The first thing in the living room that Bagsy's eyes laid themselves upon was the small glass container in the centre. It was half-full of dust, and nothing else, and she couldn't help wondering what a container of dust was doing in the middle of such a luxurious room. The rest of the room was as expensively, and plushily, decorated as the rest with themes of dark brown, white, gold and marble throughout.

'My house elf will apparate some tea in for us,' Pepsini explained. Almost instantly, a full set of tea cups, tea pots, jugs of coconut milk and sugar holders appeared on the coffee table. Mezrielda, seeming right at home in this posh atmosphere, perched herself on one of the armchairs. Bagsy, far more awkward around such lavish, old fashioned decorations, and terrified that she'd ruin them by simply existing, was less graceful as she descended onto a chair. She was also deeply ill from the intruder trap that'd she'd been caught in and was jealous of Mezrielda who'd recovered so quickly.

'In truth,' Mezrielda spoke up, taking a cup and saucer for herself, 'we had no intention of using that… warpdoor, I believe you called it?'

'Indeed.' Opius nodded, reclining in an armchair and crossing one leg over the other. 'An invention of my own creation, naturally. Far more convenient than portkeys, you'll find. Unlike portkeys, they have no schedule, and remain ready to warp someone upon touch whether that be on the day they receive it, or a year later. Even if they remain a one-use object, they are rather ingenious, if I do say so myself. Soon to be on the market, if I have my way.'

'Be that as it may,' Mezrielda breezed on politely, taking a sip of her drink, pinkie finger raised, 'this is all a rather humorous mistake. You see, we need to return to Hogwarts as soon as possible.'

'I see, I see.' Opius nodded, furrowing his brow seriously. He sucked in a breath, rising sharply from his chair. 'Well, good luck with that.' He strode over to a large, long set of purple curtains and threw them open, revealing the glistening lights of a night-time London.

Mezrielda said a bad word.

Bagsy found herself agreeing.

Pepsini pulled the curtains closed again. 'As you can see, we have time to discuss the situation before we decide how to correct this… humorous mistake.'

The three of them sat in silence for a bit as they drank their tea. Bagsy was slowly recovering from the spinning sensation of her head, and the writhing in her belly, as the nausea and dizziness slipped away. Mezrielda, it seemed, was too stunned to speak. Bagsy could guess what was on her mind; they were in a lot of trouble, and if Mezrielda was in trouble, it could reflect poorly on her parents, and if something reflected poorly on her parents, she could be taken away from them.

Guilt festered in Bagsy. It was her recklessness that led them here. Why had her eyes picked the item out like that? If only she hadn't noticed it then she wouldn't have reached out to touch it, and they wouldn't have been teleported here.

'Why did you send Blythurst a warpdoor?' Mezrielda asked, placing her empty teacup down. It refilled instantly. Mezrielda narrowed her eyes at it suspiciously.

'A long and complicated tale, I assure you,' Opius answered. 'It has to do with my dear sister over there.' Pepsini gestured at the glass container of dust.

Bagsy stared at it blankly, before a feeling of revulsion hit her. 'What happened to her?' she asked in a small voice.

'Evaporagriss,' Opius answered matter-of-factly. 'Nasty thing.' He sniffed, drank some tea, and quickly dabbed a handkerchief to each eye.

'What does she have to do with Blythurst?' Mezrielda asked carefully.

'But enough about me,' Pepsini continued, ignoring her question. 'I believe it's high time you introduced yourselves.'

'I'm Glint. Mezrielda Glint. It's a pleasure.'

'B-Bagsy. I'm Bagsy.'

Opius nodded pleasantly. 'Bagsy who?' he asked.

'Beetlehorn.'

Pepsini's face changed. 'Not from the Beetlehorn family, are you?'

Bagsy and Mezrielda shared a look.

'I'm sorry,' Bagsy muttered. 'I'm not sure what you mean…?'

Opius nodded understandingly. 'They supposedly based in America, anyways,' he reasoned. 'Forgive my confusion. You're almost certainly a different Beetlehorn than the ones I was thinking of.'

'Mr Pepsini?' Bagsy found her voice small and timid despite her best efforts.

