Chapter 31 - Serenity

"Oh, I'm sure they work like a charm, Malfoy. But you see, thanks to the generous donation of our new Defense professor, all the school teams have been provided with a set of Nimbus 2000s."

"W-well, but what I am talking about is a Nimbus 2001. It's even newer, faster, and better!"

"Newer, true. Faster, maybe. Better? Remains to be seen. If you want on the team, you'll have to prove your addition is worth more than just a possible slight benefit in terms of broom quality. I'll see you tonight at the tryouts."

Iris watched the burly boy turn and stalk down a staircase leading to who-knows-where. She still hadn't memorized their entire common room, and at this point, she doubted that she ever would. Malfoy kept glaring at his back, before he jabbed his head at Crabbe and Goyle, and they marched off towards the exit.

She made her way towards the notice board they had been standing in front of and inspected its contents. Apparently, Quidditch tryouts would be held tonight out on the Quidditch pitch, and anyone interested in joining the team was welcome, no matter the experience. Below the notice printed in perfect curly writing, there was a scratchy line added at the bottom.

Only the best will be on the team. Prove your worth in the pitch. -Flint

"Hey, Iris! What's up? Ya lookin' to join the team?"

Iris turned to see her cheerful roommate approach and glance at the notice board.

"You kidding, right? I'd probably crash five minutes into the game. I can barely hold the colors stable while flying casually, I can't imagine what would happen once high speeds and Bludgers get involved..."

Tracey pouted. "Aww... And here I was hoping we'd be on the team together..."

This caused Iris to blink. "Wait, you're trying out?"

"U-huh! I thought it'd be fun! I'm not all that good, though... but a girl can dream," she added with a grin.

"Well, guess I'll be going to the tryouts after all. There's no way I'd miss you trying to kick Malfoy's butt."

Tracey's face twisted into a scowl. "He's trying out too? Of course he is..."

"Yeah. Apparently even tried to buy his way onto the team. Luckily, Flint wasn't having any of it," Iris said with a wry smile.

Then, she shrugged and turned. "Well, I'm heading out, wanna come along to the pitch?"

Tracey blinked. "What for? The tryouts aren't until tonight..."

"The Slytherin tryouts aren't. But Harry is gonna try out for Gryffindor in half an hour."

This caused Tracey to gasp. "Oh! Well, there's no way I'm missing that!"

~V~

After Harry had vehemently defended their right to be present for his tryouts, they had finally been allowed to enter the stands and watch him zoom around on the new broom, grinning wildly, attempting to catch the small golden ball with wings.

All the while accompanied by wild cheers from Iris and Tracey.

Finally, after he had managed to catch the tiny thing for a few times, their team captain called it quits and unilaterally declared Harry their new seeker. Iris was rushing down towards the changing rooms, Tracey in tow, eager to give Harry the cuddles of his lifetime, but she was met with an unexpected yet familiar sight.

"Harry Potter was warned! Why has Harry Potter come to Hogwarts despite all the dangers?"

The little elf was back. Iris' eyebrows went up. She had thought the Aurors had arrested him.

"What are you doing here, Dobby? I told you, I'll be going to Hogwarts!" Harry hissed at the emaciated little creature.

"Not Dobby, sir," the little elf replied dejectedly.

"But... What? You are Dobby, aren't you?" Harry replied in confusion.

The elf's eyes shifted, and he said in a hushed whisper, "Please don't be saying the name, sir! He might hear."

Harry looked just as confused as Iris probably was. "I don't understand... how can it not be you? You look and sound just like him..."

"It just isn't, sir. Not anymore."

The elf turned towards the door, and his eyes widened as he noticed Iris.

He turned back towards Harry and said, "Miss would understand."

Iris blinked. Well, she didn't. Why would he think that?

"Harry! What's the hold up?" came a voice from outside.

The elf frantically looked between all of them. "Harry Potter must return home! Hogwarts isn't safe!"

But when all he received in return were uncomprehending stares, he dashed past them, and nimbly climbed out of the window.

