Turning the Corner

CHAPTER NINE

The Lotus Drowned

The next day nobody took seriously the correct process for desiccating cassia. Professor Sprout gave up, and said, "I'm not having my cassia damaged by your frivolous handling ... just copy the instructions into your notes, and we'll do the practical next term."

"She's an imbecile woman," muttered Malfoy to Crabbe.

I buried my nose in my exercise scroll and scribbled furiously because it gave me an excuse not to look around and meet anyone's eye. I was trying to avoid Padma.

Terry and I spent break flying around the Quidditch pitch on very old school Cleansweeps. Mine swayed through the air as nervously as an ancient horse that was too frail to be ridden. Reminding myself that broomsticks do not have feelings, I remarked, "I wish I had my own broom! One that - "

But Terry was not listening. He was swooping down from the goalposts in a daring dive, apparently for the benefit of a group of Hufflepuff girls sitting in the stands. He realised in time that his Cleansweep would not be able to reverse into the sharp angle he had chosen in time to prevent a major crash. A mere seven feet from the ground, he had to leap off the seat and hang on with one hand, his toes dragging along the frosty grass. Fortunately, he hit safety at the precise instant that the broom tip slammed into the mud. The girls, who apparently believed he had performed this gymnastic feat on purpose, burst into applause. Terry bowed modestly.

Professor Binns had not noticed that Christmas was coming, but nor did he notice that nobody was listening to a word he said. Nobody except Hermione Granger was still taking notes, and even she didn't seem to be paying attention to what she was writing. Among all the chattering and rustling, I noticed that Padma had her eyes firmly on her female friends. The only exception was when she launched a paper dart at Blaise Zabini - who ignored it. When Padma realised that Zabini was not going to acknowledge her note in class, she pointedly turned back to Morag and Su.

It occurred to me that Padma was the one avoiding me. So I decided not to avoid her any more. She had set up this situation. She could be the one who made the effort.

Professor Sinistra dealt with the festive mood by concentrating on Major Theories about the Star of Bethlehem - Arguments in Favour of (1) Halley's Comet and (2) a Conjunction. She span the stars in her model astrosphere to the presumed position, and pretended not to hear when Lisa exclaimed, "They look just like fairy lights!" However, she did announce, "There will be no stargazing this evening. Merry Christmas!"

Professor Flitwick did not even try to teach. He suggested a competition in which a cageful of white mice were to be turned different colours. After Mandy had managed twelve colours in five seconds, he awarded her a box of sugar mice, and after that we did nothing but eat sugar and throw colour-charms at one another.

With McGonagall's essay handed in, we had no homework, so we spent all evening playing cards and discussing magical or political theories. The common room had become very messy with papers that nobody bothered to tidy away and personal property to which people were always expecting to return. Not wanting to go to bed, I idly picked up a book that someone had left by the fire. It was Penelope Clearwater's book, Wisdom for the Searching Heart. It sprang open at a lemon-yellow page that bore the legend:

Happy is the man who can laugh at himself,
for he will never cease to be amused.

"Terry," I said, "can you make a joke about me?"

"A joke? You mean, like turning your hair blue? Or doing a Malfoy and telling everyone about how you're scared of vampires?"

"Not exactly. I mean, what is there about me that's ... er ... amusing?"

"Same as about everyone, I suppose."

"Everyone?"

"Well, we all make mistakes, don't we? Like me nearly crashing the Cleansweep this morning. And if we don't take a good laugh, we spend our whole lives worrying about not being perfect. ... Oh, I see, you're reading the Book of Wisdom again. Did it call you stupid?"

I showed him the proverb.

"Well, that's hardly worth saying," Terry snorted. "Talk about stating the blindingly obvious!"

Obvious? Was it? "So what's funny about my situation?" I tried again.

"Depends what you think your situation is, I suppose. That you worked so hard on your charms homework, only to find that Flitwick didn't glance at it? There's a sort of joke in that."

A furtive glance around the common room showed me that Kevin and Anthony had joined the fifth-years for yet more Exploding Snap, while the girls were so far down the other end that I couldn't tell whether they were discussing dress robes or dance steps. "I mean," I muttered, "what's funny about this business with Padma?"

"Oh. Tougher one. Well, perhaps it's ironic-funny that you had a girlfriend when you didn't need one, and then it all broke up just when you needed a partner for the ball. No, that's not funny. Forget that. Or maybe - "

"Maybe?"

