WARNINGS for this chapter: sex, but nothing graphic.

Chapter 29: Professor Benveniste's lecture

"Very impressive!" Harry shouted, beating away the bludger that made a loop around Sabrin and came back zooming towards his head. "But if you do that too often, you'll ruin your Firebolt!"

Sabrin had just pulled the same stunt with which she had smashed his backside in the tryouts. Whether it was the Firebolt that Harry was more worried about, or Ginny, who might be the next one on the receiving end, he was getting less and less enthusiastic about this manoeuvre.

Wham! The bludger came back hissing through the air, and Harry sent it after Sabrin.

If someone had told him that he would be swinging the beater's bat one day, he would have thought they had learnt Divination from Trelawney. But there was no arguing with Gibbon. On their first Sunday morning after the Christmas holidays, she gave him the bat, released the bludgers, and if he didn't want to go down with a crack in his skull right away, he was forced to give his arms some exercise. By mid February, his technique became less defensive. Now he was good enough to give Sabrin a proper warm-up, before she faced Harper and Goyle during the 'official' Slytherin Quidditch practice.

Speaking of which, figures in green uniforms began seeping into the Quidditch Pitch. They were too far away for Harry to see their disdainful looks, but he knew it was the sign to vacate the premises. He banged the returning bludger one last time, and almost blew Urquhart off his broomstick. That was a good one!


Harry walked back to the dungeons, showered, crawled behind the curtains of his four-poster and opened the Marauders' Map. Ron, Hermione, and Draco were sitting in the library, but soon Draco's dot separated itself from the group and started moving along the aisle between the rows of bookshelves. As it was approaching the Restricted Section, Harry noticed another dot, moving along the parallel aisle in the same direction, following Draco at a distance. It suddenly sped up, overtook Draco by a couple of rows, turned into a passage behind a bookshelf, and shot straight at Draco. There was no need to look at the name. Ewen's hunting tactic was recognizable.

The two dots moved quickly deeper into the Restricted Section, which was deserted, turned a couple of corners in the labyrinth of shelves, and settled in a nook. The dots circled around each other. And then, there was only one dot. One dot with two names: Ewen Arling and Draco Malfoy.

"Oh no. Not in the library! Idiots!"

On instict, Harry threw his legs off the bed and stretched for his shoes, but what could he do? Go and stand watch? 'Sorry, Madam Pince, can it wait? Harry Potter is having a private moment behind the deadly poisons bookshelf.' Harry pulled his feet back up. After all, Ewen was an expert at hiding. Hopefully, he knew what he was doing.

The green sheets became warm and grey in the yellow light of Harry's wand. He couldn't take his eyes off the map. Damn. Ewen was a power to reckon with.

Since his confession, it had become a whole lot more difficult for Harry to ignore the fact that he was involved with an accomplice in a high profile murder. But his brain (or was it Malfoy's brain now?) stubbornly resisted to follow through on the implications. As long as no one knew that he was not Draco Malfoy, it was as if Draco was seeing his former accomplice, not Harry, right? As long as everyone thought that Draco was Harry Potter, it would be Harry discovered shagging Draco's accomplice in the library. Right? That's why they'd better not discover them shagging, let alone that Ewen had been Draco's accomplice. And yes, it was a relief to know that Draco not being Draco, and Harry not being Harry was still a secret.

The dot with two names was trembling on the yellow parchment, as Harry tried to turn his feelings into thoughts, and thoughts into words, which kept falling back into and stirring up the colourful chaos of his feelings. Wasn't he supposed to be jealous? But right now he was definitely more worried about them being discovered than about whatever was actually going on. After all, Ewen was really Malfoy's lover, and Harry had just borrowed him, together with the body. He wasn't even sure how he would feel about him when— if— when they swapped back. Was he really attracted to men? And to Ewen? Was he attracted to Ewen? Or was it just another thing that Malfoy's body 'remembered', like the waltz? Like the tango?

But as long as it was a secret, it seemed like Harry didn't need to know all the answers. Whichever it was, now... now, he desired Ewen with every pore of his skin. How could someone who made him so happy be a bad person? Harry's brain melted at the thought, and delegated the more complex trains of reasoning to other parts of his body. He would be the greatest hypocrite if he judged Ewen for thinking with his dick. And he was not going to say no to anything.


"What if I hurt you?" Harry breathed out, fumbling with the last button of his jeans.

"Then I'll scream and we'll stop."

Harry almost started buttoning up again, at the mere thought of Ewen screaming, but Ewen grabbed the edge of his jeans and pushed them down.