"Hang on, isn't this what Lupin has been talking about?" Tracey cut in. "About the names of magical creatures?"

Harry's gaze met Iris' and their eyes mirrored each other's expression. Was that what this has been? Has some other elf taken Dobby's name? Or, she guessed, Not-Dobby, well, not anymore... Huh.

~V~

In the end, neither Tracey nor Malfoy had made it onto the team. Tracey had had fun flying, but she was still pretty inexperienced on a broom and had given up half-way through the trial. Malfoy had performed admirably, had even caught one of the golden balls, but in the end was soundly beaten out by Higgs, who secured the spot for the third time in a row.

Tracey had taken this a lot better than Malfoy, apparently, she had never expected to actually make it onto the team in the first place. They had spent the evening pretending to have lots of fun playing wizarding chess on their own while blatantly snubbing Theo, since he hadn't even deigned them with his presence for the tryouts.

This continued all the way until the next day, where she was supposed to sit next to him in Charms and had decided to catch up with Susan instead.

"Hey Iris..." the girl said quietly, but she did crack a small smile. "You're not sitting with your friends?"

Iris raised an eyebrow at her. "I thought I was?"

"Oh..." the redhead blushed.

Iris wanted to crack a joke about soulless gingers having to stick together, but couldn't come up with something appropriately funny, and by now, the pause had become awkward. Also, she probably didn't really qualify as ginger, anyway.

"How was your summer?"

Ok, she had definitely preferred the awkward silence.

"Oh, well, you know... It was fine... Once the issue with my mail got resolved at least."

Susan perked up. "Right! Did the Aurors manage to fix it? What was going on anyway?"

Iris was about to answer, but the words got stuck in her throat as she thought about it. "Wait, how do you know about that?"

This caused Susan to blush as red as her pigtails. "I... Well, I thought it was odd when none of my letters seemed to be getting through to you, but you still kept writing me, so I told Auntie about it. At first, she didn't think it was that important, but after the fourth letter, I got her to promise she'd look into it..."

"Your Auntie?" Iris asked in confusion.

"She works at the Ministry, as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I thought maybe she'd have an idea what was going on," the girl said in a soft voice.

"Oh..." Iris eyes widened at that bit of information. "Uhm... well, in that case... Thanks, I guess? I don't know how I'd have handled the rest of the summer if the Aurors hadn't shown up and arrested Dobby..."

"Dobby?" the redhead asked in confusion.

"He's... a house-elf. No idea where he came from, or why, but for some reason, he was at our house, and was trying to get Harry to agree to not return to Hogwarts. And also, apparently, he was somehow intercepting our mail..."

Susan gave her a disbelieving look.

"Hey, don't ask me! I have no idea what the little elf was thinking! He showed up, told Harry to not return, and when he didn't agree, he made Petunia's cake float, almost splattered it over the ground, and caused us to get a letter from the Ministry about performing spells outside of Hogwarts..."

"He what? That's... Huh. Every time I think I know how the Trace works..." Susan muttered.

Iris raised an eyebrow. "Trace?"

The girl blinked, and slowly began to explain, "Right, I keep forgetting you were raised in the Muggle world... The Trace is how the Ministry detects the use of magic by minors outside of Hogwarts. Don't ask me how exactly it works, I have no idea. But it does have a lot of flaws... It doesn't really work in magical households, since it can't tell who is performing the spells. So a mix up like this does sometimes occur."

Susan took a breath, and then continued with a worried expression. "You really should get that sorted out, though. If you already have a warning on file... I guess they won't do anything major, with Harry being the Boy Who Lived, but still."

"So, should I just go to the Ministry and tell them what? It was a house-elf who did it?" Iris asked incredulously.

Susan tilted her head. "You can probably just testify under a truth spell. That isn't really applicable in court, but for something like this..."

A truth spell? Like the one Lockhart had talked about? Iris wasn't sure if that was a good idea. Especially since she had done the same spell right after. If they asked the wrong questions, she wouldn't be able to deny it.

"Well, thanks for the heads-up, I guess... Where was I? Right. The next day after that, these two Aurors show up. Trench coat guy and Not-Snape. Uh... Well, I kinda forgot their names," Iris said sheepishly.

