Chapter Text
Korra just doesn’t notice people. It’s a recurring problem she has. It’s not that she actually means to be callous or tactless or any of that crap, it’s more that she’s usually focused on other stuff, like how awesome a Beater she is, and did everyone see that really amazing trick she pulled in the game last week, or sometimes she’s focused on how she really fucked up the Arithmancy homework.
But mostly, her life is so packed with stuff she doesn’t really get how some people can actually notice others; how they can get to know them just by reading their facial expressions, can keep track of all the kids in their class or even their House. To be honest the first years kind of blend into one solid lump, and the second and third have similar problems. She knows all the Quidditch players of every House, though, and a handful of other people, and she’s on actual Best Friend terms with Bolin the Hufflepuff Chaser who is a real pal and helps out with her Herbology homework all the time.
And that’s pretty much it. Most people know her, most people seem to like her a lot, going by all the cheering she gets during and after the games, but very few of them make it onto her short list of people whose names she can match to their faces. Korra figures that’s not even a big problem, like how many people does someone need to have as good friends anyway? But it does make for awkward moments sometimes. Like that time she offended someone who apparently had crushed on her since they were nine- awkward, she still doesn’t know the guy’s name.
Or now, when she’s trying to justify herself to Bolin. “There are so many Gryffindors,” she says, patiently. “I have no idea how I’m supposed to remember the name of one particular Gryffindor. She’s not even in Quidditch.”
“Wow, Korra,” Bolin laughs, incredulously. “That’s not actually- I mean, you shouldn’t have to use that to remember people. Are you serious? You really don’t know her? She was a prefect for two years! She’s Head Girl!”
“Oh, well, prefects,” Korra says, immediately categorizing them as a lower life form with her tone of voice.
“Asami Sato,” Bolin says, with great patience, “Is not a typical prefect. Obviously not, since you haven’t been in any trouble with her, and I swear you intentionally find these people and blow things up just to get detentions. For the fun of it. And then your House loses points and everyone hates you.”
“Yeah, but I get ‘em back again,” Korra blows off the whole House point system as totally irrelevant. Why people even care about the whole thing just escapes her. You end up with the Great Hall decorated in green and silver and maybe some cheering despite Slytherins being unfairly disliked for no good reason, and that’s about it. “I got like fifty points last week in Defense Against the Dark Arts, with that vampire exercise. You weren’t there, it was with the Gryffindors. Anyway, this vampire, you know? It was-“
Bolin waves his hand in front of her face, bringing her sharply back to reality. “Dude, Korra. Focus. Asami. Your Potions partner for the next month? Kind of important.”
Basically, while Korra is, naturally, amazingly talented with most forms of magic- she excelled at Defense Against the Dark Arts despite having a more offensive method than is usually considered acceptable, breezed through Charms easily, and even managed to pull off Transfiguration relatively well, she was terrible at Potions. (That and Arithmancy. And Herbology. And probably anything that required patience without flashy results.) And even though this was her last year and she’d been managing to pull by so far, apparently she’d been slacking way too much lately for her to just get a pass.
In any case, their Potions professor had decided, in her infinite wisdom, that Korra needed a tutor and had assigned her with a willing and able teacher’s pet suck-up that Korra didn’t even know. When she was perfectly capable of finding her very own Potions helper, from her own House even, without any of this assigning her some random Gryffindor nerds. (She is already intent on disliking this Asami girl, who couldn’t be that amazing anyway if Korra hadn’t even noticed her for all seven years she’d been at Hogwarts, Head Girl or no.)
“You don’t know the names of half your form,” Bolin sighs. “Come on, give her a chance.”
“Do you know her or something?” Korra looks at him, frowning. He seems awfully keen on defending her for someone who just knows her as Head Girl. She’d tease him for having a crush, but they’re still a little shaky after Bolin revealed, last year, that he’d been carrying a torch for Korra. Right after he’d caught her necking with his older brother after a big Quidditch match. Their friendship did survive the fall-out after that, but she’s not likely to talk to him about anything along those lines for a good long while.
