bag, I hurried over and took a seat in front of them.
"Hey, Maeve. Are you here to study too?" Isaiah asked in a low voice so that the librarian wouldn't hear us. It was particularly quiet in the library tonight.
"No, erm, I'm here to ask for your help." I placed my bag on the table. "A new privacy enchantment is needed. Millicent Bulstrode figured out a counterspell."
"Right. I did say I would help you with that."
Isaiah Ainsley graciously offered me an hour of his time to figure out how to improve the privacy enchantment. I showed him on a piece of parchment a small diagram detailing what I remembered from Millicent's journal. Apparently, she had found a minor flaw in the enchantment, allowing her to exploit it and undo the whole spell. I wasn't sure I understood the logic behind the spell anymore at this point, but Isaiah carefully traced out his theories on the parchment before drawing his wand and casting a bunch of spells on my bag.
"Now, if she manages to undo that one, I'll have to do some more research because this is my best work. It has to be flawless now," Isaiah said, though there was a minuscule hint of uncertainty in his voice. Amirah nodded in agreement, though I was fairly certain she was just as confused as I was about how the whole enchantment worked in the first place.
"Thank you loads, Isaiah," I beamed. "Should Millicent successfully rummage through my belongings again, I'll let you know."
We spent so much time on my bag's privacy enchantment that we almost missed curfew that night. Isaiah and I just barely made it back to the Slytherin common room on time.
James took my year's attendance soon after I arrived. The whole time, I could feel Malfoy's taunting smirk burning in my direction. When I finally whipped my head in his direction and mouthed an irritated "What?" he wiggled his eyebrows at me and nodded his head at Lancaster. I knew Malfoy was trying to remind me of the atrocious thing he said about James' father, so I just rolled my eyes, shaking my head as I looked away from him.
Though I wasn't looking at Malfoy anymore, I knew he was still smirking mischievously at me. It took all of my willpower to not pounce on him like a bloodthirsty tiger.
Going to bed that night proved difficult as Malfoy's face kept appearing in my head and so did his words: You ever heard of the story about how he killed his own wife? Drove her to insanity, until one day, she cut her own throat.
I could not accept that Astarion Lancaster would be such a vile person, but then again, as Daphne pointed out — Malfoy's family had dirt on nearly everyone. Lucius Malfoy just loved to know too much about people and tell his dear old son everything. But Lucius Malfoy could not possibly be Draco's source for this tale? It had to be some ridiculous and cruel rumour he'd heard. Or he had to have made it up just to scare me.
The only way to know for sure would be to ask James himself.
Or maybe one of his close S4 friends would spill. Would it be inappropriate if I pried?