Amortentia

The silence surrounding your question lingers in the air, nobody daring to speak into existence even the semblance of something terrible occurring at Hogwarts. 

After the events of the Triwizard Tournament last year, something shifted -not just at Hogwarts- but in the Wizarding World as a whole. Oftentimes, you would come home late from Leo’s house to find your parents arguing in hushed whispers in your dimly lit dining room, changing their topic of conversation the moment they noticed your presence. The Daily Prophet, once the only news source in your household, now stood in a haphazard pile on your kitchen counter. No matter how strange or different things became at home, things were normal at Hogwarts. 

Hogwarts was untouchable. 

Until it wasn’t. 

Within all the secrets, rumors, and forlorn looks, something just felt different. 

You pull yourself out of your thoughts and push yourself back into the conversation, which had turned to the party happening in the Slytherin common room tonight. 

“What are you wearing tonight?” Sage questions, as you and your friends descend the stairs into the dungeon. 

Between the journey to Hogwarts and the events during the start-of-term feast, you had completely forgotten about the back-to-school party that the Slytherins threw every year in your common room. To put it simply, the party was glorious, and every year it seemed to top the previous year’s party. Last year some of the seventh years decided they were going totry to go down in Slytherin history by kidnapping Fluffy, Hagrid’s Three-Headed Dog. A group of about twenty of them drunkenly stumbled down to Hagrid’s hut in the middle of the night where instead of finding Fluffy, they found Headmaster Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape, Hagrid, and Head of Ministry of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, who was there to discuss Triwizard Tournament business. Needless to say, every student who was part of the kidnapping attempt was forced to go to detention every night for the entire first semester, and every student found to be in attendance at the party was forced to follow a strict 8 pm curfew for the first month of school. Traditionally, the festivities were only extended to Slytherins in fifth year or above, and you knew better than to try and sneak in, leaving you with no punishment for last year’s antics; however, this also meant you had no idea what to expect. 

“Honestly, I completely forgot that was happening tonight. I was thinking about maybe wearing-”

“We have a more pressing issue than if you’re going to wear a white blouse that barely covers any skin or a completely identical black blouse. Was anyone paying attention when Snape said the password?” Oliver interrupted. 

His question was answered with blank stares and Sage clapping her hands over her mouth at the realization that you have no way of getting into your common room. 

Leo takes two steps toward the brick wall guarding the entrance of the dormitory and flashes a charismatic grin over his shoulder toward the group. 

“Guys, don’t worry, how hard can it possibly be to guess the password?” Leo asks, facing the wall. 

“He’s right! If we look at previous passwords and analyze them, we can find a pattern and use it to determine-”

“Severus Snake! ”

Before anyone has time to process what has just been said, a powerful gust of wind escapes the wall and knocks Leo to the stone floor. You swiftly kneel next to his side to make sure he isn’t hurt while also trying to hide your laughter at the situation that is unfolding before you.

“I cannot believe you seriously thought Severus Snake was the password,” you giggle as you help the now red-in-the-face boy off the floor. 

“Hey! It was the best I could come up with.”

“We’re doooomed,” Oliver groaned. “If that was the best we could come up with, we’re going to be trapped out here until we die.”

“That’s a bit dramatic, innit?” Leo states while rubbing the spot where he fell on his side. “Someone’s bound to come by and let us in eventually.”

A scoff arises from behind the group, and everyone turns to find the origin of the noise. Between the failed password guesses and the subsequent argument, it seemed no one had noticed that Malfoy had been standing behind them the entire time. 

“I don’t know how you blubbering idiots have survived four years at this school,” Malfoy says in a tone of annoyance as he walks towards the common room door. “The password is always the same at the start of term until it gets changed.”

“Basilisk!”

The door swings open to reveal the dimly lit room adorned with emerald green couches, large fireplaces with silver engravings of serpents, and mossy-colored curtains covering the windows overlooking the Black Lake. The commonroom is more alive than you’ve ever seen it while seventh years are rearranging furniture and carting kegs of beer and mixing drinks with firewhisky, gin, and whatever alcohol they could get their hands on. A grin begins to form on your face as you realize you’re home. 

The wave of nostalgia and joy is short-lived as Pansy runs towards Malfoy and wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him in for a kiss that seems to be getting deeper as she begins to let out soft groans while running her hands through his blonde hair. 

Malfoy and Pansy had been in an on-again-off-again relationship since their third year at Hogwarts, but growing up as childhood friends, they had essentially been betrothed to each other since before they could talk. Except with the level of perfection that Malfoy attempted to portray within his personal life, the constant commitment could get ‘suffocating’ as you’d once overheard him tell Blaise, and they would occasionally pursue other things. Meaning that Draco would fuck some random Slytherin girl while Pansy would follow him around like a lost puppy until he came back to her-a perfectly fine arrangement for everybody but Pansy. Many times, you’ve caught yourself feeling sorry for her, until you remembered what a bitch she was. 

You start looking around the common room, attempting to distract yourself with anything else so that you don’t have to watch Malfoy and Pansy making out in the middle of the common room, but instead, your eyes catch and hold the gaze of brown ones belonging to Zabini, making your stomach do flips. Not sure how to react, you give him a quick wave and take a step toward him, but instead of being receptive to your gesture, he gives you a small smile and turns away, heading up the stairs to the boys’ dorms. 

“That was…odd- to say the least,” Sage remarks from beside you. “I thought you were on good terms.”