"It might hurt a little at the beginning," Ewen ripped his T-shirt off, like it was burning on his skin, wrapped his warm arms around Harry's torso, and their chests met, "but that's all right. You just go slow."

Ewen broke the contact and accioed a small jar out his bag. "And if you coat it properly in this, nothing can go wrong." He unscrewed the lid and pressed the jar into Harry's hand with urgency. "Draco's own creation. Top quality."

"Hm. Right. Does Draco know? Is it okay if we—?"

"He insisted!" Ewen said with emphasis and pulled at Harry's boxers.

"Okay." Harry picked a small blob out of the jar on the tip of his finger. The semitransparent substance felt velvety on the skin. "What if you finish before me?"

"Then carry on, I'll see how long I can take it." Ewen tried to breathe deep. "If it's too much, we'll stop and do something else."

"Promise not to push yourself too far!"

"I promise." Ewen seized the jar out of Harry's hand and started to spread the velvety substance vigorously over— Oh god!

"What if I finish before you?" Harry pressed through his teeth.

"If you go on like this, we'll both finish, before we start."

"But what if—"

"Potter! Stop procrastinating! Just do it!" Ewen said and turned his back to him.

"I'm not procrastinating. I'm," Harry caught his breath, "negotiating," it was his last chance to sort it out, as long as he could still breathe, and talk. "Have mercy. I've never done this before."

"Oh right. Okay, I'm sorry." Ewen turned around, a worried crease between his eyebrows. "If you're not ready, we don't have to— We can stop."

What?! "Now that I have Malfoy's brew all over my cock, no way!"

"That's the spirit!" Ewen's eyes sparkled wildly, and he turned his slender back to him again. "Come on, Harry. It'll be all right. Please..."

A vision of his Gringotts break-in flashed through Harry's mind, except this time, the Goblin at the front desk was on his knees, begging him to come in and take all the riches of the wizarding world, including the dragon. Harry gathered all his courage, and pushed forward.


After that wonderfully nerve-racking experience, Harry thought that by now he had definitely lost his virginity, at least at a non-physical level. But each time he looked at the dot with two names, his stomach squirmed. Draco and Ewen were now probably losing his physical virginity for him, and he wasn't even allowed to know how! Were they treating him well? Was he... difficult?

As he saw the dots together more and more often lately, Harry tried to raise the issue:

"I have the right to know what you're doing with it. It's my body."

"Mine for all practical purposes," Malfoy replied, unperturbed, and continued towards the tapestry of Barnabas teaching trolls ballet.

Harry bombarded him with questions, but it was a lost cause.

"Don't give me any new scars!" he shouted to Draco's back, as he disappeared in the Room of Requirement.

"You wouldn't believe how much I care!" Draco's head reappeared in the door opening for another second, before the door closed again and vanished. Harry stayed behind staring at the solid wall, and hoped that Draco had brewed enough of that velvety stuff for all three of them.


Harry spent the afternoon trying to read Draco's essay on Picasso for Muggle Studies. Filch had had a thorough go at the classroom under the owlery, and had managed to strip it of almost all its magic by excessive application of bleach and a flame gun, so Kazlauskas's portable power generator, once moved to the new location, would only crash on full moons. That gave Kazlauskas twenty-eight days of electricity out of twenty-nine, and she was so gratified that she wrapped up the chapters about Muggle social services and started on modern art after the Christmas holidays.

Harry didn't mind modern art. Modern artists were probably just unobliviated Muggle witnesses of magic that had slipped through the Ministry's fingers. But Draco's take on Picasso was dry as a starved Thestral. The essay read like a treatise on human anatomy, as if all those misplaced body parts were the result of a well-aimed hex.

When the clock struck four, Harry threw another look at the map. Ewen was in North Tower. Alone. Benveniste's dot was moving slowly along the shore of the Black Lake, along with Charnay's (like hell it was an optical illusion). It was another hour till their appointment, and Harry decided he could make better use of the time than struggling through medical terminology. He put down Draco's essay, closed the map, and headed for the Divination classroom.

To Harry's dismay, Draco turned out to have had the same idea.

"You're early," Harry said, approaching the entrance to the North Tower.

"So are you," said Draco, quickening his pace, as if it was a question of who got there first. Harry followed him up the stairs. Greedy bugger!

