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“You look just like your father.”
Hera turned around from looking at Dumbledore’s exit, her brow raising in silent consideration as she faced the bumbling Horace Slughorn, standing there in a powder blue housecoat with grey slippers and a friendly smile on his face.
“Except for the eyes of course.”
Hera knowing what was coming and wanting this conversation to be over with decided to humor the man, “Like my mothers.”
Her mouth quirked up with a genuine smile at the thought of her mom. Her emerald gaze, identical to her mother's, her favorite feature, shone like the sun.
Horace Slughorn observed the teenager in front of him feeling as though he was getting a blast from the past.
A surreal moment that made him sweat at the danger that standing in this petite girl's presence could cause, uprooting all of his hard work of staying out of danger.
The Girl-Who-Lived.
The Chosen One.
Hera Potter standing in his safe house, looking for all the world a bored teenager and not the thought to be the vanquisher of the most powerful Dark Lord seen in centuries.
The famous Hera Potter was a beautiful girl with caramel skin, the famous potter hair cascading to her shoulders framing a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones, a sharp chin, and bow-shaped lips.
But the girl’s most stunning feature was the aforementioned eyes that once belonged to Lily Potter but now rested in the face of her daughter. They were the color of the brightest emeralds, so expressive and enchanting that one couldn't but be spellbound.
“Lily, lovely lily, she was exceedingly bright your mother, even more, impressive when one considers she was a muggle-born.”
Viridian's eyes snapped to Professor Slughorn with a swiftness that alarmed the man causing him to flinch slightly as those previous warm eyes turned colder than ice.
He’s only faced one gaze like that one other time in his life he recalled with swift-blooming horror, feeling sweat build on the small of his back.
He remembered with exact clarity the one time his student Tom Riddle’s mask slipped allowing him to see him for what he was. The charming veneer slipped as easily as butter.
He remembered the look in his pupil's eyes.
A look promising pain, a fierce retribution that would be dealt out brutally without hesitation.
Horace rubbed his sweaty palms together shifting on the spot as his brain tried to scramble for a way to save himself.
Hera felt her lips snarl at the way her professor said the word muggle-born.
As if her mother was lesser.
As if she were inferior.
As if she wasn’t worth her magic, wasn’t worthy of holding a wand.
As though she didn’t prove her brilliance with a wand with every flick, twist, and incantation.
As though her mother didn’t have to work thrice as hard to be respected because her blood was considered less pure than others.
Fuck that.
She could feel the slow-building rage building in her heart, the rage a feeling so comforting and familiar bringing with the ever-present warmth that ignited her belly.
Her constant companion.
A constant itch that wouldn't go away no matter what she did.
She was always so angry.
All the fucking time.
But hearing this man, this coward, this racist, disparage her mother in so few words made her want to eviscerate him on the spot.
Her brave, kind, brillant mother refused to step aside in the face of death.
Her mother sacrificed herself.
Her love and magic saved her from death itself.
Her mother was her hero.
So, who the fuck did this man think he was to talk about her?
And to think that this coward of a man could think that he could breathe one word to belittle her mother in front of her then he was sorely mistaken.
As she prepared to open her mouth the cowering professor interrupted her before she could get a word out.
Always so desperate to save himself.
She sneered.
“I only meant that she impressed me with her tenacity and quickness to pick up potions. She was a quick learner your mother. Your mother was my favorite. ” Horace chuckled awkwardly feeling as though he were a bug under a viridian gaze that was dissecting him, pinpointing every inch of him and finding the man lacking the longer she looked.
But to Slughorn’s relief and Hera’s chagrin, Dumbledore walked back in with casual ease, ignoring the obvious tension in the air.
“Professor, I need to get some air,” Hera spoke politely but left the room before either man could say a thing to her feeling as though she were about to implode.
Her skin itching all the while.
Once she was gone, the tension melted away. Dumbledore turned to face Slughorn with a quirked brow his gaze knowing.
Horace gave a shaky smile as he reflected on what he saw in the young woman’s eyes that scared him so.
For such a tiny thing, Hera Potter had the devil in her eyes.