Bolin shrugs uncomfortably. “She was Mako’s girlfriend for most of last year,” he reveals.
And suddenly, yeah, she remembers Asami Sato. Tall, lithe, green-eyed Asami with the sort of long, dark, wavy hair that no one calls hair anymore- that’s called ‘tresses’. She remembers spending a couple months stewing in a thundercloud of jealousy and taking it out on the bludgers. Had managed to knock Mako off his broom at some point, though she’d caught him and the snitch in a steep speed dive. (The snitch was accidental, she’d batted something away from her eyes and her fingers closed onto the winged metal ball.)
She remembers cornering him in the locker room and landing that kiss on him, remembers him opening his mouth receptively and leaning into her. (Bolin’s shocked and then heart-broken expression.)
All in all it was a pretty embarrassing period of her school career, especially considering that it was short-lived and Asami was out of the picture now. She doesn’t know why, only that she and Mako had broken up and it was messy. Bolin doesn’t talk about it and getting information from Mako is damn near impossible.
“Ah,” she just says, awkwardly.
“And I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know you were behind the dungbomb incident,” he clarifies.
Korra wants to go back in time and stab herself in the eye. “Right,” she adds, cringing inwardly.
“I talk to her sometimes and she’s really nice,” Bolin continues. “So maybe even if she knew it was you, she wouldn’t like intentionally try to sabotage you out of spite. But she’s a really cool girl and I feel like you’d probably like her because you’re really cool too, you know? And maybe if she helps you out you won’t have to buy so many new cauldrons.”
“I blew the thing up once. Just once!”
“You sent cockroach legs and bat guts flying into my face!” Bolin gestures wildly, as though trying to show a massively catastrophic event, “Do you know how gross that is? And I had no eyebrows for a week!”
Korra groans. “I bought you sooo many sugar quills to make up for that. And chocolate frogs, and that really weird exploding jawbreaker you like. I thought I’d purchased your silence.”
“I will never forget the guts,” Bolin says with conviction. “Never.”
So maybe she does need a little help. And maybe Asami is a god at everything Korra sucks at. That doesn’t mean she has to like it. So when she heads down to the dungeons to meet her new- Potion’s aide, or study partner, or whatever they’ve decided to call it, she can feel the scowl pulling down on the corners of her mouth and furrowing her brows. Probably she should be putting on a positive attitude for something like this, but she’s resenting the whole thing so much that positivity is difficult.
The classroom is empty, which always looks strangely abandoned. It’s just the jars of anonymous swimming creatures and organs, and the shelves of empty glass vials and bottles, and the board with its dusty white just-erased surface. Professor Pema is standing just to the left of the tremendous cauldron in which she usually brews personal supplies of potions for the hospital wing, the strange blue light from the current potion playing across her face. Tendrils, thin, twisting fingers of steam rise up into the air and shape themselves into strange designs.
Whatever it is, it smells vaguely sour and also kind of cabbagey. Hopefully nothing Korra will have to choke down after a Quidditch injury.
“You’re late,” Pema says, raising an eyebrow at her. She’s got a round, soft, sweet face and the eyebrow raise just makes her look like somebody’s mom. The eyebrow effect is just lost. Korra thinks she could try a pair of spectacles to help carry off that severe look she’s trying on, but intelligently doesn’t say it.
“A crowd of first years ran me down,” she says, with a grin that most people find charming. It does nothing for the Gryffindor Head of House, Professor BeiFong, but the vast majority of adults seem to find it adorable. Pema is one of these people, and she does nothing but sigh, fondly, and turn to the other person in the room.
“Asami, this is Korra,” she says, “Although I’m sure you two have met at least once already.”
Korra hasn’t actually met Asami so much as made faces at her from across a crowded room or stared daggers through her while she was dating Bolin’s brother, which is all very horrible and embarassing and probably doesn’t even count, so she just smiles like an idiot and nods at Asami. Hello, please do not know about the dungbomb incident or the locker room scene. Because if you do, I do not want to explain to why I ran out of the room screaming and can no longer have a potions buddy or whatever.
