✓ | RECKLESS AND BRAVE | Draco Malfoy

10 | JOCUND

JOCUND
(adj.) cheerful and light-hearted

TESSA WAS GETTING FRUSTRATED. She and her other three best friends have been observing Quirrell who looked as though he was getting more and more sickly as the days passed. But no matter how pale and thin he got, he didn't seem to crack just yet.

     Every time they passed the third-floor corridor, they would press their ears to the door to check that Fluffy was still growling inside. Tessa had once tried to suggest that they yank the door open to toss some food inside before quickly shutting it, but Ron was the first to shut her idea down quickly with a: "Don't you bloody dare, Tessa Valentine."

     She'd scrunched her nose and stuck her tongue out at him in response, but didn't ask to feed Fluffy anymore.

     Snape was still in his usual bad temper, which meant that the Stone was still safe. Whenever Harry passed Quirrell these days he gave him an encouraging sort of smile, and Ron had started telling people off for laughing at Quirrell's stutter. Tessa still found the professor rather odd, unable to muster a grin or even try to defend him from laughing students. There was something strange with the stuttering wizard, and it gave Tessa goosebumps.

     Hermione, however, had more on her mind than the Sorcerer's Stone. She had started drawing up study schedules and color coding all her notes. She'd tried convincing Tessa to do the same, and the latter had attempted to make her notes pretty and creatively written. But she gave up halfway, knowing she'll never keep it up throughout the year. Hermione stopped pestering over Tessa's studies.

     Neither Harry and Ron would have minded Hermione as well, but she turned her nagging to them, leaving the boys to send pleading looks to Tessa.

     "Hermione, the exams are ages away." Harry groaned and kicked the floor.

     "Ten weeks," Hermione snapped. "That's not ages, that's like a second to Nicolas Flamel."

     "But we're not six hundred years old," Ron reminded her. "Anyway, what are you studying for, you already know it's an A." He sent a glance at Tessa lying upside down on the couch, her nose buried in the Shakespeare book she got on her birthday. "I mean, look at Tessa. She doesn't care whether she fails or not."

     The mentioned girl peered over her book to narrow her eyes at Ron, about to kick him with her foot but he stood up and silently swapped seats with Harry.

     Hermione continued her stressful rant. "What am I studying for? Are you crazy? You realize we need to pass these exams to get into the second year? They're very important, I should have started studying a month ago, I don't know what's gotten into me..."

     Unfortunately, the teachers seemed to be against them, forcing Tessa to actually do work and stop procrastinating and reading her book. They piled so much homework on them that the Easter holidays weren't nearly as much fun as the Christmas ones. It was hard to relax with Hermione reciting the twelve uses of dragon's blood or practicing wand movements. Tessa had fallen asleep on several occasions, finding herself with sore muscles after waking up with her head buried in several parchments.

Tessa and Hermione would join Harry and Ron who spent most of their free time in the library, trying to get through all their extra work.

"I'll never remember this," Ron cried out one afternoon, surprising Tessa as he threw down his quill and looked out of the library window.

     Harry was reading a book on herbs and fungi while Tessa was stretching her arms, having finally finished all the work she'd been assigned with.