Rose broke off their kiss and pushed Scorpius away gently.
"We-we should be talking at the party," explained Rose. She shook her head.
"You leave first, I'll follow in a few minutes, okay?"
"Right," said Rose and she left.
Scorpius turned the cold tap on and splashed water on his face. "Get it together. Focus on the mission." He turned off the running water and noticed a quiet tapping noise. He looked around and finally noticed a squirrel pounding his little fist on the windowpane. Curiously a pair of ornate binoculars hung from gold chain around its neck. Scorpius scowled at the squirrel and then himself in the mirror. "No more wine tonight for you, old son. Hallucinations of angry little squirrels and kissing in water closets. I'm cutting you off, old son," Scorpius said to his reflection, wagging his finger for emphasis. He saluted the indignant squirrel and turned off the light switch. He stumbled back to the dining room.
"It is the damnedest thing, really, this ram keeps going after the goats, jumps the wall and mounts them instead," said Mrs. Maybrick.
"So you've had no lambs at all?" asked Emily.
"None that lived. Khan says Vibriosis and not to worry next year will be better, but at least half of my ewes have had Vibrio before. The only thing I can think of is that damn new ram."
"Where did you get him from?" asked Mark Harris.
"I bought him off of Munro in September, and Munro swears he's never had this problem before," replied Mrs. Maybrick.
"Hallo Ducky, you alright there?" asked Jai.
"Magnus, I want to see some of your famous plants. Where is your greenhouse? Mrs. Maybrick, you won't mind if I steal Magnus away for a minute?" asked Sophie Pritchard.
"Of course not dear," replied Mrs. Maybrick. Magnus followed Sophie out of the room.
"Make a left just there, Sophie, and continue out into the conservatory."
Jai and Sophie left the party before the other guests. They barely made it down the road before they disappeared behind a tree. The little squirrel ran to catch up. When he sat up on his hind legs to look around, his shoulders sagged. Sophie and Jai were engaged in intimate activities at a very inappropriate time and place. Fawcett may still be watching. The squirrel ran up Scorpius's leg and sat on his shoulder. It tried to get his attention by chittering in his ear, but Scorpius ignored him. The squirrel eyed the big brown ear, and bit it as hard as he could.
The door creaked as a stout man in a worn traveling entered the cluttered shop. Jars of strange-looking preserved organs and flasks of all sort of colors and shapes lined the tall shelves. There was little sunlight from the windows, the only light was a odd green glowing orb hanging from the ceiling that seemed to keep everything in shadow.
"Borgin, you in here? I've got something that you're going to pay an arm and a leg to have! Borgin!" shouted the new customer.
"Yes, sir, how may I be of service?" said Eurypylus Borgin as he emerged from behind a cabinet and walked to his customary place behind the counter.
"I want to speak with Borgin. Be a good lad and fetch him here."
"My father passed ten years ago. I am Eurypylus Borgin. I will be able to assist you in with the same discretion."
"Yes, well, hmm, like father, like son you say?" The skeptical customer fixed one eye on Borgin as the other surveyed the shop. "The shop hasn't changed a bit. Well, that's alright I suppose." He pulled a desiccated and blacked human hand from a large interior pocket in his old traveling cloak. "Fix your eye on that little beauty. Been in my family for generations. Shame to part with it really, but needs must you know."
"A bit smaller than is typical for a Hand of Glory—a more portable artefact. Is it still responsive to the touch?"
"Go on, try it," encouraged the customer.
Borgin took a quill from the counter and gently prodded the pinky finger. The hand suddenly grasped the quill and bent it back. The stranger laughed.
"What were you hoping to get for it?"
"I couldn't part with it for a knut less than 300."
"Maybe on a good day I might be able to sell it for 200 and six sickles, but that's here in the shop."
"I could go as low as 275 and ten sickles."
"Maybe while the Dark Lord was with us, but this will be difficult for me to shift in the current climate. I could come up to 230 even. But there's got to be something left for me to cover my expenses and overhead."
"270. Wizards pay good galleons for these, no matter the Minister."
"Hey, I'm taking all the risk here. You sell to me, this never comes back to you. It's been sitting in storage since before the war. You sell to someone less scrupulous, you're hauled in for questioning by the MLE next time they're done for, see."
"Hmm, I suppose I could let it go for 243."