Terry swallowed. "I know this isn't you," he lied, "but just suppose you - I mean, someone else - had been thinking of it as a great transcendent love-affair. Obviously Transcendent Love Affairs don't break up over little things like the way you ask someone to a dance. So if this Transcendent Love Affair broke up so easily, it - umm - well, there would be a funny side."

And suddenly, I realised that Terry was right. Although I wouldn't have used an expression like Transcendent Love Affair, not in earnest, I had thought myself very serious about Padma. But the affair had crashed for no particular reason, and I couldn't honestly claim that my heart was broken. My own seriousness was funny.

I was laughing. Out loud.

Terry was puzzled. To change the subject, I asked, "Will it matter if we don't have partners for this ball?"

"It shouldn't," he said, but he didn't sound convinced.

The truth was that by now the boys as well as the girls were obsessed with the business of dance partners. I only realised how much during Potions on Wednesday. Snape told us to pair up to brew our Heartsease Potion, and Terry was nowhere in sight! He had moved over to a Hufflepuff table, and was helping Sally-Anne Perks to measure her edelweiss roots.

Then I saw that Anthony was working with Mandy instead of Kevin, and Kevin was hovering uncertainly around Lisa and Su. Nearly all the boys were working with a girl: Ernie Macmillan with Hannah Abbott, Justin Finch-Fletchley with Susan Bones, Wayne Hopkins with Megan Jones, Stephen Cornfoot with Morag. Even Robert, whose nose was usually buried so far into a book that he hadn't noticed girls existed, had marched up to Kevin and was only hesitating a fraction before pushing past him. That fraction was enough for Lisa. She grabbed Kevin's elbow and swung her bag onto his bench, leaving Robert to take her place next to Su.

There were only four of us without a prac partner: Zacharias Smith showed no sign of wanting to work with Constance Roper, and I would have to choose one of them quickly if I didn't want to be landed with Padma.

"So," said Zacharias, as soon as I was cutting his roots and he was measuring my powder, "do you lot have dates for the Yule Ball yet?" It was the kind of smug confidence that really meant, "I want you to know that I have a date."

If Zacharias hadn't heard about Padma and me, I didn't see why I should tell him. And I didn't want to hear Padma explaining it either. Fortunately it was Constance who replied.

"Yes, I'm going with Eddie Carmichael. What about you, Zacharias?"

"Parvati Patil," he said. "I asked her on Sunday. So who's this Eddie? Not in Slytherin, is he?"

"Oh, no," Constance was slightly smiling. "Ravenclaw. You'd know him, Michael - his Potions notes go all round your common room."

I did know Eddie Carmichael. He was in the year above us, and I had been saved from many a detention with Snape by swotting up on copies of Eddie's immaculate old Potions notes. "He's good fun," I agreed. I was saved from having to think of anything else to say by the hiss of Snape's voice.

"Miss Jones! Miss Perks! We do not require a lecture on sumptuary customs in a Potions lesson. Stop chattering, all of you, and pay attention. On Friday we shall be having an antidotes test. I will select one of you - that is, whichever person brews the worst potion today - to take the poison, and the rest of you will be required to produce the correct antidote without the use of notes. Do I make myself clear? And the possible poisons that I might select are..."

Snape gave us a list of twelve poisons, three of them quite obscure. I was writing so intently that I did not notice the smell of burnt flowers from somewhere in the dungeon. Even when the fumes directly invaded my nostrils, I did not register that I should do something about it. Just as I lay my quill down after writing "belladonna major" there was a loud bang and suddenly black liquor was pouring all around my feet. Zacharias and I scaled the table in time to avoid scalding our legs, and looked down to see that our cauldron had exploded.

"We all know now who will be ingesting poison on Friday," said Snape softly. "I suppose Corner and Smith were too busy boasting about their girlfriends to remember to turn down the fire before adding willow oil. You boys may take more ingredients from the store cupboard and begin your potion again after you have cleared up the mess. And there is no need for the rest of you to stop working - you've all seen incompetent idiots destroying their potions before."

After a spate of cooling spells and scouring spells and gathering spells and a good old Muggle mop and bucket, we had dealt with the mess (Snape, we knew, could have banished the mixture in a second with a vanishing spell), but while our classmates were stoppering their bottles, we had to start again from the beginning. Snape glowered at us from behind his desk, as if we were stealing his spare time, while we chopped and filtered and mixed and poured and stirred and raised and lowered temperatures, all without saying a word. I never really knew what to say to Zacharias, and neither of us wanted to give Snape an excuse to fail our second batch.