The door of the Divination classroom stood open, and Draco entered unceremoniously. There was a rumble of furniture, the sound of breaking glass, and when Harry got far enough into the room to see, there was Ewen, holding a wooden frame with a canvas stretched over it. He stood, fidgeting, like he was trying to hide something behind his back, an expression of having been caught doing something shameful in his face. Newspaper clippings were spread out on a small table next to him, a tripod lay overturned at his feet, and a pungent chemical scent emanated from a puddle of brown liquid on the floor.

"Were you painting?" Draco asked, mystified.

Ewen's shoulders slumped defeatedly, and he blushed. "Yes."

He moved aside, and Harry could see an array of tubes, paint brushes, and a piece of board smeared with a rich mixture of brown, grey, black, and yellow. Ewen flicked his wand jumpily, and the mess on the floor vanished.

"You're full of surprises, Arling," Draco said, stepping slowly towards Ewen, "I didn't know you painted."

"I don't." Ewen's hands clutched tighter on the frame. "I nicked it from a heap of rubbish. Filch was about to burn it. And it was almost finished! And I've never enlivened a portrait before. And it's so expensive to have them painted, so I thought, that's my chance!"

"You were finishing a portrait?" Harry said, marvelling. He came a few steps closer, and glanced over the newspaper clippings. They were a selection of pictures of Severus Snape from old issues of the Daily Prophet. Skeeter's Snape, Scoundrel or Saint lay on top, with a colour picture of the late Potions Master on its cover, pulling venomous faces at the audience. "Can we see?"

Ewen blinked nervously. "Don't laugh." He picked up the fallen tripod, turned the canvas around and leaned it on.

Harry gasped. It was the unfinished portrait they had found in McGonagall's office during their detention for the swans, but now it had a face! Well, the nose might have been a bit too large, and the eyes might have been sitting a tinge too close together. And perhaps, the whole face stood out a little too much against the background, as if it was hanging in the air a few feet closer to the audience than the rest of Snape's body. But the expression! The expression was just like Harry had walked into his first Potions class, and Snape was greeting the new celebrity. "It's fantastic! It's him."

Ewen's tension eased a little, and he ventured a shy smile.

"Isn't it a bit"—Draco eyed the portrait intently—"too negative?"

"No," Harry and Ewen replied in unison.

"He wasn't your favourite teacher either, was he?" Harry said.

"Obviously not." Ewen crossed his arms. "I went to all his classes, but he kept marking me absent, and then gave me detentions for truancy. He knew about my vanishing problem, all the teachers knew, but he acted as if he didn't. So I failed my O.W.L. in Potions, and then he taught Defence in my fifth, and so I failed my O.W.L. in Defence, too."

"Arsehole," Harry said.

Draco sighed and shifted from foot to foot.

"When are you going to enliven him then?"


The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Benveniste, flushed from the fresh air, the folds of her cloak swinging as she walked energetically across the classroom.

"Good!" she said, stopping by the portrait. "That will come in handy." And she disappeared in her office.

"Should I make some tea?" Ewen shouted.

A muffled "Yes, please" came from behind the bookshelf, and Ewen summoned a teapot, shuffling his newspaper clippings into a pile with his left.

The sun stood low over the hills, penetrating the room with its rich golden rays. A drop of light lay caught at the bottom of each crystal ball—dozens of little suns in a basket. Water hissed and bubbled. With four soft clinks the teacups were removed from the pyramid at the sink. The silence made a void in Harry's stomach. It grew deeper and darker with every minute of uncertain anticipation, as they were seated around Benveniste's desk. A knowing smile played on Ewen's lips, but he hadn't dropped a word about the plan so far, resistant to Harry's and Draco's pestering.

"Ewen told me about your problem." Benveniste appeared finally from behind the bookshelf and took a seat in front of her steaming cup. "You would like to contact Mr Malfoy's ancestors, who you think created the artefact that caused your present condition, to ask them how to undo its effects." She looked expectantly at Draco. He nodded.

"We have looked into it, and considered a few options, which all have their advantages and disadvantages. Today we would like to discuss those options with you. But before we begin, I think it's important that you properly understand what it is you're asking of Mr Arling." She gave another expectant look to Harry. He nodded.

"Good. Then," Benveniste said brightly, "let's first brush up on the basics." She took a sip of her tea and savoured it for a short moment. "What happens to us when we die?"

A light chill ran down Harry's spine. The question was simple enough, but somehow didn't pair well with tea.

"To our bodies, or to our souls?" Draco asked hesitantly.

"The bodies, for a start."

"They are buried," Draco offered, but Benveniste was waiting with raised eyebrows. "And then they"—Draco took a deep breath—"decay."

