Chapter 12 – Something Strange
With Christmas over, December passed into a grey and dreary January, and the coming of January meant the return of Hogwarts Express and all students of Hogwarts. Harry looked forward to the return of his friends and, even though he wouldn't admit it, the resumption of classes. He sat in a secluded alcove of the Slytherin Common Room to wait for the return of his friends, his head bowed as he sank deep into the next Redwand book courtesy of Theodore.
He cleared a good chunk of the start of the book by the time the Common Room erupted into chaos with the return of more than two hundred teenagers all at once. Students came through the door in odd-sized groups – a duo here, a quintet there – in a seemingly never-ending mass. Harry shut his book and got up to greet his friends when they walked through the door.
"Happy New Year!" exclaimed Tracey. The exuberant girl raced forward to give him a hug, leaving behind Millicent, who was showing Daphne pictures of her new sibling. Blaise and Theodore trailed a little further behind with Draco and Pansy's little group. "I had a brilliant Christmas but it's good to be back!" she said.
"Happy New Year," echoed Harry.
"Did you like the book I got you?" she asked. "I spent ages trying to find something I thought you'd like!"
"I did!" Harry said. "I didn't know there were so many Slytherins playing professional Quidditch."
"Oh, there are lots of Slytherins doing everything professionally to a high level," said Tracey. "It's why we're the best!" Tracey gave Harry a big grin before peeling off to join up with Millicent and Daphne to look at baby photos.
"Have a good Christmas?" Harry asked the boys when they caught up to the girls.
"It was pretty good," said Blaise. "I got a new broom this year, finally—I beat my cousins racing this time. The old one was just too slow. And we went out flying in the snow, too. Not on brooms, obviously—although I nearly fell off my horse but it's alright because of the charms, you know."
Harry had forgotten that Blaise flew giant horses during his holidays. Everyone had to have some sort of hobby, he supposed.
"It was Christmas," said Theodore. "I went to Draco's mum's party with my dad. That was alright."
"Not that fun?" asked Harry.
"Well, it's just a load of adults standing 'round getting drunk and stuff," said Theodore. He shrugged. "And you know how Draco gets when he gets the chance to show off to everyone… but it wasn't so bad; Vince and Greg were there, too, and some of the others. We played parlour games and things like that, so I did have some fun."
Harry nodded. From what he understood, some of the first year Slytherins had parents who were friends or business associates of some sort, although he didn't quite get the often complex relationships between people's families, and nobody was especially forthcoming. Draco had been banging on about his family's Christmas party for weeks in the run up to Christmas, and it seemed to be a sore spot for some Slytherins that their families were uninvited – and a mark of pride for others. In a way he felt glad to be completely uninvolved in all that nonsense.
"I found a gallery full of paintings just off the History corridor," said Harry once the boys had all sat down. "I saw Quirrell there, too. He was being weird, but he did say there was another room further down, with like dragon skeletons and stuff like that. I was thinking we could maybe have a look in there next weekend?"
Blaise shrugged.
"Yeah, I guess," he said.
"That sounds cool," said Theodore.
"Have you done your star charts for Astronomy?" asked Blaise. He dug a scrap of parchment out of his robe pocket and unfolded it. "I've only done half of mine," he said, "and I've still got my Charms to do."
"Surely not the whole essay?" asked Theodore.
"I did my star charts last week," said Harry. "I can get them for you if you want a look. I finished my Charms but I'm not sure about the middle bit, I think I could say more about the symbolism thing."
"I didn't have time to do the essay," said Blaise. "After Christmas we went to visit my mum's side of the family for New Year, so I only had a couple of days free! It's not like I could have done homework at my aunt's house... Can I have a look at yours Harry?"
"Yeah, okay," said Harry. "I'll go get them now. I should put my book away anyway…"
Harry got up and walked back to the dormitory to grab his already completed homework. On the way he passed Draco and some of the other first years chatting near a fireplace.
"…and the Minister was there, too, but I've met him before. The Minister always attends Mother's parties, you know," said Draco.
"So you've met the Minister for Magic?" asked one of Draco's hangers-on. Evidently not one of the ones who'd been at the party, or he'd have known the answer to the question.
"Oh, yeah, loads of times," Draco said. "He always brings me a Christmas present. Has done since I was small. He's a close, personal friend of Father, you see."
