- CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE -
Potions, Poisons and Plots

After some discussion, Harry ended up taking the poison to Snape by himself. If forced to come up with a plausible reason for hanging about, he could rely on the 'remedial Potions' excuse he'd used the previous year: no doubt Malfoy had wasted no time in spreading around the fact that the entry requirements this year had been adjusted just so Harry Potter could take the class.

Besides, on a slightly less self-sacrificing note, he didn't want to run the risk of conflicting cover stories; he'd prefer not to let Snape know about the ring, if he could possibly avoid it. The Potions master might very well confiscate it, claiming Harry had been using it to cheat on his practical work in class.

To his relief, Snape was at work on something in the classroom, despite the fact that it was fairly early on a Sunday morning. Harry shuddered at the thought of having to fetch him out of his personal quarters. Although at least that would have been an excuse for strategic cowardice, since he didn't have the slightest clue where Snape actually lived.

He steeled himself, and knocked softly on the doorframe to introduce himself. "Professor Snape?"

"What is it, Potter?" he scowled imperiously, somehow managing to exude the expectation that Harry must have done something stupid without saying a word.

He stepped inside and closed the door, winning himself a cynically raised eyebrow for his efforts.

"Hardly necessary, Potter, your ineptitude at Potions is a matter of public record."

Harry forced himself not to get his hackles up. He needed Snape's help after all. "Yes, sir. Which is why I need to ask you to have a look at this for me." He produced the vials of poisoned Butterbeer that Hermione had charmed against corrosion. "Somebody tried to poison me last night. After I got in from, well, er, you know."

"I have no interest in whatever sordid liaisons you may have been engaged in last night," Snape said perfunctorily. Harry tensed in disbelief, but then reminded himself that the Potions master could hardly admit to having been in a top secret meeting with Dumbledore and several Gryffindors the previous evening. Whether or not the walls had ears, any passing Slytherins certainly did.

He placed the vials on the nearest workbench. "It's Butterbeer, or at least charmed to look like it. The mugs were left out in the Gryffindor common room late at night when we got back. We almost drank it before we found out it was corrosive."

Snape's expression was loaded with condescension. "I see. And of course, it did not occur to you for one moment that the mysterious appearance of unrequested beverages was cause for suspicion?"

"I thought it was Dobby!" he defended himself. "Er, the house-elf," he added hastily, realising his justification was otherwise incomprehensible.

"Ah. So the famous Harry Potter has his own private system of meal delivery. Tell me, Potter, are you in the habit of diverting the castle's domestic staff from their duties in order to tend to your personal needs?"

Harry gritted his teeth, and reminded himself that he needed Snape's help. "No, sir," he grated.

"I see. You simply automatically assumed that any deviation from the usual routine was a spontaneous effort for your benefit." Snape's eyes gleamed nastily. "Quite how you have managed to live this long remains a disturbing mystery. Fetch one of the school cauldrons. I have more important matters to attend to this morning than your regrettable escape from gruesome death, so you will have to perform the tests yourself - assuming, of course, you can overcome your usual aversion to following instructions."

Repeating doggedly to himself that there was no way he could do this without Snape's expertise, Harry stomped off to get himself a cauldron.

Harry found, to his surprise, that it was much easier to concentrate under Snape's unimpressed eye when it was just the two of them, and the work was actually something relevant and important. He made several different test solutions without a hitch, and felt a surprising glow of self-satisfaction when adding them to samples of the poison produced enlightening colours.

"This one's turned green, Professor," he called, after another successful test.

"Lobalug venom," said Snape with a nod, as if he'd been expecting it. "A strictly controlled substance, but not enough to produce the effects you describe on its own without the addition of a separate corroding agent. To prevent adverse reaction with the other ingredients, it would have to be vaporous while the potion was under heat and only become liquid during the cooling stage. It's extremely unlikely that the poison was brewed within the school - only my private laboratory would be sufficiently equipped to handle the fumes."

Snape was almost civil when he was working rather than teaching. Not that he was pleasant, of course, but he was at least too wrapped up what he was doing to dispense more than cursory insults. If Harry worked under the assumption that 'idiot boy' was a default form of address rather than an actual response to anything he'd done, Snape was being about as reasonable as he got.

"What's the next test, Professor?" he asked.

Snape, who had finished his own potion by now, rose from his desk and left the room. He returned a few moments later, to Harry's horror, with a rat in a cage.

"You want me to poison that rat?" he exclaimed, voice cracking in an embarrassing way it hadn't for months now.

The Potions master's gaze was cold. "The only way to truly gauge the effects of a poison and hope to cure or contain it is to monitor its exact effects on a living being." His lip curled. "Naturally, the sainted Harry Potter is not expected to get his hands dirty in the course of saving his own life. Hand me the poisoned Butterbeer, Potter."

