Nothing is mine.
Harry demonstrates his genius.
Also, quick shoutout to that one guest reviewer who thought they were ahead of the game and wanted to anonymously roll their eyes at me. This chapter may contain the taste of foot for you, but I did get a good chuckle out of your review, so no hard feelings. xD
I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale
Within the gleaming pewter cauldron, the Draught of Delight frothed like a milkshake; its bubbles burst in little sparkling showers of sparks, releasing swirls of steam that shimmered and danced with magic as they rose up through the gloom of the potions lab toward the smoke-stained ceiling.
'Oh, wow,' Hermione breathed, leaning over his cauldron to peer in. 'Harry it's really not meant to look like that, but…'
'Yeah, I kind of just went with the flow.' Harry beamed down at his creation with a proud swell of satisfaction. 'It's supposed to be delightful, so I kept adding things that felt cheerful or just spiced it all up for fun.' He eyed his ladle. 'I really would quite like to see what it does now.'
'Potter…' Snape drawled from the front. 'The description of the potion does not have any sort of vapour, what horrible mess have you wasted your time and the school's resources on now?'
'I like it better this way,' Harry replied. 'It's much more… delightful than the boring old recipe on the board. Crush this. Slice that. That's not cheerful or fun at all.'
Snape's dark eyes flashed. 'If I wanted an OWL student to advise me on how to brew a potion, Potter, you would not be in even the top twenty choices.'
Harry shrugged and dipped a ladle into the cauldron, lifting out one brimming, shimmering spoonful. 'Do you think it's too hot to drink? I quite want to try it.'
'Do not drink that.' Snape stood up and swept across, staring down into the cauldron. 'Who knows what effect it would have on you? And you are, after all, such a very precious member of our school…'
'How bad could it be?' Harry ignored him and took a sip.
The potion burnt his tongue, but tasted a little like hot chocolate syrup and the smell of melting marshmallows.
'Ow. Ow. Ow.' He fanned his mouth with one hand. 'It's really hot.'
Snape tugged the ladle from his other hand and dipped it into the potion. An inscrutable gleam shone in his dark eyes as he stirred it seven times clockwise, then three times back; the shimmering fumes poured past him, swirling with every breath he took.
'I live!' Harry declared, patting himself down just in case something unexpected had occurred without him noticing. 'For now, at least. Probably for the best; can you imagine how embarrassing it would be for Voldemort if he got killed by me as a baby only for me to die because I drank my own potion?'
The corner of Snape's mouth twisted upward, and for an instant, something soft hung in the shadows of his face. 'Your mother was an excellent brewer of potions, second to very few; she would have been proud of this herself.' Snape blinked, his forehead creasing into a deep frown, and breathed out hard through his nose, taking several steps back from the bench. 'Bottle a flask of this for me, Mr Potter. And write down precisely what you did and why.'
'Right…' Harry peered into the cauldron. 'And what if, purely hypothetically speaking, I couldn't remember because I was just doing whatever came to mind as I went?'
'Then, if there is any merit in this concoction you have accidentally created, we will have to hope that I can recreate it from simple analysis and your best guesswork, Potter.' Snape retreated to the front of the glass. 'Do it now, before what little you do remember of your experiment escapes what passes for your brain.'
Harry rolled his eyes and dug out a quill, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he jotted down what he could remember. Hermione poured one careful ladle into a flask for him and set it down on the bench.
'Leave it out, Potter,' Snape ordered. 'In case I need more than just that flask. Leave all your things.'
'I might need them in the future, though,' Harry said.
'I am not going to keep your base grade equipment, Potter,' Snape drawled. 'It's all but worthless. You will find it here in the potions lab the next time I am blessed with your company.'
'Fair enough.' Harry grinned down at his rudimentary recipe. 'You're really not going to like trying to follow this.'
'Get out, Potter,' Snape said. 'Someone take him to the infirmary and tell Madam Pomfrey to check whatever he's drunk and inhaled has done no permanent damage to him. Hopefully, if it's affected his brain, she will still be able to tell the difference.'
'Ron—'
A light tug came on his sleeve and a slim blonde figure in green-and-silver-lined robes swept past, the crimson crescent beneath her right ear swinging back and forth like a spider at the end of its thread.
