"It's not a potion," Maisie insisted. "You asked, and Madam Lovegood said it wasn't!"

They were in the Library again, three heads bent over the same book.

"Well, yes," Colin said, "but …"

"But nothing. We have a teacher's permission. We just need to get the ingredients."

"Maisie, why is this so important to you?" Mike burst out. "It's just handle polish."

"Look what it says in the book," Maisie said. She put her finger on the page, and read aloud, "Every dedicated flyer should whip up a batch for their broom-shed. This polish will reinvigorate the tiredest broom and lend speed to the slowest."

"So?" Colin said.

"So, none of us will be allowed our own brooms until next year. Madam Weasley lets me and Johannes Smythe come to her coaching, but with the school brooms, we can't keep up." She tapped the page. "Unless my broom is reinvigorated and lent speed."

"But what does it matter, Maisie?" Mike asked. "You're never going to get on to the House team. Why do you need to try and keep up with them?"

"Who says I won't get on the team?" Maisie said, jaw set. "It wouldn't be the first time a first year was on the team."

"Yes but …" Colin shook his head. "Maisie, the last one was Harry Potter, and he was the first in about a century."

"So I'll be the second in a decade."

"Maisie, he's Harry Bloody Potter! The Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One!"

"He wasn't the One Chosen To Play Quidditch, though, was he?" Maisie said reasonably. "I don't see what being destined to defeat Voldemort has to do with sporting prowess."

"It would be pretty awesome," Mike said slowly. "For one of us, a first year, to beat all the older students into a place in the House team."

"Do you really think you can, Maisie?" Colin asked. "If your broom was fast enough?"

"Oh, yes," Maisie said matter-of-factly. "I've been watching them. I could be a better Beater than any of them, if I could stay close to the Chaser. There's not a one of them who doesn't pull up, just a little."

Mike Rowland thought, personally, that pulling up was a sensible thing to do when a giant ball of magical malice was heading straight for your head, but he couldn't help imagining how it would feel to have the whole school cheering on Maisie, a first year like themselves. He was heartily sick and tired of hearing the sixth and seventh year Ravenclaw students holding forth in the common room about how they'd almost fought Voldemort. As if the fact that we were born a few years later means we'll never do anything notable or interesting in our lives.

"We should do it, then," he said. "We should make this polish. After all, Madam Lovegood practically gave us permission, right?"

Two against one. Colin had no choice but to agree. "I'll copy the recipe," he said. "At least people can read my handwriting."

Maisie beamed. "Brilliant! This'll be easy."

It was not, though, at all easy. Since it was an infusion, and not a brew, the possibilities for where to prepare it were expanded. Colin pointed out that they could do it in the dormitory and store it under his bed. However, they still needed something to prepare it in. None of them had a spare cauldron, and none of them could come up with a plausible excuse for needing a new one.

"If it doesn't have to be heat-proof …" Colin said thoughtfully one day.

Getting a serving dish out of the Great Hall without any of the teachers noticing was difficult. Getting one out without the house elves seeing and retrieving it was harder. It took them three weeks to pull it off, and even then, Maisie only managed to stuff the silver dish under her robes without detection because general attention was riveted on a whispered argument between Professor Granger and Madam Lovegood at the teacher's table.

That night, slipping it under her bed, she said to Colin, "Now we just need the ingredients."

"Mum has already said no," Colin said. "And Mike's parents said no, too. Some of the stuff on the list is bloody expensive, Maisie."

He didn't ask if her parents had approved the expense. The very fact that Maisie had pinned her hopes on improving an old school learning broom spoke volumes.

"We could probably get them in Hogsmeade …" Maisie said thoughtfully.

"Maisie, no!" Colin was horrified. "First of all, I bet going to Hogsmeade without permission is, like, a million House points off. Secondly, we could never afford them, could we?" Maisie opened her mouth and Colin cut her off. "And no way are we going to borrow them from the shop. Are you mad?"

"Then we'll have to get them from the storeroom in the Potions classroom." She narrowed her eyes at him. "You'll have to get them."

Colin swallowed hard. "I don't think I really —"

"We've come this far," Maisie said fiercely. "We've got nearly everything we need —"

"We've got one thing out of all the things we need!" Colin protested. "That's not nearly, even by Gryffindor standards."

"Look." Maisie took the carefully-copied recipe from her notebook. "There's stuff here we can get ourselves. Goose grease — we can get that from the kitchens. The house elves will be happy to help us. Angel's Trumpet is growing in one of the greenhouses, I saw it the other day in Herbology." She studied the list. "Really, the only things we need are rat tails and dragonfly thoraxes. Maybe we could catch them, rats and dragonflies."

Colin really wanted to agree with her, his mouth was even open to say yes, I bet we could — but he couldn't force the lie past his lips. "No. Rat tails take a year to mature, and dragonfly thoraxes have to be from dragonflies caught between the full moons of May and June. That's why they're so expensive."

Maisie frowned. "They can't be that expensive, there's about six recipes in the textbook that use one or the other."

"Hogwarts is a school in a literal castle," Colin said, exasperated. "Expensive if you live in a castle and expensive if you live in a two-up two-down in Clapham are a bit different."

"Then they won't mind if we borrow a little, will they?" Maisie said. "I mean, we can always replace them later."

"I don't know about you, but I'm not anticipating a sudden inheritance," Colin said.

"Later later." Maisie shrugged. "Like, when we've got jobs. We can make an anonymous donation."

Colin chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. "You don't think … I mean, what Professor Potter said. Isn't this like what he warned us about?"

"We're not using magic," Maisie pointed out. "And we're only borrowing. For a long time, maybe, but still, borrowing. I don't think we're going to wake up in the morning without noses or souls because of it, if he's right, and what you mean to do matters." When Colin still hesitated, she leaned forward. "Colin, you've got to help me. I can't do it without you."

"I know you want to get on the Hufflepuff team," Colin said slowly. "And I'd like you to get on the team, too. But is it really worth it? Breaking the rules?"

"Yes," Maisie said fiercely.

"Why?"

She looked down at her hands for a moment. "Do you know how I know what Dark magic really looks like? Because of my cousin Ella. She fought in the Battle of Hogwarts — but not on the right side."

Colin gaped at her. "She was a Death Eater?"

Maisie shook her head. "Just a sympathiser. And to be honest, she wasn't much of a witch, so I doubt she made much difference. But don't you see? She was a Slytherin, like just about everybody else in my family, so nobody's really thought that we must be related yet, but they will, they'll work it out. The Sorting Hat even wanted to put me Slytherin, but I couldn't stand it, I know that lots of them fought on Professor Potter's side, but I couldn't stand it!"

"Nobody would think that you're on Voldemort's side," Colin said. "Even if they knew about your cousin."

"My parents have moved house three times in the past five years because everybody thinks that the Wilkins are Death Eater sympathisers. I have to prove myself, Colin! Before anyone in Hufflepuff finds out that I don't really belong here, I have to prove that I do!"

Her expression was ferocious, and in the candle-light, her eyes glistened with unshed tears.

"Alright," Colin said. "Alright, I'll do it."

He kept to himself his suspicion that stealing from the school's Potions storeroom might not be the best way to convince people you were a natural-born Hufflepuff.

.

.

Author's Note: I've made up the restrictions on preparing dragonfly thoraxes and rat tails. As well as the complete recipe for the handle polish.

Ella Wilkins is a bit character in the video games, a Slytherin, and there is absolutely no canonical support for her being a Death Eater sympathiser.

I have been asked for less children and more Snape. To those readers, I say 'Rejoice!' The next ten chapters have a great deal of Snape, and the first of those will be up in a few hours.