A Recipe for Sabotage PV

The very beginning of the school year and Locket was already excited for classes. At least the ones where she would have to count, use logic, and be precise. After all that’s what she did best, after her parents were so adamant about sending her to science camps and after she volunteered at the observatory. She loved all kinds of sciences, and even though she did not yet know what they would be like in the wizarding world she was excited to find out.

Today she had potions class right after breakfast, so she made her way to the already slightly familiar dungeons. In class they would be making a potion, so she prepared her cauldron and also laid out all of the ingredients she would be needing. This was her element. As the professor told them to begin she wasted no time. She pretty much knew what she was doing, she followed the steps that the professor had explained precisely, and even though this was all very new to her, it wasn’t so different from a science experiment she would do back in her own school.

All this was until a certain thing didn’t mess her up… She really wasn’t being that annoying that day, and she even raised her hand in class to say her answer instead of saying it without raising it. She really didn’t know what she did wrong, as a paper airplane, armed with what seemed to be scraps of ingredients from the recipe, landed right in her cauldron, before she could even react. She gasped and quickly tried to take it out. She needed to use her spoon to scoop out the bits of unneeded ingredients that were now brewing in her otherwise perfect potion.

As she was doing so she angrily whipped her head around, to look for who would have committed such a heinous act. And right behind her, in the desk behind hers sat a boy who looked very guilty, and like he was about to laugh. Having an older sister she knew exactly how a person who’d just committed a prank looked.

“Hey, you!” she said loudly, with agitation dripping in her voice, as a few students around them turned to stare curiously. “Did you throw this airplane? You know that could’ve ended really badly! Weren’t you listening when the professor talked about caution?!” she fumed.

Who does he think he is? I’ll make sure to teach him that this is not right! Then, with confidence, she took a handful of dried nettles and threw them into his potion. Take this, little devil!

The smug smirk on the boy’s face fuelled her annoyment and made her throw of dried nettles into his cauldron more agitated. Seeing her action wipe that smirk off his face made her dwell in her success, with a smug satisfaction. She’d dealt with boys like him in her muggle school, and they always seemed to be the worst ones in class, so she had no mercy on him. But just as his words: “Good, now I have an explanation for why mine didn't work,” reached her ears, her smugness, alike to his, was erased from her face.

“It wasn’t gonna work either way. You’re not gonna get through this class with luck,” she sneered back. For her it wasn’t even worth it trying to look nonchalant, because her face had a mind of its own, and every single agitated expression she made at the boy was as apparent as black ink on white paper.

His next remark, specifically his phrase: “it’s not that serious” annoyed her even more. On some unconscious level of her mind, she agreed with him, but right now, when she knew that her parents had great expectations for her, and that they didn’t like this whole “witch thing” already, so she knew she had to make them proud. The boy’s statement just made her first impression of him worse. Of course it's that serious! she thought.

“Maybe I will in the future, you have no idea who you’re talking to! Maybe I’ll become a great potioneer. Besides, just because you don’t think it’s that serious, doesn’t mean the rest of us can laze through these classes without a thought in our minds!” she said, and was ready to end the conversation. He’d already taken enough time out of her lesson, and she wasn’t going to let such a smug little jerk ruin her day.

But then she heard that he mumbled something under his breath. “Nerd,” the boy said and she just couldn’t stop herself from turning back around at him. Her mind raced with all the things she could do to finally ruin that nonchalant exterior of his, since even throwing excess ingredients into his potion didn’t seem to work! He clearly cared about his reputation more than some potion, so she decided that was the best way to get back at him.

“You think you’re so cool? Well, newsflash, you just look stupid! I’m a nerd, so what? At least I’m not some idiot, who clearly doesn’t get enough attention as it is, so he decides to annoy a hard working student!” she scrunched her nose as she talked to him, as if looking at him was excruciating in itself.