Author's Notes: There's a hitch in the plans to reincarnate the Dark Lord,
and one of the "trio" makes a poorly thought out choice which will lead to
ramifications that they could never imagine and they become an unwitting
pawn for the agents of the new dark uprising. This is where the story
turns and goes dark again. And it's gonna get pretty dark.
Nothing violent or disturbing in this chapter, it just sets up the next major plot-twist.
Disclaimers: Nothing recognizable from the books or movies belongs to me.
Chapter 35: A Choice Made, Lives Changed
The school term started smoothly except for the fact that the "Gryffindor Trio" was split up during several of their classes. Hermione had gone on into an advanced curriculum track; Harry and Ron were in general studies. The only two classes they now all shared were Advanced Potion Brewing and Introduction to Wandless Magic.
Classes were very subdued and low key without Malfoy to torment them. Malfoy's two toadies, Crabbe and Goyle, had returned to Hogwarts for the new term. Neither of their fathers were captured as Death Eaters or slain on the battlefield. But without their leader, their attempts at bullying were halfhearted at best.
The only dark spot in their schedule was the twice-weekly hour in the Potions lab with Professor Snape. If anything, he was even more demanding of the students in regards to behavior and performance in class. On the way out of the first Potions class of the term, Ron pulled Harry aside, leaned over and whispered in Harry's ear: "Maybe the greasy bastard should get round to Hogsmeade more often, it just might mellow him out a bit." Harry suppressed a laugh, and whacked Ron on the back with his schoolbooks. Ron slipped his arm around Hermione's waist, and the three of them headed up the stairs to the great hall.
By this time, Lucius Malfoy had recovered to the point where he could move around his manor house, using his silver topped wand-cane for support. Narcissa had sent her housemaid with the wand-cane to Knockturn Alley to have it repaired and ready for Lucius when he was able to make use of it again. A staff of household servants now replaced their freed house-elf, Dobby. Narcissa insisted upon only pureblood witches and wizards to serve in her home. A pretty young witch, Cassiopea or simply Cassie, who had been raised in an orphanage, was employed as Narcissa's personal housemaid. The Malfoys also employed an older married couple as cook and groundskeeper, and a gentlemen's valet for Lucius. All four servants were bound to the family and home with an illegal binding spell, which was tantamount to psychological enslavement. The spell made them completely loyal to the Malfoys and very easily controllable. In Narcissa's twisted mind, she believed to be doing them a favor, by taking them when they were down on their luck and allowing them to work and live in such a fine home. Lucius had enjoyed tormenting the pretty young housemaid before he was wounded in battle. Now, she scurried away quickly whenever she heard him thumping through the house with his cane.
The time came for Narcissa and Lucius to start the process, which would eventually lead to the return of the Dark Lord. However, Narcissa found herself without child after each attempt by Lucius to impregnate her. The healing wizard was brought in from Knockturn Alley, and a powerful fertility potion was prescribed. Even with magical intervention, no baby was conceived. The wizard was sent for again, and this time he performed a thorough examination on both of the Malfoys. It was determined that Lucius's wounds were to such a degree that he would never be able to father a child again, not even with the strongest fertility potions or charms.
After the healer had left, Lucius had flown into a rage, overturning furniture, smashing crystal and viciously slapping Narcissa's housemaid for daring to look at him with pity. He drank himself into a stupor and stumbled off to bed, slamming the door to his private bedchamber behind him. In fitful drunken sleep, Lucius was visited yet again by Voldemort, who suggested a most devious solution to this obstacle. The next day, Lucius summoned Narcissa to his study, and ordered the servants out of the house for an hour so that their plans would not be overheard.
Lucius told his wife that as he was no longer able to give her a child, she would have to be impregnated by a donor. At first she was horrified with the idea and fled the study in tears, refusing to speak to her husband. However, that night she was visited again in her dreams by Voldemort's spirit, which convinced her that this was the only way. He assured her that she would be most gratefully rewarded for her loyalty when it was all said and done. She approached her husband hesitantly the next morning, and agreed to the plan, if she could personally choose the donor. Lucius was not pleased with her ultimatum, but without much of a choice, he reluctantly agreed and angrily limped off to his study to begin his research.
