Beth had a hard time looking at Diggory in the following week. She passed him several times in the hallways, had to sit behind him in Alchemy, and he was almost always visible at the Hufflepuff table at meals. Every time he passed, she would look away anxiously and think, He's different than he was yesterday. At dinnertime on Thursday she watched him from the Great Hall.
What have you done to yourself? What will it cost you?
"Beth? Are you in there?"
"Huh?" Beth sat up with a start. She realized she had been staring and ran a quick blush. Aaron Pucey nudged her, grinning, and tried again.
"I said, are you going to the dueling club?" Aaron asked cheerily.
Beth remembered Richard's vehement threats from the week before. "Yeah," she said, stifling a grin. "I wonder who's teaching it?"
"Flitwick's a champion dueler," Melissa said in a very knowledgeable and utterly infuriating way, as she leaned across the table to butter a slice of bread. "It's bound to be him."
"Snape's not bad himself, I hear," interjected Aaron. "If we're lucky it'll be him."
Bruce grunted his agreement. "Anyone else'll try to keep us away from the other Houses. I'd like to try my hand against someone else for a change."
"Like a Ravenclaw?" Melissa sniffed. She adopted a nasal, snobby voice. "'Excuse me, but according to my calculations the probability of my conquest in this duel is ninety-three point four five percent, so if you please, save us both the trouble and slither back to your snake-hole post-haste.'" She snorted and shook her head. "They're a bunch of know-it-all snobs."
Beth wasn't about to remind Melissa that she acted like a know-it-all snob quite a bit of the time. Instead she let out a short laugh. "Snake-hole?"
Melissa ducked her head sheepishly. "That's what Galen calls our common room. I guess all the other Houses say it."
"That's right," came a humorless voice behind them. Riggs stood there, looking officious and irritable. "The snake-hole. One of the many injustices forced on us by the other three-fourths of the school." His face contorted a little -- maybe it was just a trick of the light. "But I'll tell you something. I've been getting a lot more respect from the other prefects since the Heir of Slytherin has been on the loose."
They stared at him for a few seconds. Then Bruce let out a shaky laugh. "You sound a little uptight," he ventured, smiling tentatively.
Riggs relaxed slightly and the fire went out of his gaze. "They've been on us hard in the last couple of weeks," he admitted, taking an empty seat. "The administration, I mean. If we lose another student, they're saying they'll hold the prefects responsible."
Aaron let out a low whistle. "They wouldn't do that," said Beth, disbelievingly.
Riggs laughed, a short and forced sound. "Watch and see." He stood back up. "I'm off to the snake-hole to watch over all the little reptiles until the dueling club meets tonight." He strode away.
"See you there," Melissa called after him, but Riggs made no reply.
Eight o'clock came quickly and with much anticipation. The Great Hall was filled with students of all years and houses, chattering eagerly. The Weasley twins circled each other, jabbing their wands like fencing foils. A stage had appeared at one side of the room, and all of the tables and chairs were gone, so the Great Hall looked a lot like a gymnasium (if you didn't look up at the enchanted ceiling).
The fourth-year Slytherins all hung together. There was sure to be some pairing off, and despite what Bruce has said about trying his hand at other houses, they all wanted to be sure to get matched with each other.
Melissa nudged Beth's arm. "Look, it is Snape that's teaching us!" she exclaimed happily. "I knew it, he's going to be good -- oh no --"
Gilderoy Lockhart was also on stage.
Aaron let out a snort. "He'd better be up there as a demonstration dummy, that's the only way we'll learn anything from him."
But Lockhart was waving his arm cheerfully, looking more like he was accepting an Academy Award than teaching a class. "Gather round, gather round!" he called, beaming at the throng. "Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent! Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little dueling club ..."
"Little nothing, it's the whole school," Bruce muttered, but Beth elbowed him into silence.
"... for full details, see my published works," Lockhart went on. "Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape. He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about dueling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin. Now, I don't want any of you youngsters to worry -- you'll still have your Potions master when I'm through with him, never fear!"
"Ah, but will we have a D.A.D.A professor?" murmured Mervin reflectively. Professor Snape was wearing the kind of look that he usually reserved for Gryffindors and Peeves. He maintained his glare as he and Lockhart faced each other and gave the customary bow. The crown went silent with anticipation.
"As you can see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combative position," said Lockhart, obviously relishing the attention of the audience. "On the count of three, we will cast our first spells. Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course. One -- two -- three --"
They both raised their wands, but only Professor Snape got out a spell: his cry of "Expelliarmus!" sent Lockhart flying offstage and into a wall. The Slytherins cheered wildly. Lockhart staggered to his feet, hair disheveled, eyes wide and shell-shocked.