"What happens when they decay?"

Draco swallowed.

"They are consumed"—he cleared his throat—"by other organisms?"

"Right. Do our bodies cease to exist?"

"Yes. Well. No. The matter still exists but in a different form."

"Excellent, Mr Malfoy. Roughly speaking, they go to pieces. Some parts are processed by bacteria which break them up into forms that can be taken up by plants. Others are consumed by insects and arachnids, and become part of their bodies. Yet others may fossilise and become stone. In any case, dead bodies do not disappear. They fall apart and change."

Benveniste took another sip of her tea, Harry glanced into his cup, but the thought of insects and arachnids clouded his view of the innocent vegetarian drink.

"Okay." Benveniste put down her cup noiselessly. "What happens to our souls when we die?"

She looked at Draco, but he remained silent.

"Some may stay behind as ghosts, but most of them," Harry said, "move on."

"Very good, Mr Potter, what does it mean that they 'move on'?"

Harry remembered the moments spent with Dumbledore on the deserted platform at King's Cross, after he was hurled there by Voldermort's curse and before Narcissa's soft hands welcomed him back to the realm of the living. Dumbledore had said that he could probably just board a train, if he chose to. Was that what it meant to move on? Somehow Harry guessed that was not the answer Benveniste expected.

"What happens to our souls when they move on?" she repeated, looking at Draco, but he had nothing to add. "Well, basically the same thing. They go to pieces. Some pieces may become parts of a soul of another human being or animal, some may get caught in objects, some may stay hanging freely around in space. They are invisible carriers of power, and magic is the art of controlling that power. Have you ever wondered what it is in your wand that makes it a wand rather than a plain wooden stick with a feather inside? It's a piece of someone's soul, or multiple pieces of multiple souls."

She paused for the message to sink in.

"In short, the souls of the dead fall apart, and the pieces go their various ways, spreading in space, entering new combinations, and falling apart again. That is the spiritual equivalent of decay, in a manner of speaking, and the longer a person has been dead, the smaller the pieces, the further they drift apart, and the more chaotic their distribution." She stopped. "Do you have any questions so far, gentlemen?"

Harry and Draco were speechless.

"Now, this is why I'm telling you this. What Ewen is willing to do for you is to pull all the necessary pieces back together. Well, no. That's not quite right. The pieces will in fact stay physically where they are, and Ewen will communicate with them, pass information between the pieces, reassemble that information to a meaningful whole, and pass that on to you. When you ask questions, he will take them in and communicate again with all those pieces to get answers. And so on."

Harry and Draco glanced at Ewen. He was sitting straight but free from tension, in some sort of serene concentration, like a demigod about to ascend to heaven.

"As it appears from the summary you gave," Benveniste continued, "Norma and Circinus died eight hundred eighty-nine years ago. That's a very long time! It takes an enormous act of power to reassemble something that has undergone that amount of decomposition. I trust that Ewen can do it, but our task is to support him in every way we can." Benveniste let her gaze drift from Harry to Draco and back again.

"What— what should we do?" Harry said.

"That depends." Benveniste stood up, paced a couple of times up and down the classroom, stopped at the window, and leaned against the windowsill. Now they could only see her black silhouette in the stream of evening light.

"There are basically two ways in which you can communicate with a deceased person through a medium. The first and the most straightforward one is what I've just described: you ask the medium a question, the medium reconstructs the soul of your contact, asks them the question, and if your contact is kind enough to answer it, they answer, and the medium retells that answer to you."

"Are they usually not kind enough?" Draco asked.

A mortal human once again, Ewen sniggered. "Imagine what it's like for the poor contact. Imagine you've been sleeping, having sweet dreams, and then all of a sudden a perfect stranger wakes you up, sways a locket in your face, and wants to know how the damn thing works. How would you react?" Ewen leaned back in his chair and squinted smugly. "I've been practising with my own long since deceased relative, and he wanted to punch me in the face. Of course, he couldn't literally punch me in the face because he's dead, but—"

"You talked to your ancestor? You never mentioned it." Harry wondered why. Had they been so busy with other things?

"Anyway. I first had to explain who I am, and why I was bothering him. It helps when it's your own ancestor. They kind of like to see their little ones. But to Draco's ancestors I'm no one."

"Right," said the black silhouette at the window. "Besides, if you have just one simple question, then it's okay, you could do it. But if you want to have a conversation, and the medium has to run back and forth between you and them? It can take hours to rebuild a nine-hundred-year-old soul. How many times do you want your medium to do it? The introductions alone can take days, before you even get to ask what you actually wanted to ask."