Back at Hogwarts, the fall term was progressing rapidly. Following the first month of classes, all upper year students were given permission to leave the castle and spend Saturdays in Hogsmeade. After the first few visits, Ron realized that he only had a handful of pocket change left and would not be able to buy Hermione a fancy Christmas gift. He went to Dumbledore, and asked permission to work for the ministry as an errand boy on weekends. His request refused, Ron shuffled back down to the Gryffindor common rooms dejected and worried about how to come up with a decent sum of money in a little over a month. He earned a few galleons and some change by selling off some of his Chudley Cannons Quidditch memorabilia to fellow students. But it was just a drop in the bucket towards what he needed to come up with. He spent the next couple of weeks in a very foul mood, lamenting his poverty and inability to work during the school term.
Mid-term exam time came, and the students faced a very challenging Potions exam. Instead of the usual written question and answer exams they were used to, Professor Snape had devised a practical hands-on examination for the upper level students. They arrived in class to find a blank sheet of parchment and four very tiny vials of colored liquids sitting at each of their places at the worktables. The students took their seats and looked at the materials on the tables with confusion.
When it was time for the exam to begin, the professor entered from the laboratory behind the classroom. He stood in front of his desk and addressed the students.
"Now. Before you, you will find a blank sheet of parchment, which has been charmed to burst into flames at the slightest suspicion of cheating. You will only get one piece of parchment. Cheat and your midterm grade goes up in flames. You will also find four small unmarked vials containing samples of various potions we have worked with so far this term. You will have exactly two hours to use your senses to determine which potions are contained in the vials. Once you have done so, you will write a paragraph describing the potion, its ingredients, how it's brewed, and what its uses are. If you finish your exam before the two hours are up, you may leave your parchments and empty potion vials on my desk and be dismissed. Now, have I made myself clear as to what will be expected of you? Are there any questions?"
Neville Longbottom meekly raised his hand.
"Longbottom! What did you not understand about my instructions?"
"Er, professor, what exactly do you mean by using our senses to identify the potions?"
Professor Snape gave an exaggerated sigh. He leaned back against his desk and glared at the class.
"What I mean is, that you have just enough of each potion to smell it, taste it, and look at the color and viscosity. You need to know how to identify potions without necessarily looking at a label."
Crabbe raised his hand, brows furrowed.
"Yes Mister Crabbe?"
"None of these potions are poisonous are they?"
"Not in the amounts given to you Mister Crabbe. Use some common sense! Believe me, no matter how tempting the thought might be, Dumbledore would never allow me to poison you as part of a lesson."
The professor sat down on the chair behind his desk and reached for a large hourglass.
"Now that you all are clear as to what this exam entails, I have a couple of announcements to make. I will be leaving for a conference with Dumbledore on Monday, and will be gone all week. Professor McGonagall will be taking over my classes during that time. I have left a lesson plan for her, and you will be tested on that material after I return."
He flipped the large hourglass over and sparkling sand started flowing through to the bottom.
"You have two hours, start your exam."
The class erupted into a flurry of activity. Students warily unstoppered the tiny vials and held them at arm's length, taking tentative sniffs of the contents. Hermione dove right in, sniffing, tasting, and feeling droplets of the liquids between her fingers. Her quill practically flew across her parchment. She finished the exam in less than an hour.
She gathered her book satchel and got up to turn in her parchment. As she approached the desk, Ron leaned in surreptitiously towards Harry and whispered behind his hand: "Pssst. Harry? Help me keep an eye on Snape, he might just reach out and grab her bum. We both saw how he grabbed his woman's bum that night we were at the café."
Caught off guard by the comment, Harry snorted out loud and started coughing loudly, trying to hold in his laughter. Ron jumped up and started whacking him on his back.
"Mister Weasley! What on Earth is the matter with you?"
"Uh. Er..Just helping Harry, professor. He was coughing!"
"I am quite sure Mister Potter is capable of coughing without any assistance from you! Mister Potter, do you need to be excused to the hospital wing?"
Harry cleared his throat and in a cracked voice managed to squeak out a reply: "No professor, just got a lungful of potion fumes. Sorry about that."