"Well! There you have it!" he gasped out, struggling back to the stage. "That was a Disarming Charm -- as you see, I've lost my wand -- ah, thank you, Miss Brown -- yes, an excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don't mind my saying so, it was very obvious what you were about to do. If I had wanted to stop you it would have been only too easy -- however, I felt that it would be instructive to let them see ..."
"What a load of --" Aaron began sharply, but Beth decided he needed to be elbowed before he could finish.
Astoundingly, Lockhart was still smiling. "Enough demonstrating!" He stepped into the crowd, and they all backed away a little. "I'm going to come amongst you and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you'd like to help me ..."
Professor Lockhart wandered through the clusters of students, picking out couples with joyous abandon. When he reached Beth's group, he broke out into a wide grin. They drew closer together.
"Aha, here we have the young Slytherins! Splendid, splendid. Here's a group of Gryffindors -- I'm sure you're willing to try your hands at each other! Best of luck now!" And he shuffled up the two clusters until Beth found herself across from one of the Weasley twins. Helplessly, she looked around for her friends. Aaron Pucey was faced off with the other Weasley, almost snarling with hatred at the Gryffindor's Beater. Melissa was paired off with Angelina Johnson, a girl one year older and at least a foot taller than Melissa herself. Bruce was nowhere in sight.
Beth looked at the Weasley. He scowled back.
Lockhart was back at the platform, proudly surveying his handiwork. "Face your partners and bow!" he called.
The Weasley gave Beth a stiff bow. Not sure what else to do, she curtsied.
"Watch for the ready! When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm your opponents -- only to disarm them -- we don't want any accidents -- one ... two ... three --"
Beth raised her wand and cried, "Expelliarmus!" Across from her, the Weasley did the exact same thing. They must have cast their spells at the exact same time -- both were thrown backward, and the wands went flying out of sight. Beth landed on something soft, which turned out to be a second-year Hufflepuff; the Weasley went careening into his brother, who tripped and went sprawling onto Aaron Pucey. Aaron took it as a direct challenge and started battling the Weasley to the ground.
There were screams and puffs of green smoke started appearing in random spots in the room. Beth saw Riggs groping around on the ground, blind without his spectacles. The Hufflepuff she had hit was apologizing effusively. In every corner there was chaos -- then Snape's voice came roaring over the sounds of war.
"Finite Incantatem!"
Gradually the room fell silent. Students and wands were lying everywhere. Aaron Pucey had to be pried off of the Weasley, which was doubly difficult since both of them were bleeding heavily. Melissa, sprawled on the ground, got to her knees and started collecting the wands. Beth crawled to her side and started to help.
"Holly -- twelve and a half -- this is Cho Chang's --" Melissa muttered, as she picked up the wands. "Oak, eleven, looks like -- unicorn hair -- give this to Ernie Macmillan, would you," she said to Beth, handing over the wand. "Twelve inch rowan, dragon, that's you, Beth. Fourteen and a quarter, beech ... huh, that's funny, Bill Weasley graduated ... oh, I'll bet this is one of the twins' ..."
Beth handed around the wands as Melissa picked them up. "Wow, you're good," she said, impressed. "That's going to come in handy."
Astonishingly, Melissa gritted her teeth. "I doubt it," she hissed, and stood up.
At the front of the room, Professor Lockhart was trying to collect the class again. He was leading Draco Malfoy and Potter into the center of the room. Everyone cleared a space for them. Lockhart was saying something to Harry, who looked terrified to be pitted against Malfoy -- at least, terrified that his adult assistant was Lockhart, who waved his wand elaborately before dropping it on the ground. "Whoops -- my wand is a little overexcited --" he declared. There were muffled snickers.
Across from them, Snape was whispering to Malfoy, who smiled. "I'd kill to know what he was saying," said Melissa enviously. "Potter is so dead."
Lockhart raised his hands like a wrestling referee. "Three -- two -- one -- go!"
This time, only Malfoy managed a spell. He roared, "Serpensortia!" and an enormous black snake burst from his wand. It sat in front of Potter and poised to strike. Everyone circling the two backed off.
Snape was wearing a cat's smile. "Don't move, Potter, I'll get rid of it ..." he murmured, with no intention of doing so quickly.
Apparently it wasn't good enough for Lockhart, though, because he cried, "Allow me!" and shot something out of his wand that only succeeded in blasting the snake three yards in the direction of the Hufflepuffs. It made a beeline for the fat boy that Beth had landed on.
