A/N Thanks for the continued support! :) R&R xxx

Chapter Eleven

Advanced Potion-Making

Amara gaped at the Professor. They could win the little bottle of luck? Everyone was silent as they gazed at the golden potion.

"One tiny bottle of Felix Felicis," said Slughorn, taking a minuscule glass bottle with a cork in it out of his pocket and showing it to them all. "Enough for twelve hours' luck. From dawn till dusk, you will be lucky in everything you attempt.

"Now, I must give you warning that Felix Felicis is a banned substance in organized competitions . . . sporting events, for instance, examinations, or elections. So the winner is to use it on an ordinary day only . . . and watch how that ordinary day becomes extraordinary!

"So," said Slughorn, suddenly brisk, "how are you to win my fabulous prize? Well, by turning to page ten of Advanced Potion-Making. We have a little over an hour left to us, which should be time for you to make a decent attempt at the Draught of Living Death. I know it is more complex than anything you have at- tempted before, and I do not expect a perfect potion from anybody. The person who does best, however, will win little Felix here. Off you go!"

Amara drew her cauldron towards her on determination. She had never had the chance to try her best to win something in potions before: and she wanted the lucky potion, which would be handy at time like these. Amara riffled through her copy of Advanced Potion-Making until she found the correct page and scanned through the ingredients. The people around her were hurriedly doing the same thing - everyone wanted the lucky potion.

Amara got the ingredients she needed and started cutting up her roots. It was a good thing she had practised making dinner back home because she could chop the roots swiftly and accurately like they were carrots.

Harry was reading his book with immense concentration whilst Ron was cursing his cauldron. Hermione seemed to have reached the furthest after ten minutes. She looked breathless, but had her potion looking like the "smooth, black currant-coloured liquid" which meant she was halfway. Amara was one step behind and she was determined not to let this stop her. Around the bluish steam of the room she saw her classmates making their potions feverishly too, and it spurred her on.

Trying to concentrate was hard because they could see what everyone else was doing. This meant that Amara perked up when she heard Malfoy talk to Slughorn, who was wandering between the cauldrons.

"Sir, I think you knew my grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy?"

"Yes," said Slughorn, without looking at Malfoy, "I was sorry to hear he had died, although of course it wasn't unexpected, dragon pox at his age. . . ."

And he walked away. Amara smirked and resumed making her potion - though she exchanged smug looks with Harry, who had been listening in as well.

"Can I borrow your silver knife?" Harry asked Amara as she resigned to watch her potion.

"Sure," said Amara and she passed it to him. To her surprise she watched him crush the bean with the knife and put the juice into the potion. It immediately turned lilac. Amara gaped at it as Harry looked up in surprise too.

"How did you do that?" Amara whispered so that Ernie, Ron or Hermione didn't hear.

"It was written in the book," said Harry in amazement. "Crush the bean, not cut it."

Amara was wide-eyed as she looked back at her potion. It was still a dark purple because she had cut up the bean. How had Harry's book known to crush it up?

Amara got her spoon and was about the stir anticlockwise seven times when she saw Harry stir once clockwise. His potions turned the palest pink.

"How are you doing that?" demanded Hermione, who was red-faced and whose hair was growing bushier and bushier in the fumes from her cauldron; her potion was still resolutely purple.

"Add a clockwise stir —"

"No, no, the book says counterclockwise!" she snapped.

"Add a clockwise stir?" Amara asked in interest.

Harry nodded. "After seven stirs anticlockwise."

Amara nodded and began stirring. She did one clockwise stir and saw her deep purple potion turn lilac. Eagerly, she did it again as Hermione frowned at her still purple potion. Ron was now cursing his potion and not doing much to help himself.

Though Amara's was getting paler, Harry was ahead of her, and when Slughorn said "And time's . . . up! Stop stirring, please!" Harry's was a shade lighter than Amara's. Amara couldn't help be on awe at the instructions in Harry's book. They were amazing.

