Her Christmas holidays were lonely without Fred and George, as they went back home for Christmas, but she found ways to occupy her time. There was always an abundance of school work to do, even if she had finished all her homework within the first two days of the holiday, she could always revise.
She would annotate her potions textbook when she felt the need, even writing little recipes and idea at the back that she had planned. Of course, she would have no idea if they had worked until she attempted them and tried them out. Once she had, she would correct her recipes and reattempt until she had made a new magical sweet.
Ever since her meeting with Professor Lupin, Haidee's mind had been divided in two with curiosity. One, being the Patronus charm which she was eager to learn. She had spent many hours in the library, doing research on the charm. Although it was advanced, it was not hard to find information on. It could be conjured by the enchantment 'Expecto Patronum' whiles the spellcaster pondered over their happiest memories.
The second being the potion Snape had brought into Lupin's office when she was discussing that particular charm with him. Wolfsbane Potion, not a permanent cure for Lycanthropy, however a temporary fix that allows the werewolf to keep control over their mind post-transformation.
She knew Professor Lupin would not simply drink a cauldron of potion if he was not aware of what it was and the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. His sickly appearance, disappearances from class and his torn clothing were all concluding that Professor Lupin was a werewolf.
Haidee was no longer in two minds about Lupin, however. Her mind had been fixed. In fact, she was even disgusted with herself that she would even consider him untrustworthy due to his condition, especially when she began to realise that his lycanthropy may be the reason for his subtle outcasting.
Determined to help in whatever little way she could - knowing the difficulties of being the outcast in Hogwarts - she thought that she might be able to help using her knowledge of potions to treat him.
She knew that the Wolfsbane Potion was horribly tasting and she knew that Lupin himself did not like the taste. So, she thought she was the perfect candidate - considering her knowledge of potions and skills in sweets - to try and invent an easier, more delicious way to consume the potion to show, in a subtle way, some solidarity.
What she also knew was that this was no simple tasks, considering she had never done this before as well as that sugar renders the Wolfsbane Potion useless.
She could not admit truthfully that the thought of a werewolf teacher had not shaken her, but it was fear and irrationality that caused her bias and not the fact that Professor Lupin was, and forever would be, her favourite teacher who had ever taught at Hogwarts.
Hours upon hours she would spend in the library researching Wolfsbane Potion, planning recipes that were inevitable to fail upon scrap pieces of parchment. She studied furiously, unsure why she was so determined to find a way to make this work. Yes, she sympathised with him but her determination seemed rooted deeper than simple empathy or perhaps, was it simply because she could not bear to watch Professor Lupin smile insufferably at her each time she walked into his class.
Upon the twenty or thirty different loose pieces of parchment that she had scattered over her desk were twenty or so different recipes she had concocted in hopes that maybe one of them might work. Scooping up the parchment pieces she rushed her way to the kitchen with her cauldron. She knew that she had the majority of the ingredients she needed, others would be in the greenhouse as the main ingredient of Wolfsbane potion was wolfsbane.
Her excitement caused her to dash towards the kitchen where she rounded a corner. Before she had turned she had not realised that Peeves was looming in that hallway, ready to cause mischief for however next entered but by the time she realised this, he had already locked onto her.
"Oh!" he gleamed in excitement as his favourite victim stared nervously as he floated above. "Haidee the cyclops has come to show me her eye!" In a darting motion, Peeves flew to her and pulled at her hair. He tugged and tore as he aimed for her fringe, trying to reveal her eyes.
In an effort to remove him, she thrashed around causing his booming laugh to bound off the walls. Luckily, she had managed to make him let go and she hastily ran from the room, hoping he would not follow. Her chest heaved as she hid behind a wall, looking down at the things she held in her hands. Most of the parchments where her recipes were written had fallen in her flailing attempt to remove Peeves from her, others were torn beyond recognition. She stared at the mess in her hands and watched as hours upon hours of hard work and calculations was washed down the drain, as she was only left with two remaining recipes for her to attempt.
Her rush to the kitchen quickly turned into a paranoid stalk as she continuously looked behind her in an effort to protect herself from Peeves, her excitement dwindling as she merely had two recipes to attempt. Some of the ripped parchment she might have been able to mend, but she didn't want to accidentally piece the wrong pieces together to create a whole new calculation that could produce an infinite amount of reactions.
She greeted the house-elves as she entered, placing what she had left in her hands on her kitchen bench before preparing everything. Staring at her recipes, she had almost no hope now of it working, but she decided to proceed.
She followed her own direction, her handwriting was small and scribbly in her excitement to jot down her idea, but she managed to understand what she was saying. She had never attempted to merge a potion with a sweet before and she soon discovered why she had never heard of anyone else inventing it. It was extremely difficult, even for Haidee who found both potion making and baking naturally easy.
The ingredients in the baking aspect would counteract the potions qualities and Haidee was forced to find potion-like ingredient substitutes that would both make the potion effective but also create the same chemical reaction in the cooking process as it would in simple baking. These ingredients did not come around easily, and Haidee had made seven attempts to find a sugary ingredient that would not counteract the Wolfsbane potion yet taste sweet and crystalised into candy.
She also had to pay close attention to how she was preparing the wolfsbane. It was quite poisonous and needed to be prepared perfectly for it to be usable in the potion. She focused immensely on this part, her eyes never parting for the wolfsbane as she prepared it, her hand steady as she sliced. Her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth in her concentration and once she had prepared it to her satisfaction, she added it to the potion.
