"Welcome back, mate," Harry said, as Ron limped into his seat in the dungeons. "How are you feeling?"

"I've been better," replied Ron, "but at least I don't have Madam Pomfrey hovering over me like a bird."

Harry laughed.

"C'mon, Malfoy, tell us what happened," Crabbe implored. Harry turned to see him at Malfoy's side, who had once again chosen his own separate table.

"Sod off," said Draco sourly. "Get away from me."

Pansy put a hand on his arm. "What's happened to you?"

Draco glared back at her. "Have you gotten uglier since yesterday? Didn't know a nose could get that flat. Looks like a mesa."

Insulted, she gasped and covered her nose.

"Right then!" Slughorn said, coming into the room. "Today we're going to be starting work on Veritaserum. Everyone in groups, please."

Harry and Ron turned in to face Hermione and Padma. Draco glanced across at the Slytherins, who rolled their eyes at him and turned their backs. Likewise, Michael Corner's group shunned him, whispering something about a "murdering git." He turned back to his Potions book, apparently deciding he'd just have to work on his own.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Hermione said exasperatedly. "Malfoy," she called, "would you like to come and work with us?"

Ron gave her a murderous look.

"He has no place to be!" she hissed. "It's only the neighborly thing to do..."

"He probably won't come anyway," said Harry, but to his great surprise, Draco picked up his bag and came over to their table.

"Okay," Hermione said brightly, as Ron threw daggers at Draco with his eyes, "we need five ingredients: powdered moonstone, runespoor eggs, valerian roots, the juice of mandrake berries, and jobberknoll feathers."

"I'll get the feathers," Padma offered, eager to escape the awkward situation.

"Ron and I will find the moonstone and the eggs," Harry said.

"I'll get the berries," Hermione said, "so Malfoy, you get the valerian roots."

They spread out across the room to get the ingredients and came back to the table. Draco and Hermione arrived back first. He took out his silver dagger and began to meticulously cut up the valerian roots when he saw Hermione taking the juice out of the berries. He stopped cutting.

Hermione noticed. "It's really quite easy," she said. Lots of people had asked her how she managed to get so much juice out of berries before. "You just have to make a little cut and peel the skin back a little. Then you'll get a perfect little lip, and once you squeeze the berry--" she demonstrated-- "there you are!" She held up a vial, which was filled with juice.

He looked away. "I don't need your Potions expertise." He paused. "Mudblood," he said, almost as an afterthought.

Hurt, she went on juicing berries until Ron came back with eggs in his hand. "Over-easy, scrambled, or poached?" he asked Hermione, making a little bow.

She giggled. "Over-easy, please. With wheat toast."

Harry and Padma came back, and Hermione poured her large vial of mandrake berry juice into the cauldron. "Put the feathers in right away," she instructed Padma, and began to stir. She watched as the potion turned pale blue, and beckoned for Ron to put the eggs in-- he did so, and the potion thickened.

"Malfoy, we need your roots."

He swept them off the table, into his hand, and squeezed in between Hermione and Ron, dropping them into the cauldron. At once, steam began to rise in dizzying spirals.

"Perfect," Hermione approved, standing on her tiptoes in excitement. If there was one thing Hermione Granger appreciated, it was perfection in an assignment, and they were nearing it. "Moonstone?"

Harry dumped the powdered moonstone into the potion and Hermione let out the breath she'd been holding-- it turned pale green, and the smoke dissipated.

"Perfect!" she repeated, though this time it was more of a squeal. "Now we just have to stir once every five minutes for twenty minutes." They sat back down around their table, and silence ensued.

Finally, Ron couldn't take it any longer. "You," he said to Malfoy, "are a git."

"Oh, yeah?" Malfoy sneered. "And you're a blood traitor with horrible taste in women. Let's discuss something we don't know already."

Harry's blood boiled. "She's the one who invited you to the table," he spat. "If it wasn't for her kindness you'd have a pot full of tar right now."