'Yes?' He smiled as if humouring a child which, Bagsy admitted, he was.

'May I ask a question?'

'I believe you just did.'

'Oh,' Bagsy stalled. 'May I ask another one?'

'Once again,' Pepsini said, 'you already have.'

Bagsy flushed and narrowed her eyes in thought. 'May I ask you two questions?'

'There you go. Yes, you may.'

'How did you brew the potion that defeated the doppelgangers?' Since he'd introduced himself Bagsy couldn't believe she was meeting the actual Opius Pepsini, doppelganger defeater and Unseen Connections author.

Opius dropped his teacup, that shattered on the tiled floor. 'My word!' He beamed. 'You know my work! How extraordinary. What is your age, if you don't mind my asking?'

'Thirteen,' Bagsy answered.

'Extraordinary. Truly.' Pepsini rose to his feet, fixing the teacup with a wave of his wand, and hurried over to one of the massive bookshelves lining the walls. He hummed as he paced alongside it before sliding a tome from its shelf. Flipping through the pages, he wandered back to them. 'Here we go.' He presented the page to her. 'That's the exact recipe for the potion I used on those dastardly beasts.' Bagsy read hungrily, grateful both for the information and for the chance to ignore the suddenly social situation she'd found herself in.

It was there, laid bare before her; exactly what ingredients allowed a potion to target and manipulate an innate ability a person holds. She made a mental note of it all. And then Bagsy felt like the world's biggest idiot. Opius Pepsini has used jobberknoll feathers and zout to target the doppelganger's ability to shapeshift. Bagsy's mind flashed back to her journey on the Hogwarts express at the start of term, when she'd made a potion that targeted Winifred and Robin's innate ability to heal through fire and inhibit it. Sure, the potion did the opposite of what she was trying to achieve with Tod by stopping an ability rather than bringing it back, but she should have realised that the ingredients could be repurposed. 'Of course,' Bagsy hissed to herself. 'Of course, you great, big, idiot!' Now she had something to work with, her anger with herself was replaced with excitement. This was something to go on, this was how she could figure out the cure for Tod's power.

'Bagsy?' Mezrielda sounded confused.

'It's nothing,' Bagsy lied, handing the book back to Pepsini. She thought it best not to talk to Mezrielda about her IOU with Tod. 'Thank you so much, sir.'

'It's my pleasure. Say, do you know any of my other works?' Pepsini seemed greatly flattered and Bagsy wasn't sure if it would be rude to say yes or no. She was only thirteen, and Pepsini had been shocked she'd known even one thing about him. Was she not meant to know anything?

'I'm sure she does,' Mezrielda cut in with a meaningful look at Bagsy that told her it was okay for her to know these things.

'Yes!' Bagsy blurted. 'I've read – or tried to read – your book. Unseen Connections.'

'Oh, that.' Opius seemed disappointed. Bagsy looked wide eyed and worried at Mezrielda. Had she said something wrong? 'Such a shame. I really thought I'd struck gold with that work, but it was perhaps my largest commercial failure. What do you think of it, Bagsy?'

'Well…' Bagsy trailed off, looking to Mezrielda for help again, who made an encouraging gesture that Bagsy didn't understand. 'I found it really confusing and unhelpful,' she said honestly.

Mezrielda put her face in her hands.

Pepsini smiled and let out a sharp bark of laughter. 'Exactly! I'm thrilled to hear it.'

Mezrielda looked back up, now as confused as Bagsy. 'You are?'

'Yes! It's not an easy work to read. It takes a special sort of mind many tries to grasp what it is trying to say, but the key is that once it is understood, that mind can do great things with its knowledge!'

'And what is it trying to say? I still don't understand it and I've read it three times, now,' Bagsy said.

Pepsini took a sip of tea from his fixed and refilled cup. 'It is attempting the difficult task of teaching the reader to ignore all rules of magic and look at only patterns. It is with these patterns, with different indicators, that we can learn and that we may try to create new things.'

All of his words flew as high over Bagsy's head as the book itself had many times. Bagsy furrowed her brow in puzzlement. 'I'll never be able to apply that,' she mumbled wistfully. 'I have no idea what any of that means.'

