Thank you, James Birdsong, for the kind review on the last chapter!
Little bit of a longer chapter, hopefully in a good way and not a drone on kind of way. Also for some reason I always thought that Justin Finch-Fletchley's name was Justin Finch-Finchley, which of course would be a very strange name. As usual, likes, comments, questions, suggestions, reviews, follows, etc. are appreciated and encouraged!
Chapter 14 A Cup of Snake Oil
Parvati was attempting to be patient as she stirred the brownish grey sludge of a potion currently occupying her cauldron. The emphasis being on attempting to be. It had been nearly a month since she, Padma, Luna Lovegood, and several of her fellow Gryffindors had started brewing this potion. The waiting on the complex potion was taking a toll on all of them.
The heir of Slytherin had not been resting either, with three third year boys, two from Ravenclaw and one from Gryffindor, being attacked over this month. They had been found in the 3rd floor hallway along with three burned cameras, which was somewhat understandable as all of them had been members of the photography club. It was assumed that they had taken pictures of the attacker and the person had destroyed the camera to prevent their own identification. Since then the small club of 6 had disbanded out of fear that they were being targeted, especially since all 6 members (including those attacked) were muggle-born.
The novice potioniers were currently in the second-floor girls' bathroom, right across the hall from where the first victim, Mrs. Norris, was attacked. Even though Mr. Filch had been hanging around the 2nd floor more often than in the past, you wouldn't be able to tell based on the state of the bathroom. The formally eggshell white tiles were nearly all stained a sickly green color. The ten stalls occupying the room were all labelled with an out of order sign and had been since Parvati had started school last September.
The one part of the bathroom that still captured the charm and magic of Hogwarts was the sink. Decorating the heads of each of the faucets were silver snakes with bright red rubies replacing their eyes. The rubies were so beautiful in fact that when she had first entered back a month ago, Luna had to drag her away from staring at the memorising snakes.
Luna was also in the bathroom with her and was currently looking at the potion instruction book (Moste Potente Potions) with Hermione Granger. Nearby, Lavender Brown was looking out the window at the snow falling. The light was catching her curly brown hair in that special way and not for the first time Parvati found herself starring at her best friend.
Luna flipped the page of the book loudly, startling Parvati. Earlier this year Parvati would not have expected to be associating with Luna and Hermione. She and Lavender had found Hermione to be quite tiring to talk to and a know-it-all. And Luna was Luna. But after working with the two of them she had realized she might had judged too harshly.
"Hey Parvati, would you say the potion is giving you a negative energy? Or more of neutral one?" asked Luna in her typical dreamy tone.
"She means is the color correct. Is it a murky greyish green?" clarified Hermione in a exasperated manner.
"I think so," Parvati replied, "it looks a little browner to me, I'll stir it a little more."
"Alright, we have to wait for Seamus, Dean, Padma, Harry, and Ron with the new bicorn horn anyways," said Hermione. They had previously stolen the bicorn horn along with the other ingredients from Snape's storage room, but the horn had broken and so the properties would be significantly reduced.
Parvati returned to stirring and glanced over to the farthest stall on the left. It was, as usual, occupied by Moaning Myrtle, a ghost student. Myrtle was thankfully being quiet today and wasn't making more of a mess of the bathroom by diving into the toilet repeatedly.
Hermione walked over to her and looked into the cauldron. She frowned and pulled out a small stick with a red line inside of it along with numbers lined up along the red line. She stuck the device into potion, frowned, and then pulled out her wand and increased the temperature of the fire.
"What is that Hermione?" she asked.
"It's a modified thermometer," Hermione answered as she cleaned off the device with her sleeve, "I've altered it with a couple of spells to make not… well explode when exposed to magical substances. Muggles use the device to get precise temperatures, because they like to know more than whether its cold or hot."
Parvati began to drone out Hermione at this point, she was going on a rant about muggle technology again and Parvati knew very little about muggles, so this wasn't a conversation she would be able to input much to.
It was then that Dean, Padma, Harry, and Ron entered the bathroom holding a small bag.
"Oh good you have it, the potion is ready for the bicorn horn," Hermione said, holding out her hand for the bag.
Ron carefully extracted the horn from the bag and handed it over. Hermione took the bicorn horn and took over control of the potion from Parvati. "It was kind of weird, Snape only had one in his storage," he commented.
"I think Snape might have been on to us beforehand and hid the rest of them. There's no way he'd only have one," said Harry.
"Where is Seamus," asked Luna, finally looking away from the textbook.
The three of them looked guilty.
"Seamus was in charge of the distraction and well…." Padma started, "He kind of did too good of a job." She giggled and the boys grinned.
Parvati glared at her twin. "Get to the point Padma."
Her twin rolled her eyes before replying, "Fine. The idiot set the potions lab on fire, so now he's in detention."
"Why did you guys-" started Parvati before being interrupted by Hermione's cry of triumph.
"Its ready!"
