"Today we will be making a coagulation potion," Snape said as he swept into his dungeon lair of a classroom exactly on the second the lesson started. "This is one of the more important healing potions, if dosed correctly it will staunch even the largest wound." He glared at Harry who was talking quietly to Ron, they both stopped immediately under his unwavering attention. "If dosed incorrectly it will turn a patient's blood into a gelatinous paste that will kill them in minutes if not properly treated. Mr Potter and Mr Weasley, if you two utter one more word out of turn I will put you in detention, as it is I will take ten points from Gryffindor," he smiled thinly as they both hung their heads, "each." A groan rippled through the members of Gryffindor in the room, while the Slytherin openly smirking about the situation. "Before you complain Mr Potter, I don't care that you are a school champion, if anything that should mean that you should be setting a better example." Malfoy burst out laughing, he laughed so much he fell off his seat, which caused everyone else to start laughing. Red faced, Malfoy got to his feet and retook his seat, "Mr Malfoy, please stop disrupting my lesson, some students need to listen to what I have to say, and you are one of them." Malfoy blushed and glared at the back of Snape's head as the professor turned to write the recipe for the potion on the board. "You will need half a cup of diced blisterwort root, one teaspoon of essence of grood leaves, a medium sized rat's tonsil and one measure of jubjub juice. Be very careful when following my instructions, if you brew this incorrectly and leave it too long the results will be very painful, Mr Longbottom, you are not to work by yourself on this one." He wrote a series of instructions on the board and then let us all set about making our potions. I was with Seamus because I had arrived slightly late and as such had been separated from Alice by the vindictive Snape. When we were halfway through making our potion, Draco stalked over with his goons, I say stalked, he looked like he was trying for stalked, but it was more half slouched stumble than actual stalking.
"Draco, from the almost obsessive way you follow me around I could almost think that you had a thing for me," I said, not looking up from carefully stirring my potion, "I'm sorry, I'm already taken."
"Don't flatter yourself bitch," he said quietly so Snape wouldn't hear.
"Tsk, tsk, clean your mouth out with soap Dracy, you shouldn't use such language," I said as patronisingly as possible, preparing a shield, just in case. Seamus had suddenly found a reason to be on the other side of the room, probably a wise decision.
"I am not a little child you insufferable pest," Draco growled.
"Don't make a scene now Dracy, but you seem to suffer me quite a lot, seeing as you go out of your way to talk to me. I suppose it must be refreshing for you to talk to someone who is not a sycophant who loves your father's money."
I could practically hear Draco's teeth grinding and the slow gears turning in his goons' heads as they tried to understand what refreshing and sycophant meant. "I am so going to kill you one day," Draco said through gritted teeth.
"Oh, okay, if you say so," I said nonchalantly, "can you wait a while, I have a list of people who called dibs before you did, besides, I'm a bit busy with making this potion."
He took a step forward, I put a shield in front of him, "coward," he remarked.
"Not really, busy is more like it, I would prefer if you tried on a different day and at a different time," the potion finally changed colour, I grabbed the tongs and took it off the burner.
"I'll get you one day, when you least expect it," he turned and walked off.
"If you insist," I muttered as I carefully added the thinly sliced rat tonsil to the potion, doing my best to ensure it dissolved in the noxious liquid and not vomit at the smell (dissolving rat tonsil smells as bad as you would expect it would).
"What did Draco want?" Seamus asked as he returned from the other side of the room.
"The usual, to insult me for a bit, then to threaten murder, he's not too creative that one, I think I come out of our little discussions feeling better than he does. His vocabulary for insults is rather uninspired and exceptionally limited, he seems to default to a set list of threats and insults when he feels like he is losing. Anyway, enough about our favourite ferret, have you diced the blisterwort?"
"Of course," Seamus said as he proudly handed me the well diced plant.
"Thanks Seamus," I said as I returned the potion to the burner and added the blisterwort.
"Professor Snape, please may I have permission to go to the loo?" Seamus asked, Snape levelled a glare at him, but nodded.
After class, I was walking to herbology with Alice at my side, when Draco stepped out from a side corridor so that he was right in front of us, I groaned. "What do you want weasel?"
"Nothing," he said with a grin that contradicted what he had said. "Can't a guy not walk to his next lesson without an ulterior motive?"
"With you, there's always an ulterior motive," I said with a frown.
"Oh none this time," he said with a wide smile that looked downright evil.
I heard a sound echo down the corridor Draco had stepped out from, kind of like a groan. "What was that?" I asked, glaring at Draco, Draco for his part looked confused and scared.
"I, I, I don't know," Draco said hesitantly, I glared at him and ran down the corridor the sound had echoed from, Alice chasing after me.