Mezrielda, however, was looking at Bagsy in bemusement.

'What?' Bagsy asked.

'Nothing.' Mezrielda grinned wickedly, not looking like she meant nothing at all. Bagsy shot her a mock glare.

Pepsini clapped his hands together. 'I have half a mind to keep you here for the night and send you back on the first train tomorrow, but I must admit you've both grown on me. I shall mercifully get you back to Hogwarts within the hour. Your professors need never know about this excursion.'

Mezrielda let out an audible sigh, her shoulders sagging. 'Thank you, sincerely.'

'Any time. Now, excuse me, it will take about ten minutes or so to activate the return journey on this warpdoor,' Opius explained, gingerly taking the glass rectangle with the wasp inside from Bagsy. 'You're lucky you didn't drop this in the intruder trap. It's the only warpdoor that can take an individual into Hogwarts. I had special permission from Fitzsimmons, you see, otherwise it simply wouldn't be able to pass the security guarding the school.' Opius then stood in silence as he worked complicated magic on the warpdoor. When at last he cried out that he'd finished, Bagsy was finding her eyes beginning to slide shut. 'Here we are,' Pepsini said, placing the warpdoor on the coffee table carefully. 'Make sure one of you is holding onto the other, then simply grab onto the paperweight.' He indicated the glass rectangle with the wasp inside. Bagsy held her hand out to Mezrielda, who hesitated with an odd expression on her face before taking it. Without a second thought, Bagsy smiled at Opius, thanked him, and then placed her fingers on the paperweight.

The second time was much easier than the first. She was expecting the world to shift around her and simply closed her eyes for the duration. Before she knew it, she and Mezrielda were standing in the small room Starrett kept her confiscated items. Bagsy quickly placed the paperweight down on a shelf before hurrying from the room, letting go of Mezrielda's hand. Mezrielda followed closely. It was late, and the castle was practically deserted, the silence a strange feeling. Paintings snored on either side of them as they crept along, and moonlight glimmered through the ancient windows.

'I'll see you tomorrow,' Mezrielda whispered as they came to a split in the corridor. One way led to the dungeons, the other the kitchens and beyond.

Bagsy nodded. 'Yeah, see you. And thanks, Mezrielda, for helping me get my wand-training wheel back.'

Mezrielda shrugged. 'Don't mention it, just don't let Starrett see you've got it back,' she said before disappearing down the dungeon steps.

Bagsy reached the dormitory without incident and passed Greenda on her way to bed. She apologised to her for missing Quidditch practise that evening. Greenda didn't seem to mind, but told her Ford wasn't impressed, and that anyone else who cared wasn't someone worth worrying about or giving the time of day. Bagsy guessed this meant she'd had another spat with Emmeline and reminded herself she needed to figure out how to fix the animosity between them. Then Greenda buried herself back in the stack of books and papers she was studying.

Care for Magical Creatures was Bagsy's first lesson the next day. Teresa and Mezrielda, their quarrels long behind them since their mutual hatred of Professor Mephit had taken hold, walked alongside each other as they discussed what silly mistakes and fumbles Mephit might make that lesson.

'If he confuses warblers and morblers one more time I'm gonna loose it,' Teresa stated as she re-did her ponytail, her ginger hair catching fire in the winter sunlight.

Mezrielda hummed her agreement. 'Absolutely. I also feel he should be gentler with the creatures.' Bagsy noticed that Mezrielda was determined to talk loud enough that the students around them heard. Very few were keen on Professor Mephit, and the opinions of Mezrielda only seemed to rise with every criticism she proudly declared of him. Bagsy had little doubt a lot of her complaining was simply a ploy for social acclaim, as Mezrielda would call it. Especially given Mezrielda lacked any real enthusiasm for magical creatures or the study of them and bemoaned any and all homework they were set on it.

The class was clustered in a corner of the barn, which still surprised Bagsy with how much bigger it was on the inside than the outside. More surprising still was how Mephit had managed to develop such muscly arms but have such lanky legs.