Harry rolled his eyes and gave a perfunctory greeting as he walked past the group. He couldn't just ignore them, but neither did he want to be drawn into whatever was happening. Listening to Draco talk about Father this, and the Minister that ranked rather low on his list of things to do, after all. He ducked into the dormitory and rummaged around for his homework to go over with Blaise and Theodore, then took it back out to the Common Room.
Harry spent the rest of the day up until dinner editing his homework with Theodore and Blaise, although much more of his time was spent letting Blaise copy him than on actually changing anything he'd written.
The professors and their apprentices appeared to have co-ordinated in launching an all-out academic offensive against their students, as every single class dove right into work after the holidays. Even the normally quite relaxed Ms Gamp had the students working on practical transfigurations on the first day back, which Harry found interesting but more challenging than he would have liked after such a relaxing Christmas break.
By Friday morning, only the second day back at classes, Harry already felt like he needed another holiday. At least Harry had already finished all his homework: some of his friends spent the morning furiously scribbling on parchment whenever they got a few spare minutes to complete Professor Quirrell's assignment due in after their morning Herbology session.
"What's the difference between a jinx and hex?" asked Millicent. "Is there a difference?"
She sat on the floor outside the Defence classroom using her bag as a makeshift table to complete her essay. She wasn't alone, as several others in the combined Adder and Viper group were occupied doing the same thing, being watched by those who had already finished.
After a minute or so of nobody saying anything, Harry offered some help.
"Hexes are worse than jinxes," he said. "It goes like this: jinxes, then hexes, then curses. I think one of the books says jinxes are meant to be irritating, but not very dangerous, and hexes only cause moderate suffering. But they aren't different kinds of spells, like with charms or transfigurations."
"Oh, no!" said Daphne. "I had it the other way around!" She immediately rummaged around in his schoolbag to grab her essay, quill and inkpot to correct her mistake.
Professor Quirrell strode through the hallway followed by the distinctive odour of garlic and onions. The professor looked even more unwell than usual, with dark bags under his eyes and sallow skin. He looked as miserable as his behaviour suggested he felt.
"C-come in," he said as he opened the door. "Put your homework on my d-desk."
Reluctantly, the first year Slytherins complied, moving through the doorway in twos and threes, stopping at the desk to deposit their homework before claiming their seats.
Harry took his seat at one of the middle rows and opened his textbook to roughly where the class had left off before Christmas. Quirrell ordinarily stood at the front of the classroom behind his desk and read directly from the textbook, but today he stood in front of his desk without his book. He leaned against the desk almost casually, an action quite at odds with all his prior teaching.
"Today, we will discuss cursed and enchanted objects and the various different strategies which may be used to distinguish between the two and, if necessary, break a curse. This is not the lesson you were prepared for before the holiday—you may put your books away."
Harry stuffed his textbook back into the bag and got out some parchment, ink, and his quill. He never usually had to take notes in Defence – it was already written down in the textbook, from whose content Quirrell never deviated – but perhaps today Quirrell would say something useful.
"At the most basic level, there are two kinds of curse. The first type is perhaps the most common and the most stereotypical—it is a so-called 'Dark' spell used to place a curse upon a person or an object for some nefarious purpose. In the hierarchy of Dark spells it is the most serious. If you have successfully completed your homework assignment, you will already know this much."
Quirrell paused and picked up a smallish object from his desk. He showed it to the class with a flourish.
"This human skull has been cursed so that, if a Muggle touches it, his skin will melt from his body. We all in this room are quite safe, as none of us is a Muggle… or so I hope! This type of active curse is always placed intentionally. This particular skull was cursed as a method of protection against bodily desecration by Muggle tomb robbers. A helpful lesson in how even so-called Dark spells can be used for noble purposes."
Harry hardly thought that melting the skin off unsuspecting Muggles could be called 'noble' – in fact he felt like there were many better ways of protecting wizarding graves from Muggles than flesh-melting curses, but he held his tongue.
Quirrell strode forward and set down the skull on Daphne's desk at the front of the classroom.
"Pass it around as we continue the lesson," he instructed. "You will, I hope, be attuned to magical energies well enough by this point in your careers to detect that there is something unusual about this skull, but if not, it shall come in time I'm sure." He paused. "Go on, Miss Greengrass. It can't hurt you."
