Steam curled lazily from the cauldron at the front of the room as Professor Slughorn encouraged the class forward, his voice warm with amusement. One by one, students leaned in, curious and eager, murmuring about what they smelled fresh rain, honey, polished wood, expensive perfume. Laughter followed, light and careless.

Eventually, Elara stepped forward. The scent reached her before she even leaned in fully.

Old ink. The kind that stained fingertips and smudged along the edges of parchment. A hint of something warmer—faintly citrus, like sunlight caught in fabric. And beneath it all, something softer familiar in a way that made her chest tighten before her mind could catch up.

Elara froze. Her fingers tightened at her sides. She didn’t step back immediately. Instead, she inhaled once more, quieter this time, like she was testing it hoping it would change. It didn’t.

She straightened slowly, her face carefully neutral, but something had shifted behind her eyes something sharper, unsettled. She turned, intending to retreat without comment

“Elara?” Slughorn prompted, amused. “What do you smell?”

A pause. She recovered but only just. “Nothing… notable,” she said evenly, voice smooth but thinner than usual, like it had been stretched too tight. “Common things.” A practiced and careful lie.

When your turn came, the scent rose to meet you just as clearly. It smelt like Elara. Not vaguely but specifically. Your gaze lifted and hers was already on you. The realization hit her all at once quiet and catastrophic. You knew.

The crack in her composure was small, almost imperceptible. A slight widening of her eyes. The faintest flush creeping along the line of her neck. Then panic. Not loud or obvious but there. Her gaze snapped away, then back again as if she couldn’t decide which was worse looking at you or not.

She stepped back to her seat cutting you off before you could ask of the scent. “Amortentia is… imprecise,” she said quietly. Her voice was steady, but there was a tightness beneath it, something strained. “It reflects perception. Not truth.”