Harry squirmed, but did as ordered. He watched the rat twitch its nose as Snape opened the cage. It's only a rat, he thought, deliberately. It didn't help. It looked a little like Peter Pettigrew's Animagus form, but that didn't make him feel any better about it either.

He watched Snape's deft fingers lift out the animal's food tray, and wondered how often the Potions master did things like this. He suspected, though he had no proof, that in his job as a spy Snape was sometimes called up to brew horrible things at Voldemort's request. Did he test those too? Worse, did he stand by and watch while they were used on human victims? How much innocent blood did Snape have on his hands - and how much of it was put there in the name of doing service to the 'greater good'?

Harry felt a sudden and wholly unexpected wave of miserable sympathy. He often felt used, like Dumbledore's tool - how much worse would it be if he was forced to actively hurt people, instead of just see them die every time he failed? Would the guilt stains ever wash off?

"Stop!" he blurted, before he registered that he was going to do it. Snape's hands paused in the act of preparing to pour. "You're right. I'm sorry. I should do it. You're right."

Snape raised a single eyebrow. "An unusual phrase for you, Mr. Potter. Perhaps you might stretch yourself to make use of it more often." But he stepped back and handed the vial of poison to Harry without further comment.

He poured it out with numb fingers, feeling like the worst kind of murderer. He'd squashed the occasional spider when he'd lived in the Dursleys' cupboard, but this... How could anybody ever willingly do something like this? How could he know what he was doing right now, and yet still somehow be going through with it?

"I really hope this doesn't hurt," he told the rat sincerely. It was a golden opportunity for Snape to take a potshot at him, but he didn't say a word.

Harry placed the food tray back in the cage, and hoped against all practicality that the rat wouldn't eat it. When it took a cautious sniff and crept closer, he wanted to look away, but knew he had no right to.

It's only a rat, he tried to remind himself, feeling utterly wretched.

"'Only' is a dangerous word, Mr. Potter," Snape said softly, close to his ear. Harry wondered for a startled moment if he was using Legilimency, then realised, with a shudder, that it was probably the voice of horrible experience. How much of a step was it, really, from 'It's only a rat' to 'They're only Muggles'? Dumb animals. Okay to kill.

Just like he had sometimes thought to himself that he wouldn't lose any sleep over it if he had to kill a Death Eater. After all, they were only Death Eaters. Not really human.

The rat ate the poisoned food. The rat eventually died. Harry left the classroom, and was violently sick.

Professor Snape made no comment on it when he returned.

Professor Snape efficiently dissected the poor, murdered rat, and was able to identify the remaining components of the poison. He made Harry brew a potion that would neutralise the poison before allowing him to leave. If he hadn't known better, Harry might have believed it was a deliberate ploy to assuage his guilt a little, help him believe that killing the innocent little beast had somehow been justified.

If so, it failed miserably.

Harry spent most of the rest of the day by himself, feeling rather fragile and depressed. He had a feeling that Professor Snape had been teaching him a lesson today - one that was far deeper and more personal than even the mental invasion of the Occlumency lessons. One that he could have done without, for all that it was probably more important than a hundred years of studying Potions.

It was an inauspicious start to the summer term.

Just over a week later, on what Hermione informed him was May Eve, Walpurgis Night, or even Walpurgisnacht - otherwise known as the evening before May Day - Harry found himself crouched in his Invisibility Cloak in the corner of the Slytherin common room, hoping against hope that nobody would trip over him. He'd followed a first-year in almost an hour ago; there were about a million ways this could go wrong, but if they'd tried a more complicated plan there would be even more of them.

Right now, he was finding that fear of discovery was beginning to pale into insignificance compared to the forces of cramp, boredom, hunger, and a growing certainty that he was going to need to attempt to navigate to the Slytherin bathrooms and make use of the facilities. Which was going to involve a stupendously high risk of being caught, especially since he wasn't about to attempt it underneath his invisibility cloak.

Not to mention that he couldn't take care of any of those things or his actual mission here until the group of fifth-years lounging by the fire finally buggered off.

They had been playing a game of Exploding Snap that quite obviously none of them cared about ever since he'd first come in. Gradually everyone else in the room had trickled out - Slytherins, in bed before midnight, who knew? - but the fifth-years remained. Finally, the last holdout in the rest of the room, a small pink-faced girl with a Hermione-sized stack of books, packed up her things and left.

And then, abruptly, the tenor of the gathering changed. One of the boys oh-so-casually wandered over towards the passageway that led to the dorms. Another just happened to go and sit by the main entrance. And the others got down to business.

"Where's the little princess?" said a sneering blond boy that Harry vaguely recognised. Trage, wasn't it? One of the group they'd tussled with on the train.

