"Now, as I was saying," Slughorn went on, "The Draught of Peace is a potion which relieves anxiety and agitation. It takes around ninety minutes to be fully brewed, which means you have enough time to make it until the end of the class. You may find the instruction in page seven of your books. Now go on!"

      There was loud sounds of scrabbling around the room as everyone took out their cauldrons and ingredients, starting the brewing.

    "Hi," Alexandra smiled at the black-haired boy beside her kindly, even though he had laughed at her not too long before. "I'm Alexandra."

     "Good for you," said the boy coldly, attending to his potion without glancing at her.

    "Aren't you going to tell me your name?" she tried to say nicely.

    "No."

     Alexandra tapped her fingers on table impatiently and pursed her lips together, before clearing her throat at the boy to get his attention.

     Sighing, he put his book down angrily and turned to look at her through his grey eyes. "What?"

     "Well — I was wondering if you could share your book with me," she said hesitantly. "I forgot to bring mine with me today."

     "You forgot?" The boy smirked at her. "Are you sure you're a Ravenclaw?"

     "Yes," she said firmly, even though she looked slightly hurt. "And as a matter of fact, I take pride in it. Today I had just slept in."

    "Oh, that makes it sound a lot better," he said sarcastically. "And nice touch on wearing your robes inside-out, by the way."

"Oh... it wasn't really intentional, but thanks!" Alexandra said cheerfully and smiled genuinely at him, his sarcasm going unnoticed by her.

"Weirdo," the boy mumbled under his breath, going back to stirring his potion.

    But Alexandra didn't really mind. She was used to being called that by now. And as a matter of fact, she was starting to like it.

    So trying to ignore the boy, Alexandra decided to go on with the ingredients Slughorn had already written on the board, even though it lacked instructions.

    She didn't want to bother asking the other Slytherins around the table, afraid to get the same respond. She even tried calling Professor Slughorn a few times, but he seemed too busy attending to his favorite students as always.

     Fifteen minutes had passed and it was obvious that Alexandra's Potion was not going as it should've. She knew that the Potion was supposed to be a light shade of purple by this time, but it was now a muddy color of green and even looked more solid than liquid.

    "What the heck are you doing?" said the same boy to her right, now glancing down at her cauldron.

    "Making the Draught of Peace," said Alexandra, avoiding his gaze and stirring her disastrous looking potion.

    "No," said the boy flatly, "what you're doing is screwing up the Draught of Peace."

     Alexandra turned her head on him. "I thought you didn't care."

     "I will, if it blows up in my face!" said the boy. "Ugh, you know what? Forget it. Do what you want."

Alexandra was terrible at coming up with a comeback, because she wasn't used to talking back at people, always being the quiet and shy type. So she decided to ignore him and go on with the Potion until Slughorn could come around and help her.

     So she then raised her arm to add some powdered unicorn horn, but just then the boy's eyes widened in horror as he tried to yell, "NO, DON'T —"

     But it was too late.

Not a second later after the powder was dropped into the cauldron, the potion blew up in their faces, covering Alexandra and the boy in a disgusting green slime.

"I literally just said it would blow up!" he yelled.

"I thought you meant it figuratively!" Alexandra retorted helplessly.

The students around the room were now sniggering and laughing in muffled tones as Slughorn made his way worriedly toward the two.

  "Oh, dear, dear." Slughorn came forward with a sigh and then gave his wand a flick, repairing the cauldron. "You two better go and clean up. Go on."

Huffing, the boy with black hair turned on his heels and immediately left the class and Alexandra followed him right behind, blushing in embarrassment.

"I am so sorry!" Alexandra said for the fourth time as she followed him up the corridors.

"Leave me alone," the boy mumbled.

"You see, I was a little pissed that you wouldn't even let me look at your book. I don't understand what I supposed to have done," Alexandra kept on rambling as she followed him, "But I wanted to say sorry for the green potion incident —"

    "Stop saying sorry!" he snapped at her.

    "Oh, okay, sor — I mean — not sorry."

     The boy huffed again in annoyance before going along his way. But she kept on going.

     "You see, I feel really guilty if I know someone's mad at me. I won't be able to sleep —"

  "Fine!" The boy cut her off angrily, stopping to turn to look at her sharply. "Will you shut up if I accepted your apology?"

"Of course!" Alexandra smiled at him happily and nodded in glee.

  "Okay then," the boy sighed in exhaustion before looking back at her. "Apology accepted. Now goodbye."

With that, he walked for a few seconds longer until he finally reached a bathroom. He walked inside immediately, knowing that she could no longer follow him there.

So he walked toward one of the sinks and started trying to cleanse his robes by splashing water on it, but it was helpless and wouldn't wash off the potion.

But he took aback when in the mirror's reflection, he saw the girl walking inside the bathroom after him.

"You can't come in here!" he said, turning around to face her angrily. "This is the boys' bathroom!"

"This is the girls' lavatory, actually," said Alexandra with another giggle, walking toward him.

He gaped at her, as if he couldn't believe how she was still so calm and kind to him after he had talked to her harshly.

"Here, let me help you with that," she said in her dreamy voice, taking out her wand and waving it at him. The next moment, his robes became as clean as new.

   "Why didn't you do that before!?"

  "Well, I wanted you to forgive me first. I knew if I had done it earlier, you wouldn't have stuck around long enough to accept my apology."

     She shrugged, as if it were the most obvious reason in the world. The boy stared at her for some while in disbelief, thinking to himself that she was probably the most peculiar and bizarre human being he'd ever seen.

"Well..." Alexandra started, giving him a little smile, "now that I'm forgiven, can you at least tell me your name?"

With that, the boy sighed in defeat. "I'm Regulus," he finally said. "Regulus Black."