Harry watched as Daphne picked up the skull, held it for a token amount of time, and immediately passed it on to Millicent. Millicent held it far longer than Daphne had, turning it over and over in her hands and peering right inside it. The skull got passed along the row as Quirrell continued the lesson.
"The second type of curse is a much more primeval, primitive, kind of magic. Curses like this are among the oldest kinds of magic in the world, which would have been used by our very earliest wizarding ancestors—often unbeknownst to them, of course—but are less commonly seen in this modern era. For you see, untrained wizards—which all wizards were, more or less, in the very earliest days of magic—have a peculiar tendency to leak magic. You yourselves may have experienced this and heard it called 'accidental magic'. Perhaps you became frightened, or angry, or so happy you could almost burst… and something magical occurred. The second kind of curse relies on a process very much like that which we see in accidental magic, although it is not quite the same thing."
By that point the skull had reached Harry. He took it from Theodore and looked it over. It just looked like a regular human skull with no particular identifying features. Harry could, however, feel something. An undercurrent, nothing more than a vague feeling, but there was something there. As Harry pondered whether what he could sense was the curse on the skull, Quirrell continued with the lecture.
"Who here has an elderly relative with some sort of 'lucky' charm? An old knut, perhaps, or a beloved gobstone, or a small toy? Perhaps the knut never lands face down, or the toy never gets dirty, although it is not enchanted and nor is it overtly magical?" Quirrell paused but nobody offered him anything. "You see, the reason for this is that some objects owned by or associated with a wizard can become imbued with the wizard's magic and strong emotions over time and become imbued with magical energy. Sometimes this is a perfectly benign process and produces a sort of primitive charm. Other times, this results in a curse. This kind of curse is particularly difficult to displace as it does not rely on a particular incantation or even, generally speaking, a cogent theoretical framework which one can use as a basis of curse-breaking."
"Sir?" Oliver Wash stuck up his hand to ask a question. "This other type of curse… can it attach to places, too? Not just things?"
"Five points to Slytherin for an astute observation. Indeed, it is believed—though not proven—that the cursed ground outside York is as a result of habitation by the Dark Lord and his forces during the build up to the first war. Plants which grow in the soil there have the curious property of poisonous nectar. As an experiment, soil, rocks and other objects from the site have been removed and replaced with equivalent objects from a non-cursed site—the curse remains at the site in York and does not follow items removed from it. It has been sectioned off so that Muggles cannot access the site, of course," said Quirrell. "A similar situation can be observed at Stonehenge—the curse in this instance can be attributed to generations of sacrifice and other ritualistic activities by the wizards who frequented the site. There is even some evidence that curses such as this may be attached to concepts and more abstract constructions than people, places, or objects, although research in this area is still quite new."
"Sir?" Blaise signalled for attention. "If this kind of curse is harder to remove, why isn't it more common?"
"It is near enough impossible to choose the effects of the curse, you see. It is a wilder kind of magic. Sometimes the effects are very serious, and sometimes not. If you wish to curse an enemy so that their hair falls out or their bones melt, there are spells available to do this. Spell-based curses are at once more versatile and easier to use than their primitive cousin. It is also much more difficult for a wand-trained wizard to use their magic in the ancestral manner—at least on purpose. Most curses of this type in the modern era are accidental in nature. By-products of some other thing."
Quirrell went on to discuss several examples from different parts of the world, which Harry dutifully wrote down onto his parchment. Harry scrambled to get out another piece of parchment as Quirrell described the strange circumstances surrounding a blood-curdling curse on a ziggurat somewhere in Central America.
"…the central chamber of the ziggurat is completely inaccessible even today; the world's premier curse-breakers have thus far failed to penetrate its depths. Rumours abound that a skilled Parselmouth may be able to access the central chamber, but the Indian wizards with the talent have refused to make an attempt due to the powerfully Dark nature of the curse on the ziggurat, and the local wizards disavow any and all knowledge of the site. The Dark Lord could perhaps have managed this, but he is quite dead, thanks to young Mr Potter. Ha, ha."
Harry shifted awkwardly in his seat. He could almost feel the eyes of everyone in the room on him. What on Earth could have possessed Quirrell to make such a poor joke? Harry thought that even Quirrell looked uncomfortable, and he had made the joke! And that awful little laugh... Still, Harry did wonder what a Parselmouth was, so he whispered the question to Theodore.
