Snippet #2446666

Claire had finished breakfast, although she still had some of her tea left, when she saw Xing Hei come into the hall. A fellow fifth year student!

She couldn’t recall whether they had potions or transfiguration first up. She’d been considering searching the depths of her bag for the piece of parchment that had been handed to students on the first day of term and had outlined their class timetables. Hers was probably now it was in a sadder state than it had been over a month ago as she’d ceased caring for it once she’d fallen into her schedule. So when Xing came in she slung her bag over her shoulder, picked up her mug, and wandered over to the Slytherin table to go ask him.

She got some dirty look from some of the Slytherins as she set her mug on their table and took a seat on the wooden bench beside Xing. She, naturally, ignored these looks, having little patience for such things and never really being to really respect the habit of segregating houses. She calmly took a sip of her tea, gazing over the rim, challenging anyone to question her, and demonstrated her indifference. Then, setting the mug down again, she turned to Xing.

As usual he was not exactly smiles and sunshine, he looked tired but his expression was composed and impassive.
“Good morning, Xing,” she smiled. I hope you slept well, she wanted to say. But it looked like he hadn’t, so she bit her tongue. “So, um…” She racked her brain for something that she might say to him. “How did you go with last night’s potions homework?”

That seemed a fair enough question. She was pretty sure that Xing was good at potions, and they were both in the same year class. They’d been assigned the homework task of writing about an ingredient of choice, describing its properties, and the effects that other common ingredients and brewing procedures had on it. She’d chosen salamander blood, with its healing and rejuvenating properties, since it was an important ingredient in a strengthening solution, one of the potions on the fifth year’s curriculum. Otherwise, she usually she would have gone for some plant ingredient because of her affinity for Herbology. All this went very quickly through her mind as she waited hopefully for reply for the Slytherin boy beside her.