The Vase Room was chaos. The snake that was Daedalus lay Petrified on a little couch, curled slightly and looking like a plastic toy. Vivian couldn't take her eyes from him. Behind the Ledger, Riggs ran searches of every kind while the dusty pages flipped madly. Everyone else clustered together, arguing loudly about what had to be done next.
Richard finally stormed in, clutching a scroll and wearing a harried look. He strode to the front of the room, bellowing, "Quiet down, time to think!" He turned to the group. "Chaps, we have a problem."
Cacophony.
He silenced them again with an impatient wave of his hand. "I know, I know, come on, shut up already! Here it is. If we take Dell to the infirmary, we have to tell everyone who he is, and he's exposed. Dell's unregistered. That's huge fines, loss of wizarding privileges, maybe even expulsion. If we don't," he went on loudly, over rising complaints, "he just sits here and everybody thinks he's missing, there's an unsuccessful search, his parents are called in and he's declared legally dead. One at a time!" He pointed to Vivian. "You speak."
"We have to turn him in," she said quietly. "We can't leave him like this."
"One at a time!" Richard repeated, and the clamor quieted down. He looked around suddenly. "Where's Herne?"
"Filch caught him on the way down," Evan drawled coolly.
Richard threw his hands in the air. "Of all things! At all times!"
Riggs cleared his throat. "Mister President, Riggs," he said formally.
"What?" Richard snapped, sounded frazzled.
"We can't turn him in. He was unregistered for a reason. We have to find some way to cover for him."
"Sure," sniggered Uther, "we can all take turns running around wearing a Daedalus mask."
A light in Beth's head clicked on. "Wait!" she cried, over the mixed laughs and groans. "We could -- it might -- I mean that's not a bad idea!"
"Beth's talking," Richard called, pointing at her.
"The potion they're making in the bathroom," she said in a rush. "Potter and them. Polyjuice. We can use it to change ourselves into Daedalus, just for classes -- take turns, whoever can fit it into their schedules -- no one knows he's gone, and then we can change him back as soon as we figure out how!"
As soon as she stopped speaking, Beth realized that the clamor had faded into complete silence.
Melissa spoke up. "But it's not finished yet. Didn't you say it would be done on Christmas?"
"Yeah." Beth thought hard. "I'll bet I could speed it up using my Alchemy text. We'll steal about half and make our own version. They'll think it just condensed overnight."
Silence again. Beth suddenly noticed that Richard was giving her a very funny look.
"We can cover for him until Monday morning. He has classes that day before we leave for break. Get the Polyjuice working by then and we'll do it. Otherwise --" he looked at Vivian "-- he's going to the infirmary."
There was a very unsettled pause.
"What do you need?"
Beth cleared her throat. "Some of his hair. Lacewings. My Alchemy book. I'll have to go over the recipe. They've done the hard stuff for us. And someone has to help me steal the potion tonight."
"I'll do it," said Bruce, at the same time that Mervin said, "Sure, I'll go along."
Richard drew in his breath and let it out slowly. "All right then. Everyone's dismissed. Someone get Dell's comb -- Uther, you do that -- and bring in all the hair you can get off of it. Melissa, bring down the Alchemy book. Good luck, Beth."
"Thanks." She was surprised to find her voice was shaking. She looked at Bruce and Mervin. "We need something to carry it in."
Bruce looked around. "This'll do." He picked up a big, heavy-looking copper vase.
The S.S.A filtered out of the vase room, and Beth, Bruce and Mervin set off down the darkened hall.
The corridor was weirdly lit at night; the moon streamed through high, narrow windows and glinted off of the suits of armor lining the hall. Everything looked silver and gray. Mervin lit up his wand, adding a bluish tint to the floor and walls. They edged through the corridors, jumping at every creak and scuffle, until they reached the bathroom where the potion boiled.
Mervin balked at the door. "But -- it's a girl's lav."
"Oh go on!" Beth hissed, giving him a shove. "It's not as if there are any girls in there!"
But Bruce wouldn't follow. "You're wrong," he said, in a very quiet voice. All three of them stopped and held their breaths. Over the hollow squeaks and rustling of the empty castle, they could barely make out the sound of a girl, sobbing piteously from inside one of the stalls.