Then -- incredibly -- Harry Potter turned toward the snake and uttered a stream of hissing and rasping like Beth had never heard. The snake continued toward the Hufflepuff for a few seconds before it dropped and turned back to Potter. Potter smiled at the snake and then grinned up at the Hufflepuff -- who shouted, "What do you think you're playing at?"
The Hufflepuff and his friends stalked away.
It wasn't long before Potter was also swept away by his friends. Lockhart vainly tried to recapture the attention of the masses.
"Well -- excellent demonstration of what can go wrong if one doesn't follow directions ... eh ... let this be a lesson to you ... what shall we move on to now, Professor Snape? I don't suppose you'd care to show us all that little snake trick, would you?"
"The club is over," snarled Snape, and he strode out.
If Lockhart had any intention of continuing the lesson by himself, no one stayed to see it. There was a wild exodus for the doors, some to get away as soon as possible, others to follow Potter and see what he was up to, still more to follow Snape and beg him to teach them how to summon a snake.
Bruce appeared at Beth's side, tapping his watch. "Eight thirty," he grinned. "Guess it did end in time for the meeting."
So at eleven o'clock that night, the S.S.A. met again for their weekly gathering. The members who had come early were having a lively discussion about the Dueling Club and its abrupt end.
"A Parselmouth! The lucky bum is a Parselmouth!" Mervin ranted. "What did Potter do to deserve that?"
"And why didn't anyone find out about this last year?" asked Vivian. "We should have been watching him closer."
"What a bad time to let the secret out," Richard mused. "Everyone's going to think he's the Heir of Slytherin."
"Which is of course bunk," said Vivian, "because to be the Heir of Slytherin, one must necessarily be a Slytherin."
"What if the Sorting Hat didn't know about it?" Herne suggested, but Vivian waved him away.
"The Sorting Hat is smarter than that," she argued. "If he was the Heir of Slytherin, I think he would have been made a Slytherin no matter what other traits he had. He's a Gryffindor for heaven's sake. A Gryffindor who happens to be the only Parselmouth in the school."
Daedalus had joined them by then. "I'm a Parselmouth," he said, in a hurt voice.
"It doesn't count if you have to turn into a snake to do it," she argued primly. She grabbed his hand and pulled him onto the divan beside her. "Not to downplay your accomplishments. No offense."
"Of course."
Richard looked around, assured that all of the members were present, (except Riggs, off on prefect duty) and clapped his hands to get their attention. "All right, we all know that Potter's a Parselmouth. Interesting, but we have other things to talk about. Has anybody tracked down those two potions that are brewing? Diggory and Granger?"
Beth raised her hand.
"I found Diggory's on Saturday. I think it's been finished. He turned the library book back in, too -- I asked Madame Pince."
Richard looked like he had been handed the keys to the castle. "Did you get a sample? Or see what he put in it?" he asked eagerly.
Beth shuddered. "I heard and saw the end of it, the incantation I mean. He mixed in a hair, and ..." she swallowed "... blood, and then said, 'Glory, honor, power, vivo something vicco.' Is that enough?"
Vivian was already leafing through the Recipe for Success book. "Did he drink it, or rub it onto his skin?" she asked practically.
"Drank it."
"Well it's not that one then ... he didn't say anything about giving up his firstborn child, did he?"
"Not that I heard."
"It's the very end of this one, so you would've known ... how does 'vivo transcongus vicco' sound?"
"That's it!" said Beth eagerly, coming up beside Vivian and peering over her shoulder. "There's the blood part. There's the hair -- I guess the 'glory, honor' and all that was just his own thing."
Vivian let out a low whistle. "The Trancongus Brew. Look at all this potion promises. Beauty, intelligence, charisma, you name it, you can get it."
"Who needs a potion like that?" grinned Uther satisfactorily, putting his hands behind his head.
"Nobody, that's who," Daedalus said in a serious tone, bending over the spell book. "Look at this clause. 'User trades length of life for one filled with glory and power.' I can't believe he actually did it. He'll live to be maybe thirty and die rich, but so young."
"He must value a few years of greatness more than a lifetime of mediocrity," said Evan, in his steady, impartial voice.
There was a round of silence, and Beth realized with horror that each of the members was actually weighing the choice.
Daedalus broke the silence. "Whatever Diggory's done, it's his choice. He's not the Heir of Slytherin. I don't think this potion has anything to do with the Chamber of Secrets. He's harmed no one but himself. Besides, there's no boomslang in this recipe, so it wasn't Diggory that robbed Snape."