She made many attempts and many errors, some of which was her inability to find a suitable replacement ingredient causing her lollies to not form spheres and others were miscalculating the proportions of which ingredients to use. She had found, however, that with the smallest amount of honey combined with dried and crushed nettle, she would create a substance was sweet in flavour, held the body of the candy so that it would not collapse and did not disrupt the effect of the Wolfsbane potion. It was also expected to give the werewolf's fur coat a shine.
Failed attempt after many failed attempts, spending day in and day out of the kitchen, she had finally produced a sweet that stayed in form and that she hoped would keep the effect of the potion.
Of course, she was not going to hand Professor Lupin a sweet she had made without testing it first. She knew that since she was not a werewolf herself that she would not be able to test the sweet to its entirety. However, she could test the taste and any side effect it may have.
She popped the lolly into her mouth with unease. She was proud of what she had produced, even if it did not work, as she knew that she had made progress.
Within seconds, her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she collapsed. Her head smashed to the ground causing searing pain to evolve over her head. Her body jerked slightly on the floor, her mind unconscious to her situation as blood poured from the wound.
Suddenly, she came to. Her eyes fluttered open to find herself in a pool of blood and many house-elves standing above her, looking down. In a groan, she put her hand to her head, where it stung, and found that she had a large wound where she had hit the ground as she struggled to stand, holding into a bench for support
She watched as the house-elves helped her to a seat and began to wash her wound. They tried to speak to her but her brain was so hazy that she didn't understand what they were staying.
"I-I'm sorry. I can't hear you," she said softly and that was when they stopped talking and just continued what they were doing. Haidee faded in and out of consciousness, her eyes catching something new every time she opened them. By the fourth time she opened her eyes, the pool of her blood had been mopped up from the floor and there was a bandage around her head. The kitchen around her was clean and she was sitting on a chair, her pounding head reduced to a soft thump.
She looked around the room and found her failed candies all piled up neatly. She tucked them away quickly, almost too scared to even look at them but she never liked throwing out any of her creations for there might be a situation where she needed one.
She decided that that was enough for that day, and she spent the rest of it sitting in the library, scribbling down new formulas and recipes despite her pounding head.
The next day she tried again. She had mended her recipe and had even conjured up a few more in hopes that one of them might be successful. The house-elves greeted her as she entered once again, asking her how she was, some even hesitantly asking if it was a good idea to continue this experiment. She greeted them back and shrugged at the idea that they may have been right and she may be way in over her head, but she persisted anyway.
She had begun to brew the Wolfsbane Potion, which she had improved to better suit her recipe when she started on her next element. She believed that it was the sugar concoction and the incorrect preparation of the wolfsbane mixed together that created that collapsing side-effect. She took extra care to prepare the wolfsbane, this time, even bringing in her potions textbook for further instructions before she made her next sugar mixture.
She was immensely focused on her ingredients as she made the mixture, strictly following the recipe she had made the previous night when she realised that in her hazed state, she had made a mistake in her work. Without bothering to write down what she had corrected, she continued to slave over the mixture until her literal blood, sweat and tears had fallen into the solution itself.
As she mixed, she saw that the texture was not coming to the granulated texture as she had expected. She stared at it, instantly knowing that it was not how it was meant to be and her heart sank. She had tried so hard and so many times, she was sure that this one was close to perfection, but she had messed up somehow and she stirred furiously in her own frustration, hoping that it would magically fix its incorrect texture.
She sighed in defeat, looking at the powdery substance in front of her. It was meant to be thicker, more crystallised. The finer grain could disrupt the proportions of the recipe; it was unusable.
She would have to scarp everything she had been working on that day due to that, as the potion would soon overboil due to her mended proportions and she had no sugar mixture to add to it. Distastefully, she threw away her potion before staring at the disappointing powder that stood before it. With a frustrated sigh, she scrunched up the failed recipe and threw it away, also.
It was rose gold and powdered as soft as silk. In her curiosity, she dipped her finger into the powder; it was so soft it felt as if she was touching nothing. She looked at the powder residue that lingered on her finger once she had removed it. She lifted it to her nose and smelt it, smiling at the sweet, soft smell of rose and mint. She didn't know why; there was no rose or mint in there. She licked the tip of her finger in her curiosity, wondering if it also tasted of rose and mint, ingredients which she had not added. Just the residue of the powder had enough flood her tastebuds with those unexpected flavours, so sweet and tangy, she was almost tempted to go back for more when her eyes flashed white and she gasped for air.
In front of her eyes, a black, scruffy bear-dog stood before her. He was large and hunched, positioned to pounce. He stood in the halls of Hogwarts, only a few feet away from her allowing her to feel the heat of the dog's breath as he growled. His fur was mattered and his flared teeth were sharp and yellow. His beady eyes stared into Haidee's soul, growling louder and louder until it was the only thing she could hear. It rang in her ears. He jumped, leaping for Haidee with black eyes and razor teeth.
Haidee yelped loudly falling backwards from her upright position, trying to flee from the dog. She fell onto her bottom, her heart racing and bottom sore from the fall.
She blinked hard and looked around before scrambling to her feet. Terror filled her heart which was racing unhealthily fast. Her body seized in fear, her throat aching to scream for her. In her panic, she fled the scene, leaving the powder on the bench. She ran from the kitchen and into the Hufflepuff common room, where she found herself alone. Her fright consumed her, her senses now alerted and she flinched at the potplant whose leaves waved at her due to her passing movement.
She rubbed her eyes and looked around her cozy Hufflepuff room in search for the vicious dog. It felt so real as if that dog was directly in front of her. She left its breath on her skin, the stink of its breath. She felt it as if it were true.