The potion had thinned out significantly and turned a much darker brown color. It most definitely wasn't any more edible looking than before. Lavender cleared her throat, and everyone looked over to her.
"So who's going?" she asked, "We clearly can't all go, there's not enough potion."
"I'll go," volunteered Harry immediately. Ron nodded, "Me as well."
"No," said Hermione. "We should send people who… well… have a better control over their tempers," she seemed to realize her rudeness and continued, "sorry, but if you guys sock Malfoy our cover may get broken."
The boys looked disgruntled, but they reluctantly agreed.
Parvati spoke up, "There's enough for 3 people. How about me, Hermione, and Padma. Padma and I have used Polyjuice potion before, the experience might be helpful."
She thought back to her first experience with the potion some 3 years ago. She and Padma had stolen the potion from their mothers, who were very skilled potioniers. Both woman had quit their jobs at the ministry a year prior to pursue more experimental pursuits in potions, rather than continuing to "be a factory for potion making" within the ministry. She was rather proud of her mothers' success, and two months prior to her and Padma's start at Hogwarts, her mothers had released a simpler treatment for Spattergroit, a nasty fungal infection. With their potion labs at home, she and Padma had easy access to difficult to make potions like the Polyjuice potion.
The potion was, to put simply, disgusting. Just as disgusting as it looked.
But the experience of turning into another person was strange, painful, and not one Parvati would ever trade. They had turned into the neighbor wizard boys, also twins, as a prank on the boys' parents (it worked very well). While she didn't look forward to drinking the substance, she had a feeling that she, Hemione, and Padma could handle sneaking around the Slytherin common room and get some information from Malfoy.
To her surprise, Hermione agreed. "That's a good idea."
She dug into her bag pulled out three muffins.
"These have a sleeping solution in them, all we have to do is feed them to Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle. I've already got a hair from Pansy Parkinson; she was shedding all over my desk last charms class. We can grab Crabbe and Goyle's hairs when we hide them."
"Could I be Parkinson," asked Padma, "turning into a boy was not very fun last time." Parvati silently agreed, suddenly having male body parts was very strange.
"Sure," replied Hermione handing them the muffins, "tomorrow will be the best day to try this, lets meet tomorrow morning."
THE NEXT MORNING
The plan to sneak the muffins to three slytherins somewhat went off without a hitch. Crabbe and Goyle didn't seem to notice the extra muffins on their plates that morning, and they chowed down without much hesitation. It was lucky that the potion took the time it took for them to leave the hall to go into effect, and Harry and Ron were able to drag them to the broom cupboard. They decided in the end to not try this technique with Pansy, rather they followed her until she was alone and used petrificus totalus behind her back. They locked the three Slytherins away and the group gathered once more in the 2nd floor girl's bathroom.
Parvati mixed in Crabbe's hair into the potion in her cup and watched it turn a even darker shade of brown. Hermione added her hair from Goyle, and they watched her potion turn a bland beige colour. Finally Padma added her hair from Pansy and the potion changed to a bright sunshine yellow. While Parvati was aware of the inconsistency of colour that the Polyjuice potion was well known for, she still was concerned by the strangeness of Padma's potion colour.
But this was no time for hesitation. The girls quickly dressed in the stalls, and the larger slytherin robes hung off Parvati weirdly. She forced herself to drink the potion in its entirety. It was just like before, a strange and somewhat painful feeling. She could tell she was growing as her eyeline rose and her clothes began to fit.
Stepping out of the stall, her felling was confirmed by the gasps of the other students. Hermione's appearance had similarly changed to that of Crabbe, but even though her appearance was completely different, the facial expression was still definitely of Hermione. All eyes then went to Padma's stall. But Pansy didn't step out. No one did.
"Padma? Are you coming out?" she asked, knocking on the stall door.
"No, go on without me… I feel sick," Padma called back.
Parvati could tell her twin was lying but the clock was ticking on the potion and she and Hermione rushed out of the bathroom.
They were lucky. They found the Slytherin common room quickly and were able to walk in behind a couple 5th year Slytherin girls after they said the password "Pureblood".
"Crabbe, Goyle, there you are!" drawled a familiar voice, "Have either of you seen Pansy? She was supposed to meet me to work on potions."
Draco Malfoy strode towards them; he emulated arrogance with every step.
"Ummm, no haven't seen her," said Hermione, who was expertly matching Crabbe's style of speech. Parvati shook her head, hopefully Pansy would stay missing during this interrogation.
The three sat down on the chairs and couch by the fireplace. Draco started describing the woes of his father in a way that sounded like he wanted to feel like a victim without ever having to suffer.
"Can you believe that he was removed from the board of governors? The necklace was barely a dark object. Plus it had only ever been used to kill muggles and house elves so who even cares?" Draco was now tossing a green apple into the air and catching it. The way she was shifting in her seat lead Parvati to believe that Hermione's patience was waning.
"Did you hear about the photography club kids? The ones who got petrified?" Hermione asked him.