Hermione rolled her eyes, smacked her parchment down on Snape's desk and stomped out of the room. Ron had returned to his seat and sat with his arms crossed over his chest, fuming.
"Is there another problem Mister Weasley? You have one hour left to complete your exam and I see very little writing on your parchment."
Ron scraped his chair loudly on the stone floor, pulling up closer to the worktable and hunched over the parchment, cheeks burning and a scowl on his face.
He was writing furiously as the last grains of sand started to drain out of the hourglass. Once the last grain dropped, the parchments flew off of the worktables and into a neat pile on the corner of the professor's desk, to the sound of frustrated groans from the remaining students. The handful of students who had been writing at the end of the exam period deposited the vials in a little box on the professor's desk, trudged out of the potions classroom, and headed towards the stairs.
Harry was waiting for Ron at the top of the staircase. Ron shuffled up the stairs and as soon as they were out of earshot, he lit into a scathing rambling swearing rant about the Potions Master.
"I tell you Harry, that fucking greasy bastard enjoys making our lives misery! I wish the Ministry had tossed him to the dementors when they had the chance, he'd be right at home with that lot. The bloody prick!"
Harry patted Ron on the shoulder.
"Cheer up Ron, you heard what he said, he's not gonna be here all next week. Potions with McGonagall's gonna be a snap."
"Thank goodness for small miracles."
The boys headed back to the Gryffindor common room, relieved to be done with Potions for the week.
Saturday morning came and Ron found himself with nobody to hang out with. Harry was practicing Quidditch moves with the new Gryffindor chaser, and Hermione was working on an extra-credit project for her Advanced Muggle Culture class. Begrudgingly, Ron pocketed his few remaining coins and headed to Hogsmeade by himself.
The day started off slowly for Mira in the tailor shop. She needed to send an owl to her cousin, but the shop owl, Swiftfeather, was off making a run to the elf-workshop with sample fabric swatches and measurement sheets. Mira locked the shop and headed to the village owl postal center. She paid the owl rental fee, and the message was soon on the way to its destination.
On the way back to the shop, a pretty young woman and an older man accidentally bumped into her as they came around a corner, knocking her to the ground. Mira dropped her bag, spilling the contents into the street. With profound apologies, the man helped her to her feet, dusted her robes off and made sure she was okay while the young woman picked her things up for her. The man winked at the woman and turned Mira away from her to dust off the back of her robe. Mira never saw the woman swipe some of the things that spilled out of the bag. The woman handed Mira her bag, minus a few items, and begged forgiveness. Flustered, Mira said no harm done, and headed back on her way to the tailor shop. She didn't notice anything missing from her purse until later that evening, and then she shrugged it off, the items were of no real importance or significant value.
Later in the afternoon, Ron had taken a table in the back of the café to rest and try and come up with another plan to earn some Christmas money. He had spent most of his time in Hogsmeade looking for day work, anything to raise a few Galleons to go towards a present for Hermione. He managed to scrape together four Galleons by helping the owner of Honeydukes move empty candy barrels into the basement and levitate them in a stack against the wall.
He decided he could part with a few coins, and ordered a cup of cocoa at the café. He was browsing the Daily Prophet classified ads when a hooded figure sat down at the seat across from him.
"Beg pardon young sir, but is this seat taken?"
Ron looked up, a perturbed look on his face and shrugged his shoulders.
"No, I was just reading the classified ads."
The hooded woman leaned forward, pale white hands with long red nails twining together.
"Aren't you a student at the school? You look much too young to be seeking employment."
Ron folded the paper and sighed.
"Well, yeah, I am. But I was just looking for a weekend day job or something, I need to raise some money before Christmas."
"I see. Well, don't your studies take up all your free time? Or are your marks so good that you have plenty of time to spare?"
"Oh, my marks are fine. Well.. In all my classes but Potions. I'm not doing very well in that one. But not for lack of trying, it's just that the professor really has it in for me and won't give me a break at all."
"Oh my, I can certainly understand. So, there is no love lost between you and this Potions professor?"
Ron took a drink of his cocoa and snorted.