Asami actually has a really nice smile. Some people smile and they look like tremendous dorks, like Bolin, and some people look really fake and cold, and some people just have this cute little shy smile, but Asami’s is- warm, and slow, and it makes her look even prettier, which is kind of monumentally unfair. Because really, how much prettier is one person allowed to get? It’s almosy sickening.
“I’ve never met her exactly, but of course I know who she is,” Asami says, still smiling at Korra.
“Of course you do?” Korra asks, feeling a little defensive because what’s that supposed to mean?
“Quidditch,” Asami explains, “I don’t play it myself and of course you’re Slytherin so I really shouldn’t be cheering for you, but I can’t help but notice you out there. You do all of the most complicated plays, and you’re captain now and it really shows in the strategy. You’re very bold.”
“Bold is an understatement,” Pema says, dryly, no doubt thinking of the occasions when Korra has been caught rulebreaking.
Korra, usually completely comfortable with receiving compliments, shrugs a shoulder awkwardly and smiles a bit. “Yeah, well,” she says, “Thanks.”
Strategy, she’s been told, is a really nice way of putting it when most of the plays she writes are mainly offensive without much of a thought to defense. It’s true, she’s not the best at subtlety and she mainly goes for the tried and true method of blowing her opponents away with a well-placed blast of force. It doesn’t always work, but it’s been working pretty well for Slytherin so far, since most of their players are big and bulky enough.
Pema talks at them for a little while, explaining how this whole thing is going to work. Basically, Korra’s supposed to find some time in her daily schedule to sit in the library with Asami or even occasionally take up some time in the dungeons, trying to brew whatever potion she’s crappiest at. Everything else is totally up to them: the time they meet, how long they meet, even the location of the meeting is up in the air. They don’t have to meet at the library if they don’t think it’s ‘conducive to a studying environment,’ since Korra is such an active person.
“I know, let’s fit a cauldron to my broomstick,” Korra says sarcastically, when she and Asami have managed to get out of the room. “I’ve never tried it before and it’s sure to be exciting.”
Asami laughs. “Actually, I’ve had something else in mind.”
Talking to her is, thankfully, much easier than she thought it would be. Maybe Korra’s kind of biased against prefects since most of them are of the stick-up-the-butt persuasion, and Head Girl seemed like a higher category of teacher’s pet. And also Asami’s pretty in that Siren’s Guide magazine way, sleek hair and burnished lips and sultry long eyelashes that Korra can’t help but think of obnoxious girly-girls who giggle over everything in that vapid way. (Never mind that she’s actually never met one of those. Ever.)
They’re heading down one of the passegways through the tapestries, and hopefully she’s not going into the Gryffindor common room or anything because some people go really weird about this whole House rivalry they’re supposed to be having. Korra decides to stick to the Potions topic, because anything else would be too awkward right now and Mako’s like the big pink elephant in the room.
“So,” she tries, “You like Quidditch?” And then wants to eat her tongue because what kind of stupid question is that? Really.
Asami turns her head and smiles at her, brightly, like she’s really interested in the topic. She supposes she must be, but she didn’t expect her eyes to light up like this over Quidditch. She doesn’t even play the game. “I love it,” she says, “I watch all the games, of course. I go home and gush about it and of course my father doesn’t understand any of it but it’s all to blame over my falling out with football and hockey. I used to watch those religiously but now they don’t seem as exciting, you know?”
Korra just stares at her and Asami- she doesn’t blush, exactly, but she does look kind of embarassed and shakes her head.
“Sorry,” she says, “I went all muggleborn for a second there. Football and hockey are muggle sports- with a ball or a puck? Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed watching sports.” Asami pushes at the wall and they step out of a mirror somewhere further away from the library that Korra had been expecting. Maybe it was going to be the Gryffindor common room after all.