At the end of your fourth year, you had assumed that things with Blaise would end naturally when you both went home for the summer, but things had only progressed further. Throughout the summer you sent letters back and forth, and he came to stay with you on your family’s estate, and whatever was going on between you was blossoming, until the end of the summer when he stopped writing you back.

“I thought we were too, but he stopped responding to my owls after he came to visit,” you comment.

“He came to visit you?” exclaims a shocked Sage. “And you didn’t tell me? I’m going to kill you! How could you not tell me? That’s ridic-”

“Can we talk about this in my room?” you interrupt-suddenly realizing how many people were within earshot of the present conversation as people start turning toward you and Sage. 

Grabbing your hand, Sage pulls you up the iron stairs leading to the girls’ dormitories, and once inside your room, you sit down in the armchair in the corner of your room, while Sage sits cross-legged on your bed lazily stroking Nyx, who had burrowed her way into Sage’s lap. 

“I don’t even know where to start,” you sigh, reminiscing on the time you spent with Blaise over the summer. 

“Why don’t you start right before the train ride home from Spring term? I can’t seem to remember what happened after we stepped foot off Hogwarts property. Truthfully, my memory is a little fuzzy so if you could just fill me in on the blanks, I would-” 

You interrupt her with a glare as she starts to laugh at your reaction. 

Your friends truly were never going to let you forget about the train incident with Zabini. 

“Well honestly, I thought that was going to be the end of whatever was happening between us,” you start. “I didn’t think he wanted a relationship or anything, we had never even discussed the possibility of that. I was under the impression that this was going to be just something casual, but a week after term ended, he sent an owl saying he missed me and that hecouldn’t stop thinking about me.” 

“Oh my God…what did you say?” 

“I wrote him back and told him that I wanted to see him.”

“No you did not!” Sage shockingly exclaims. 

“I did!” You reply with a grin on your face. “Leo wasn’t going to be at the estate until later in the summer because his family had planned a holiday, and my parents had been working longer hours, so it was just me and the house elves, and believe me, I love our elves, but I needed someone that was my age, and preferably human…so I invited him to come.” 

“Interesting that you somehow forgot to mention this to me.”

“I’m sorry! By the time he left, Leo had arrived and I was focusing on other things and preparing for school, and I guess I just forgot to mention it,” you say while laughing at Sage’s annoyance. 

“Wait, how long was he there for?”

“Well, only about a month. We basically-”

“A month!” Sage cries, interrupting your sentence. “And you couldn’t be bothered to tell me! What do you even do with a boy for that long?”

“Well I’m trying to tell you now, but you keep interrupting me!”

“Sorry! I’m just excited!”

“I mean honestly we didn’t do that much. We spent a lot of time in the city sightseeing, but when we were home we spent most of our time outside riding bikes or swimming in the lake,” you lie, trying to seem nonchalant about the time you spent with Blaise. 

“Wow, that sounds so romantic.” 

“It was,” you sigh, turning your head towards the window in your room that overlooks the Black Lake. Getting lost in your thoughts, you stare at the sky that is painted shades of orange, pink, and purple for the sunset, and you reminisce on your month with Blaise. 

The Parisian air, thick with humidity, felt hotter than usual and left you with a haze surrounding the memories you made over the summer. You remember sparse but specific moments; tying, undoing, and retying the ribbon in your hair as you stood in your home’s foyer waiting for Blaise to arrive; his dark skin peeking from the undone buttons on his shirt as you danced in your kitchen to the vintage Edith Piaf record you owned; the taste of the espresso-flavored gelato you shared while strolling under the lit up Eiffel tower. 

Blaise arrived at your family’s estate at the beginning of July. Although you had been exchanging owls throughout part of the summer, the agonizing hour you spent standing in the foyer, anticipating his arrival, left you with so much nervous energy that you forced yourself to focus on anything but the minutes counting down. You adjusted, straightened, and smoothed the hem of your white linen dress so that the perfectly pressed edge could fall an inch below your midthigh as if it just happened to effortlessly fall that way. Seeing that only minutes had passed, you walked around the foyer trying to find uneven paintings to level, you combed through the bouquet of dried lavender delicately arranged in a vase on the table in your entryway, looking for a sprig out of place, just so that you had something to do with your hands. Ultimately, you failed, because your house elves had already meticulously cleaned and organized every square centimeter of your home in expectation of Blaise’s arrival. Finally, having nothing else to do, you brought your hands up to your hair to undo the silk ribbon that’s already held part of your hair back and attempted to adjust it so that it sat tighter in your hair. Frustrated at the way the ribbon now felt lopsided, you untied it again and retied it, even though it now sat looser than it had before you started adjusting it. Before you can begin to undo the ribbon yet again, you’re interrupted by a knock at the door, announcing Blaise’s appearance. Turning to the door, you inhaled deeply-a failed attempt at calming your nerves, and opened it. 

Instantly, you’re greeted with a wide smile and deep chocolate eyes. As he steps towards you, Blaise says “Hello?? Can you hear me??”

What.

Pulling yourself out of the memory, you snap your head towards Sage, who is still sitting on your bed with Nyx. 

“Huh?” is all you can manage to get out. 

“I asked if you could hear me,” Sage lets out with a sigh of annoyance. “I was trying to get you to tell me more details about you spending time with Blaise but I guess you lost your ability to hear.”

“I’m sorry! I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Sage playfully teases. “Your sex-filled summer with Blaise? And how you’re going to get him back tonight?” 

You snort and roll your eyes at her comment, “No actually, I was thinking about how we need to start getting ready for tonight unless we want to get mistaken for trolls.”