"Tucked up in bed, dreaming of his daddy," snickered the only girl in the group.

"He's had a smug look these past few days. I don't like it." That was Ferus. He was obviously in command of the room; the others all grew less restless and paid attention when he spoke up.

The tall, thuggish boy by the main entrance - Dempsey, the third boy from the train - said: "It's only because the Potter boy fell down the stairs."

Mention of his own name was rather eclipsed by the sudden temptation to guffaw as he realised that 'the little princess' referred to Malfoy.

"That's quite an unnatural obsession he has there," said the girl. "One would almost think Malfoy fancied him, if he wasn't such a weedy little runt. And the way his hair sticks up, it looks frightful. The number of times he's been splashed all over the newspapers, you'd think someone would introduce him to a mirror."

"The only person Malfoy fancies is Malfoy," said Trage cuttingly, while Harry tried not to choke too audibly under the influence of several conflicting violent reactions.

"Anyway, his highness has been looking far too self-satisfied of late, and I don't trust it." Ferus reigned the conversation in. "I think he's had news from outside."

"Who from? Mummy?"

"Maybe she's sent him his teddy-bear," said the girl. "I bet he's got one."

"With blond fur," added Trage.

"Enchanted to say 'You're the pwettiest girl in the whole wide world' when he picks it up."

"Nonetheless, someone should watch him," Ferus said. "That bloody eagle owl is a menace. I've not got a letter off it yet."

"Could You-Know-Who really have freed his father?" asked Dempsey uneasily. There was a collective ripple of disquiet.

"I don't know. We have to assume it's a possibility."

"What does that mean for our plans?" asked the girl.

"Nothing," said Ferus firmly. "Even if it's true, it's only his word, and the others know what that's worth. This is our chance to win them over, but we have to work subtly. The sixth-years are mostly his - I'm not sure about Nott or Zabini, but it's not worth the risk of making an approach. We need to work on the younger kids."

"Some of them are pretty frightened," said Dempsey. "Everyone knows the hedge is You-Know-Who's work. They think he's left them to hang, and they don't trust Malfoy."

"One minute," said the girl suddenly, as if she'd been monitoring a countdown. Ferus nodded at her.

"All right. Any other business?"

"That bloody Dolorus kid," said Trage. "We've been trying to get him alone, but he's too damn smart. He knows the castle far too well."

"What about an ambush?"

Harry suddenly itched to draw his wand and start hexing. Plotting a coup against Malfoy was one thing, but listening to the Slytherins planning an attack on some scrawny little kid who'd annoyed them somehow was quite another.

"Not a chance," Trage shook his head. "I tell you, he's too smart for that. Sticks to the Prefects like a piece of Never-Ending Toffee."

Harry grinned to himself under the Invisibility Cloak. Well, what did you know? The Ravenclaw boy had taken Hermione's advice after all.

"All right." Ferus stood. "Break it up kids, and get back to the dorms. Be careful, Livia; Petrina's in Malfoy's pocket for sure."

The girl shrugged easily. "Don't worry, she thinks I'm shagging Dempsey."

The tall boy leered at her. "That can be arranged."

"Only with the Imperius Curse, sweetie. I remember you when you used to run around cousin Ambrosine's garden in nothing but a vest, wiping your snotty nose on the back of your hand and trying to eat slugs."

"'Course you do," said Trage, "it was only last summer."

The Slytherins gradually dispersed.

Things got slightly more comfortable when the last of the Slytherins had gone, and he could safely take over one of the chairs and sit for a while, even if he had to keep the Invisibility Cloak draped over his head. He was so busy running over the ramifications of a possible coup against Malfoy that he almost missed the letters that began melting out of the stonework at midnight.

Harry blinked blearily at the rhyme, and wondered if he could remember the duplicating spell Professor Flitwick had used on the last one. No, he decided reluctantly, probably not. He pulled out a quill and rumpled sheet of paper, borrowed somebody's ink, and laboriously copied the verse down.

To enter on a snaking path
The moon will guide you true
Seek out the centaur's better half
Between the red and blue

Look neither forward nor behind
To travel where you would
Traverse the path not shown and find
A crowd there silent stood

Take hands that hold the pages fast
An answer will appear
If you know words of ages past
That Salazar held dear

Harry yawned as he finished scribbling the words down, hoping they would turn out to be intelligible come the morning. He had to sit blankly for quite some minutes before the words of the concealing spell he was supposed to use came back to him.

"Imago wall!" He grinned in triumph as the letters disappeared. Ha! Let's see you get to this item first, Malfoy. Or Ferus. Or whoever it was.

He yawned again. Wow, he was tired. Well, he still had the Invisibility Cloak on, didn't he? And no one was likely to walk in at this time of night, anyway. So it would surely be fine to sit down and rest for... just a... few... minutes...