"243 it is, Mr.—Jones,'" agreed Borgin as he extended his hand to shake. The pleased customer gathered his galleons into his outlandish money bag, stowed it into his cloak and exited the shop. He followed a hag out of Knockturn Alley into the early evening light of Diagon Alley. She soon turned into Slug and Jigger's and he continued further on toward the Leaky Cauldron. The strange customer didn't notice that a wizard in muggle clothes left Flourish and Blott's and began following him through the pub. Just as the door of the Leaky Cauldron opened onto Charing Cross road, there was a loud pop.
Scorpius woke up dizzy in every sense of the word and walked to the toilet using the furniture and walls. He noticed that it stung a little as he peed and looked down, puzzled. The toilet water was blue. He finished urinating and frowned. He walked back into the bedroom and gently shook Rose awake. She groaned.
"What? What do you want?" she asked.
"Uh, my uh, my pee is blue."
"Your what? What on Earth are you talking about? Go away. Let me sleep," she groaned.
"Yes, okay. Going to have to risk it. YOU NEED TO GET UP NOW!" shouted Scorpius. Rose jumped out of bed and pressed her wand at Scorpius's throat. "Right, uh, just going to point that somewhere else," he said as he tried to push the wand to the side. The wand did not move. "Okay, guess that will just stay there for the moment. As I was saying, I could be over-reacting but I don't think that I am, really-quite odd,"
"Get to the point you prat."
"We've been poisoned," replied Scorpius. Rose lowered her wand.
"Your urine is blue?" she asked. Scorpius let out a small breath he had been holding.
"Yes," he replied.
"Shit. Double shit!"
"You're thinking of that Toltec love potion made from the blue syrup found in Stanhopea-"
"caeruleata . Yes, I was. How do you know about that Stanhopea?"
"You told me to read, so I read." Rose looked skeptical. "Skimmed, really."
"hmm. Right, well, there's one almost fool-proof way to know if that's what it was—What do you remember about last night?"
"We went out to dinner."
"Where?" ask Rose
"Haven't the foggiest."
"I don't remember either, but I know that unlike you I would normally remember, even if I had more than two drinks, so I think that it is safe to say it was that Toltec potion."
"How's that?"
"Didn't you read the footnote?" Scorpius shook his head no. Rose closed her eyes and recited from memory: "A love potion made from the S. caeruleata will invariably make those who ingest it loose the memory of both the previous and following four hours. This fact alone nearly caused the extinction of the species during the Toltec period. As the plant became scarce the Toltec culture developed alternative love potion recipes using more plentiful ingredients… Do you know what I think?"
"That England will make the quarterfinals."
"What are you talking about?"
"Quidditch World Cup. Opening ceremonies will be in a couple of weeks. You weren't thinking about the World Cup?" Rose rolled her eyes.
"What I was going to say was that this might be a perfect opportunity to assess how many Stanhopea Fawcett has access to."
"Okay…how?" ask Scorpius skeptically.
"We visit the Eden Project."
"Oh, that's not so bad. I thought you were going to suggest a bit of house breaking."
"No, no, we'll go about our routines as usual, we'll go to the pub after dinner, and then we'll have a good poke around Eden Project."
"At night?"
"Fawcett may have someone on staff—we can't go and look at plants that have muggle-repealing charms on them during the day, and I examine a plant that Sophie Pritchard can't see, that would give ourselves away completely."
"Alright, but then we have to keep to our cover as closely as possible. We'll have to make up some story if we're caught. Maybe stealing plants? Thin, but it will have to do. And Ducky, I know that naturally you're about as discreet as a Nurmengard rally, but we should be as invisible as possible. If we encounter Fawcett or anyone else, we should not repeat not engage. We can try to follow at a safe distance, but preserving our cover is paramount." Scorpius looked at Rose. "pay attention, Rose, are we agreed on the rules of engagement?"
"we're in agreement, I promise not to attack anyone or whatever it is you think I'll do to blow our cover. I just need to get a look at that pseudobulb to confirm that is what we were poisoned with."
"Why couldn't someone else check this during visiting hours?"
"Because someone else wouldn't know what the orchid looked like before, we might have managed to figure it out if someone else took a photograph of it, but passing that photo to us in our current isolation status would be impossible. And we may need to start antidotes now to prevent any continuing damage, depending on—"
"Alright, I give in, you've convinced me."