“If you like sports so much, why don’t you play any?” she asks, a bit more of an edge to her tone than she really wants to be there. She expects that Asami enjoys watching it well enough but doesn’t want to get her hands dirty, or get herself sweaty, or something like that.
Asami pauses and doesn’t look at her. “Well,” she says, “Well. I’d like to.”
It doesn’t strike Korra that she sounded sad, or wistful, or something along those lines, until later. Because she’s bad at this, she’s bad at noticing people. All she says is: “Well, go ahead and do it, then.” Korra’s never had anyone or anything holding her back.
And Asami just smiles at her again, but this time it’s not as bright and warm, it’s more like an afterthought. “Alright,” she says, “So when do you want to meet to study?”
Korra’s just left with the feeling she might have missed something.
The Slytherin common room is actually one of the least comfortable rooms Korra has ever been in. It makes sense, the place is a dungeon, but they’re all kind of magical, so she figures that someone could have lit the place brighter. Somewhere in the Slytherin group mind, there seems to be a high tendency towards the darkly dramatic. Korra has never managed to soak up that trait. She figures she can be dramatic enough with bright colors and awesome spells and maybe a bunch of magically conjured fireworks going off behind her.
Also, someone is always playing chess.
“Mageright,” she mutters, and heaves a sigh as the passageway opens up. Cool green light flickers along the stone walls, and the low-level buzzing din of students chattering among themselves is filling the room as she walks in. A quick glance tells her that yes, there is a chess match going on in front of the fireplace. Good old status quo.
Korra figures that since students from every House are in the chess club, it’s got to be a thing in more than just Slytherin. But she also figures that no one plays chess quite like them. Everyone’s got about ten thousand layers of spell alterations on their personal chess sets, the chess pieces try to demoralize each other and occasionally even assassinate the other pieces, and there’s about ten different ways to play the game. (Ravenclaw’s got forty more variations, but Slytherins boast a higher rate of success.)
Everyone looks like they’re mainly occupied with homework or exploding snap or whatever else it is they’re doing, so she picks out one of the more comfortable seats: a claw-footed armchair done in dark wood and forest green leather, and sinks into it. She’s got homework herself, yeah, but she doesn’t want to get it out here and now. And most of it’s just star maps for Divination, those are pretty easy since she received an astrolabe from an out-of-touch aunt for her birthday. She’ll just set her quill to copy and instant perfect grades.
“Hey, Captain,” an unctuous voice murmurs, and she suppresses a jolt of surprise.
“Tahno,” she says, irritated. He’s constantly trying to throw her off guard.
Tahno chuckles as though he’d seen the jolt, and leans against the wall near her chair. “Not happy to see me? Did I interrupt some private time?”
And why the fuck does everything the guy says have to come out sounding like a sexual innuendo, she wonders. What does it say about a person that they have to sound like that all the time? Korra doesn’t bother to address that, obviously, it’s the kind of weird thing he does and anyway if she tried to say he was doing it, he’d just blame it on her dirty mind or her covert desire for him or some bullcrap like that.
“You interrupted me getting ready to do my homework,” she says, frowning at him. “So unless you’ve got something important to tell me, like maybe you getting a broken leg or a rare disease and being unable to play next game, feel free to go somewhere else.”
He just smiles. “So unwelcoming. Can’t study with me here? Am I too distracting for you?”
Hexing people in the common room is bad form, but her fingers twitch towards her wand anyway. “What do you want?”
“Just the pleasure of your company.”
“Tahno, I swear to god-“
He cuts her off by pushing back from the wall and settling nearer to her chair, draping an arm over the top and leaning over her. “I just want to discuss some strategy. Our next game’s coming up soon, and it’s Gryffindor. They’re not amazing, but they might actually stand a chance against us and they’ve been winning regularly against Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. I’m thinking we need to be more… creative in our tactics.”
