Chapter 18, everybody! In which stuff gets exploded….
Technically, Hermione comes up with the idea for the Polyjuice shortly after Mrs. Norris is attacked, but it struck me as kind of odd that everyone really lost their heads after that one incident, so Hermione starts a little later here. Also did some fudging around with the potions ingredients—but phosphite is a stabilizing agent in chemistry, from my quick searches on the subject.
TroyWeb, thanks for the reviews! Yes, that's a crying shame, that is other house erasure and we should sue. And no problem! I've never been a fan of bash-fics and writing good relationships puts me in a happy place so you'll definitely see more of that. :D YES—and it never occurred to me for anyone to treat him like a dark creature and thinking on how that would go I'm kind of glad. Me too….
Harry Potter © JK Rowling
Luna and Colin's attack spread through the school like wildfire—anyone's best guess as to why they were out was a combination of hunting for Luna's shoes, visiting Harry in the hospital wing, and trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Neville was distraught, but that was nothing compared to Ginny, who had to go to the hospital wing from a total nervous breakdown. Harry felt terrible too, from a combination of friends being attacked and the idea that they had been on their way to see him when it happened.
It was why he was open to Hermione's proposed idea.
"I'm sorry, what?" Ron asked.
"Polyjuice Potion," Hermione said. "Professor Slughorn was talking about it the other day. We can use it to infiltrate Slytherin and question Malfoy."
"We're sure it's him though?" Harry asked. They had already asked their Slytherin friends, and they seemed dismissive of the concept.
Ron rolled his eyes. "Come on, Harry, he was practically giddy when the Chamber was first opened!"
"And Slytherins all play close to the vest," Hermione said. "He might be doing it and none of them realize."
Snips gave Harry a hard look—which Harry misinterpreted, apparently.
"Fine," he said. "We'll do it. Where's the recipe?"
"Well that's where we hit a little snag…."
The little snag being that the book the potion was in was in the Restricted Section—they debated on whether or not Slughorn would actually sign off on the book on the basis of further reading, decided that securing a signature from Lockhart would require less fuss. Mostly because as Ron pointed out, Lockhart was more than willing to sign anything you handed to him. They had the book in Myrtle's bathroom a day later.
"Those are not encouraging sounds," Ron pointed out after a few minutes of Hermione muttering.
"This is the most difficult potion I've seen," Hermione said, as Harry scooted over to read it—oh those illustrations were horrible. "And some of these ingredients won't be in the student stores—it'll take about a month to brew."
"A month? Half the school will be petrified by then!"
"Well if you have a better plan—"
"We could just off Malfoy."
"RON."
Harry sighed, glanced at Snips, back at the book—recalled how horribly empty the extracurricular potions lab felt.
"We'll do it," he announced. "If we come up with a better plan we'll go for it, but right now this is our best bet. Let's do it."
Stupid. Idiot. Dunderheaded. Children. Absolutely no sense at all.
Snips was absolutely certain of three things: one, that he was the best at potions, no questions asked; two, that he knew what a person was thinking when they made eye contact; and three, that Harry Potter and company absolutely could not stay out of trouble. When they weren't being ambushed by it, they were merrily hunting it down, only pausing to pick up a helping of treacle tart on their way.
But of course, trying to tell them this was beyond him, seeing as how they didn't speak in chirps, so he fell back on his usual way of telling them he did not approve at all: nipping Harry on the chin.
"Ow! Sorry, Snips," Harry said, obviously not certain what he did but apologizing anyway. Snips chirped, letting him know that he accepted the apology anyway, and then held on as they ignored him and went and approached this conundrum in the most stupid and reckless way possible.
That is, brewing and ingesting Polyjuice potion. Even worse, Hermione was the one to suggest this, and she was the sensible one!
But at the very least, since they were bound and determined to do this, he'd go along with it and make sure they didn't do it wrong—that would just be mean.
But that certainly didn't mean he'd let them get away with it.
Snips wasn't helping them in Potions class again, which was to be expected. Nor was he willing to help them sabotage Malfoy's cauldron. Ron and Harry had tried very hard to come up with a distraction that would work, and while Ron thought that maybe tossing a firecracker in Malfoy's cauldron would work (he certainly deserved it, after trying to sabotage theirs all their first year), Harry thought that maybe faking an attack would do it.
"I don't think so, mate," Ron said. "You do that, Malfoy will never let you hear the end of it."
Snips crred at that.
"Careful," Harry told Snips. "If I don't do it, we go with Ron's plan of tossing a firecracker into Malfoy's cauldron."
Snips snipped first Harry's chin and then Ron's chin before flying over to the shelves and rummaging through them.
"What is he doing?" Ron muttered.
"I…have no idea," Harry admitted. "Maybe he decided to help us with our potions again?"
"Is there a problem, boys?"
Harry and Ron yelped as they spun around to see Professor Slughorn standing before them.
"No! No, no professor, why would you think there was a problem?" Ron asked quickly, trying to find a nonchalant pose and failing.
"Well, you both were staring at the shelves—trying to find a way to fix your potions?" Professor Slughorn asked, looking at both their cauldrons. "Harry, perhaps you'd like to have a guess at how to fix yours first?"
"Uh," Harry noised, staring at his potion—if he kept Professor Slughorn's attention, then not only would he not discover Snips, then Hermione might have a chance to sneak into the stores—gah, why hadn't he loaned her his cloak first? "Uh, well…looking…back at my textbook," Harry said, scanning the recipe quickly. "I…think I added too much ground lavender—read 'teaspoon' as 'tablespoon'—"
"A common mistake," Professor Slughorn said. "Remember to always read the recipe carefully."