"Talks to snakes," whispered Theodore in reply. "Rare magic."
"Er, right," said Harry. "Thanks." Instantly his mind went back to Dudley's birthday trip to the zoo, and the snake which he had spoken to – and which had spoken back to him. Speaking to snakes was something Parselmouths did, which meant Harry, like Voldemort, was a Parselmouth. To Harry it seemed like the sort of fact best kept to himself, especially given the rumours that already circulated the school about him.
Harry tried to keep up with his notes during the rest of the lesson but found his heart wasn't in it. Instead, his thoughts kept returning to all of the similarities between himself and Voldemort – both of them in Slytherin House, both with a rare talent for speaking to snakes, and even their wands were brothers.
By the end of the lesson Harry had only managed to scrawl a few disconnected bits and pieces of the lecture onto the rest of his parchment, but stuffed it into his bag with the rest of his things anyway. He could always ask Theodore or Daphne to copy their notes later, after all.
Harry didn't even join in with his friends as they discussed Quirrell's odd competence and lack of stutter during the lesson. He was too preoccupied with his thoughts about Voldemort, rare magic, and the strange twist of fate that seemed to connect the two of them over and over again.
On Friday morning Harry and the others in Viper group arrived to their morning Potions session to find an unusually good-tempered Professor Snape stood in front of a large gold cauldron in the middle of the laboratory. The benches that ordinarily filled the room were nowhere to be found, although Snape did have a small preparation table next to him.
"Come in and stand beyond the marked line on the floor," directed Snape as the students arrived to fill the dungeon chamber. "Today, we have a deviation from our plans due to an … opportunity … which has presented itself. You will not be brewing today."
A murmur run out through the room. Snape almost never did demonstrations, preferring instead to farm them out to his apprentice, Mr Shafiq.
"Professor, will we need to make notes?" asked Granger. "Only, we don't have tables…"
"Notes will be provided at the end of the lesson. Today, you must simply pay attention." Unusually, Snape didn't even take points for the interruption. "Today's potion is rarely made due to the difficulty in acquiring its primary ingredients in the necessary amounts. We are fortunate that certain occurrences have granted us the opportunity to brew this potion. I daresay you shall not get the chance again." Snape paused. "Weasley! What is the purpose of a gold cauldron?"
"Er, dunno, sir." Weasley shrugged. "It's heavy so it's hard to spill?"
"Hmm. One point from Gryffindor for lack of basic potioneering knowledge." Snape turned to the Slytherins. "Mr Malfoy, what is the purpose of a gold cauldron?"
"Gold cauldrons have a stabilising effect on opposing ingredients, and can amplify positive energies when used, particularly in healing potions with volatile ingredients, Professor."
"An excellent answer, Mr Malfoy. Five points to Slytherin for superior preparation." Snape turned towards the Gryffindors. "Following on from Mr Malfoy's answer, explain why—"
Snape didn't get to finish his question, however, as the laboratory door swung open to reveal Mr Shafiq holding a big glass jar filled with cloudy fluid, and Hagrid the groundskeeper holding a big box.
"We've got the ingredients here, Professor," said Mr Shafiq. "All properly processed and safe to use!"
"We've got the full body 'ere Professer," said Hagrid. He wiped a tear from his eye. "An' enough hair ter fill ten wigs, I reckon."
"Wonderful," said Snape. "Ali, place the venom jar on the table. Hagrid, you may put the corpse next to the cauldron and we shall process it."
The big, hairy, man placed his box of bones onto the cold dungeon floor and then immediately stepped back from the cauldron.
"If yer needin' any more, we've kept some back fer yeh. 'Specially th' eyes," he said. He blew his nose and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Best be off—lots ter do." The groundskeeper shuffled out of the dungeon chamber and the door slammed behind him, and let out a great big wail as he left the potions corridor.
Snape sighed.
"Today's potion uses Acromantula venom, hair, and carapace in amounts that are difficult to find, notwithstanding the rarity of Acromantulas. Longbottom, why?"
"Oh, er. Um," stammered Longbottom. "I don't know what that is, sir," he managed to say eventually.