Slughorn moved slowly among the tables, peering into cauldrons. He made no comment, but occasionally gave the potions a stir or a sniff. At last he reached the table where Amara, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ernie were sitting. He smiled ruefully at the tarlike substance in Ron's cauldron. He passed over Ernie's navy concoction. Hermione's potion he gave an approving nod. With Amara's he beamed appreciatively and exclaimed how wonderful it was. Then he saw Harry's, and a look of incredulous delight spread over his face.

"The clear winner!" he cried to the dungeon. "Excellent, excellent, Harry! Good lord, it's clear you've inherited your mother's talent. She was a dab hand at Potions, Lily was! Here you are, then, here you are — one bottle of Felix Felicis, as promised, and use it well!"

Harry slipped the tiny bottle of golden liquid into his inner pocket. Though Amara was disappointed that she didn't win, she was glad Harry got it. Though Hermione seemed much more disappointed that she did, and the Slytherins were looked murderous.

"How did you do that?" Ron whispered to Harry as they left the dungeon.

"Got lucky, I suppose," said Harry, because Malfoy was within earshot.

Amara was buzzing to hear more about the instructions written in Harry's book and had to keep quiet until they were sat at the Gryffindor table for dinner.

"So, what was the writing about?" Amara said eagerly.

"There's writing all over the book," said Harry. "And some of the actual instructions have been crossed out and had alternative ones underneath. There's so many tips which made the potion better to make".

Hermione was frowning at the story.

"I s'pose you think I cheated?" Harry said.

"Well, it wasn't exactly your own work, was it?" she said stiffly.

"He only followed different instructions to ours," said Ron. "Could've been a catastrophe, couldn't it? But he took a risk and it paid off." He heaved a sigh. "Slughorn could've handed me that book, but no, I get the one no one's ever written on. Puked on, by the look of page fifty-two, but —"

"Hang on," said a voice close by Harry as Amara laughed at Ron's complaining. It was Ginny, who had come to join them. "Did I hear right? You've been taking orders from something someone wrote in a book, Harry?"

She looked alarmed and angry.

"It's nothing," Harry said reassuringly, lowering his voice. "It's not like, you know, Riddle's diary. It's just an old textbook someone's scribbled on."

"But you're doing what it says?"

"I just tried a few of the tips written in the margins, honestly, Ginny, there's nothing funny —"

"Ginny's got a point," said Hermione, perking up at once at the thought of the book being bad. "We ought to check that there's nothing odd about it. I mean, all these funny instructions, who knows?"

"Hey!" said Harry indignantly, as she pulled his copy of Advanced Potion-Making out of his bag and raised her wand.

"Specialis Revelio!" she said, rapping it smartly on the front cover.

Nothing whatsoever happened. The book simply lay there, looking old and dirty and dog-eared.

"Finished?" said Harry irritably. "Or d'you want to wait and see if it does a few backflips?"

"It seems all right," said Hermione, still staring at the book suspiciously. "I mean, it really does seem to be . . . just a textbook."

"Good. Then I'll have it back," said Harry, snatching it off the table, but it slipped from his hand and landed open on the floor.

"You realise something that's better than the original isn't always evil," Amara said. "Just because it doesn't go with the actual written book."

Hermione glared at her.

-OOOOO-

Amara managed to see her siblings during the week. She joined Ethan in the library, as the Fourth-Years were getting much more work than they had been used too, and Ethan and Eddie were getting rather swamped. Piper and Flick were with them too, both looking tired and irritated.

"I've done the Care of Magical Creatures essay," said Ethan as he lifted his books to find it. "But I can't find my Muggle Studies book -"

"Wait, you took Muggle Studies?" Amara said.

"Yeah," said Ethan, grinning. "I wanted to see what it was like."

"And me, Ed and Flick took it," said Piper, not taking her eyes off her parchment.

"And that," countered Ethan. "You didn't take Care of Magical Creatures, did you?"

