Chapter 8: Potions Class and Dinner

An anxious Dobby woke him with fifteen minutes to get to his next class. Harry begged the house elf to find him some Pepper-up potion and a snack. A doubly anxious Dobby returned with a corked vial and several sections of a chunky purple fruit on a long skewer.

"Dobby?" Harry eyed it suspiciously.

"This be good fruit for Harry Potter, sir." Dobby pushed the skewer to his unwilling hands. "Dobby be helping in a good way!"

The strange fruit, surprisingly, wasn't too bad. It filled his stomach and soothed his dry throat. Harry hoped he wasn't coming down with anything serious. The very last thing he wanted to do was visit the infirmary and see the disapproving glower of a certain Madam Pomfrey.

Relieved and somewhat more awake, Harry made it to the next class of the day managed to stay somewhat awake. The final class of the day was potions and Harry was not looking forward to it. He had a feeling Snape would see through his foggy mental and physical state and find some way to make a mockery of his entire effort to be there.

He didn't know if he could stand it.

Harry was surprised to find that he was not the only one walking slowly towards the dungeons. There were a few others and one of the laggers happened to be a certain blond Malfoy. The blond moved slowly and carefully, his silvery eyes occasionally shifting to take stock of his surroundings as he moved. Without the usual accompaniment of his cronies or Pansy Parkinson, there was something decidedly off about the Slytherin and something different in the way he moved. His footsteps were light and his posture was far too relaxed for it to be natural.

Harry quickened his step and trotted past, unable to keep from sneaking a sideways glance. For a moment, emerald eyes locked with pure silver ones, a look of pure fright cracked through the pureblood's mask. Then, as quick as it had appeared, it flickered away and Draco turned his eyes straight ahead as if he'd never seen Harry at all.

The unusual moment was enough to prompt Harry to look back, but when he did, Draco's mask was stubbornly back in place and his head was held high once more.

Brushing it off, Harry continued on. He couldn't afford to waste his precious waking moments thinking—being awake simply cost him too much at the moment. He was so tired! The Pepper-up seemed to be fizzling out just as fast as it had given him a boost. He grimaced and sighed, remembering a the night of his inheritance and then the fact that he'd apparently slept for nearly two weeks afterwards. He'd woken exhausted, cranky and feeling drained, in spite of the temporary wonderment over his new Dragel attributes. His magic had probably left during that time, he mused.

Visualizing the weariness as something he could stuff in a box, Harry mentally gathered it up and shoved it in a corner. He willed the Pepper-up to hold him out for just a little bit longer.

The door to the potions classroom came into sight and Harry quickened his step with energy he could barely spare.

Potions was harder than Harry could ever remember it being.

For the first day, it wasn't really that bad. In fact, everything was the usual mix of chaos and confusion that he'd come to associate with Hogwarts and the first school day and consequently, the first school week. It was always like that and the normality of it should have provided some semblance of comfort—not panic and a short temper.

Harry found himself becoming snappish and increasingly furious as the last portion of the day wore on. Potions, it seemed, would be his last straw. He couldn't understand it at all, but he didn't have time to puzzle through it. It was hard to keep his temper in check and hard to keep from saying things that he knew wouldn't go over well. He couldn't remember if Ron was always this annoying, Hermione always so frustrating and Ginny always so irritating. He was thankful he'd been spared their company at lunch and that Ginny wasn't in the same classes as he was. He didn't think that he would've been able to handle it.

As it was, when Professor Snape split them up and paired them with Slytherins, Harry was more than happy to be away from his fellow housemates. There was a restless undercurrent traveling through them and he didn't like the unease that his new instincts screamed at him. It was constantly warning him that something bad loomed ahead. Harry hoped it was just a feeling not an actual premonition.

He tried to focus on the lesson, grateful that the Pepper-up at least allowed him to be awake enough to make an effort. The mental trick for his exhaustion seemed to be working—somewhat. He only hoped it would last.