'Never mind, Ron,' Harry said, gathering up the rest of his stuff and following her out.
'Potter.' Her voice was soft; soft and cool as frosted grass on his fingertips. 'I am sure you can find your own way from here.'
Harry slung his bag over his shoulder. 'No, I think I might get lost. It's only been four years and multiple trips to the Hospital Wing.' He laughed to himself. 'I could probably find my way there while blind. Which just means without my glasses really.'
She turned on her heel in a slow, deliberate spin and studied him with those bright blue eyes. 'You have your glasses.' A rogue lock of blonde hair slipped free, dangling over her small, cute nose and the slim curve of her eyebrows. 'I do not particularly wish to spend any time in your company, only to thank you.'
'You're welcome,' Harry replied. 'What for?'
'For helping my sister.'
He blinked. 'Your… sister?' Something fell into place before those cool blue eyes. 'Oh… Astoria. Right, of course. You have two blue eyes and she has one.' Harry scratched the back of his head, hunting for a way to avoid bringing up the fact her younger sister had the blood malediction she'd escaped. 'Well, you're welcome. Peeves was being a bit of a dick for no reason; your sister's eyes are just fine. To be honest, he vanished before I even had to do anything, so I just tried to cheer her up a bit.' He offered her a smile. 'So that makes you Greengrass, right?'
She gave him the slightest nod.
'I mean, I assume there's a first name that goes with Greengrass..?' Harry waited, but she only stared back at him, her gaze brimming with winter chill. 'But… apparently it will remain a great mystery.' He snorted. 'Well, Greengrass, if your sister thinks she's cursed by just having that one green eye, then I must really be in trouble with this big thing on my face.' Harry poked his scar with one finger. 'Do you think it would grow back if I cut it out? That would probably make it worse, though, wouldn't it? And Voldemort might get confused and attack the wrong person; we can't have that, he seems quite good at killing people who aren't me.'
The weight of Greengrass's silence hung over them like thick, deep snow.
'You are really not very talkative,' Harry mused. 'Even your sister's more chatty than you, and she's pretty quiet. I think she was just being shy though, or maybe she's scared of ghosts.'
'Of Those Who Dream in Death, it is not ghosts Astoria is terrified of,' Greengrass murmured. 'Goodbye, Potter.' She swept past him and back into class, leaving just the faintest fragrance of sweet spearmint behind.
'Wow.' He eyed the corridor toward the Hospital Wing, shrugged, and headed for the Common Room instead. 'She really was not interested in me at all. And there Snape was promising me celebrity status in first year; how disappointing.' Harry chuckled to himself as he headed up the stairs. 'How many giant snakes do you need to kill with a sword to make a pretty girl swoon, anyway? Surely one's meant to be enough?'
'Password,' the Fat Lady asked.
'Courage.'
'Indeed.'
'A terrible choice of password,' he said, ducking into the passage. 'Since just about everyone in the school would have it near the top of their list of Gryffindorish passwords.'
A handful of students in the years above lazed on the chairs by the fire, flying charmed parchment birds into the flames, so Harry joined them, watching their little wings smoulder as they drifted into the fire, glowing orange and curling to ash as they plummeted in little spirals of smoke down into the grate below. Others trickled in as the minutes drifted by, the flow of Gryffindors turning to a flood as the hand passed the hour.
'Harry.' Hermione stalked through a crowd of first years who fled her pursed lips and deep frown toward the safety of the alcove by the dormitory stairs. 'What on earth were you thinking?!'
'Just now?' Harry tugged his eyes from the flames. 'Not much, really.'
'Not that. You drank it!'
'It's meant to make you feel delighted,' he said. 'It wasn't poison.'
'You did a whole bunch of other things to the recipe!' she hissed. 'It could easily have done something bad to you.'
'But it didn't.' Harry grinned. 'You're not my mum; you're not skeletal and dead enough. Also you don't have green eyes, and everyone likes to tell me I have her eyes.' He thought of Voldemort plucking Saul's eyes from his head with a flick of his wand. 'They make it sound like I literally stole them and stuck them into my own face, though, which would be weird and creepy.'
'Just…' An exasperated little sigh escaped Hermione and she dropped down beside him on the sofa. 'Don't do it again.'