'Gather around,' Mephit instructed them, the floating panel of coloured glass magnified Mephit's eyes as he peered at them. 'Or don't, if there isn't enough space,' Mephit added. 'Though of course there probably is, so actually do gather around. But don't squash each other! Unless you need to squeeze in to fit around me…'

Bagsy found herself constantly confused during Care for Magical Creatures. She didn't think it was due to the subject matter.

Mephit was teaching them about snakes that somehow were birthed by fire, and then died within the hour, laying their eggs to ignite more flames and hatch into more snakes.

'They're called…' Mephit stumbled. 'Uh, they're called embers. Yes. Ember snakes.' Mephit nodded, the panel of glass floating in front of his eyes flashing the word Ember at the students.

'Um, actually,' Teresa piped up testily, 'I think you mean ashwinders. Ember snakes are a type of scarf sold at Madam Malkins Robes for Every Occasion that give of flecks of fire when you move.'

'Of course,' Mephit laughed awkwardly. 'Just keeping you on your toes. Ashwinders. Yes. Dangerous snakes. Except for when they're not. Be cautious. But not too cautious, they are fascinating, after all. But don't get too close, I suppose. But I suppose you need to be somewhat close to see them.'

Bagsy looked down at her notes, grunted in frustration, and scribbled them all out. It seemed anything that came out of Mephit's mouth contradicted whatever he'd said moments before. When Mephit finally shut up and set a magical fire, allowing it to burn out so the students could see the birth of a real ashwinder, Bagsy found herself edging as far back as she could. A grey and red snake with pure black eyes poked its head out of the embers, shaking the ash from its scales and looking around itself peacefully.

'You've got to be careful with these,' Mephit explained. 'Their eggs will cause fires if we let it roam around and lay them wherever it likes. Thankfully, they aren't hard to get rid of.' Mephit took his spray bottle from his belt and aimed it at the snake.

'No!' Teresa gasped, leaping between Mephit and the snake, holding her arms out. 'It only gets to live an hour, why must you kill it so soon? Water kills ashwinders!'

Mephit furrowed his brow, the panel of glass magnifying his eyes up to ten times as he looked uncertainly at Teresa. 'I have to kill it because it may cause more fires.'

'Not if you keep it in a terrarium and ensure it doesn't find a suitable nesting spot!' Teresa exclaimed, putting her hands furiously on her hips.

'I… hadn't… I mean, of course I'd thought of that. I set aside a terrarium just the other day for this…' Mephit grabbed a terrarium which seemed empty except for little white dust-like dots floating inside. Mephit easily pulled off the lid and walked towards the snake, not realising the little white dots, fairies, where rushing out with buzzes of excitement.

Teresa stood, mouth ajar in shock, at the sight. Mezrielda couldn't hold back an unimpressed shake of her head.

Teresa breathed, 'At least the fairies are talking to each other now they're out of that ridiculously tiny cage…'

Waiting for the ashwinder to turn to dust and die was rather boring, so Mephit let them poke around the barn for the remainder of the lesson. The students eagerly rushed from one enclosure to the next, pushing their faces against the meshing and peering in at the creatures. Only, every creature in the barn seemed impeccable at hiding in their habitats.

Bagsy stayed well to the side, not wanting to venture too close to the monstrosities her mind convinced her were hidden behind each bush or branch. It was only Bagsy, standing at the side like she was, that noticed Professor Mephit looking out a window at the lake with a concerned expression on his face as if he'd seen a ghost. The next moment Mephit had rushed out of the barn without a word.

Curious, Bagsy walked over to the window and peered out. She saw Hogwarts' lake in the distance, and the Quidditch training grounds off to the side, but nothing that explained the worried expression on Mephit's face.

With a nervous glance at her classmates, Mezrielda and Teresa seeming preoccupied explaining to the other students what a mimic was, Bagsy hurried out of the barn after Professor Mephit. Despite his lanky legs, Mephit was very fast and already a small shape next to the lake. Bagsy, hunched low and trying her best to be invisible, crept towards the lake after him.