"None whatsoever. I've been trying to figure out a way to get back at him for being so unfair to me and my friends since day one."
"I see, well then. I think we may be able to help each other out. How would you like to earn some Christmas money and get one over on your teacher, hmmm?"
Ron looked warily at the hooded figure.
"Just what did you have in mind? I mean, I don't need to cause any more trouble for myself with him. What do you want me to do?"
"Well, it's a very special and secret job. I am in need of some exotic and hard to find potions ingredients, carefully controlled by the Ministry. I could wait for a permit to be processed and an order to be placed, but you know how the Ministry drags its heels and how slow owl post can be at times. If I give you a list of things I need, just small amounts of certain items, could you get into your teacher's personal stores and acquire them for me?"
Ron sat back in his chair with a confused look on his face, and the leaned forward.
"What? You mean steal potions ingredients from Snape's personal stores? I don't know. I could get expelled for that!"
"Well, I would make it worth your while. You would be paid very well. How does fifty Galleons sound?"
Ron's eyes got big, and he looked around to make sure he was not being eavesdropped on.
"Fifty Galleons! That's a lot of money! And all I have to do is sneak into Snape's office and swipe some potions ingredients?"
"Yes, that's all you need do, and small amounts, they will never be missed. But you may tell no one. Not even your best friends. This must be a secret."
"You've got yourself a deal! He's gonna be gone all next week, it should be a snap. Wait, how do I get them to you?"
"You will meet me in the alley next to the Three Broomsticks Inn at six in the evening next Saturday. Bring the potions ingredients, and I will have your sack of coins waiting for you."
"Wait a minute. How do I know that they won't be Leprechaun coins?"
The woman reached into her robe and pulled out a small sack of coins and handed them to Ron.
"Here are ten Galleons. You will find that they are most certainly the real thing. Deliver the potions ingredients to me, and you will receive the rest."
The woman reached back into her robes and pulled out a tiny piece of parchment, listing the items she needed.
"I must be going now, but remember. Bring me these items next weekend, and you shall have your gold."
Ron looked at the list of ingredients and then back up to ask the mystery woman a question but she was gone.
He tucked the parchment into his pocket, along with the sack of ten Galleons and sipped his cocoa, plotting how he would get into Snape's laboratory to get the goods.
Nothing violent or disturbing in this chapter, it just sets up the next major plot-twist.
Disclaimers: Nothing recognizable from the books or movies belongs to me.
Chapter 35: A Choice Made, Lives Changed
The school term started smoothly except for the fact that the "Gryffindor Trio" was split up during several of their classes. Hermione had gone on into an advanced curriculum track; Harry and Ron were in general studies. The only two classes they now all shared were Advanced Potion Brewing and Introduction to Wandless Magic.
Classes were very subdued and low key without Malfoy to torment them. Malfoy's two toadies, Crabbe and Goyle, had returned to Hogwarts for the new term. Neither of their fathers were captured as Death Eaters or slain on the battlefield. But without their leader, their attempts at bullying were halfhearted at best.
The only dark spot in their schedule was the twice-weekly hour in the Potions lab with Professor Snape. If anything, he was even more demanding of the students in regards to behavior and performance in class. On the way out of the first Potions class of the term, Ron pulled Harry aside, leaned over and whispered in Harry's ear: "Maybe the greasy bastard should get round to Hogsmeade more often, it just might mellow him out a bit." Harry suppressed a laugh, and whacked Ron on the back with his schoolbooks. Ron slipped his arm around Hermione's waist, and the three of them headed up the stairs to the great hall.
By this time, Lucius Malfoy had recovered to the point where he could move around his manor house, using his silver topped wand-cane for support. Narcissa had sent her housemaid with the wand-cane to Knockturn Alley to have it repaired and ready for Lucius when he was able to make use of it again. A staff of household servants now replaced their freed house-elf, Dobby. Narcissa insisted upon only pureblood witches and wizards to serve in her home. A pretty young witch, Cassiopea or simply Cassie, who had been raised in an orphanage, was employed as Narcissa's personal housemaid. The Malfoys also employed an older married couple as cook and groundskeeper, and a gentlemen's valet for Lucius. All four servants were bound to the family and home with an illegal binding spell, which was tantamount to psychological enslavement. The spell made them completely loyal to the Malfoys and very easily controllable. In Narcissa's twisted mind, she believed to be doing them a favor, by taking them when they were down on their luck and allowing them to work and live in such a fine home. Lucius had enjoyed tormenting the pretty young housemaid before he was wounded in battle. Now, she scurried away quickly whenever she heard him thumping through the house with his cane.