"If I remember correctly, I am the one who is good at Potions," he retorted. "So if it weren't for Granger, you'd have a pot of tar. I'd probably have something a little bit more like apple juice." He smiled sarcastically. "Or perhaps lemonade."

"You let Greyback in the school last year," Ron said, getting straight to the heart of the matter.

Draco's smile vanished. "Now hold on, I--"

"He bit my brother Bill," continued Ron.

"I didn't know he was coming," Draco said defensively. "You think I'd have wanted a crazed werewolf running the halls of Hogwarts? I have friends here too, y'know. Well... had friends."

Harry and Ron ignored this. "Of course, you were just thinking of protecting everyone," Harry shot back. "Letting Death Eaters into the school and all. Top way to keep your "friends" safe."

"Yeah," said Ron. "Sending cursed necklaces and poisoned mead, not knowing whose hands they might wind up in... too bad it wasn't Pansy's... talk about horrible taste in women..."

"Look," Draco said. "I'm sorry about your brother, okay?"

Ron and Harry were so taken aback by this that they fell silent.

"And about the necklace and the wine... I had a reason for what I was doing."

"Trying to kill Dumbledore!" Ron burst out.

"It was his life or someone else's!" Draco shouted.

Ron leered. "You're a bloody coward," he stammered, "and no better than a murderer."

But Harry knew. He'd been there, watching it all unfold, and knew that Draco had been unable to commit murder even to save his parents. And now one of them had died even though the Headmaster was gone.

"And," Ron continued, "better to be a blood traitor in a one-room shack than to be a poncy git who can't even go home to the one parent he has left."

At this, Draco made to hit him, but Harry held him back.

"That's enough!" Hermione shouted. She stirred the potion one time, and gathered Ron's things for him. "Go back to the dormitories."

Sullenly, he took them.

"Wrapped around her dirty little finger," Draco jeered.

Hermione handed Draco his bag. "You too," she demanded, her arms crossed.

For a moment, Harry wondered if Draco might punch Hermione. Maybe as retribution for their third year. But he silently took his bag and followed Ron out the door.

"I," Hermione declared imperiously, "am going behind them, so if a fist fight breaks out in the hallway, I can stop it." She slung her bag over her shoulder. "Don't forget. Once every five minutes. You have three stirs left."

Harry glanced at Padma. "I can handle it," he told her, "if you want to skive off early."

"Okay," Padma agreed. "I have Divination homework, anyway."

Harry waved at her as she left, and sat back in his chair to enjoy a peaceful fifteen minutes alone. He watched the time, careful to stir once at each five-minute mark, just as Hermione had said, and by the end of the class, the potion was the exact shade of "palest lilac purple" that it was supposed to be.

Everyone else had already left. Harry extinguished the flames and gathered his things.

"Harry, m'boy!"

"Yes, Professor Slughorn?"

"You know, I'm having one of the ol' Slug Club parties before the Christmas Ball," he said affably, puffing up his chest. "Why don't you and your date come by?"

"Uh, sure," Harry said.

"I'll be owling everyone with invitations, of course," he continued, "but they'll come the day of the ball. I don't want anyone being able to fake their own invitation so they can gate-crash." Harry must have looked quite confused, because Slughorn began explaining his security measures. "You know... we'll have someone at the door, checking invitations, making sure it's only the select few I've invited..." He beamed. "My dear friends from the Weird Sisters will be making an appearance. Maybe you'll get a chance to chat with them." He winked and lumbered on into his office.

With a sigh, Harry exited the dungeons. He was in the middle of cooking up a plot to get out of the Slug Club party when he heard an argument down the hall.

"Your wand looks ancient," Max Hauser was saying contemptuously to Melody. "Too poor for a new one?"

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a Weasley," added Allyn Zabini, who never turned down the chance to bully someone.

Melody turned to Allyn. "You're the one with the red hair," she said, which shut her right up. Then she turned to Max. "It is ancient."

"Did your grandmother will it to you when she died?" he teased.

She drew herself up proudly. "No. It's one of the first wands Ollivander's ever made."

Gisela Franco regarded her suspiciously. "How do you know that?"