That caused Susan to giggle. "I think I might know who you're talking about."

"They basically barged into the house past Vernon, then spammed this spell, Revelio."

Susan gave her a confused look. "Spammed?"

It was now Iris' turn to blush. "Uh... anyway. One of them somehow finds Dobby, and drags him inside, unconscious, and they just disappear. And the strangest part? Yesterday, that same elf shows up again, to tell Harry the same thing again, except he claims that he is no longer Dobby."

Susan's face fell, a pained look crossing her brown eyes. "Oh! That's... That's horrible! Whoever owned him must have been really mad. I mean, the elf did sound like he was a bit insane, but he didn't deserve something like this... Nobody does."

Iris didn't know what to say to that.

~V~

The shadows yawned, and out stepped a girl carrying a backpack. With a glance this way and that—just to make sure the coast was clear—she set down her bag on the stone altar in the familiar room of the old detention wing, and began to retrieve what she had brought.

First came the book she had gotten from Hermione. It had been quite an interesting read so far, but her directed research had led her to a very particular experiment that might hold the answer to the question she had sought. Yes, it was a very simple, and very innocent experiment, something you'd probably perform in any secondary school physics class at some point, yet what she intended to use it for was anything but.

Next, she retrieved a large glass flask from her potions kit, along with a fitting stopper, which she promptly cut in half with a quick Diffindo.

Then, a spoon she had nabbed from the Great Hall, and a roll of duct-tape and a blue rubber balloon from her old ritual supplies. Finally, she added the golden wrapping foil from Ron's cauldron cakes—which she hoped would work for what she needed.

Opening the book again to the page she had marked, she began to put it all together. A strip of the wrapping foil was torn off and taped to the bottom of the spoon. Then, the spoon was inserted in between the split halves of the stopper, joined back together, and finally placed into the flask, with the bowl of the spoon sticking out the top. There.

Now all that was left was to charge it. Iris took a deep breath, and began inflating the balloon. When it had finally reached an appropriate size, she tied it shut, and held it up, staring at it for a bit. What she was about to do felt a bit silly, especially in light of what she was trying to achieve. But she admitted to having done that a few times even back home, just because it had been fun to stick things to the walls or ceiling.

With a shrug, she placed the balloon on top of her head and rubbed, feeling appropriately silly all the while. Only once her hairs were standing well and thoroughly on end, did she relent and remove the blue balloon, red strands of her hair stubbornly clinging to its surface. She held it as far away from her as she could, until all the hairs finally detached, and then moved it closer to the spoon.

And there it was. The golden foil was moving. And the closer she got with the balloon, the further it bent away from the spoon. As the experiment had suggested, she touched the balloon to the spoon, then removed it again. The foil was still visibly bent away from the surface of the spoon. So far so good. And next...

She reached out her other hand, and touched the surface of the spoon, and in an instant, the foil lost its tension and fell back down to resting flatly against the spoon. There. It worked.

Iris took a breath. Now came the actual test. She repeated the same thing, charging up the balloon and following that, the make-shift electroscope. Then she set it back down, and withdrew her wand.

Bright iridescent light burst forth, and she quickly narrowed it down—this time into a cone in front of her, engulfing the entirety of the spoon. The golden foil showed absolutely no reaction, still being repelled by the equal charge on the spoon. Thank God.

So now, for the second part of the test. She turned her light from its regular iridescent state to a bright blue, and once again, began to shift. From blue, onto violet, and then onto ultraviolet—her hair still standing every-which way. The color faded, and faded, until she couldn't make out any at all. But the feeling remained. It was definitely still going. And the foil was also still being repelled, so she was still safe. Pushing it further and further, she was pretty sure she had already reached the point where her prism had stopped working. There was a distinct difference in how it felt, depending on how far she pushed it. But it was impossible to tell exactly. With a shrug, she kept forging onwards.