The time came for Narcissa and Lucius to start the process, which would eventually lead to the return of the Dark Lord. However, Narcissa found herself without child after each attempt by Lucius to impregnate her. The healing wizard was brought in from Knockturn Alley, and a powerful fertility potion was prescribed. Even with magical intervention, no baby was conceived. The wizard was sent for again, and this time he performed a thorough examination on both of the Malfoys. It was determined that Lucius's wounds were to such a degree that he would never be able to father a child again, not even with the strongest fertility potions or charms.
After the healer had left, Lucius had flown into a rage, overturning furniture, smashing crystal and viciously slapping Narcissa's housemaid for daring to look at him with pity. He drank himself into a stupor and stumbled off to bed, slamming the door to his private bedchamber behind him. In fitful drunken sleep, Lucius was visited yet again by Voldemort, who suggested a most devious solution to this obstacle. The next day, Lucius summoned Narcissa to his study, and ordered the servants out of the house for an hour so that their plans would not be overheard.
Lucius told his wife that as he was no longer able to give her a child, she would have to be impregnated by a donor. At first she was horrified with the idea and fled the study in tears, refusing to speak to her husband. However, that night she was visited again in her dreams by Voldemort's spirit, which convinced her that this was the only way. He assured her that she would be most gratefully rewarded for her loyalty when it was all said and done. She approached her husband hesitantly the next morning, and agreed to the plan, if she could personally choose the donor. Lucius was not pleased with her ultimatum, but without much of a choice, he reluctantly agreed and angrily limped off to his study to begin his research.
Back at Hogwarts, the fall term was progressing rapidly. Following the first month of classes, all upper year students were given permission to leave the castle and spend Saturdays in Hogsmeade. After the first few visits, Ron realized that he only had a handful of pocket change left and would not be able to buy Hermione a fancy Christmas gift. He went to Dumbledore, and asked permission to work for the ministry as an errand boy on weekends. His request refused, Ron shuffled back down to the Gryffindor common rooms dejected and worried about how to come up with a decent sum of money in a little over a month. He earned a few galleons and some change by selling off some of his Chudley Cannons Quidditch memorabilia to fellow students. But it was just a drop in the bucket towards what he needed to come up with. He spent the next couple of weeks in a very foul mood, lamenting his poverty and inability to work during the school term.
Mid-term exam time came, and the students faced a very challenging Potions exam. Instead of the usual written question and answer exams they were used to, Professor Snape had devised a practical hands-on examination for the upper level students. They arrived in class to find a blank sheet of parchment and four very tiny vials of colored liquids sitting at each of their places at the worktables. The students took their seats and looked at the materials on the tables with confusion.
When it was time for the exam to begin, the professor entered from the laboratory behind the classroom. He stood in front of his desk and addressed the students.
"Now. Before you, you will find a blank sheet of parchment, which has been charmed to burst into flames at the slightest suspicion of cheating. You will only get one piece of parchment. Cheat and your midterm grade goes up in flames. You will also find four small unmarked vials containing samples of various potions we have worked with so far this term. You will have exactly two hours to use your senses to determine which potions are contained in the vials. Once you have done so, you will write a paragraph describing the potion, its ingredients, how it's brewed, and what its uses are. If you finish your exam before the two hours are up, you may leave your parchments and empty potion vials on my desk and be dismissed. Now, have I made myself clear as to what will be expected of you? Are there any questions?"
Neville Longbottom meekly raised his hand.
"Longbottom! What did you not understand about my instructions?"
"Er, professor, what exactly do you mean by using our senses to identify the potions?"
Professor Snape gave an exaggerated sigh. He leaned back against his desk and glared at the class.