"He told me so himself," said she.

Max snatched it from her.

"Hey!" she protested. "Give it back!"

"Give her the wand back," Harry instructed. He towered over the Hauser boy, and he promptly returned it to her, along with a sneer worthy of Malfoy.

"Now get lost."

Gisela, Max, and Allyn turned and left.

"Thanks," Melody said, stowing her wand away.

"So... that's one of Ollivander's first wands, I heard?"

Melody nodded.

"How'd you get it?"

"I was with my aunt and my cousin, getting her wand before she went to Hogwarts, and Mr. Ollivander looked at me, and he said that he had the perfect wand for me. And my aunt said that I was too young yet, that I wasn't going to Hogwarts that year, and she wasn't going to be buying one for me. But Mr. Ollivander told her that I needed to have the wand, and he would just give it to me, I wouldn't have to pay for it. He took it off a pillow in the window and told me to take real good care of it, as it was one of the first wands that Ollivander's had ever made."

Harry mulled this over. "The wand chooses the wizard," he murmured to himself.

"That's what Mr. Ollivander said," Melody told him earnestly.

"Could I see it?"

Reluctantly, Melody handed her wand over. He examined it closely, noticing the letters "RR" on the bottom of the handle, which looked like it had been inlaid with gold and ivory. "Real piece of history you have there, Melody," Harry said, almost stumbling over his words as he handed it back to her. "See you around."

"See you!" She waved merrily.

Harry set off toward Gryffindor Tower, his pace quickening with each step. By the time he reached the portrait hole, he was at a dead run.

"Ron, Hermione. Ginny." Out of breath, he plopped down on the couch next to Ginny. "You wouldn't believe-- I think I figured it out."

Ron looked up from his chess match with Ginny. "What?"

"It's Ravenclaw's wand," Harry told him, fully aware that he was speaking nonsense. "Look. Something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's-- Dumbledore told me that the relics of Gryffindor's were safe, but Ravenclaw, we never knew about. Then that first-year girl comes in with Ravenclaw's wand..."

Hermione was bewildered. "What?"

In reply, Harry filled them in on the entire conversation he'd just had with Melody and the memories from the Pensieve last night.

"And you think that might be the relic of Ravenclaw's?" Hermione sounded uncertain.

"Well, yes, I mean... the initials on the wand, how old it is..." Harry trailed off. "Hermione, are you making elf clothes again?"

She smiled brightly. "Yes. It's hard work finding time to do it though."

"So just don't do it," Ron groaned. "How many times do we have to tell you, they like their lives?"

Hermione ignored him. "So do you know the murder weapon?"

"No," Harry said slowly, "but I do know one thing."

"What's that?" Ginny blinked back at him.

"I have this feeling that Regulus Black may have been important for Voldemort to kill."

"But didn't you say that Pettigrew murdered him?" Hermione knotted off the end of her yarn.

"Yeah," Harry said, "but in one of the books Moody gave me, it said something about murder being able to split two souls. Wormtail may have murdered him, but it was on Voldemort's orders. So both souls are split."

"I see," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"Anyway," Harry continued, "the river that Pettigrew drowned Regulus in... that's the murder weapon."

"So you're going to toss the wand in the river?" asked Ron.

"No," Hermione said, "that would be too risky."

"Why?" Harry had thought that throwing the wand in would be an excellent idea.

"Well," she began, "what if you're wrong about Regulus' murder being the murder that made the wand Horcrux? Or what if it's the wrong river? Then there's a piece of Voldemort's soul floating on where you can't destroy it."

Harry considered this. "Right. So then..."

"So get some river water in a jar," Hermione said. "You can submerge it that way. Or pour it on the wand."

"Good thinking," he approved.

"Which river is it?" asked Ginny, out of curiosity.

"That's the problem," Harry said. "I don't know." He paused. "But there's one person who does."

"Pettigrew," Ginny said.

He nodded. "I'm going to have to find him and force the answer out of him."

"When?" Ron wanted to know.

"I was thinking over the Christmas break."