She could just about see Mephit lowering a glass into the water and pulling it out. He tested the liquid and even from the distance she was at Bagsy could see a sharp reaction of fear and confusion from him. Mephit instinctually turned around, looking behind him, but not at Bagsy. Following his gaze, Bagsy's own eyes landed on the forbidden forest.

What was Mephit concerned about? What had he seen that had spooked him so much?

Bagsy hurried back to the barn. As keen as she was to find out, she was equally keen to avoid getting in trouble. When the lesson ended, and the students were walking back to the castle, Bagsy pulled Mezrielda aside. It wasn't easy, given she was surrounded by students listening eagerly to her explanation of gargoyles, but with a dignified wave Mezrielda departed from her captive audience.

'Yes?' Mezrielda asked in confusion. Bagsy relayed what she'd seen, Mezrielda's expression growing more confused as she did. 'And? He's a fool, Bagsy. Who knows what he was thinking or doing.'

Bagsy let out a breath but found herself agreeing somewhat. Still, she couldn't shake the want to understand what Mephit had been doing.

After an eventless transfiguration lesson (even though Bagsy had her wand-training wheels back, she wasn't stupid enough to use them where professors could see them) and a hearty lunch, Bagsy headed for Herbology with the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws.

Mezrielda waved Bagsy goodbye, shooting a glance that Bagsy swore was concerned in Arice Allthorn's direction, before heading off for her own lesson. Arice Allthorn didn't waste much time before scooting to Bagsy's side, walking with her.

'Hi, Arice.' Bagsy smiled pleasantly at him.

'Hi, Bagsy…' Arice stumbled over his words, and didn't seem as chilled out as he usually did. Bagsy furrowed her brow.

Professor Wattleseed burst into the green house, wiping his glasses clean before placing them on his face. 'Good news, students!' he announced, throwing his arms wide. 'Today's theory lesson is cancelled! Instead, we'll be setting up and prepping for Friday's practical lesson. Put your cloaks back on, collect your things, and follow me!' Wattleseed was brimming with excitement.

Bagsy and Arice shared a confused look.

Teresa tapped Bagsy on the shoulder as they left. 'Mind being partners again this year?'

'Don't you want to be partners with Neve?' Bagsy suggested, glancing over at Neve who was shuffling along timidly at the back. Bagsy still couldn't shake the feeling from her second year that she'd stolen Neve's partner away from her.

'Nah she'll be fine,' Teresa dismissed Bagsy's concern.

'Actually,' Arice cut in, his voice wavering, 'I thought maybe we could be partners this year, Bagsy?'

'Nonsense,' Teresa snapped at Arice, who narrowed his eyes at her. Teresa threw one of her long limbs over Bagsy's shoulder, smiling confidently down at him. 'She's already mine, aren't you, Bagsy?'

Bagsy opened her mouth to say something but found her face flushing from all the attention she was getting. In her first year no one had wanted to be her partner – now it felt like everyone did. 'I suppose I am already partners with Teresa…' Bagsy murmured apologetically.

Arice flared his nostrils and clamped his mouth closed but didn't protest.

'Sorry…' Bagsy trailed off.

Arice didn't speak to Bagsy as they followed Wattleseed and moved to the other end of the group. Teresa folded her arms. 'Ignore him,' she breezed. 'He's being a spoiled brat. Sometimes you don't get what you want, and you simply have to grow a thicker skin and move on.' Bagsy didn't respond but couldn't help shooting Teresa a small glare.

When Bagsy realised Professor Wattleseed was leading them towards the forbidden forest, she forgot any qualms she'd had about her partner for this year's project.

Wattleseed stopped a few paces from the tree line. 'I know Mondays are our theoretical lessons, and I know our practical lessons have been a little lack lustre so far this year, but!' Wattleseed gave a small skip of excitement as he indicated a bulge in the dirt at his feet, where deep cracks were forming through it. 'Clostra boab's take their time.' Bagsy blinked. She'd never heard of a clostra boab before. 'I'm sure you all remember last year's project fondly. Popple trees are fascinating things.'

Bagsy and Teresa shared a smile. Last year their herbology project had been encouraging the growth of a grove of popple trees. Working together, they'd managed to sprout more trees than anyone else.