While Korra isn’t exactly against playing dirty, she prefers to only do it if the other team is stooping to that level as well. Otherwise it just isn’t satisfying, using cheap tricks to get a victory. Doesn’t seem like much of a real victory then, if she can’t manage to do it within the rules of the game.
Or, well, somewhat within the rules of the game.
At least mostly.
But like any Slytherin, she also really likes to win. And it is just a game after all, not anything huge. Not the Quidditch Cup. For that she doesn’t cheat.
“And what did you have in mind?” she asks, not looking at him. Usually his smug face makes her want to resort to good old physical violence. She rummages through her bag instead, searching for a quill or something to fiddle around with while he talks.
Most of Tahno’s ideas for more ‘creative’ planning involve some casual sabotage, like the one year that he and Ming and Shaozu, his two minions, snuck into the Hufflepuff lockers and put some spells on the broomsticks to make them fly marginally slower.
They’d told her that one after the victory, since Tahno knew she wouldn’t okay it because she was ‘so fond of that Hufflepuff Chaser’. Some other ideas had been dosing the Keeper of the Ravenclaw team with some sleep potion, and trying to enchant the snitch. Nothing too dangerous.
This time, he’s trying to push to have some of his buddies sneak in just before the game and Confund a couple of the players. Not all of them, maybe just one or two, a Chaser and maybe a Beater. It’s actually do-able, assuming that the people he chooses to do this aren’t going to get caught by someone.
“Well, if they do get caught, they’re going to say they did it on their own,” Tahno says, shrugging. “No loss for us, just a couple of our House-mates getting too invested in the game.” He doesn’t get his hands dirty if he can afford not to. “If it works, the game is in the bag. If not, it probably still is. Nothing wrong with a little insurance.”
And usually she’d be okay with this, since Confunding wears off and no one was really going to get hurt, so why not let her team go ahead with it? She had to admit she leaned some on Tahno for the actual tactics part of being a Captain, letting him deal with the more subtle kinds of strategy. (Korra is as subtle as a bag of bricks.) But she can’t help it, or not her but somewhere in her subconscious, her mind can’t help tossing up that thing Asami’d said about her- ‘you’re bold.’
“Yeah,” she says, slowly, “But, I mean-where’s the challenge in that?”
Tahno sighs, because this is honestly something she has said more than a few times, it’s not completely Asami’s compliment rushing in and grabbing hold of her decision-making. “Come on, Korra,” he says, “Sometimes I think you should have been a Gryffindor.”
She smirks. ‘Yeah, but I cause way too much trouble. Anyway, if it’s in the bag one way or the other, why waste all that time and risk losing House points for something that insignificant?”
He snorts, “You’re talking to me about risking House points? That’s rich, coming from you. How many did you lose this past month?”
“Hey!” she points the quill at him like a wand, “I gain them back, don’t I? No one rocks Defense Against the Dark Arts like I do and you know it. And I scored a whole load of extra points for loaning the school Naga for Professor Bumi. And you’re just changing the subject now, the point is that we shouldn’t cheat unless we actually need to, okay?”
Tahno rolls his eyes. “You need to stop hanging out with that Hufflepuff loser, Captain. You’re starting to talk like one.”
“You don’t get to call Bolin a loser.” She shakes her head sarcastically. “And, wow, blow to the heart. But fine. If you want it in Slytherin talk, here you go: it’s an unnecessary risk. It’s not worth the energy we put into it. Instead of doing that, you could probably just have your buddies sneak in and try to copy the Gryffindor game plans instead. You know, get a close look at what goes on in their heads. Pretty sure the Captain doesn’t keep them anywhere special.”
“You might have a point,” he admits, “Fine, we do it your way. If we lose the game it’s on your head.”
Korra makes a derisive noise. “I’m the captain, pretty boy. It’s always on my head.” She shakes her head and finally digs out some parchment. She really doesn’t want to resort to doing plain old boring homework to get obnoxious team members off her back, but some sacrifices had to be made for the greater good. “Anything else?”