'Yes, mum.' Harry gave her a thumbs up. 'Where's Ron? Hermione… we told you he's not a Muggle-born, what have you done with him?'
Hermione glowered at him, fighting the twitch of her lips. 'You're impossible,' she said, losing the battle and shaking her head with a smile. 'But at least you seem in good spirits.'
'I had a funny dream,' he said. 'Voldemort was murdering someone again.'
She blinked. 'How is that funny?'
'It's hard to explain,' he said. 'You had to watch him do it. It was just like watching Dudley get all his favourite crayons out for his colouring books when he was about seven; he was so pleased with himself. Only, obviously, he was being far creepier than fat baby Dudley.'
'Right...'
'Anyway,' Harry said, sensing Hermione's lack of appreciation, 'who is the girl that volunteered to take me to the Hospital Wing? She's something Greengrass, but wouldn't tell me her first name.'
A peal of laughter escaped her. 'Have you got a crush, Harry?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'What did it feel like when you thought about Gilderoy? We can compare notes.'
Hermione dipped her hand into her pocket and threw a ball of parchment at him; it bounced off his forehead, rolling away down into the gap between the sofa cushions.
'My scar!' Harry clutched his face. 'It responds only to dark magic. Hermione… you've fallen.'
'Better to reign in hell than put up with you,' she retorted. 'No, I didn't even know the blonde girl's surname; only that she's very pretty and obviously has to be new.'
'She does?'
'Well, have you seen her before?'
'I have not,' Harry admitted. 'But Astoria's been here since first year. She said she'd been able to see the thestrals since then, so...'
'And you think in four years of sharing classes you what, just didn't notice her?'
'Maybe she swapped houses and used to be in Ravenclaw.'
'Nobody ever swaps houses, Harry.'
'Right, once you're sorted at eleven, that's it, there's no way back. Of course you'd argue that, because it means people won't realise you're as evil and anti-Muggle-born as the Slytherins.'
'Greengrass is a Slytherin.'
'Clearly by mistake; she's too pretty to be evil. Maybe I can swap her for you?' Harry mused. 'Do you think if I asked Professor Dumbledore nicely, it'd work?'
'No.' Hermione sighed and rummaged in her pockets. 'I'm out of things to throw at you.'
'Does that mean I should start running because you're about to throw dark curses at me?'
'No, shut up.' She flapped a hand at him. 'I guess the older Greengrass wasn't at Hogwarts for some reason. Maybe the family's complicated. Most are.'
'Well, I want to know what her first name is,' Harry decided. 'And normally when I want to know things, I just ask you.'
'I don't know her name; she's only been here for a couple of weeks and she looks like the sort of Slytherin who won't talk to me. Ask Astoria.'
'Right, good idea.'
'At least you've finally discovered girls exist.'
'I learnt that last year, thank you,' he retorted. 'At the Yule Ball, when I had to dance with one of them. I forgot for a few weeks over Christmas, probably because of the trauma of dancing, but then I saw Fleur Delacour in a bathing suit and I'm never going to forget that girls exist after that.'
Hermione rolled her eyes. 'Boys,' she huffed. 'All you like are short skirts and low-cut blouses.'
'Also pretty faces and bathing suits,' Harry chimed in, laughing. 'But someone who spent so much effort to look pretty at the Yule Ball can't scold me for liking girls who look pretty, Hermione.'
She wrestled with that for a long moment before conceding defeat to his flawless logic. 'Fine. Fair enough. Girls like to be pretty for more than just boys, though!'
'Which is, of course, why you've made sure you look that pretty so many other times when there was no boy to dance with.'
'Shut up.'
'Make me.'
Hermione reached for her wand. 'I can, you know. I know three curses that will do it.'
'Yeah, but then you'll have to talk to Ron about chess and quidditch, so you won't.' Harry grinned at her. 'And you'll out yourself as a dark witch by using your dark magic to curse me.'
'Damn.' She sighed. 'You're right; it's not quite worth it. Almost, but not quite.'
AN: Follow the linktree to find all the fun places. There are more chapters available on Discord, and those supporting me get to read about 20 chapters of my first drafts and all my original works!
linktr . ee / mjbradley