"Right. And uh…." Come on, he had been studying potions and been working with Mrs. Weasley with those household potions—surely between Snips and her, something would stick! "And uh, that caused my potion to turn this…puce color…."
Ron leaned over and looked. "Oh, that's puce," he said quietly, with the air of someone who had always heard of the color but had no idea what it looked like.
"Right. And…." He glanced up—saw Snips in the rafters with several sprigs of different plants in one of his tiny claws. "And uh…Better Potions and Tonics—I read it over the summer—suggests that…when there's too much lavender…wormwood helps to balance it out?"
"Very good!" Professor Slughorn said. "And how much wormwood would you have to add?"
Snips was crumbling up the plants in his claws—Ron glanced to see what he was looking at, but Professor Slughorn must have thought he was wracking his brain. Which, by the way, he was.
"Uh…I added a tablespoon when I should have added a teaspoon…that's…three times the amount I should have…and…you add a quarter teaspoon of wormwood to one teaspoon of lavender, because too much makes the potion bitter, so…three-quarters of a teaspoon?"
"That's absolutely correct!" Professor Slughorn said. "Ten points to Gryffindor for puzzling that out, Harry! You'll find the wormwood on the top shelf there—best get a ladder, or see if someone will help you. Don't climb on the shelves—had a first year do that and it didn't end well. Now Mr. Weasley," Professor Slughorn continued, moving to Ron's cauldron. "Can you tell me how to fix your potion?"
"Uh," Ron noised. "Uh, well, my potion is, uh…what is this color?"
"Teal," Harry said, glancing at it before moving to the shelves, watching Snips frantically—he had drizzled the plants into Malfoy's cauldron while he was watching Professor Slughorn quiz them and had climbed back down to the shelves.
"Teal—okay, and it turned that color after uh, adding the uh, the goshawk talon trimmings, and it was supposed to turn a…clear blue," Ron said, reading out of his recipe book. "So…I might have read it wrong…."
"Teaspoons again?" Malfoy called jeeringly.
Ron's ears turned red.
"Now now, as I said, a common mistake," Professor Slughorn said. "Did you add too much or too little?"
"I think I added too little," Ron muttered.
"What are you doing?" Harry hissed at Snips, who had now lifted the lid on a jar and was scooping several handfuls of powder into a leaf. Snips hissed back before bundling up the leaf and scurrying into the rafters again.
"Well that's usually an easy fix," Professor Slughorn said. "But it's been simmering a while, so you need to add a stabilizing agent—what do you add, Mr. Weasley?"
Now Ron's whole face was red as he struggled to think—he had not been as interested in potions as Harry had gotten, preferring more practical spells with immediate results and learning how to fly a broom, and had therefore not poured over his mother's potions books to wind down evenings. "Um…."
Malfoy was laughing, Professor Slughorn looked like he was getting ready to turn around and tell him to hush, and Snips looked like he was about to drop his little bundle into the cauldron—and if that happened, Slughorn would see it and naturally look up and spot Snips. Harry had to do something.
So he shot his hand up.
"Yes, Harry? Did you need help finding the stepladder?"
"Uh, yes sir, but—I think I read that uh, phosphite, is a good stabilizer, sir—I remember because uh, when I was still going to uh, Muggle school, that we covered a little bit of chemistry and—it struck me as kind of odd, that chemistry and potions uses the same stabilizers."
Slughorn nodded, and Malfoy looked like he was about to comment, but at that moment Snips—who had been watching Harry intently—glanced back down, saw Malfoy, and chose that moment to shove his little bundle off the rafter and into Malfoy's cauldron.
The effect was immediate—whatever Snips had been doing to Malfoy's cauldron on the sly caused it to explode mightily, as effective as any firecracker, splashing Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle and quite a few others in the immediate vicinity. Slughorn—who had jumped back in alarm at the sudden noise—quickly rushed forward, performing a vanishing charm on the mess on the floor so he could get to his students.
"My word—I've never seen a potion do that—did someone lob something in here? Nevermind—everyone who was hit with the potion, forward to my desk—I have the antidote handy in case of such accidents, but…never have I seen it go like that…."
Harry stared for the longest time before a sharp nip to his jaw brought his attention sharply back.
"That was brilliant," Harry hissed to Snips, back on his shoulder and in his hiding spot. "I thought you weren't going to help."
Snips turned up his beak, apparently deciding that he was still going to punish Harry by ignoring him.
"Bloody…" Ron breathed, too taken by the carnage to finish his statement.
"Ron!" Harry hissed, snapping his friend back to attention. "Give me a hand here—I can't reach the wormwood and you still need phosphite."
"Right, right," Ron said, wandering back to the shelves while still watching everything. "Snips did that?"
Harry nodded.
"You get first dibs on my supper," Ron whispered to Harry's shoulder, figuring Snips was there. "Whatever you like—choicest cut or whatever. Pumpkin pasties."
Snips clicked his beak at that, but refused to comment further.
But even better—he saw Hermione ducking out of the storeroom and slinking back to her cauldron. She ducked out of sight for a moment—putting the pilfered ingredients into her bookbag, perhaps—before popping back up, glancing around before giving them a discreet thumbs-up, which he returned.
Success.