TPS Part 10: Nott's Nerves

Next class was particularly boring. Onyx mostly spent the time writing an essay for potions and finally it was time for lunch. He walked in with the other Slytherins but quickly made his way out of the group and over to a corner of the Gryffindor table.

He walked up behind a few girls who seemed to barely touch their food. "What's up? Has she come out yet?" The trio jumped as they hadn't expected someone to come up behind them. As they looked at Onyx whose eyes only portrayed guilt and compassion they visibly relaxed and one of them, Parvati Onyx thought her name was, spoke up.

"No. At your mention she almost seemed to be willing to come out here but she refused to leave and eventually locked herself into one of the stalls." Onyx sighed and scratched his head. He leaned down and lowered his voice.

"I don't want you all to spread this around, as it might tarnish my already poor reputation. But could you sneak me into the girl's bathroom? I'd like to give it a shot at least. She's a nice girl underneath her sometimes aggressive tone."

Onyx smiled gently at them. Dunbar looked into his eyes, nodded, grabbed his hand and instantly started dragging him out of the great hall.

'Well at least they won't think I'm a creep, it'll be difficult convincing anyone that I'm not trying anything with Dunbar though. Guess I'll handle that later, one focus at a time" Onyx thought as the two quickly walked through the halls with joined hands.

Very quickly they reached the bathroom in question, surprisingly the stairs hadn't given them any trouble at all but really helped them. 'I'll have to look into what controls the stairs at some point' Onyx thought as he stood in front of the bathroom.

He looked around and saw that there were a few onlookers, but they only saw Dunbar dragging him in there. Surely that wouldn't be his fault? Right? Onyx walked a few steps forward and ended up in front of the locked stall. "Hermione? Is that you in there?"

As soon as he said that, he heard someone jump and almost fall off their seat in there "O-Onyx? What are you doing here? Only girls are allowed here you know? What if someone sees you? You'll get in trouble!" Onyx smiled. Even though he could clearly hear that she had been crying until very recently on her voice, she still rambled on about how he'd get into trouble. She was worrying unnecessarily.

"Oh no! Hadn't thought about that. Let me in there so I can hide with you then!" Onyx said in a joking manner so imagine his surprise when he heard a 'click' and in front of him stood a clearly distraught Hermione.

Her eyes were red and puffy, her nails bitten down, her hair even more frizzy than normal and streaks of tears ran down her cheeks. Onyx quickly walked in and wrapped his arms around her.

He let her cry on his shoulder as he felt her arms wrap around him a lot stronger than he thought such a delicate girl could manage. Rufus was walking around their ankles pouring some gentle magic into the girl. Onyx fed her some calming words about 'the Weasel not being worth it' and told her to start hanging out with those who deserved her.

A bit into that speech he noticed that Dunbar looked like she felt a bit left out and so Onyx broke off the hug, kissed Hermione on the forehead and made way for Dunbar to take his place.

"I'll handle the weasel, you two take all the time you need. I have notes for the classes and all of the assignments you would be given today so don't worry about anything like that." Hermione gave him a thankful weak smile as he left the room to go say some words to the red headed boy.

Once he got back to the great hall, he noticed that Rufus wasn't with him. He had apparently stayed behind to use some of his more soothing abilities. No matter, he didn't need him when he was going to make a confrontation.

Walking through the doors he was met by the Parvati girl and one more whose name slipped his mind. They nodded and walked behind him as he walked to the middle of the table.

"It's a shame you have to take your own lack of talent out on others." Onyx sat down next to the weasel and the two girls sat down opposite, next to Potter but currently they were too busy glaring at Weasley to notice him.

"If you'd just fail on your own and not try to drag down the next of us you'd just be a waste of space, but that's of course an upgrade on what you currently are."

This seemed to make the boy's face match his hair in colour. He clenched one fist and reached into his pocket with his other hand. Half a second later, a wand was in Onyx's hand "Nu uh, I wouldn't do that if I were you."

The boy gaped at the speed Onyx had brought out his wand. But now gulped as the wand was directed right at his crotch. Onyx looked into the boy's eyes with clear anger and a slight glow to to the blue in his eyes.

"You'll apologize to the girl who simply wanted to help you get a spell right. She may have done so without you asking and not in the best way possible but she was only trying to help your lousy ass not drag down your entire house with you. Is that understood?" Onyx looked around the table and sadly one of the few who had realized what he was doing was one of the boy's brothers so as soon as he nodded, Onyx stood up and left the table.

The rest of Samhain was uneventful. Next day Onyx would find out that the weasel in fact did ask profusely for Hermione's forgiveness and sadly, for Onyx's sake, she accepted it.

The weeks went by and only one thing of note seemed to happen. Rufus was getting more and more sick for every week. At first it was just a little weakness but now he could barely move. Due to their strong connection this had been affecting Onyx as well, making him lose concentration in several classes. This made sure that he was only second in his year during the last round of tests. He wasn't very worried, what worried him was that Rufus never seemed to get better.

The last week while Rufus had been bedridden, Onyx had been hit by several curses and jinxes when he didn't have his fox watching over his shoulder or looking for traps. Onyx had gotten a bit better at spotting them but he was still sent to Madam Pomfrey most days. Today, Nott came up to him alone.

He was clearly not very comfortable with talking to him but Onyx had seen him try and walk up to him when they were alone before, this time he made it this far. "What is it Nott? Malfoy hasn't sent you has he?"

Onyx knew that they shared a room but Nott clearly didn't like that fact and even flinched at the mention of his name. "No." Nott looked at the ground, not even managing to look at Onyx's feet. "Well? What do you have to say?"

Nott cleared his throat. "I..I know about the fox." Onyx blinked several times and his eyes widened more as he heard the follow up "And I know what's causing it."