"What I mean is, that you have just enough of each potion to smell it, taste it, and look at the color and viscosity. You need to know how to identify potions without necessarily looking at a label."
Crabbe raised his hand, brows furrowed.
"Yes Mister Crabbe?"
"None of these potions are poisonous are they?"
"Not in the amounts given to you Mister Crabbe. Use some common sense! Believe me, no matter how tempting the thought might be, Dumbledore would never allow me to poison you as part of a lesson."
The professor sat down on the chair behind his desk and reached for a large hourglass.
"Now that you all are clear as to what this exam entails, I have a couple of announcements to make. I will be leaving for a conference with Dumbledore on Monday, and will be gone all week. Professor McGonagall will be taking over my classes during that time. I have left a lesson plan for her, and you will be tested on that material after I return."
He flipped the large hourglass over and sparkling sand started flowing through to the bottom.
"You have two hours, start your exam."
The class erupted into a flurry of activity. Students warily unstoppered the tiny vials and held them at arm's length, taking tentative sniffs of the contents. Hermione dove right in, sniffing, tasting, and feeling droplets of the liquids between her fingers. Her quill practically flew across her parchment. She finished the exam in less than an hour.
She gathered her book satchel and got up to turn in her parchment. As she approached the desk, Ron leaned in surreptitiously towards Harry and whispered behind his hand: "Pssst. Harry? Help me keep an eye on Snape, he might just reach out and grab her bum. We both saw how he grabbed his woman's bum that night we were at the café."
Caught off guard by the comment, Harry snorted out loud and started coughing loudly, trying to hold in his laughter. Ron jumped up and started whacking him on his back.
"Mister Weasley! What on Earth is the matter with you?"
"Uh. Er..Just helping Harry, professor. He was coughing!"
"I am quite sure Mister Potter is capable of coughing without any assistance from you! Mister Potter, do you need to be excused to the hospital wing?"
Harry cleared his throat and in a cracked voice managed to squeak out a reply: "No professor, just got a lungful of potion fumes. Sorry about that."
Hermione rolled her eyes, smacked her parchment down on Snape's desk and stomped out of the room. Ron had returned to his seat and sat with his arms crossed over his chest, fuming.
"Is there another problem Mister Weasley? You have one hour left to complete your exam and I see very little writing on your parchment."
Ron scraped his chair loudly on the stone floor, pulling up closer to the worktable and hunched over the parchment, cheeks burning and a scowl on his face.
He was writing furiously as the last grains of sand started to drain out of the hourglass. Once the last grain dropped, the parchments flew off of the worktables and into a neat pile on the corner of the professor's desk, to the sound of frustrated groans from the remaining students. The handful of students who had been writing at the end of the exam period deposited the vials in a little box on the professor's desk, trudged out of the potions classroom, and headed towards the stairs.
Harry was waiting for Ron at the top of the staircase. Ron shuffled up the stairs and as soon as they were out of earshot, he lit into a scathing rambling swearing rant about the Potions Master.
"I tell you Harry, that fucking greasy bastard enjoys making our lives misery! I wish the Ministry had tossed him to the dementors when they had the chance, he'd be right at home with that lot. The bloody prick!"
Harry patted Ron on the shoulder.
"Cheer up Ron, you heard what he said, he's not gonna be here all next week. Potions with McGonagall's gonna be a snap."
"Thank goodness for small miracles."
The boys headed back to the Gryffindor common room, relieved to be done with Potions for the week.
Saturday morning came and Ron found himself with nobody to hang out with. Harry was practicing Quidditch moves with the new Gryffindor chaser, and Hermione was working on an extra-credit project for her Advanced Muggle Culture class. Begrudgingly, Ron pocketed his few remaining coins and headed to Hogsmeade by himself.
The day started off slowly for Mira in the tailor shop. She needed to send an owl to her cousin, but the shop owl, Swiftfeather, was off making a run to the elf-workshop with sample fabric swatches and measurement sheets. Mira locked the shop and headed to the village owl postal center. She paid the owl rental fee, and the message was soon on the way to its destination.