"Ritchie did," said Piper.

"Yeah, and?" Ethan said. "You took Arithmancy."

"What's wrong with Arithmancy?" Piper said indignantly. "It's one of my favourite subjects!"

She also met with Tessie in the common room, where she was joined by Aubrey and Joey (the other second-year friends Tessie had were too scared of her "nearly-seventeen-year-old-sister").

"Next year's going to be great," said Tessie when Amara had sat down with her. "New subjects and Hogsmeade trips, how cool is that? I already know which subjects I'm going to take - definitely not Muggle Studies like Ethan, I mean, we're Muggleborns aren't we? Why on earth would we learn about ourselves? - so I've decided to take Ancient Runes and Arithmancy because Divination sounds stupid and I've heard bas stories from Care of Magical Creatures ..."

Tessie, being twelve-years-old, never seemed to stop babbling on. She went from subjects to gossip to who was annoying and back again. She had kept her hair messy still, and it was very weird to touch. She'd extended her headscarf supply, and now wore either dark purple, dark blue, lilac, orange or red.

"What do you think of Slughorn?" Amara asked her sister, because she knew Potions was her worst lesson.

Tessie made a weird face.

"The first lesson, when he found out my name, he was so pleased because he knew you and Ethan and you guys are "favourites" of his and such. Then I exploded my cauldron and he seemed slightly sad that I wasn't very good. I thought I had got off easy but then he said about he had heard of my "abilities" and now he won't stop talking to me ... Oh and he likes Aubrey too because she's related to Darren Floyd."

"I'm rather glad he hasn't take any interest in me," said Joey, twisting her Rapunzel-like hair around her finger. "I don't like his collecting."

Harry was becoming the best in class for Potions, all because of the 'Half-Blood Prince's' textbook. He had shown them the little caption the day before:

This Book is property of the Half-Blood Prince

But none of them knew who he was.

Amara pondered over the fact that though the book had the owner's nickname, it didn't seem like the person had wanted to find it, which was odd because the things written inside were very intelligent and amazing indeed.

The fact that Harry was getting better grades annoyed Hermione an awful amount - she refused to get help from the altered instructions and preferred to use the "official" ones. Ron, now the worst out of the four of them, wasn't exactly pleased that his best friend had dropped his awful potion skills and developed spectacular ones. Harry had offered to share his book, but Ron could read the writing as well, and couldn't exactly ask out loud.

Amara sometimes used the Prince's instructions because she found them interesting. She started jotting down some of the instructions into her own book for future reference. This also meant Ron could sometimes read them too.

Slughorn did not seem to catch on that Harry was not 'gifted' as he presumed, but merely getting other instructions that made his potions better than everyone else's. Hermione became even more bad-tempered when Slughorn raved about Harry's talent.

The sixth-years were given a sufficient amount of homework which they had to get through each night, but Amara, now practised because of Hermione, was able to keep up to date with it.

Harry often skimmed through his potions textbook, and had found interesting notes in the margins.

"Look," he said on Saturday evening, pointing on a page to Ron and Amara, who were both struggling through their Defence Against the Dark Arts essay. "He's also made up spells, I think, in the margins. I wonder if he made them himself?"

"Or herself," said Hermione irritably, overhearing them and looked annoyed. "It might have been a girl. I think the handwriting looks more like a girl's than a boy's."

"The Half-Blood Prince, he was called," Harry said. "How many girls have been Princes?"

Hermione did not answer, instead she returned to her essay and scowled at Harry's copy of Advanced Potion-Making.

Amara and Ron did the same, but Harry returned his book into his bag.

"It's five to eight, I'd better go, I'll be late for Dumbledore."

"Ooooh!" gasped Hermione, looking up at once. "Good luck! We'll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!"

"Hope it goes okay," said Ron.

"Tell us all about it," said Amara as they watched Harry leave through the portrait hole.

