Previously in Chapter 17-19: Hermione accompanied the Order of the Phoenix to a Death Eater attack, where she forcibly side-along apparated with a Death Eater who saved and then unmasked him. This Death Eater then told Hermione that she owed him a life debt and he would give back her wand if she agreed to not turn him in. Hermione instead fled and tried to take back her wand, but took his instead. Back at the Burrow, Bill told Hermione that the DE's wand was safe to use, but warned that wands have a way of trying to track back to their owners.
Chapter 20: Baneberry Potion
The green flames had barely cleared from before Hermione's eyes when she heard Professor McGonagall's briskly polite, "Welcome back, Miss Granger."
Hermione brushed the green-colored Floo ash off of her robes before offering McGonagall a quick "Thank you" and looking around the Hogwarts hall they were in. There were four fireplaces against the walls, including the one she had just stepped out of, and the Heads of House were monitoring the open Floos.
At the sound of the Floo behind her, Hermione moved to the side and was soon greeted by the sight of Harry stepping out of the fireplace.
"Mr. Weasley will also be returning to Hogwarts from the Burrow tonight, correct?" McGonagall asked, reading the scroll of parchment in her hands.
Hermione nodded, and a second later, the Floo roared again. Ron stepped out of the fireplace, brushing soot off his robes as he did so.
After McGonagall checked their names off on the scroll and wished them a good evening, the three of them began the trek from the Floo room to Gryffindor Tower. It was Sunday night only shortly before curfew, and the corridors were silent except for occasional rustling from the paintings. The Great Hall was one of the rooms they passed through and it, too, was significantly quieter than during the day. Stars twinkled overhead in the enchanted ceiling, and in preparation for tomorrow's breakfast, the tables were entirely clear. Except—
"Is that an owl?" Harry said, pointing towards the Gryffindor table.
Hermione squinted through the dimly lit Great Hall at the table. "Looks like it. It must be waiting for tomorrow morning to find its recipient."
"I guess so," Harry said. "Although I swear it's looking at us."
"It's not any owl I recognize," Ron shrugged, and they continued on their way to the Gryffindor tower.
Hermione cheerfully greeted Harry and Ron the next morning as they took a seat next to her at breakfast. Ron sleepily slathered a piece of bread with marmalade before saying, "I don't know how you do it, Hermione. We have double Potions first thing in the morning, and somehow you manage to look something other than horrified. Or depressed, like Harry here."
Ron clapped a hand on Harry's shoulder, who flatly replied, "We have to spend the next three hours with Snape. How could that not be depressing?"
"At least it's the start of a new unit? That should be interesting," Hermione helpfully replied, taking a sip of pumpkin juice.
"Yeah, but that means we'll be getting back our tests from the last unit soon," Harry replied with a sigh, grabbing a piece of fruit. He idly added, "I wonder how many different ways Snape can find to fail me."
"I don't know, but I bet we could compete for who fails the most often," Ron said cheerfully. A second later he added, "Although I would only bet on it if I could bet on myself."
"Ron!" Hermione laughed. "Surely you don't want to get failing grades?"
"No, but it seems to happen in Potions anyway, so no point in being sad about it." He reached to grab another piece of toast, before pausing mid-reach and looking at the end of the table. "Harry, is that the same owl you pointed out last night?"
A tawny owl was standing near the end of the table, curiously turning its head at the surrounding students. It did indeed look like the same owl and, now that it was light out, Hermione could see that it was carrying a rectangular package.
"It looks like it's looking for someone," Hermione said, turning back to face Ron and Harry.
"It'll be probably be a return-to-sender soon," Ron said, pouring himself a goblet of pumpkin juice.
"A return-to-sender? That can happen with owls?" Harry said.
"Yeah, if you're not clear enough when sending an owl, sometimes they get confused about who they're supposed to deliver their letter to, and they end up having to fly back to whoever sent them in the first place for more clarification," Ron replied, turning his attention back to the plate of food in front of him.
