The smell of freshly brew potions filled your nostrils as you mixed herbs with your pestle and mortar. You would have mixed other ingredientes as well, but, lucky you, got paired with Merula. And there was just no way, that she would let you do something that would create the remote posibility to take more credit than she could.

So you were stuck with the plants. And it was going good, really. If it wasn´t because you could see the nervous pace of the other girl, as she gathered the rest of the ingredients. Or how she had picked the wrong one three times in a row. That wasn´t proper of her. She´d sooner break the vial in your head to knock you out, before allowing you to see that she had commited a mistake.

It took her longer than usual- not that you kept track- but she was back at the table with the slightly more dangerous jars. But something was off. There was exhaustion etched on her face- more bitterness than smugness today. Weird. She was more like a perfect, toxic mix of both. But oh god spare you from asking; she would most certainly strangle you right there, for doubting her integrity.

So, you kept quiet. When she added half more of an axabran hair, or when she didn´t mix exactly five drops of acromantula venom. Not even when the cauldron exploded on your faces and Snape scolded and sent you both to the bathroom to clean up -you were now covered in soot. You didn´t say anything about that, either.-

But when she didn´t blame you for the incident, and just walked down the hallway without a cruel comment- oh, boy. That´s when you truly worried.