'And I'm sure you are all aware of the mesmerising whomping willow we have here on our grounds. I decided, given we already had two incredibly rare trees at Hogwarts, why not build the collection? Soon Hogwarts will be the home of every rare tree imaginable!' Wattleseed's voice rose passionately, and there was a mad glint in his eyes. 'Ahem,' he calmed himself. 'That is to say, I have managed to convince the Society for the Protection of Rare, Obscure and Unique Trees, or S.P.R.O.U.T, to provide us with clostra boabs.' Wattleseed plucked a large shovel from the ground and, with a hefty breath and infatuated expression, struck it into the dirt. 'Quolldron College, in Australia, sent us these boabs, and we sent them some popples in return, so they can begin their own grove. A fair trade, I'd say. Now then, I've done the hard work of planting them, but to get these trees ready for our Friday lesson we'll need to dig up and soften the soil above them so they can grow. Everyone grab a shovel. That's it, now look for growths and cracks in the ground and set to work.'

Bagsy did as she was told, picking a small patch of cracked earth that was rising out of the ground. Teresa joined her as they began to dig up and mix the soil above the tree Wattleseed had planted earlier. It was scary work for Bagsy, who couldn't help glancing over her shoulder at the dark, looming trees and thick, oppressive foliage behind her. She swore she saw something large moving in the distance and tried her best to ignore it. Wattleseed had set up a wooden fence along the treeline of the forbidden forest to keep the students out, though Bagsy reckoned whatever was in there could easily pass the fence if it so chose, so it gave her little comfort.

Once Herbology was finished, Bagsy waved goodbye to Teresa, who seemed set to be her partner again this year, and hurried to potions.

As Bagsy rushed to the shelves to collect the ingredients needed to brew topsy-turvy scurvy slurpy, a potion created by ancient pirate wizards, she paused. Her eyes caught sight of a bottle of snake fangs sitting in plain view. There were fewer of them because, last Potions lesson, they'd used the snake fangs to brew wideye potion, the potion that kept you awake.

Bagsy brought the jar of standard ingredients to her desk and prepared three measures for the recipe. With a quick glance to ensure Blythurst wasn't paying any attention, which he unsurprisingly wasn't, and that no students were looking her way to copy her next move, Bagsy rushed back to the shelves. As she placed the jar back, she quickly snuck the snake fang bottle into one of her robe's pockets. With a guilty, flushed face Bagsy hurried back to her station and set about brewing as if nothing was wrong.

'What have you done?' Mezrielda asked, after not too long.

Bagsy was shaking all over she felt so ashamed and was making a mess of her potion. The rest of the class were, unfortunately, doing exactly the same as they copied her. 'N-nothing!' she exclaimed, tipping the contents of her failed potion into the waste fountain and starting again. 'Nothing at all!' Her voice was squeaky with deception.

At the end of the lesson, when Mezrielda was busy helping other students clear up with pleasant smiles, 'but of course I'll help you' and 'honestly, it's nothing' falling from her lips, Bagsy stole more ingredients until she had the makings of the wideye potion filling her many pocketed school robe. With a swift and suspicious sounding goodnight to Mezrielda, who shot her a curious gaze, Bagsy scuttled back to the Hufflepuff room.

'Bagsy!' Ford Krinkle, who'd been sitting with Kat and Emmeline next to the fireplace doing work, hurried towards her. 'Any progress on that… special project I set you?' he asked, with a glance in Emmeline's direction.

'Not really. I'm working on it, though. Along with the Hufflepuff brooms,' Bagsy assured him, before ducking behind the ferns and armchair into her private room.

'How does she do that?' Bagsy heard Ford wonder. 'Missing Hufflepuff… more like disappearing Hufflepuff,' he huffed. Bagsy didn't spend a moment puzzling on what he was saying, instead fishing her potions set from her bottomless tool box and setting to work.

If she modified the wideye potion to last a little longer, and be a little more potent, Bagsy realised she wouldn't have to worry about sleep anymore, and could simply focus on the myriad of things she needed to get done. Tod's favour, the quarrel between Emmeline and Greenda, the Hufflepuff brooms, Mezrielda becoming an Animagus, school work… it was all too much but perhaps it would be manageable if she could spend twenty-four hours awake and working instead of just eighteen.