His attention returned to the present and Harry realized that he didn't really know the tanned fellow he was paired up with, but he knew the name associated with the face. That realization wad enough for him to maintain a civil front for the sake of appearances. Blaise Zabini, was, by Harry's own admission, a handsome enough fellow, with lovely golden skin and inky black hair. A closer look showed at that Zabini's dark eyes weren't really black, but rather a purple so dark it was almost black and they seemed to sparkle to life when they caught Harry staring.

Blaise winked, breaking the stare and the faintest twitches of a smile graced his face. "See something interesting, Potter?" He teased. There was absolutely no hint of condescension in his voice, merely a touch of warmth and something else.

Harry found himself blushing and then scolding himself for having such an obvious reaction as he looked away. He'd never found an accent that sent shivers straight through him like that. "Nothing." He swallowed. "Nothing interesting." He tried to focus on the words on the page between them bearing the potion ingredients. The words were starting to dance together before his eyes.

"You wound me." Blaise murmured. "And here I was about to congratulate myself for charming a lovely little lion from the-"

"I'll get the other ingredients." Harry said, hastily. He was on his feet and gone before the other boy could protest. He took his time rummaging through the cabinet and extracting the necessary bottles, before he cradled them carefully in his arms and began to walk back to the shared table with Zabini's.

He thought he saw the flicker of movement before it registered that someone had tripped him. Harry felt his breath catch and everything slowed to a point where it felt like life was playing by in slow-motion. He knew he would fall and ruin the ingredients in his arms as well as his entire day—there was no way a simple fall like that would result in anything else but injuries from sharp pieces of glass. He'd end up in the infirmary, in spite of his careful hopes to avoid it and he'd be subjected to Madam Pomfrey's tender mercies.

He closed his eyes for the impact that never came.

Strong, slender arms caught him about the shoulders and braced to take his weight, before easing him upright.

Harry's eyes flew open and he found himself staring into a pale face with unreadable grey eyes and a familiar—but muted—sneer. "Two left feet, Potter?" He said, snidely. The blond steadied him with a hidden hand. "Do try and put one foot in front of the other. It'd be a waste of potions' ingredients otherwise." Draco nudged him in the direction of Blaise's table and stepped out into the aisle moving up towards the ingredient cabinet to retrieve his own necessary ingredients.

Harry snuck a glance around the room to see that others had noticed the little exchange and it was only Hermione who eyed him with pursed lips, while Ron seemed torn between saying something and keeping quiet. Harry hurried over to the worktable and carefully set the ingredients down. He tried to focus on the potion and the instructions, but his mind was elsewhere, replaying the precious seconds in Malfoy's arms.

The earlier incident had piqued his curiosity. Something had been off there—and he wanted to know what it was. There hadn't been a hint of the fright that he'd seen in Malfoy's eyes earlier and it was almost as if he'd gone through a complete transformation from the moment he'd entered the Potion's Classroom. There was also a familiar scent to the boy that Harry also couldn't place, but his mind was too tangled to puzzle it out in the middle of class.

"Potter, Potter—Harry!" Blaise snapped his fingers in front of his face. He perked a brow when Harry flinched and leaned away. "Never mind." He sighed, the faintest furrow in his brow. "You're really pants at Potions, aren't you?"

"Well excuse me for-" Harry began, pushing away from the table to glare at him.

Blaise caught his hands and held them over the cutting board. "Just dice these up and don't do anything else." He instructed. "I'm sure you can cut little bitty squares, yes?" He prompted when it looked as if Harry was about to object.

Harry didn't answer. He just yanked his hands back and began to viciously dice said ingredients.

Blaise chuckled. "This isn't a punishment, little lion." The teasing tone returned to his voice as he leaned down to whisper in Harry's ear. "I'd simply prefer not to get blown up today and somehow I think you would like the same, hmm?"