Evan spoke up again. "I could have told you that," he said, with a Cheshire-cat smile. "It was Potter and his band of merry outlaws. I found their potion."
Richard looked at him with a combination of vexation and admiration. "Where, then? What was it?"
"They've got it cooking over a toilet in a girl's bathroom," Evan announced coolly, self-assured smile flicking across his lips. "Apparently one that no one ever uses, thanks to the ghost that lives there. Very whiny."
"Moaning Myrtle," sighed Melissa, nodding in recognition. "She's a terrible bore."
"They have it all set up. They even keep their supplies in there," Evan yawned. "The best part is, they're so sure that it's a secret, they even left the spell book open to the page they need."
"Really!" said Vivian eagerly. "Which potion?"
In reply, Evan took up Moste Potente Potions and flipped through it casually. He found the page he wanted and spread the book open, laying it on the floor in front of him. The S.S.A crowded around to read it.
The drawings were dire, but to Beth's trained eye the ingredients were worse. The potion included some genuinely dangerous elements, and at least three things that couldn't be found in the student supply cabinet. Daedalus noticed it too. "Looks like Snape got ripped off more than just a boomslang skin," he whistled.
"'Polyjuice Potion,'" Mervin read. "'To make oneself become another, for divers ends and mischiefs.' They're going to turn themselves into someone else?"
Richard stood back, arms crossed, deep in concentration. "That's not a Petrification potion," he mused, "no matter what else it is. They aren't using this against anyone."
"Not yet," Beth added, looking over the recipe closely. "It has to be stewed for a whole month -- if they're still cooking it, it must not be done yet. If we had some, I'll bet we could tell how long it had been going."
Evan reached into his pocket and coolly produced a stopped-up vial, half full of sticky green liquid.
Richard looked at Evan as if he was holding a vial of gold. "Fantastic," he breathed. He took the potion and held it up to the light, eyeing it critically. Without warning, he thrust it into Beth's hands. "All right, Potions Mistress, do your stuff."
Beth looked at the potion in her hands, startled. "Uh -- I can analyze it tomorrow afternoon," she offered.
"Thanks," Richard beamed. Beth suddenly didn't feel as if she could look him in the eyes any longer, so she turned away with a blush.
The next day after class, Beth took over a small room in the dungeons to analyze the Polyjuice potion and spent most of the afternoon bending over the vial, adding heat and ingredients and calculating furiously. That's where Melissa, Mervin and Bruce caught up with her, just as she was putting away the last of her equipment.
"It's almost all in there," she said, loading up her cauldron. "They're almost the whole way through the recipe. It just needs to stew until about Christmas, and a few base ingredients need to be restocked, and of course at the end you add a bit of whoever you want to turn into --"
Mervin looked repulsed. "Like hair and stuff?"
"Toe lint," said Bruce.
"Toe nails," said Mervin.
"You are disgusting," said Melissa.
They climbed up the stairs to get to the common room. Beth felt good about what she'd accomplished. Alchemy was actually coming in handy, she realized. It was a whole new way of concocting potions -- figuring it out, rather than by recipe or guess. She could really grow to like that kind of thing.
Professor Sprout's voice boomed through the hallways.
"All students return to your common rooms! Return to your common rooms immediately! There has been another attack!"
The four of them joined the horde of Slytherins going back to the common room. All around them, students buzzed with whispered worries. Who was it? What if the Heir decided to kill someone? Was it one of us this time? Bruce wondered as much aloud.
"Don't be ridiculous," Melissa sniffed, as they climbed into the common room. "It's the Heir of Slytherin. We're safer than anyone."
"But what if it was an accident?" Bruce argued. They pushed through the crowd and staked out a corner. Riggs came in like a man aflame, whirling around frantically and trying to console, reassure, direct, and assist everyone all at the same time. He barely had time to comfort a pair of frightened first-year girls who stood nervously right at the entrance.
"I don't know anything!" he cried over the noise. "They didn't tell me anything! I'm going out to see what I can do -- where's Daedalus Dellinger? I'm putting him in charge here!" He blustered out of the common room without realizing that Daedalus was nowhere in sight.
A few minutes later, the door opened again, and Richard stepped through, clutching something tightly.
"Where was he?" Mervin asked suspiciously.
"I'll bet he went looking for the scene of the attack," Beth grinned. Her smile faded as Richard came over to their little group. His face was pale, and his eyes were wide.
"We're meeting tonight," said Richard, in a very shaky tone, "about a matter of extreme importance."
Only then did Beth see what he held in his hands. It was a long green snake with a brown streak down its back, and it had been Petrified stiff.