During a lesson in Potions class, the students were each assigned a potion to make with a partner. It was the first week back from summer break, so they were all assigned potions they had made before, as a short review lesson. 

Across the classroom from Ophelia Potter and her partner Daisy Hookum, was Regulus Black, riddled with guilt still looming over him from the spring.

He had tried apologising to Ophelia before, but she was adamant in not accepting anything from him. 

The countless letters delivered to her house over the summer, the piles of notes that Regulus slipped under her dormitory door, the amount of times he had tried to talk to her at school. All of it a desperate plea for forgiveness, but none of it accepted by Ophelia.

She was often a forgiving person, but not with Regulus. Not anymore. 

She had forgiven him enough times. Now it was up to him to actually prove he was worthy of forgiveness, or he would never get to hear her kind voice again. 

Ophelia and Daisy had been assigned the task of brewing an Amortentia potion. 

As Ophelia added pearl dust to the brew, Daisy's eyes had wandered away from the potion and were focused on the same thing as most students in the room. 

Half of the class was distracted by something small flying from the back of the classroom. After close inspection, the students realised it was a paper crane sent from one student to another. Most students looked away when they saw it was just a piece of parchment, but Daisy kept looking. 

She tapped Ophelia on the shoulder, and pointed at the paper crane heading to their station at the front of the classroom. 

"I think that's for you." Daisy told Ophelia while gesturing to Regulus sitting at the back of the room, also watching the crane. 

Ophelia realised what she meant and rolled her eyes, then turned back to the cauldron. 

After a moment more, the crane landed on the table of the station being occupied by the two girls. 

She couldn't avoid it anymore. Well, she could. But, she decided to unfold the note anyways. She pressed her hand against the piece of parchment, smoothing it out flat on the desk. After running her palm against the note, she looked at the words. 

A simple sentence was written on the parchment in black ink. 

"Ophelia, can we please stay after class and talk?" The note read. 

Not even a signature, but Ophelia didn't need one anyways. She knew from the presentation and the handwriting who it was from. Knowing that, she also knew that she didn't care about the note. 

Daisy stirred the potion while Ophelia was preoccupied. Still stirring, she watched her friend, waiting for her reaction to the letter in curious anticipation. 

Ophelia sighed quietly, then folded the letter and dropped it into her robe pocket. 

"What did it say?" Daisy asked, though she read it too and knew exactly what it said. 

"It doesn't matter." Ophelia said, then strategically changed the subject. "Are we done with the potion?" 

"Yes, I think so."

"Perfect." Ophelia smiled, then called over Professor Slughorn to tell him that her group had finished the task. 

Ophelia caught his attention, and he made his way over to Daisy and Ophelia's station to check their work. 

"Are we all done here, ladies?" He asked, looking down at their potion. 

"Yes." The girls replied in unison. 

"Wonderful." Slughorn said. "Feel free to smell the potion if you'd like. You both know what that does. Or you two could take a break and go on a quick walk down the halls."

The girls thanked the professor, and he walked away over to the group next to them. 

"I want to smell it." Daisy said with a grin. 

She brought her face down to the cauldron filled with an opalescent liquid and took a sniff of the spirals of steam rising from the brew. 

Daisy rose from the cauldron. She paused to process the scent and then looked up with a gleam in her eye. 

"It smells like swiss cheese!" Daisy announced to Ophelia. "And old books and ink, too!"

"Sounds like that Hufflepuff boy you're always sitting with." Ophelia pointed out with a small grin and a raised eyebrow. 

"Maybe." She replied, biting her lip to hide herself blushing. "Do you want to smell it too?"

"I think I'm just going to go for a walk down the halls right now." Ophelia told her.