Granger stuck up her hand and waved it around.
"One point from Gryffindor. Thomas, the same question. Quickly! We don't have all day."
Thomas shrugged.
"I don't know either, sir. Never heard of Acromantulees, or whatever."
"Hmm. One more point from Gryffindor. My, my, you are all on excellent form today. Weasley! For the third time, why are ingredients from Acromantulas so rare?"
"Because they're giant, man-eating spiders, sir," said Weasley almost immediately.
"No," said Snape, "but as pitiful an answer as that is, it is rather better than your compatriots managed. As Weasley indicated, Acromantulas are extremely large spiders who do, at times, eat people. Unfortunately for Weasley, this is not why their ingredients are so rare. Although classified as Five-X Beasts by the Ministry, they are in fact as intelligent as humans—more intelligent than most of you, I would wager. Thus it is rather difficult—and ethically dubious—to acquire Acromantula parts. That they prefer to live only in the jungles of Asia compounds this difficulty."
Behind Snape Mr Shafiq had taken the corpse from the box and started taking it apart and stripping it of its hair. A jar full of milky white eyes sat on the table next to him. Far from being filled with bones as Harry had thought, it was occupied by a more or less intact giant spider. He leaned over for a look.
"Despite their dangerous nature, Acromantula eyes, hair, and carapace can be used in a particularly rare potion designed to heal certain mental maladies which can arise in wizards. The potion I am going to demonstrate today is commonly known as the Lunatic's Draught. It is incredibly expensive to brew—the venom alone would cost you two hundred Galleons for the amount required—but is capable of healing several difficult mental illnesses known under various monikers at the time of the potion's creation."
Snape paused to stir in a clump of Acromantula hair.
"Its expense and the rarity of its ingredients ensures it is rarely used, even for those cases where it is the only possible solution. This batch I will brew over the course of this weekend is therefore to be donated by the Hogwarts estate to St Mungo's hospital in the hope that it can be used to treat some of its most intractably-ill patients. It is not a universal cure. For reasons still undetermined, it has no effect on madness caused through spell damage. Nevertheless it is currently the only tool we have to cure illnesses of the mind." Snape gestured to Mr Shafiq. "My apprentice has some interest in this area; you may direct any questions on this to him, after the end of today's session. Now, watch carefully as I add the Acromantula eyes to the potion—this is a technique which you will be required to know for your practical exam."
Snape started to add the eyes to the giant gold cauldron full of murky, viscous fluid. Harry leaned in a bit closer to watch.
"You don't think the giant spider bits came from the forest, do you?" Harry heard Millicent whisper to Tracey.
"I hope not!" she said.
Each eye Snape added to the potion popped as soon as it hit the solvent, splashing its jelly into the potion. While Snape busied himself with the potion, Mr Shafiq called over a smaller group of students – about half the class, with equal numbers of Slytherins and Gryffindors.
"Come and have a look at this," Mr Shafiq said, and gestured to the still mostly-intact Acromantula corpse. Several of the students – Weasley most prominent among them – refused to look directly at it, but Harry didn't see what the fuss was about. It was just a big, dead spider. "With most potions ingredients you have to do the processing and harvesting the Muggle way. Anyone willing to guess why? No pressure!"
Nobody offered an answer until Granger sighed dramatically and gave one.
"Residual magic from spells can interact in a negative manner with the ingredients, rendering them useless for whatever purpose they serve in the potion, Mr Shafiq."
"Right, good answer, Miss Granger! Five points to Gryffindor. As well as that though, the process of preparation is part of the magic of the potion, yeah? So when the instructions tell you to for example 'squash with the flat of the knife', if you do it differently, that produces a material difference to the potion. That's part of why for lots of potions you need to prepare the ingredients yourself, yeah?" said Mr Shafiq as he cut more strips of carapace from the giant spider. "So for the Lunatic's Draught the instructions say something like 'cut one inch wide strips of carapace with a sharp ritual knife', and if I did it with a different type of knife or cut little squares, that wouldn't be right for the potion and would affect how it turns out. Does that make sense?"
Mr Shafiq didn't wait for a response and instead carried right on with his little lecture, all while cutting the Acromantula into little strips.