Once he'd gone Amara and Ron looked sadly back at their essays and wrote some more words. After another half an hour they high-fived and rolled up there now completed essays. Around them, people were playing Chess or Gobstones, trading Chocolate Frog Cards and sweets, doing homework, reading textbooks or chatting with friends. It was times like these when Amara missed Fred and George terribly. They would usually be amusing a crowd, or always willing to add laughter to her evenings, but now they had left and she only had their occasional letters. They'd stopped coming so frequently now that she'd started school. She presumed that either they were too busy or they thought she was, because they'd never do it on purpose.

Against Hermione's advice, Amara stopped doing homework (Ron followed suit quickly) and got a fresh piece of parchment to begin writing to Fred and George (Ron followed suit, except he was writing to Tally instead).

Dear Fred and George,

How's the shop going? Busy now everyone's back at school? Hogwarts is basically the same, except Umbridge has gone and now there's Aurors patrolling the grounds and castle, and the security has tightened. You'd probably get a bucket load of detentions if you were still here, considering how many times you snuck out. Then again, it would depend on if you were caught.

It's slightly strange without you two, but then again it's alright now we're sixth year and get loads of frees (Ron's overjoyed but Hermione know we'll have to do homework in those lessons). Ron's going well with Tally, I think, they keep in contact nearly every day, they should really get something which makes them able to talk all the time instead of waiting for a reply with an owl. This girl Lavender Brown has been giving Ron some attention though, which is really weird, because she's never done that before. Maybe I should talk to her? Weird how Ron can get two girls in under a month, huh?

I'm also trying out for Chaser for the Quidditch Team, because Harry's the new captain and there are actually spaces. Fingers crossed I get it!

I'm pretending to do homework at the moment, because Hermione keeps glaring at me. By the way, Filch has banned everything of yours here, which is really funny, but I just wanted to tell you.

Probably a useless letter, nothing's really in it, but I felt like writing anyway.

Hope to see you at Christmas,

Love Amara.

Amara put the letter aside so she would be able to send it in the morning. She would normally have sent it now, considering it was still only quarter to nine, but because of Dumbledore's warning, she decided to stay safe.

They continued with their mind-blowingly dull homework for another two and a quarter hours before Harry returned. By then, the majority of the common room had dispersed up into their dormitories, but Amara, Ron and Hermione were eager to hear what Harry had to say.

Ron was adamant that he was being taught spells, but Hermione and Amara told him he couldn't know that, and he should wait until Harry returned.

As soon as he saw them, Harry hurried over to them and sat down in an armchair next to Hermione.

"So?" said Amara eagerly. "What did you do?"

Harry peered around at the remaining third-year boys, who looked at his staring and walked off towards the dormitory, as though he was going to bite them.

"He said that he was going to tell me what made Voldemort –" Ron winced. "try and kill me," Harry said. "He said it was to do with the prophecy and it can help me survive." He paused as Hermione looked stricken. "And now he's going to start showing me memories, in his Pensieve, that can help us figure it out. Tonight he showed me this memory from a guy called Bob Odgen. His memory was in near this place called Little Hangleton. He went to see this family called the Gaunts, because one of them, Morfin (Marvolo was his father, Merope his sister) had used magic on a Muggle. They didn't want to go – and we found that the Gaunts are decedents of Salazar Slytherin. It was a strange memory – there were two Muggles who came around, and one of them was a boy – Tom – whom Merope liked. They tried to kill her, I think, but we left the memory so I didn't see. The brother and father got sent to Azkaban. The father – Marvolo – was Voldemort's grandfather. Merope tricked Tom Riddle – the Muggle – into marrying her and having a baby, which turned out to be Voldemort."

"What happened to the Guants?" Amara whispered.

"Merope died after giving birth – she had lifted the enchantment on Tom Riddle and he had left her. Marvolo died too, once out of Azkaban. I don't know what happened to Morfin."

His explanation left them reeling, and they stayed up for a while, mulling over his words about how Voldemort came into existence.