There, that weird point where the tingling was changing, it turned into hundreds of tiny sharp pinpricks all across her skin, but nothing visibly changed except—

The foil! It had moved. And not just a little! It was noticeably bending downwards, relaxing... It was losing its charge!

The feeling of sharp cold pinpricks seemed to extend up her arm and run all the way down her spine, but she was pretty sure it had nothing to do with her light.

Crap. She had been right.

~V~

"Oh no, we won't be having that again. I believe it is time for you to make some new acquaintances. Both of you."

Iris blinked at the hook-nosed man looming over their table, and turned to look over at Neville, who was bearing a terrified expression.

"How about... Longbottom, over here with Miss Greengrass, and Potter..." his eyes swept the room and spotted an empty chair next to the one girl she really didn't want to work with, and his mouth pulled into a small smirk. "With Miss Granger, I believe."

God damnit.

Very reluctantly, she started to pack up her bag, and with a final apologetic look to Neville, she got up and made her way over to the annoying girl. Although, the look on the girl's face made her pause.

Iris couldn't quite narrow it down, but it seemed like she was somehow both frustrated but also scared? Not quite jealous, but something similar? But then she remembered something else.

Iris had completely missed it at the time, but from what Harry had told her, Hermione had voluntarily come along with him to try and save her. Even though they both obviously didn't like each other all that much. Iris still thought that Hermione had been the one who started their mutual animosity, but ever since Hermione had been acting so... well, annoying, for the second half of the year in potions, she had to admit she probably shared similar feelings about her. And yet, the fact remained that she had risked her life to try and save her for some reason.

She really would rather be anywhere else right now.

The girl moved her bag aside without a word to make space for her things, and Iris reluctantly sat down, and began to prepare for the lesson. She looked back up and realized the class had fallen quiet, and one glance revealed the cause.

Professor Snape was standing in front of his desk and was holding up a tiny vial. It seemed to be containing a sort of silvery-blue liquid, swirling and swishing around the inside, also somewhat gaseous—was it not a liquid after all? Iris kept staring at the tiny glass container. She could barely make out anything from this distance, yet it seemed to somehow take up her entire field of vision. She noticed Hermione next to her, just as enamored with the shimmering liquid, and couldn't help but smile, any annoyance about her presence long forgotten. Pretty didn't even begin to describe it.

"What I have here is called Essence of Serenity."

His words barely registered, her mind was still sort of in a haze, staring at the gigantic, tiny thing. Her eyes followed the vial, as he moved it to the side, over to his desk, and the moment he dropped it inside the container, it was as if a spell broke. Iris blinked. What the hell?

Professor Snape stalked back up to the blackboard, whipped his wand against it, and two words appeared.

Reactive Potions.

"Now that you have completed the barest fundamentals in your Potions education, it is time we take a peek into the true depths and wonders that can hide within a carefully controlled cauldron."

He paused to look at the class, letting the moment stretch for a bit.

"What you have been brewing so far are what is called Reactive Potions. This term describes regular potions that work solely on the reaction between the different ingredients, and the way they are prepared, and added. This is the easiest and safest type of potionmaking, and it forms the foundation of all potions in general. It solely uses the magic of the ingredients to produce its effect. The brewer is merely required to facilitate and steer the reaction, and their interactions are very predictable and logical. This is the reason why these types of potions can mostly—with some exceptions—be brewed simply by following the recipe to the letter."

Iris nodded along with the teacher. In her experience, Potions seemed to be a strange mix of cooking and chemistry, which could be done entirely by following the recipe, but seemed to work just as well by diverging from it in places that made sense.

"However, most of these potions are very limited in their potency, as they can only utilize the limited amount of magic contained within said ingredients. In order to produce significantly more potent potions, one must harness their own magic in addition. And this is the core concept of the second type of potions, that we will begin brewing starting this year."

He swirled and jabbed his wand again, and the blackboard revealed a second set of words.

Reflective Potions.

Iris perked up. She had read the term a few times in her textbook but hadn't really understood what it meant.

"The term Reflective Potions describes any potion that reflects a quality of the brewer. The potion is still mostly brewed similar to a Reactive Potion, but its main ingredient is the Essence of a Trait harnessed from the potioneer themselves. This is achieved with the help of a talisman used to capture said Trait, in a moment where the person exhibits it."