He looks like he wants to say something else, but Shaozu and Ming come in through the passageway with something bulky and clinking hidden under their robes, and he just waves a hand dismissively. “Not really. See you around.” He un-drapes himself from the back of her armchair and heads over to the two of them, smiling his usual confident smirk. It gets wider when Ming pulls out what looks like a firewhiskey bottle and the three of them laugh and head off to some darker corner, followed by a small group of sixth-year girls.
She dips the quill into her inkwell and tries to think. It’s not easy. Not because she’s bad at thinking- or maybe she is, but really she just hates stillness, and restraint, and lines and lines of writing. Would rather be out there flying again than sitting here, books in her lap and quill in her hand. Her mother says she’s headstrong, but Korra just thinks there is something in her that needs to move.
Under her quill, lines form. Not writing, but the smooth lines of a cloak billowing in the wind and the rough edges of a broomstick. She’s not an artist, but sometimes it helps to sketch things out when she’s thinking.
Asami Sato’s bright idea for Potions studying is to do it in the greenhouses, with the ingredients at hand. More hands-on, she says, and that sounds appealing, because it’s quiet without being stifling and Korra has always liked the greenhouses and the multicolored plants and the fresh, earthy smells, even though she doesn’t have what you’d call a green thumb.
“Along with helping you with the ingredients and the more complicated exercises, I’m going to be working on something of my own,” she’d explained to Korra. “Hopefully watching the process will help you to some degree, but mainly I’m supposed to for the advanced class I’m taking this year. If it all goes well, I’ll apprentice to a Master and hopefully, eventually become one of my own. I’ve been writing essays on it in theory and tweaking the ingredients, but be aware that everything might not go exactly right.”
“Oh my god,” Korra had just joked, not taking it seriously, “So we both have the equal opportunity to blow the place sky high?”
She can’t imagine how many points they’d lose for nuking the greenhouses. And imagining it all coming from the Head Girl made it somehow more hilarious, although Asami had made it clear that explosions were not some of the malfunctions they had to look forward to. I wonder what she’s making? Some kind of beautifying potion? A stronger version of amortentia? Maybe when it didn’t work it would spew glitter and rose petals across the room.
Potions, ugh. When she gets older and becomes a world-famous Quidditch player, she is going to buy any potions she’s likely to use. It’s not like she’s going to use the skill at all anyway, so why put all this emphasis on it in her last year?
The small figure on her parchment has long, swirling black hair. Korra taps her wand to the picture and mutters a brief incantation, feeling magic pulse under her fingertips. A second later, there’s a tiny drawing about the size of a Cornish pixie zipping around her head, and she sends it directly towards the dark corner Tahno had disappeared to. Maybe it’ll mess up his perfectly-smoothed, product-laden hairdo.
She’s just sitting at a table in the empty Potion’s classroom and minding her own business.
“Cheating’s wrong, you know,” Asami says from directly behind her, and Korra almost flies out of her skin because how the hell does she know about that? But then she sees that Asami’s just eying up her star maps over the table. It’s unsettling because she has no idea how long the girl has been there.
“Who says I’m cheating?” Korra says, but rolls the maps up anyway. She goes for a lighthearted tone to cover up her nervousness. Asami’s the Queen of prefects after all, she might just rat her out. “I could be really good at this Astronomy thing. I might have found my true calling. I might be having secret lessons with the centaurs. You have no idea.”
“The lines on your parchment are smooth and almost continuous,” Asami says, looking faintly amused. “Like they do when someone enchants their pen to do the work. And since you can’t exactly dictate star positions, I’m assuming you have an astrolabe hidden somewhere.”
Korra throws her hands in the air. “Yes, yes, I give up. You’re a genius.” There doesn’t seem to be a threat of reporting her to a teacher in the air, so she just continues casually. “And cheating’s a Slytherin tradition. I thought everyone knew that. I’m sure they’d boot me out if I stopped.”
“They have a few traditions that I’m not exactly fond of, yes,” Asami says, and puts her books on the table. They’re mostly Potions-based, with one on various magical plants. She figures it’s because of her difficulties remembering the properties of most of the ingredients.