"And then imagine," Ewen jumped in again, "the guy wakes you up every couple of hours. By the third time you'll hate him!"

"All right. What's the other method?" Draco said.

"The other method," Benveniste's black figure moved out of the beaming rectangle and became three-dimensional again, as she walked across the room towards the tripod. She picked up Ewen's portrait of Snape and with a wave of her wand stuck it up against the wall in front of them. "The other method is projection. Instead of reassembling a soul every time you address it, the human medium does it only once, and transfers the connection to another suitable, usually non-human medium. For instance, a painting. In this case, the spirit is given a substance to imprint on, so they can operate quasi independently, and can converse with the querent directly. Ewen, why don't you give us a little demonstration?"

Ewen shrank back into his chair. "Now? With Professor Snape?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"But I— But he—"

"He's good enough for testing the idea." Benveniste flicked her wand at the canvas and the glossy patches of new paint dried instantly.

Ewen swallowed, blew a sigh out of his cheeks, but stood up. "Okay. I can try."

He stood in front of the portrait, holding his wand to Snape's forehead where his greasy hair parted to show a small triangle of pallid skin. Ewen tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes. For a few seconds nothing happened, but then, with the sound of a flame engulfing a burner, the colours and the contours of the painted face started to change. Snape blinked and stared into the room.

Everyone was silent, waiting. Snape let his gaze wander in bewilderment.

"What's this? Where am I?"

"Hogwarts," replied Benveniste.

His eyes focused on her.

"Rebecca?"

"Severus."

"What are you doing at Hogwarts?"

"Teaching."

"Teaching?" Snape's bewildered gaze swept over the room again, and stopped first on Harry, then on Draco. "Potter!"

Draco looked nervously at Harry. Snape's lips settled back into the disdainful curl Ewen had painted.

"Seeing that Potter is alive, and Mr Malfoy is too," he drawled, "am I right in assuming that the Dark Lord is dead?"

"That's exactly right," Benveniste said with satisfaction.

Snape threw his eyebrows up for an infinitesimal tick.

"Ten points to Gryffindor."

"Ten points?!" Ewen coughed out indignantly, but Snape ignored him.

He frowned, thinking. "Who's the boss now?"

"McGonagall."

"In London?"

"Shacklebolt."

"Predictable."

"True."

Snape gave Benveniste an intrigued look.

"But you, Rebecca! I thought you were happily settled as the queen of the underworld. What happened? Did you upset Kingsley, or did Kingsley upset you?"

"We can catch up on ministerial gossip later. We're here in the middle of an extra-curricular crash course in Necromancy."

"Oh." Snape looked distant. "And I am your necromantic guinea pig. That explains your sudden interest in my person."

"No offence intended, Severus. Thank you, Ewen." Benveniste turned to Harry and Draco. "As you can see, one cannot avoid small talk altogether. People remain people. Even Professor Snape."

"But, Professor," Draco said, "we don't have a portrait."

"I know. But that's not the only option." Benveniste turned her back to Snape's sceptical face and continued the lecture. "The medium, the human medium, can also provide some of his own bodily faculties for the summoned soul to operate. Traditionally, he would temporarily surrender his entire body to the contact. To the outside observer it looks like the body is being possessed by the spirit. The spirit looks through the medium's eyes, talks through his mouth, and, conceivably, strikes with his fists. As you can probably imagine, this approach is rather invasive. Being possessed is a delicate matter. If the seer is insecure, or the contact is ill-intentioned, the experience can be— It is not uncommon for seers that have been through it to develop the same symptoms as do victims of rape. We don't want to expose Ewen to such a risk, do we?"

"No." Harry and Draco shook their heads vigorously.

"I'm not insecure," Ewen said firmly, as if his professionalism was under attack.

"No, but we don't know what those Louberts were like. You never know how brave you really are, until you've met your adversary."

Another chilly wave ran down Harry's spine, as he thought of Ginny. She never wanted to talk about it, but she had been through it. She had been possessed, and now, perhaps irrationally, Harry wondered if their break up and their failure to negotiate their intimacy had had something to do with it.

It must have been nonsense though. She obviously had no problem with other guys. No, total nonsense!

"Is this the only way then?" Draco asked.

"It was until recently." Benveniste said. "But we were working on a new approach. At Mysteries," she added, when she met Snape's questioning look. "The research stalled during the war, so the method could not be perfected."