A Trait of the brewer? What, like a personality trait? Things had officially gotten weird. How was she supposed to capture a personality trait? Next to her, Hermione was furiously scribbling something on her parchment.

"These potions can range wildly in difficulty and potency. To begin, we will be attempting to brew a Calming Draught, one of the simplest Reflective Potions. Today, you will be preparing the base, like you would any Reactive Potion. Your homework until the next lesson will be to craft your talisman, and capture the essence of Serenity, which we will be using in said lesson to complete the second part of the draught. You will be working in pairs for the base during this lesson, then split the results into your own cauldrons. From the moment that the Essence is added, the potion must be entirely brewed by the same person who provided the Trait."

Iris threw a glance over at Hermione. That was bound to go down well.

As per his usual modus operandi, Snape provided them with instructions on the blackboard on how to complete the first part of the Calming Draught, and set to stalking around the room, being generally unhelpful. Iris' attention was drawn to Hermione, who handed her a sheet of parchment.

"Alright, I'll go set up the cauldron, you go get the ingredients," the girl declared, shoving the parchment into her hands.

Iris just kept looking at her with a raised eyebrow. After a few seconds, Hermione's face started to shift into uncertainty, but before she could further think about it, Iris shrugged, took the parchment and made her way towards the ingredient's cupboard. Looking down at the list she found pretty much all the ingredients from the blackboard copied down one by one. She guessed it was just as well, this way she wouldn't have to keep bouncing between the door and the shelves.

A solid minute later Iris returned to find the cauldron already set up, a mechanical clock, and a parchment of notes detailing the necessary steps with appropriate timestamps. This girl worked fast. But also, she had a feeling those timestamps would end up being thrown out of the window one way or another.

"Did you get everything?"

"Yup." Iris replied and set everything down on the table. It hadn't been all that many ingredients anyway.

"Is that- Hang on, why did you get honey? That wasn't on the list!" Hermione whispered.

Iris turned towards the bushy-haired girl and gave a grin. "For flavor of course!"

Just as Hermione's mouth was about to open in indignation, she added, "And also, it could work to stabilize the crocodile heart, so we can use less peppermint oil."

"It could?!" came the aghast reply.

"Well yeah, they kinda look similar."

"No they don't! We're not going to add who knows what to the potion based on a whim! Are you-" Hermione hissed, but then broke off mid-sentence, and her face fell.

"Oh." she muttered, looked down, and then at her parchment. "...You're just making fun of me."

Iris' eyes widened, and she raised her hands. "What? No, I was serious! I mean we don't have to, but I really think it could work."

Hermione gave her a skeptical look.

"If you want to stick to the recipe, that's fine. But I think it could work as a substitute to reduce the side-effects, which according to the book, mostly come from the peppermint."

However, Hermione still wasn't convinced. "Why would you think that? It doesn't say anywhere in the recipe!"

Iris sighed. "Just trust me, okay?"

"Are you serious? The last time I trusted you I almost-" Hermione cut off mid-sentence, eyes wide.

Iris' eyebrows went up, but the girl didn't seem eager to continue.

"Fine, we can stick to the recipe, I just thought you'd maybe want to go for some extra credit..."

Iris turned towards the cauldron to begin filling it with water but noticed a torn expression on Hermione's face. This girl was just too easy.

"I know half the time you do some weird things in class it ends up with the potion going wrong and you getting marked down..."

Iris just shrugged. It was true, after all. But both of them also knew, that the other half of the time, it worked. And that often ended up in grudging full marks and sometimes even extra credit. Which was probably even higher praise where Snape was concerned, especially when it came to her. Also, if it did fail, well, that would probably result in Snape belittling every single detail of their work again. Which was the best part about it. Most of the intricacies of the reactions between different ingredients she had learned from those very rants.

Iris decided to give her the final nudge.

"You know, we only need to have the base potion done by the next lesson. And Snape only grades potions once they are done. If it doesn't work, we can just repeat it by the recipe some time before then..."