“Where do you want to start?” Asami asks, and Korra just shrugs in response, uninterested and frustrated she has to be here and probably the worst person to work with ever.
“Whatever you think is best?” she tries. It’s not like she’s the student aide here or anything, she’s obviously just barely managing to pass the class. Then she feels a bit guilty. Asami probably has stuff to do, too, and who wants to spend their time talking about wrinkled leaves and animal bits with someone for hours? “I guess we could just start with this class and go on from there,” she adds, making a little more effort. “We’re making that very particular good dreams potion, and I’m supposed to explain how the properties of each ingredient get the potion to do what it does.”
“Confused about how the ingredients interact with each other?” Asami asks, looking interested, although Korra can’t figure out why. This probably isn’t even that difficult for her.
“Yeeeah,” Korra draws out. “I mean, I’m pretty sure that moonstone is there to help balance everything out and the passion flower petals are pretty obvious, but why the crushed wings of a jade scarab? And the hummingbird intestines are just- so obscure I can’t even stand it.” She gestures with her hands, trying to show how totally impossible the whole thing is.
“Anyway, I basically wrote down a bunch of guesses and they’re right here,” she waves a crumpled stack of parchment in the air at Asami, who takes it in one hand and smooths it out.
“Did you fold this into a fan?” she asks, raising an eyebrow in an amazingly elegant way.
Are you part Veela or something? Korra refrains from saying. “I was hot,” she says instead. Which comes out almost like a whine and makes her sound basically twelve, great. “It was muggy and Professor Pema was brewing a tincture of rat’s teeth and dragon bile in her huge cauldron, which just makes everything steam over and it’s really unpleasant.”
Asami shakes her head, smiling, and reads the scrawled notes written across it, her expression going from amused, to neutral, to amused again, to a little distressed.
“Some of them aren’t serious,” Korra interrupts. “Don’t get too concerned.”
“You put down here that dragon dung is a great contraceptive,” Asami says, sounding torn between disgust and laughter.
“It would keep anyone using it from having sex for the rest of their lives, so it’d probably do its job just fine,” she says, and can’t be serious about that one. They laugh. “Aside from that, how bad is it? Am I totally completely dead wrong about everything, or is there hope for me yet?”
“You’ve got a pretty good grasp on the basics,” Asami says diplomatically, “But you’re missing the greater range of effects that some of these ingredients have. Moonstone, for example, is used for its extremely positive energy, and of course its affect on the subconscious mind, and also because-” she continues, describing the more intricate attributes of the ingredients, explaining more patiently than Korra had expected her to.
Turns out Asami is probably one of the smartest people Korra has ever spoken to, and that goes for some Ravenclaws too. It’s all knowledge based on plants and potions and how everything works together, but she’s so involved in it and so interested that it’s hard not to try to be interested in return, and even though she still has a shaky grasp on what Asami’s discussing, it’s obvious that she’s extremely comfortable in her knowledge of it.
Back when she’d been hooked on the idea of dating Mako, she hadn’t thought much of Asami. She’d thought the lovey-dovey gestures they made towards each other were gross and corny and told herself they were even kind of fake, and she’d liked to think Asami was, well, kind of vapid. Seemed like a lot of pretty girls were, flashy and gorgeous and nothing under the surface.
But Asami’s talking to her about ‘the intricacies in variations of moonstone’ and ‘the latent curative properties’ of dreadkite venom, and she’s faced with the uncomfortable truth that she was wrong about that, at least. Not that she’s still holding a grudge- really it’s the opposite. Once Mako graduated and headed off to train for an Auror position, she’d allowed herself to forget the whole thing. And why not? It was embarrassing. She’d let her jealousy of that short-time girlfriend of Mako’s go so far away she even forgot who that girlfriend was.
And yeah, it sucks, because Korra doesn’t like thinking about herself as a petty person. Or as a negative anything, really.