On the way back to the shop, a pretty young woman and an older man accidentally bumped into her as they came around a corner, knocking her to the ground. Mira dropped her bag, spilling the contents into the street. With profound apologies, the man helped her to her feet, dusted her robes off and made sure she was okay while the young woman picked her things up for her. The man winked at the woman and turned Mira away from her to dust off the back of her robe. Mira never saw the woman swipe some of the things that spilled out of the bag. The woman handed Mira her bag, minus a few items, and begged forgiveness. Flustered, Mira said no harm done, and headed back on her way to the tailor shop. She didn't notice anything missing from her purse until later that evening, and then she shrugged it off, the items were of no real importance or significant value.
Later in the afternoon, Ron had taken a table in the back of the café to rest and try and come up with another plan to earn some Christmas money. He had spent most of his time in Hogsmeade looking for day work, anything to raise a few Galleons to go towards a present for Hermione. He managed to scrape together four Galleons by helping the owner of Honeydukes move empty candy barrels into the basement and levitate them in a stack against the wall.
He decided he could part with a few coins, and ordered a cup of cocoa at the café. He was browsing the Daily Prophet classified ads when a hooded figure sat down at the seat across from him.
"Beg pardon young sir, but is this seat taken?"
Ron looked up, a perturbed look on his face and shrugged his shoulders.
"No, I was just reading the classified ads."
The hooded woman leaned forward, pale white hands with long red nails twining together.
"Aren't you a student at the school? You look much too young to be seeking employment."
Ron folded the paper and sighed.
"Well, yeah, I am. But I was just looking for a weekend day job or something, I need to raise some money before Christmas."
"I see. Well, don't your studies take up all your free time? Or are your marks so good that you have plenty of time to spare?"
"Oh, my marks are fine. Well.. In all my classes but Potions. I'm not doing very well in that one. But not for lack of trying, it's just that the professor really has it in for me and won't give me a break at all."
"Oh my, I can certainly understand. So, there is no love lost between you and this Potions professor?"
Ron took a drink of his cocoa and snorted.
"None whatsoever. I've been trying to figure out a way to get back at him for being so unfair to me and my friends since day one."
"I see, well then. I think we may be able to help each other out. How would you like to earn some Christmas money and get one over on your teacher, hmmm?"
Ron looked warily at the hooded figure.
"Just what did you have in mind? I mean, I don't need to cause any more trouble for myself with him. What do you want me to do?"
"Well, it's a very special and secret job. I am in need of some exotic and hard to find potions ingredients, carefully controlled by the Ministry. I could wait for a permit to be processed and an order to be placed, but you know how the Ministry drags its heels and how slow owl post can be at times. If I give you a list of things I need, just small amounts of certain items, could you get into your teacher's personal stores and acquire them for me?"
Ron sat back in his chair with a confused look on his face, and the leaned forward.
"What? You mean steal potions ingredients from Snape's personal stores? I don't know. I could get expelled for that!"
"Well, I would make it worth your while. You would be paid very well. How does fifty Galleons sound?"
Ron's eyes got big, and he looked around to make sure he was not being eavesdropped on.
"Fifty Galleons! That's a lot of money! And all I have to do is sneak into Snape's office and swipe some potions ingredients?"
"Yes, that's all you need do, and small amounts, they will never be missed. But you may tell no one. Not even your best friends. This must be a secret."
"You've got yourself a deal! He's gonna be gone all next week, it should be a snap. Wait, how do I get them to you?"
"You will meet me in the alley next to the Three Broomsticks Inn at six in the evening next Saturday. Bring the potions ingredients, and I will have your sack of coins waiting for you."
"Wait a minute. How do I know that they won't be Leprechaun coins?"
The woman reached into her robe and pulled out a small sack of coins and handed them to Ron.
"Here are ten Galleons. You will find that they are most certainly the real thing. Deliver the potions ingredients to me, and you will receive the rest."
The woman reached back into her robes and pulled out a tiny piece of parchment, listing the items she needed.
"I must be going now, but remember. Bring me these items next weekend, and you shall have your gold."
Ron looked at the list of ingredients and then back up to ask the mystery woman a question but she was gone.
He tucked the parchment into his pocket, along with the sack of ten Galleons and sipped his cocoa, plotting how he would get into Snape's laboratory to get the goods.