Beth let out a sigh of relief and smiled at the boys, who looked bewildered at her reaction. "It's all right, it's just Moaning Myrtle. She won't tell on us." As if to prove it, she forged into the restroom whispering, "Hi, Myrtle!"
The foggy form of a girl materialized through the door of the first stall. Her round face was a picture of misery, and large tears welled behind her thick, ghostly glasses. "What do you want?" she sniffed, as if Beth's greeting had been an insult.
"We need some of that potion in the last stall," said Beth, as Bruce and Mervin poked their heads in the door. "You can keep a secret, can't you?"
"Ooh, can I!" said Myrtle, brightening instantly. "I haunted Olive Hornby for forty years without once telling her what actually killed me! Wouldn't give her the pleasure of hearing about my tragic demise!" The prospect of keeping a secret delighted her so much that she bobbed to the ceiling and back, beaming.
"I knew we could trust you," Beth smiled flatteringly. "Myrtle's great, isn't she, guys?"
Mervin and Bruce, who had edged inside but still looked uncomfortable, had to catch Beth's eye before agreeing vehemently that yeah, Myrtle was the best ghost they'd ever met at Hogwarts, they'd have to stop by again some time. The look on Myrtle's face was one of ecstasy.
"Those little brats who are mixing it don't like me," she confided, almost gleefully. "Moping Myrtle, moaning Myrtle, you should hear what they say about me! Serves them right if their things are stolen. Nasty little Gryffindors." She swooped into the last stall; Beth, Bruce and Mervin followed, to find a cauldron simmering over a fire in the toilet seat.
Myrtle watched gleefully as Beth dipped out a full half of the tub and moved it into Bruce's copper cauldron. "Isn't this going to screw up their potion?" Mervin hissed.
"Not too much," said Beth, shaking her head. "There's not much left to do but let it cook. And if they add too many lacewings, it'll just wear off quicker, that's all. Besides," she added, "they're obviously up to no good. If it doesn't work, all the better."
Absolutely overwhelming Moaning Myrtle with thanks, they hauled the cauldron with the Polyjuice back the Vase Room and plopped it on the floor in front of the divan where Daedalus lay, still and serpentine. "We've got to get this back onto a fire, right away," Beth said, looking critically at the cauldron. Mervin, who was good at Charms, lit a fire in one of the low vases and they hoisted the potion on top of it, where it started to bubble and fizz again.
They stood around poking the green goo for a few minutes.
"Disgusting," said Mervin, pulling out a long strand of what looked like snot.
"Put that back!" Beth snapped.
"There's a big old piece of skin in here somewhere," said Bruce hopefully, stirring it with a poker that he had found propped on the wall.
"And a -- oh -- look at this," said Mervin. He unearthed a foot-long, faintly twitching tentacle.
"Get out of that!" Beth ordered.
"I wonder what it tastes like," said Mervin gleefully.
At that point Beth kicked them both out and ordered them to go to bed.
With the boys gone, she finally had a chance to sit down and think. The Alchemy book had been brought down, and now Beth flipped through it idly.
She had never been faced with a problem like this, either in class or otherwise. She didn't know what to start on first: how to speed up the brewing, how to add the extra lacewings before it was ready for them, calculating what the hurried preparation would do to its properties. It made her want to not start on anything at all.
"Well," she sighed aloud, "it's going to be a long night anyway." She opened the Alchemy text to the index and looked up "time alterations".
Late study nights are terrible, wonderful times. Beth started working full-force by midnight, at a steady pace. By one thirty she was churning through equations with a fervor that guaranteed incorrect answers. Around two, she slowed down to a grudging tenacity. By three she was talking to herself to keep moving. The quality of her work dropped off dramatically. She doodled, sang, and once or twice found herself staring at something for no good reason at all -- the armchair, or a picture on the wall. By three thirty she realized that she wasn't getting anything else done and she might as well go to bed. It took half an hour for her to clean up and set things in order for tomorrow.
It was four o'clock in the morning before she closed the Alchemy text and dragged herself to the common room. Even Filch wasn't out prowling this late at night; she made it back easily. The fireplace was still going, but it flickered low; the common room was completely deserted. Half blind with exhaustion, she stumbled down the hall to her bedroom and got ready for bed with a kind of numb relentlessness. Part of her didn't want to sleep: There's so much work to be done, she thought frantically. The other part of her won out about three minutes later, and she dropped off into black and dreamless sleep.