“I’m getting off the subject, aren’t I?” Asami asks, with a self-conscious laugh. “Sorry. I’m just- really into Potions, as you can probably guess. Um. Sorry.”
Korra realizes she’d been drifting off. Great, she is now not only a whiny twelve year-old, she is also one with a short attention span. “Hey, no,” she says, “It’s cute. I mean, I could probably talk about sports and butt-kicking all day, so don’t worry about it.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Asami says, “I’m a big fan, remember? I just wish I could watch a professional match.” An old wistfulness in her voice now, like she’s relating some kind of childhood dream.
“Don’t have the time?” Korra asks. Or maybe the money. She doesn’t know anything about her family, maybe they’re too broke to afford tickets or something. She’s paid fare for Bolin and his brother a few times, but Mako usually got surly about having to accept her money and more often than not refused to go. Kill-joy.
“Something like that,” Asami says, smiling down, more at the table and her hands than anything else. “I’ve only seen them playing in the animated drawings on books, or in pictures.”
The way she says it, ‘animated’ instead of enchanted or spelled, makes her realize again that Asami’s muggleborn. It‘s hard to remember, since she acts so normal most of the time. Most of them are so strange. “Oh, right,” she says, brightly, “You probably are with your family over the summer, right? You could probably drag your muggle dad to the game. So long as you’re there, they won’t alter his memory or anything.”
“I’m not taking my father anywhere someone might want to wipe his brain,” Asami says, much more sharply than Korra expects. She looks up, too, quickly and almost angry, green eyes flashing. It’s like she just insulted her.
“Fine, okay,” she says, trying to be placating. “I mean, you don’t even have to. You’ve come of age now so you can probably just go on your own if you want. It’d just have to be over the summer because there aren’t any games close to the school. Except for ours, of course. But some of the moves the Wyverns pull, I only wish I could fly like that!”
She can’t tell if it smooths it all over entirely, Asami’s lips are still tighter than usual, but eventually the conversation gets friendlier, looser, Korra gets her talking about who she’s betting to win the Quidditch Cup. The snappishness was weird, but Korra just figures that it must be hard to live in the muggle world for so long when you know there’s a better one out there. She probably can’t wait to leave home.
“Ravenclaw’s got a good Seeker,” Asami offers.
Yeah, and Tahno’s got a faster broom. He made sure of it. But that she doesn’t say. She just shakes her head. “I hope you’re not betting too much money on them for the Cup, because it’s not going to happen,” she says. “And no offense to Gryffindor but we’re totally going to cream you in the next match.” Fair and square, too. As far as that goes.
Asami shrugs, a happier smile on her lips now, the sudden anger from earlier already passed. “No way.”
“I’ll bet you we will. If we win,” Korra says, “You make me a potion. Any one I ask for.”
“I’ll take that bet,” Asami smirks. It’s awful. The smirk settles onto her lips like it belongs there and it gives her a sort of seductress look. None of her expressions are okay. “If we win, you promise to do me a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” Korra asks suspiciously. “Is this a lift something heavy for me favor or one of the ones that ends up with me pretending to be your date at a really horribly awkward family gathering, because I am never doing that again.”
Asami rolls her eyes. “It’s the kind of favor I’m being deliberately vague about. But no family members are involved.”
“Not that it matters or anything,” Korra said, “I mean, since we’re definitely going to win. But that’s a relief. Deal, then. Prepare to make me something fantastic. Oh, and did we get cleared for the greenhouse yet? You said you were discussing things with the Herbology professor.”
“We’re allowed in greenhouse two,” Asami says, “Apparently they’re working with some distressing carnivorous species over in greenhouse three, and the first one has mandrakes. The one we‘re in isn‘t going to have either of that, so it‘s pretty safe, but the bubotubers might pop on their own since some of them are a bit overripe. So we should steer clear of that section.”
That’s a fun thought. Exploding potions, plants bursting acidic pus, and plants that wanted to eat her whole. And here she was always complaining there was never enough excitement at school.