Chapter 4 | The Ruby Potion

I set the dagger aside. But it had slashed through the fabric of one of my Hogwarts robes. I fingered the torn edges of the fabric. Absentmindedly, I reached my hand through the hole in the cloth.

I expected to feel nothing.

Or the smooth fabric beneath it

What I did not expect to feel was cold, hard metal.

Was it metal? There was definitely something inside it. It was like someone had put an undetectable extension charm on the inside of my school uniform! My finger clasped something roundish, with a sharp edge. I slowly, nervously pulled it out of the hole. It was most beautiful golden goblet I had ever seen. It too had words in a strange language carved into the side:

Erised uoyhc ihwt aht tone riuq er eruoy noi topeh tec udor pi.

And it had the letter S engraved there, too.

So there was not only a Mirror of Erised, but a Dagger of Erised, and Goblet of Ersied.

But then, as I held the cup in my hand, it filled with a potion like none I had ever seen before. I was a brilliant scarlet color, so much so that I could have sworn it was made of liquid rubies, or something like that. Maybe liquid diamonds, too. The crimson-red potion against the gold goblet somehow reminded me of the gold Gryffindor lion on scarlet. I set down the goblet. To my surprise, it immediately drained of the ruby potion. I picked it up, and it filled once more. I had never seen anything do that before.

"Reparo." I mended the tear that the dagger had made.

"Sea serpent." I suddenly heard a voice from outside the door. I quickly hid the goblet under one of my folded robes in the trunk, and the door opened.

"Oh, it's you." I let out a sigh of relief as I saw Liam walk in with his arm around Ev.

"I am so glad that tomorrow is Friday," she said loudly. "But can you believe Professor Gable is making us write two and a half feet on - "

"Come here!" I whispered to them in an urgent tone. "We need to go somewhere where no one will overhear us."

"Well… there's the prefect's bathroom on the fifth floor… hardly anybody ever goes in there," Liam suggested.

"Perfect!" I exclaimed.

"None of us are prefects." Ev looked at him skeptically.

"So? Right, because none of us have ever broken any rules before."

Evelyn smiled "Whatever you say…."

A few minutes later we were rushing up the stairs. "I don't see why you have to bring your other robes- ."

"You'll see in a minute" I said, feeling slightly annoyed with my friend.

Once we got to the bathroom, I pulled out the goblet and the dagger. I watched as the goblet filled with the crimson potion. I summarized to them everything that had happened to me in the last hour.

"And… well, every time I touch it, it fills with this red potion, and… well, I don't know what to do." But Evelyn gave me a look askance.

"What potion?"

"You… you can't see it?" I stammered.

"I see the cup, but I don't know what potion you mean…"

"Here." I thrust the goblet at her. "You hold it. Do you see it now?"

"Still nothing." She shook her head, and looked at me in an apologetic sort of way.

"Urgh." I wanted her to understand, not to feel sorry for me! I snatched the cup from her and shoved it towards Liam. "Please tell me you see it?"

"No." His deep blue eyes stared back into my green ones. "But I believe you."

That wasn't good enough. I let out a sigh of exasperation, and placed the two Items back in my trunk. "Let's go. I have homework to do."

That was a lie. But I wanted to go to the library and look up everything I could on potions, and magical qualities that objects could possess.