"I guess..." Hermione was nibbling on her lower lip, looking between her and Snape.

Iris was very aware of the fact the girl very much disliked her, and didn't trust her at all for some reason, but she was pretty sure even that wouldn't dampen the allure of possible extra credit for the academic overachiever.

"Fine... we'll try your way," Hermione whispered.

Iris gave her a smile in return. "Knew you'd come round."

Hermione swallowed, and picked up the dandelion root, and started slicing it into small chunks. Iris followed suit, and started to prepare the crocodile heart, which was still as yuck as always, but at least it wasn't one of those things that were still moving.

Once the water had reached a boil, Hermione took it off the fire, and started to add half of the sliced dandelion root. As she stirred, the water started changing color again. Over the past year Iris had realized that the reason she had been initially confused with the instructions in the book, and why she had started trying to work a bit more by instinct and what she or Neville knew about the ingredients, was that the colors were off. The recipe described the colors the potion was supposed to reach at each step, which they never quite had. Except Neville had kept pointing out that it did look fine to him.

At first, she hadn't really believed him. After all, she had seen it right in front of her. But after her repeated adventures to the shadow realm, she had started noticing that this wasn't quite what was happening. It seemed more like the way things looked when she was looking through doors in the shadow realm. The potion did indeed have the color described in the recipe, but it somehow also had a second color. Overlapping, yet still separate. She could only really distinguish it if she was focusing really hard.

As they kept adding more and more ingredients, the colors changed, both according to the book, but also in another way. They were coming together in a symphony, each color covering a different angle, somehow, despite it being a uniform liquid. But something was strange. Usually, the ingredients would form a combination of colors—which she couldn't really describe, they didn't really have a form. But if she had to, it was a sort of performance of colors, where one or more would take the center stage, and the other ingredients would play supporting instruments. And it all somehow merged into a coherent whole. But this was a bit different. The more they added, the more the potion felt like just an assortment of supporting ingredients. All the colors neatly arranged in a circle, yet there was a gaping hole in the center.

She suspected that was where the crocodile heart would come in. After adding half the required amount of peppermint oil, Hermione dumped in the heart, and it quickly dissolved into the potion. A new color emerged, flooded the cauldron, then neatly divided up and spread to all sides. But the hole still remained. The new color then started pulsing, signaling it was time to add the rest of the peppermint. Or rather, the honey, in this case. Hermione threw a final uncertain look at her, and she nodded.

Iris opened the jar, inserted the ladle and measured out the approximate amount required. As the thick liquid gently dribbled into the cauldron, she watched in fascination as a new color emerged, almost exactly the same as the peppermint, and it spread out, just like the oil had. The pulsing of the heart slowed with each beat, until it finally stopped. There. She knew it would work.

Iris put the jar down with a smile, turned, but something she saw from the corner of her eye made her frown and look back. It was faint but still- Oh. That wasn't good.

She kept staring, hoping it would still settle down, but nothing was changing. The new color had settled in all the ways the peppermint had, yet not entirely. Inside the gaping hole that had been completely devoid of color until now, she could make out faint traces of honey.

"Uhm... Yeah, sorry. That didn't work quite as planned," Iris admitted sheepishly.

Hermione gave her a confused look. "What do you mean? It's the exact color from the book!"

"Well... if this recipe was the entire potion, then yeah, I guess it'd work. But the way it looks, the whole thing seems to be designed around something that has yet to be added. I guess that would be the Trait we need to capture. And it looks like honey isn't going to work with that. It's taking up the space for the Trait."

"What are you talking about?"

Iris sighed. "It's hard to explain... It has to do with the colors. Please, trust me when I say I think we're better off redoing it from the start, rather than brewing this one to the end. We're only half-way done with today's part anyway, I think we can finish it before the end of the lesson."

Hermione gave her a disgruntled look. "Next time, why don't we just stick to the recipe from the beginning?"

Iris really wanted to snipe back but couldn't come up with an adequate reply. No matter how much she disliked it, Hermione had been right in the end.