The three of them soon finished the rest of their breakfasts and began their descent into the dungeons. Once they were inside the Potions classroom, they could see that there were four cauldrons at the front of the classroom. At least one of the cauldrons smelled like sulfur, while another (or perhaps the same one—Hermione couldn't tell) smelled like rotten fish. Snape was also at the front of the classroom, alternating between stirring one of the cauldrons and watching students file into the classroom with his customary scowl.
Once the whole class was assembled, Snape filled a clear beaker with the potion from the rightmost cauldron and held it up. Without preamble, he announced, "Who can tell me what this is?"
The few rustling sounds in the classroom disappeared, and Hermione racked her brains as the class fell silent. The potion's red colour was not enough to go by, and the smell of that potion was mixing with that of the other potions such that she couldn't be entirely sure of its identity.
Snape raised an eyebrow as he looked around the silent classroom and drawled, "This potion is either a poison, an antidote, or neither. Which is it?"
When no one moved to respond, Hermione raised her hand and tentatively began, "It's not an antidote because—"
"If I had wanted to know what the answer was not, Miss Granger, I would have asked for such," Snape silkily replied. When no one spoke further, he continued, "It seems I need to speak as though I am addressing first years. Our newest unit is poisons and antidotes. What is this potion?"
Hermione shot her hand in the air again. "Then it's a p—"
"No one knows what this is?" Snape sneered, setting the beaker down. "Have none of you decided it worth your time to open a book during the course of your Hogwarts career?"
"Maybe if it was something you had actually taught us before," Harry muttered under his breath.
"All antidotes can be identified by their blue color. This is therefore a poison," Snape sharply articulated. "It is the Baneberry Potion and has one particularly unique property. Who knows what it is?"
"You can transform the poison into the antidote by adding only one ingredient," Hermione blurt out.
"And that will be everyone's first assignment for the day," Snape announced to the class in response. "You will all be given a sample of the Baneberry Potion, with which you will discover how to create the proper antidote. Possible ingredients can be found to the left of the classroom. I remind you that you will be working with a poison, and you therefore must be extraordinarily careful when handling it. Anyone who does not do as such will be punished appropriately. You may begin."
The members of the class began bustling around, and Ron fondly said, "Do you remember how easy Potions was back when we were first years? All we had to do was follow the instructions in the textbook."
"Yeah, none of this 'invent the potion yourself' stuff," Harry reminisced.
"Well, this is more like what actual potion brewers do," Hermione replied. "Although I do wish I remembered what ingredient it was that changes Baneberry Potion from a poison to an antidote."
"Yeah, I wish you remembered, too," Ron teased, and Hermione gave him a good-natured swat on the arm.
"Ronald! I wouldn't give you the answer even if I did remember it."
"Ah, well, can't blame a bloke for trying," Ron grinned. "Want to at least give a hint about what type of potion it is?"
"Well, it's a poison," Hermione said with a teasing smile.
"Okay, that I know," Ron replied. "But what does it do?"
She gestured towards the flasks of potion in front of them before adding with the same smile, "Come on, let's get started on the actual assignment."
Ron moved to grab potion ingredients from the side of the classroom and added, "At least Snape only laid out six different ingredients. It means I can just try them one-by-one, and eventually I'll find the right one."
Hermione was mildly peeved to admit that he was right, but she was none the less determined to discover the correct ingredient without resorting to such guess-and-check methods.
Pulling out a roll of parchment, Hermione began to take notes on what she knew. The base of the potion was flobberworm mucus and one of its main ingredients was baneberries – that much she could remember. The red color also suggested the presence of some substance that only partly reacted with the base, probably hellebore. If it was hellebore, finding the proper ingredient for the antidote would be simple enough. All she would need then would be a substance that could break down the bonds between the hellebore and flobberworm mucus.