"So we think this Acromantula and his mates died fighting a unicorn in the Forest," he said. "We think that because there was a lot of unicorn blood and hair at the scene. Does anyone know why we had to clean the blood away thoroughly before we could even think about using any of the parts?"
"Because it would ruin the potion, sir?" suggested Theodore.
"Er, right… yeah, sorry, that's not wrong, but I meant to ask, what specifically about unicorn blood is the problem? I should have said: what property of unicorn blood makes it impossible to use in potions—any potion?" Mr Shafiq nodded to himself. "That's better," he muttered.
Some of the students were more interested in the fact that the Acromantula – more than one Acromantula, even – had been found in the Forbidden Forest than answering the question, Millicent chief among them. Harry heard several of the gathered students whisper the name 'Sirius Black', so he tuned out immediately. He didn't want to ruin possibly the only cool Potions lesson he'd get at school with crazed rumours about Sirius Black. Almost a whole minute passed before someone offered any kind of an answer, even though the little group was far from quiet.
"It's a sin to kill a unicorn," said Pansy eventually, in a rare display of academic initiative.
"Well, you're on the right track," said Mr Shafiq. "It's actually because unicorn blood is cursed. It has remarkable healing properties, right, but if you drink it or put it in a potion, you get cursed for the rest of your life. So technically, you could use it in a potion—there are actually some Dark and highly illegal potions which use unicorn blood—but every potioneer worth his cauldron steers clear of it. Too dangerous."
"What happened to the unicorn?" asked Granger.
Mr Shafiq shrugged.
"We didn't find a body, so we think it won the fight and got away. Hagrid's keeping an eye out for any wounded unicorns, though."
"If it dies," continued Granger, "what can be safely harvested from it? No blood, but what about anything else?"
Mr Shafiq leaned back in his chair.
"That's a really good question, Miss Granger. The truth is, we're not entirely sure. Nobody wants to test it, see? We know you can harvest the horn; we use powdered unicorn horn in lots of potions already! Generally from when an elderly unicorn dies of natural causes, but also when one is killed. We know the hairs are safe, even to take from a killed or dead unicorn, since we use them in wands and other things… but for anything else, no one is willing to take the gamble." He paused. "Well, no one who writes and publishes papers, anyway. And it's not like there are many people out there who even want to kill unicorns for any reason, yeah? Like Miss Parkinson said, it's sinful to kill a unicorn. Nearly everyone agrees."
"Is it the same for karkadanns?" asked Harry.
Mr Shafiq nodded.
"Yes. All unicorn species have cursed blood. The poets say it's a sign that they are the most favoured things in all of creation!" He paused. "Right, we've gone a bit off track… and I think Professor Snape wants you back so you can see what he's doing. Off you go, then!"
The ten students Mr Shafiq pulled away joined the rest of the group only to be replaced by the other half of the class. Harry was a bit disappointed to leave – Mr Shafiq was a much better teacher than Professor Snape, even if Snape was better at potions – but the brewing process for the Lunatic's Draught did seem rather interesting. It combined all of the skills they had been learning over the course of the year, and some new ones. Watching as Snape expertly brewed the rare potion made Harry grudgingly respect his skills as a potioneer, since he made the whole thing look effortless even though there was a lot going on.
It was just a shame Snape wasn't even half as good at teaching as he was at potions.
Theodore inched closer to Harry and leaned towards him.
"Giant spiders fighting unicorns in the forest! It's a bit mad, isn't it?" he whispered. "What next, the centaurs fighting invading giants?"
"There's centaurs in the forest as well?" asked Harry.
"Well, it's a magical creature reserve," said Theodore. He looked as if he was about to continue, but a sharp look from Professor Snape quietened him. "Sorry, sir," he mumbled.
Harry didn't get a chance to ask him what else was in the forest, but he supposed giant spiders fighting unicorns was enough to be getting to grips with for now. Wizards seemed to have a completely different worldview to Muggles. Harry's uncle liked to go on and on about 'health and safety gone mad', but Harry reckoned even he would balk at a forest full of ravenous spiders next to a school – let alone whatever else was in there.
Harry spent the rest of the lesson alternating between watching and listening to Snape, and imagining fights between giant spiders and unicorns in the forest. When the students streamed out of the dungeon laboratory, that was all any of the first years wanted to talk about. By the end of lunchtime, it was all anyone in the whole school seemed to be talking about.
