Chapter One

Owl Post

Snape walked stiffly towards Moaning Myrtle's Toilet, but he didn't open the door.

"Quickly, here is your money, 5 galeons and 12 sickles as we said", Snape whispered.

On Christmas Day Harry woke up with a great pain in his forehead. He sat up in his bed and saw that Hedwig was picking on the window with her beak.

"Weird", Harry thought and went up to open the window. Hedwig had brought a letter. Whilst opening the letter, Harry heard a loud grunt and then mutter coming from the bed next to his, something about beating Malfoy off his Nimbus 2001. Harry cheered Ron on but when he realised Ron was still deeply asleep he continued to open the letter.

In the envelope, there was nothing but a recipe.

Mandrake Root

Fluxweed

Leeches

Knotgrass

Bicorn Horn

Boomslang Skin

Lacewing Flies

Harry turned the old piece of parchment around, but couldn't find a secret message hidden anywhere. He knew this recipe from somewhere, he just couldn't place it. As you could expect from the son of James Potter, soon Harry had summoned his best friend Ron and the hunt for the different ingredients had begun. Bicorn Horn, Boomslang Skin and Leeches were commonly used during Potions class with Snape, those they could easily steal from Hermione's private set. Neither was Mandrake Root a problem since their friend Neville Longbottom had received his own Mandrake plant. He had fainted when the rest of the class were learning how to plant them so professor Sprout had assured that Neville wouldn't fall behind in class, by giving him one to plant by himself.

They got leeches and knotgrass from Hagrid's garden and to make sure that nobody saw them they had to sneak out into the blistering cold night. The invisibility cloak that Harry had gotten last Christmas really did work well. There was a problem though, none of them had ever heard of Lacewing Flies, a few days passed when Harry and Ron were secretly forming a plan on how to get their hands on them. Apparently there was a sort of nest where the flies lived close to the kitchen. Using the Marauder's Map the located a tunnel almost directly into the nest and with the help of Dobby the house-elf, he provided a jar to put the flies in, the three of them managed to get hold of a jar-full of Lacewing Flies.

"Harry, what have we created?" Ron said with awe in his voice, he was looking down at the liquid in the pot. In about 15 seconds it had turned from being boiling hot with a red colour to a sort of green tone with purple air bubbles coming out of it. Now it had started to freeze and looked very much like ice, some kind of smoke poured up along the sides of the pot.

"This could be really dangerous, what if it explodes?" Harry said when he noticed Ron was sitting on his knees with his head almost completely hidden in the pot. A diminished, giggly answer came from the pot.

"The smell... it's so good Harry, I feel so warm, you have to try this", Ron giggled.

Harry went to the pot and bent over, he immediately felt fuzzy and felt the need to thank Ron for coming up with the idea, but before he was able to, he had zoned out.

"Aaaaaah, wake-up-wake-up-wake-up!" Myrtle was absolutely terrified by the two young boys who had crashed plain on the ground in her toilet. Ron and Harry slowly came back to life and sniggered at eachother.

"Why have you got my glasses on Ron, I can barely see!" Harry giggled.

"I can barely see either!" Ron took the glasses of and blurted: "It's Moaning Myrtle!"

Myrtle was floating around in circles high up over their heads. She seemed very upset about something and her moaning created dull echos in the enourmous toilet with a big marmour column in the middle.

"What are you doing?" she yelled in her penetrating high-pitched voice.

"Hey Myrtle, we were just making a potion, we don't mean you any harm" Harry said politely.

"What is that potion you're making?" Myrtle came closer and when she could see the potion clearly an awful grin of joy spread across her face. "That's blue ice, crack it with your wand"

Harry waved his wand and the potion, that now was completely frozen, begun to crack up.

"Now crush it" Myrtle yelled while waving frenetically.

Harry, who was still feeling a bit fuzzy from last night, didn't question Myrtle's orders at all and went ahead and crushed the frozen pieces of the potion into dust.

"Now we just have to find the pipes, let me think, where did he hide them?

"Myrtle", Ron interrupted. "Who hid what? What are you talking about?"

"Tom Dolder" she answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "This is what happened: I was hiding in one of the toilets because Oliver Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. I was crying and then I heard someone come in. It was him, I tried to hide but he discovered me straightaway. I thought he was going to hurt me but for some reason, he was very happy. He showed me the pipes and we smoked together for a while, it was the best feeling. We then fell asleep, actually, this was when it happened, I didn't wake up after that. At least not in a living shape..." Moaning Myrte burst into tears and moaned. "He was so nice, how could he?".

"But the pipes, where are they?" Harry begged.

"For you Harry, I can tell" Myrtle sobbed and pointed at a sink. "You have to talk Parseltongue (snake language) to that sink".

After Harry had done what he had to, the two of them (Myrtle had tried to join in but her state made it hard for her to hold the pipe, instead she was floating above the two in the smoke from the pipes), smoked on the old pipes for a while.

Snape walked back in to the shadows where another figure was waiting for him. A flame from Snape's wand lit up their faces as he warmed the pipe up. Snape took a deep puff and said.

"Minerva, is this what being a woman feels like?"