Harry felt himself blush again as warm breath gushed over his ear and he quickly bent his head over the cutting board and began to dice the wrinkly brown root in as even squares as he could muster. It was cold in the dungeons, as usual, but simply being near to Blaise seemed to chase the coldness away.

Surprisingly, they managed an acceptable potion between them and Harry managed to slip out of the room without any further incidents—as far as blushing went anyway.

"Hiya Harry!" Terry Boot, from Ravenclaw waved at him as he passed in the hallway. "Is it true that you-"

"Hey!" Seamus glared at him. He'd appeared at Harry's side the moment class had let out. "He doesn't need to hear about that rubbish from the likes of-"

"Harry, mate!" Ron stood at the end of the hallway looking flustered. "Hurry up!"

And so Harry hurried.

For the rest of the day, Harry tried and failed to piece together what it was that everyone was supposedly not asking him about, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He only knew that something was slightly off and he didn't think it had anything to do with the issues at Azkaban. He'd have to figure it out on his own later. For the meantime, he just needed to keep everything together and Hermione from trying to pry all his secrets free.

In the midst of dinner however, Hermione finally had her chance. She'd managed to sit between Harry and Ron and once her redheaded-friend was stuffing his face, she turned her attention on the smaller boy. "Harry, what did Professor Terius want this afternoon? Is everything alright? Where were you during lunch? We saved your seat and you didn't show up and-"

"He didn't say." Harry said, quickly filling his mouth. He knew one of the best ways to distract Hermione was either through a forceful change of subject or something equally visually distracting. Stuffing his face as Ron did might make him sick for a bit, but it would certainly send Hermione into a different kind of fit. "He looked at me and then said I could go." He shrugged. "I don't know what he wanted. He never said."

Hermione frowned. "Why would he call you and then send you away without saying anything?" She elbowed Ron. "Chew with your mouth closed." Her gaze flickered back to Harry. "You too, Harry, that's disgusting!" She wrinkled her nose. "We should all keep an eye on him. There's something strange about him and we need to know what it is." She nodded across the table to Ginny, who was tucked up with the Twins, as usual, the Weasley's eating together out of habit. "Did he do anything strange in your class, Ginny?"

The redheaded girl shook her head in thought. "Not really, but I didn't see him do anything. He mostly talked."

"Didn't use a-"

"wand though." The Twins chorused.

"Thought it was odd, Gred."

"Thought so myself, Forge."

The twins beamed at each other and went back to their respective dinners.

"Didn't use a wand?" Hermione mused, her eyes glazing over as the mental wheels began to turn. "Wandless magic is dangerous and very difficult to perform. I don't think I've ever seen another professor use wandless magic—not even Professor Dumbledore."

Harry stifled the urge to roll his eyes. That was somewhat true, but when you had tremendous amounts of magical power at your disposal, wandless magic helped to burn off the excess—at least, that was what Dumbledore had once told him—and Harry had seen the old man use it a few times on occasion. Maybe he was lucky. He'd always wished he could learn it for himself. It'd looked like fun.

"Now that I think of it, most professors use a spell to write on the boards." Hermione mused. "He wrote with his hand and he didn't seem very accustomed to it either. He also didn't use charms to clean the board." She frowned into her dinner plate and began to mutter book titles beneath her breath. An evening of research was certainly in the works

Harry was glad for that. It meant that she'd likely end up in the library on the grounds of research. He felt a yawn coming on and stifled it, impatiently. The Pepper-up had barely managed to get him through classes, though the minute he thought of dinner, his body seemed to revive itself. He hoped the temporary awareness would last long enough for him to get some other things done. For now, he could trek along to the library with her and get in with the same library pass to take a look on what Hogwarts had to offer about Dragels.

He could use all the information he could get!

Another yawn threatened to come and Harry forcefully willed it away as he focused on emptying his dinner plate. He was busy with his own musings and thoughts and never noticed the twin redheads watching him intensely from the other side of the table or Ginny's pointed frown in his direction.