She chewed her lower lip, while trying to think of what compounds could do that. Gnomish Lava Plant was a substance that could break almost any bond, but it was also extraordinarily expensive, so it seemed unlikely they would be required to use it. The compound ionicis carphina was similar, but similarly rare. Although — didn't it have a more commonly used relative? It was ionicis something – ionicis ajiricola? Ionicis alisio? No, ionicis assula, that was it! And it was a compound present in a fair number of other magical plants and animals, too.
Hermione nimbly walked to examine the collection of ingredients Snape had set out. Neither of the first two ingredients had any ionicis assula, and while the third ingredient had trace amounts, it would certainly not be enough to create the antidote. The fourth ingredient, griffin claw, had a low concentration of it and, although she had a creeping doubt that it would be sufficient, neither of the last two potion ingredients had any, so it seemed to be the only possibility.
Hermione raised her wand to levitate a griffin claw to her work station, but her first attempt to levitate it resulted in it hovering barely an inch off the table. Her second attempt resulted in it shooting two feet into the air, until she was finally able to lower it to a reasonable height and bring it back to her cauldron.
With a frustrated sigh, she dropped the griffin claw into a pestle and grabbed a mortar. If her inability to hover ingredients as accurately as she liked was any indication, she still wasn't used to her new wand yet. Admittedly, she was not sure whether referring to it as her new wand was entirely appropriate. It seemed a bit cheerful of a phrasing given that she had obtained the wand by accidentally taking it from a Death Eater.
The griffin claw now a fine powder, she delicately poured a sample of Baneberry Potion into her now-clean cauldron and added the griffin claw soon after. With a few turbulent stirs of her wand, the potion began bubbling and changing color. It slowly morphed from its original red color to a dark orange, before settling on a dull yellow-green.
Hermione let out a loud groan. That wasn't anywhere near the right color for the antidote.
Ron looked over at her cauldron before saying, "Hey, your potion is puke-green too! Maybe fifth time will be the charm, eh?" He Vanished his own cauldron of yellow-green potion, before pouring another sample of Baneberry Potion into his cauldron and reaching for the fifth ingredient in Snape's line of ingredients.
Hermione dejectedly turned back to her own cauldron. If it wasn't griffin claw, then what could it be? Had she incorrectly analyzed the potion? Or was she misremembering how much ionicis assula was needed? But, no, she was certain that all of her logic had been correct. In fact, if anything, the antidote required a higher concentration-
It was at that moment that a thought struck her with such force that her mouth formed the shape of a small 'O', and she found herself wondering how she hadn't thought of it before. Of course Snape hadn't laid out the ingredient they needed! He had likely predicted that most of the students, like Ron, would use a process-of-elimination to find the proper ingredient and was trying to avoid that.
Smiling triumphantly, Hermione tightly screwed the lid onto her flask of Baneberry Potion and rolled up her sleeves. Deciding that Flitterbloom bark would be a suitable source of ionicis assula, she decided to transfigure the remnants of her griffin claw.
She raised her wand, planning to gradually coax the griffin claw into the sturdy bark and delicate leaves of the Flitterbloom plant. To her surprise, as soon as she began the Transfiguration charm, the griffin claw shot into the form of a two-foot long branch, slamming against her flask of Baneberry Potion and sending it flying into the air. Hermione watched, horrified, as it spiraled towards the front of the classroom where Snape was standing.
A fraction of a second later it hit Snape squarely in the back of the head, before dropping to the ground and shattering, and the whole class fell silent as he whirled in Hermione's direction with a livid expression.
…
A/N: So I recently realized that two of the upcoming chapters are set around Christmas and, if I time this right, I can actually post them around the holiday season (instead of some non-Christmasy time like the middle of March). In other words, I'm going to update every few weeks until Christmas, resulting in my posting 4-5 new chapters (including this one); after that I will temporarily return to trying create enough of a backlog that I can start posting regularly again.
Anyway, thank you to all of my lovely readers for their support and many many thanks to kci47 for beta-reading!