"What is the method?" Draco said.

"It is a compromise, of sorts, between a portrait and spirit possession. The medium reassembles the soul of the contact, as usual. In doing so, he accesses the contact's body image, the way the deceased person pictured their own appearance by the time of death. The seer projects that image to his own retina, so for him it is as if he literally sees the person. All this is fairly harmless, but it does not make it possible for the querent, that is you, to communicate with the deceased."

Benveniste tapped the table with her fingers.

"The next step is to project that image from the medium's retina to an outer carrier. That can be done. It is a moderately complex ritual that combines the use of charms with a number of potions. And that creates an image that you, the querents, can see. Now, the final step you can probably guess." She put on her usual impenetrable smile, but there was a playful sparkle in her eye.

"The seer does the same thing to that image, as he does to a portrait!"

"Exactly, Mr Malfoy! He projects the reconstructed soul to it, so the image gives the soul a substance to run on, in the same way a portrait does. The only difference is, the seer cannot reasonably perform that charm himself, because he cannot see the outer image, but an assistant can. That would be me in our case."

"That sounds fantastic!" Draco said gravely.

"It does, doesn't it?" All of a sudden, Benveniste forgot her professorial demeanour, and flushed with excitement, like a child chattering about a terrific new game she had played. "The best thing about it is that the seer only provides his eyes, that's the only body part being 'possessed', so to speak. The rest happens outside his body, that's nothing compared to full possession! But—" Her face went serious and professorlike again.

"But?"

"The projection from the retina to the outer carrier," she sighed, "that part has not been perfected yet. All the methods with which we could achieve the desired effect were rather heavy on the eyes. If it turns out to be a lengthy conversation, Ewen's eyes could suffer substantial damage. In the worst case scenario, he might remain blind for life. That is, he would still be a seer, of course, but he could lose the ordinary visual capacity with which we are all endowed."

"Damn it!" Draco whispered.

"It's the first option then," Harry said. "We'll have to go slow."

"I have a good feeling about those Louberts," Ewen said. "I can handle one. Have him, or her, possess me, as far as I'm concerned."

"Isn't there a way to protect the eyes?" Draco said, frowning. "Wasn't there a potion—?"

"There is little one can do to prevent the damage, I'm afraid." Benveniste said. "But there is indeed a potion for the worst case scenario. Eyes can be completely regrown."

Snape sniggered darkly in his portrait. "You don't mean that nostrum they make at St Mungo's that smells like a dead merman?"

"You are the expert, Severus." Benveniste turned around. "What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing if you don't mind ending up with five eyes. On occasion, it might even grow you an extra ear."

"I'd rather stick with two eyes," Ewen said softly but very clearly.

"In that case," it was the first time Snape took notice of what Ewen said, "you'd better be careful with how you portion the ingredients."

Benveniste scrutinised Snape's face silently. "Am I right in thinking that you have a better recipe?"

Snape's lips twitched in an attempt not to say something as positive as yes.

"I used to play around with eyes at some point. As with anything else, precision is key."

"Would you trust Mr Malfoy to brew it under your supervision?"

"As long as Mr Potter stays as far away from it as he possibly can."

Harry and Draco exchanged glances. Benveniste looked questioningly at Ewen. Ewen nodded. She cast an evaluating glance at Harry, Draco, and Snape. All of a sudden, they were a work team.


Next, plans, lists, and appointments were made. The session would take place on the last day of the Easter holidays. Until then they had plenty of time to brew all that needed to be brewed, and just enough time to make a stock of Polyjuice, which Benveniste added to the list at the last moment, for testing purposes. How Polyjuice would be useful for testing, and for testing what, Harry had no clue.

When Benveniste stood with Snape under her arm, ready to disappear into her office, she looked at Harry and Draco, and her eyes glinted strangely.

"I hope you appreciate the responsibility that rests upon us." She turned to go, but stopped again. "And I am doing this on one condition. If it turns out that no quick solution to your problem is forthcoming, then you have to tell the others. It cannot go on like this forever."

"Yes, Professor."


When Benveniste finally left for the promised catch-up on ministerial gossip, Harry stared at his untouched cup of cold tea.

"I didn't even take a sip."

"That's good," Ewen said. Draco smirked knowingly.

"Why? Is it poisoned?"

"No, of course not!" Ewen vanished the tea with a flick of his wand. "She uses tea to measure the success of her lectures. Full cups means it went well. Empty cups means she has to improve her methods. I can make you guys normal tea though, shall I?"