By the time Bagsy was getting sleepy, the potion was brewed. It wasn't wideye potion – wideye potion took many hours to brew and had to be left to sit. Bagsy had sped the process and increased its potency by adding swift scales. Usually swift scales ruined a potion, causing it to boil over or burn through a cauldron, but simpler potions, with great brewing care, could take the extra intensity without catastrophe.

Taking a bit of a risk, Bagsy had also added some root of Asphodel, with the hopes it would help the potion genuinely replace the energy gained when sleeping, rather than simply energising the drinker like a sugary drink. Taking a leap of faith Bagsy drank the oily, deep green substance and stood still, trying not to gag.

Without realising how, Bagsy found herself lying on her back looking up at the ceiling. With a sharp intake of breath she lifted her head and gingerly placed a hand to the back of it. There was a large bump and a soreness there as if it had been struck. She sat up and looked around herself. She was still in her private room, the bottle she'd poured the green potion into clasped loosely in her hand. The dusk light that had filled the room was still there, so no more than five or so minutes could have passed.

Had she fainted? Bagsy felt like she had. Actually, she felt more like she'd had twelve glorious hours of sleep. Worried, Bagsy wondered if an entire day had passed, but when she checked her wizard's calendar it said it was still Monday. A wizard's calendar never lied.

Staring down at the bottle in her hand, and then glancing at the cauldron the potion had been brewed in, Bagsy felt a thrill of excitement. She'd done it! She'd placed an entire night's sleep into a bottle. She'd brewed rest.

Her motivation soaring, Bagsy took out some parchment she'd noted Opius Pepsini's doppelganger potion on and decided that first she would try to replicate it perfectly. Then, with a basis for her work, she'd branch out and start experimenting with the recipe. By the end of the week Bagsy may have the cure Tod sought after.

Bagsy brewed Pepsini's potion exactly as it should be, jobberknoll feathers, zout and all. She'd raided Blythurst's stores again. With permission, of course. He'd hadn't responded when she'd asked him in a quiet voice last lesson, which was the same as explicit permission, Bagsy told herself. But, once the potion was done, despite her precise following of the steps, she was surprised to find that the vapours from the swirling brown and pink liquid were making her skin sting.

'Ouch…' Bagsy mumbled, gently rubbing her arms, the skin of which was riddled with goose bumps and turning a worryingly pale grey. The contact felt like sandpaper and spread horrible itching up and down her limbs.

A few minutes later and Bagsy found she could stand the stench of the potion no more. Abandoning her task, she sought refuge in the common room, coughing and wafting the air in front of her face as she stumbled through the small door behind the armchair. Bill hadn't seemed to mind the potion's fumes and had looked at her curiously, her rat nose twitching, as Bagsy had suffered and fled.

Bagsy sat sulkily in front of the dead fireplace. She'd grabbed the quilt her sister, Bontie, had made for her last year and wrapped herself in it. The winter chill of Scotland had reached deep into the castle, even into the burrow that was the Hufflepuff common room. As the quilt expanded in thickness to snuggle warmly around her, the cold coals and logs barely providing any warmth, Bagsy said a silent thank you for the temperature responsive blanket Bontie had provided her with.

She spent a while wallowing, wondering what she'd done wrong when brewing the potion, before her thoughts turned to her sister. Grabbing some paper and a quill, she wrote Bontie a quick letter, deciding to take it to the Owlery in the morning. She explained her visit with Opius Pepsini, adventurer and inventor extraordinaire, and how, somehow, she must have made a mistake brewing his potion as it made her feel ill and itchy.

Not feeling any need to sleep, thanks to her potion which she had decided to call exhaust-gone, Bagsy finally managed to fit some school work into her timetable and spent the night writing the risk assessment for that year's herbology project, an essay of summoning charms and their uses, and an explanation of the differences between copper, brass and pewter cauldrons, all the while thinking that not having to sleep so she could spend all her time working was very handy indeed.