A/N: Thank you for all of the nice reviews. Those of you who are waiting for more Severus, take heart that after a little more exposition in this chapter without him he will be coming back and making pretty much consistent appearances in all or nearly all chapters from this point forward. Just gotta get through a little bit here...

Please keep reading and reviewing! Thanks again! :)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Mystery

The back hall was dark, but she could just make out what she needed to see to find the bathroom. It was darker inside the small room, but a simple lumos charm took care of that. Dinah looked in the mirror above the pewter sink. Lovely. Her nose had become a bright, cherry-like shade of red somewhere in between when she had put on her dress robes and now. She grabbed some toilet tissue and blew her nose, but still felt quite a bit of drainage. Perhaps she should take an early leave from the party.

Some hot tea with honey now sounded infinitely more attractive than the tart punch. She grabbed a handful of toilet tissue and stuffed it into her robes just to be safe, and then washed her hands. Holding one bit of tissue to her face, she left the bathroom and leaned against the door, staring out into the hallway and listening to the sounds of the party in the distance. To leave or to stay?

She sneezed again, loudly, and was answered by a loud thump down the hall on the right. She frowned and scratched the itch from her nose with the tissue. Surely her sneeze hadn't been violent enough to jar something from a shelf in one of the adjacent rooms.

A few more silent seconds were followed by the creaking of floorboards in the same general direction as the thump. And then she heard footsteps.

Yes, those were clearly footsteps. Dinah checked to her left, but everybody seemed preoccupied with the party. Hopefully, no one was snooping around in Slughorn's private rooms. She took a few hesitant steps in the direction of the noise, and the floorboards creaked beneath her. The footsteps became faster and then she heard another thump.

She hurried forward; completely ignoring the fact that now it would appear that she was the one snooping around in Slughorn's private rooms. There was definitely somebody in here, and for all she knew they could be stealing or spying or any number of unmentionable things. She stopped at a closed door on the left side of the hall, fairly certain that this was where the sound had come from.

She held back another sneeze and then listened, but there was no more noise. Against her better judgment, she tried the door handle. It was unlocked. She pushed it open and stepped into a large, dark bedroom. The window at the far end was open and a cold breeze was blowing in. It appeared that whoever had been in here had escaped in that direction.

Dinah knew she should probably turn around and go tell somebody, but she found herself walking forward. A large suitcase was open on the gray bed on the right wall, with some clothes strewn out around it. The desk on the left was full of pictures of Eugene with various people and a row of books written in a different language. A poster on the wall advertised the Bulgarian Quidditch team, and all of this evidence together allowed Dinah to conclude that this must be the guest room Eugene was staying in.

A rather thick book lay separate from the row and a page was marked in the middle. Dinah opened to it, but couldn't read any of the words. Still, it appeared to be some lists followed by narrative, so it was probably a potions book. She flipped through it, and noticed that Eugene had sketched some kind of symbol she'd never seen before on the inside front cover. It was a triangle with a circle in the middle and a line through it.

She didn't think much of it and closed the book, as her attention was drawn to something much more suspicious against the far wall to the left of the window. A rectangular cherry wood table stood there, and on it were a few sliced pomegranates along with some filled vials and test tubes and around twenty emptied or half-emptied glasses of red liquid. Dinah frowned and walked over, lifting up the glass that had the most liquid in it and sniffing. It smelled fruity, like pomegranate, and she had a sudden thought that this was probably the youthening potion. But there was a print on the side of the glass. The sort of fuzzy half translucent white print that human lips left when they drank from a glass.

Was someone drinking the potion? Eugene couldn't possibly be human-testing the concoction at this early stage. That would certainly be unethical.

Then again, she might just be over-thinking things. Maybe it was just straight-up pomegranate juice.

Well, either way she wasn't drinking it to find out. And there had definitely been someone wandering around back here. Someone besides herself.

Another thump from further down the building caused her to freeze in her tracks. If someone caught her in here she would be in so much trouble, and she wasn't even a student! But there was nothing she could do now except just stand there and hope nobody showed up. There was nowhere to hide that she could see in the immediate vicinity. Whoever had made that noise was either the person who had been here earlier or Slughorn or Eugene coming back, possibly to check on her. Unpredictable as it was, she still hoped it was the former.

But after awhile nothing had happened and so she allowed herself to exhale. An exhale which was immediately followed by a sneeze she had to stifle. It was time to get out of here, before she truly did get caught. She crept across the room, careful not to creak the floorboards while walking, and listened at the door. She heard no one and so opened it and stepped back into the hall. It was still empty. She scurried toward the light at the end and back into the hubbub of the party.

Sirius appeared to be having a heated argument with Nick while Lucy looked on awkwardly; Idris was chatting with one of the team members of the Hollyhead Harpies, Slughorn was talking loudly to some people she didn't know, and Ginny and Hermione were conversing in a corner. The rest of the party seemed relatively normal. Dinah hurried past without talking to anyone. Best to get back to her rooms and just explain to Slughorn later that she had left because she didn't feel good. The way he was about germs, he certainly wouldn't mind.

"Dinah!"

She jumped about a foot when Eugene intercepted her. Clutching a hand to her heart and trying to look innocent, she plastered a smile on her face that she hoped looked genuine and said, "Yes?"

"Sorry to startle you," Eugene smiled back, and Dinah had the sudden thought that such a nice person couldn't possibly be doing something unethical. "Is your cold better?"

"Er, no," she admitted, holding the tissue to up to her red, still running nose, "I think it's probably best that I leave here before I give this to somebody else. Plus, I'm sure I look gross. Give my apologies to Professor Slughorn for me, will you?"

"I will," he agreed, "Oh, but before you go I would like to ask you if you would be willing to come by the potions room some time Monday evening. I would like to show some of my progress to you firsthand."

"I think that would be fine," Dinah agreed, "Provided I'm not still sick, I'll make sure to come by."

After Eugene had thanked her, Dinah managed to make her getaway. When she got back to her rooms she fed her pets and got out of her dress robes before making that honey tea she had wanted. She curled up in a chair with a blanket, the tea, and a bunch of tissues and thought about what she had seen tonight.

Should she tell Dumbledore about all of the suspicious things that had gone on? She didn't want to be accused of spying or trespassing, but maybe it was something he needed to know. Still, she didn't really think Eugene would be doing anything wrong. It was just a gut feeling she had.

And then a new possibility occurred to her. The most obvious suggestion was that Eugene was drinking it himself. An odd, possibly dangerous practice in her opinion, but who was she to judge another's potion-making methods. Then again, if he was doing that why hadn't he just said so to somebody already? Maybe he was embarrassed. In light of that possibility, it was also a thought that maybe the person snooping around was some rival trying to get their hands on Eugene's formula.

If that was the case then Eugene was probably fully aware of it and there was no need for Dinah to draw unnecessary attention and ridicule to herself for sneaking around in Slughorn's rooms.

Still, she would keep an open eye and an open mind when she was around the potions assistant from now on. That way, if anything strange did happen, she would know when it was time to tell someone.