The sound echoed again, louder now, I followed it back to its source, Seamus was lying face down on the floor in a pool of blood, his robes were torn and his hair singed. I hesitantly rolled him over, his entire front was a mess of wide, but mostly shallow, cuts. His eyes were swollen closed and his face was a mess of nicks and burns, there was a large bruise on his forehead and his nose was broken, but he was still breathing. "My Gods," Alice said as she covered her face with her hands in shock, I heard retching, it was Draco, he and his goons had followed us to Seamus.
"Draco, go and get a teacher," Draco hesitated. "RUN!" I shouted, he ran off, his goons followed. "I'm unsure if we should move him," I said worriedly, "if we do, it could agitate the cuts and cause more bleeding and we can't afford for him to lose more blood."
"Did Draco do this?" Alice asked in disgust.
I looked closely at the cuts, they had stopped bleeding, they were jagged and erratic, the cuts were without rhyme or reason, not targeting any one part of his body. "I don't think so, he has been lying here long enough for the bleeding to stop, this must have happened when he went to the toilet and didn't come back. Look, these three cuts are parallel, as are these three, but the two sets of cuts come from different angles, this is an animal attack. If this was a person they were in a frenzy and as such would not cut him parallel like this, the multiple angles implies claws." I carefully examined him for anything deep enough to be dangerous, but they were mostly superficial, the ones that were deep missed major blood vessels and internal organs.
"Janet, why are there no footsteps? I mean, there had to have been enough blood for the attacker to get some on their feet." I looked around, she was right there were no footprints or pawprints leading from the puddle of blood.
"Hmm, I don't know," I looked over him. His hand was clenched around something, I carefully opened his hand, hairs fell out, black hairs, not like any hair I had ever seen. They were matted with blood, which made them hard to separate, but I managed to take one from the clump, it was branched, splitting halfway to form two ends, which in turn split to form four, which split to form eight and so on. "Alice, you know animals, have you ever seen anything like this?" She took the hair and paled, carefully turning it over in her hands.
"No, I can tell you that it feels wrong, when I look at it and hold it, it feels unnatural," she handed it back, I looked at it more closely, it did feel extremely wrong.
"Curious, I can't feel any magic coming off of it, but you're right, it feels like an affront to nature, like it doesn't belong," I put the hair down, I could not look at it or hold it any longer.
I heard running footsteps, I looked down the corridor, it was Snape with Madam Pomfrey and a pair of House Elves with a stretcher, "step aside and let Madam Pomfrey do her job," Snape shouted, we both took a step back.
"He's alive and stable enough to be moved," she declared after looking him over. "Who would do something like this?"
"Not who, what," I said, "I'm pretty sure the attack was done by an animal, the scratches are mainly in parallel sets of two or three, as would be expected of an animal with claws. The scratches are from two directions, not something you would expect from a human, who would have a knife in one hand, the other to hold him down and as such would cut in one direction, and they are too jagged to be magic."
Snape raised an eyebrow, "how do you know they came from two directions?"
"The cuts on both sides of his body were angled towards the middle, that's quite difficult to achieve with a knife," Snape's eyebrow did not lower.
"What about the burns? That could not be an animal," he looked on grimly as the House Elves loaded Seamus onto the stretcher.
"Not a muggle animal, but there are dozens of monsters that it could be, or even a minor demon," I knew the latter was unlikely, Dumbledore would have noticed something like that.
"Hmm, I think that is highly unlikely, it was more likely that it was a person who carries a knife," he raised an eyebrow at me directly. "Maybe a dwarven dagger?
I was taken aback by the sudden accusation, "one," I whispered, careful to not let Madam Pomfrey hear, "a dwarven dagger leaves a trail of magic when it cuts something, because its metal is imbued with magic. Two, Seamus was most likely attacked during your lesson, which I was in, finally, three, if I had attacked Seamus, he would not be on that stretcher, he would be dead and I would not have left him in the corridor." Snape nodded the smallest fraction, The House Elves apparated Madam Pomfrey and Seamus to the infirmary.
"What's this?" Snape asked as he leant down and picked up the strange hairs, he dropped them immediately. "What is that abomination against nature?"
"That is the other reason I think the attacker was not human, Seamus was holding onto it when we found him," Snape nodded.
"What are you going to do?" He asked, his usual monotone wavering slightly, from anger maybe, or fear.
"I don't know, personally, I'd call in a specialist Auror who deals with this kind of thing, but Dumbledore won't do that and nor would Fudge, they have too much riding on the tournament." I rubbed my temples, I was developing a headache from proximity to the unnatural hair, whatever the creature was, it seemed it was probably brought in by Titan magic, and I knew exactly one person who practised that kind of magic.
"It is a shame that our headmaster likes to play politics so much with the lives of his students," Snape started walking away down the corridor, "do what you must, but I am not staying here longer than I must, I'm developing a headache."
"Can we at least have a note to explain our absence from Herbology?" I called after him.
"I'll talk to Professor Sprout later," he called back. Sprout was angry when we turned up to Herbology late, but when I explained our absence, she was less angry, expressing shock and concern at Seamus' attack.