"Of course I did Crabbe, the whole school did," he replied with a strange amount of disdain for someone talking to a friend. "Father said it was a good attack but wasn't large enough for the plan."
"What plan?" Parvati found herself blurting out. Draco frowned at her.
"I swear Goyle you get thicker everyday. THE PLAN my father and mother are organizing to have some fun with the Mudbloods," he said with a sickly smile. "He hasn't told me much but I'm certain the school will be a lot purer when its over."
"When will you do an attack like that though?" Hermione asked, desperation creeping into her voice.
Draco frowned again and looked between the two of them. He laid the apple down onto the green silk cushions and leaned back in the chair.
"Did you two get hit in the head or something? I'm not doing the attacks; the heir is or whatever. The plan is just to be ready for a big attack that is bound to happen. It happened back like 50 years ago, it'll happen again. And then Father, Mother, and their friends come in. You two should really ask your parents more about this, they're participating, well unless they are as thick as you two."
Parvati was about to ask more when Hermione suddenly stood. "I feel sick," she announced and grabbed Parvati's arm. She pulled the two of them out of the common room into the dungeon hallways while ignoring Draco calling out to them. She pointed to Parvati's hair which was rapidly growing.
"That was close!" she cried and the two began their walk back up to the bathroom.
"Hermione… what do you think Mr. Malfoy's plan is?" Parvati asked while trying to hold her pants up as her waist size decreased.
"I don't know," Hermione admitted. She stopped and turned to Parvati. Her face was red with anxiety and for the first time Parvati saw uncertainty in the girl's eyes. "The other thing is we have no way of telling people about this, no one will believe us," she concluded.
They started walking again, going up the through the first-floor corridor to avoid the traffic of the main staircase. They walked through the fake portrait and climbed the small hidden staircase.
"We can tell someone about the potential attack, maybe with an anonymous tip the ministry can visit the Malfoy Manor and find something incriminating," said Parvati. Hermione said, "yeah maybe," and clearly unconvinced.
She was likely right, Parvati thought, there was no way that even the semi-disgraced Malfoy family would be investigated like that. She had learned from her mothers about cursed necklace that Malfoy senior had been caught with. Apparently, a ministry official had been visiting for dinner (and to win the continued support of the Malfoy family and their money) when he had nearly touched the necklace. A house-elf had grabbed it to prevent him from touching it and died instantly. House-elf deaths were required to be reported so Malfoy was stuck with a small fine and a temporary removal from the board of governors. Her mothers, while not involved much in politics, had told her that it was likely that he would be back on the board before school years end.
At the top of the staircase, they pushed through another false portrait and came face to face with a shocking scene.
Lying on the floor was a first year Hufflepuff boy Parvati recognized to be Justin Finch-Fletchley, he wasn't moving, and she prayed that he was only petrified. But the real horror was the floating being in front of them. It was Nearly Headless Nick, but he didn't look like a normal ghost. His whole body had turned a very light shade of green. He was posed looking up at the ceiling with his arms at his side but palms out. It almost looked like he was fading away.
Unlike with the roosters, the shock had frozen Parvati's voice. Hermione moved first, squatting down on the ground nearby the body. She wasn't looking at the body though, and that was when Parvati saw them, hundreds of tiny spiders crawling away towards the cracked open window. Parvati didn't have the energy to wonder why they were there or what they were doing.
She was about to call for help, when Peeves decided to join them. He looked at the body and the form of Nick and started to yell "Another attack, no student or ghost is safe!" while flying away.
Parvati briefly wondered if he was afraid for his own existence. Could a poltergeist feel that kind of fear? Could what happened to Nick happen to him?
Their friends were the first at the scene and were smart enough to rush them into the nearby bathroom to change out of the Slytherin robes. When they returned McGonnell had also arrived on the scene. She began interviewing the others and Parvati nudged Lavender, "where's Padma?" she asked the girl.
"She's in the hospital wing," Lavender whispered back. The two girls locked eyes for a moment before Lavender continued, "the hair wasn't as clean as it needed to be and well Pansy owns a salamander. She'll probably be alright-" Parvati didn't stay to listen to the rest of what Lavender was saying, rather she ran.
She ran. She ran past the exhaustion the day had been. She ran past the stern voice of her head of house. She ran past the threat of violence and actual violence to the hospital wing.
Her sister had to be alright.
Opening the door, she noticed a new bed had a curtain around it and she approached.
"Padma?" she called.
"Go away," the familiar voice of her sister called back.
"Padma, please, let me in," she pleaded.
"Go away," Padma repeated. The girl's voice was short and clipped.
Not for the first time, Parvati ignored her twin and pushed back the curtain. Padma was there.
She was whole. She was alive.
But her brown skin was no more; she was now blue with large scales on her arms and face. Red dots covered her face in an almost mockery of pimples. And her eyes were somehow amphibian-like, almost alien.
"Please go away," her sister repeated one more time before bursting into tears.
