The Potions Mistress and the Sorcerer's Stone

The man with two faces.

"RON!" Aidy cried after Harry took the king. Ron, who had gallantly sacrificed himself, was laying face down and obviously unconscious.

"My god..." she said, running to his side and taking his pulse.

"He's alive. Thankfully." she looked back at the next door. "But, we have to keep going. He'll be fine." she assured a worried looking Hermione, who nodded. And so, the remaining three people of the quartet trudged quietly out of the room. In the next chamber they came to, there was a troll in the corner, ten times as big as the one that they had faced. This one was clearly out cold, with a bloody lump extruding from his forehead.

"I'm glad we didn't have to fight that one." Harry muttered. "Come on, let's get out of here, it stinks." and it did, the whole room smelled like a combination of rotting fish and moldy cabbage. The next door that they came to put Aidy on edge. Severus's challenge hadn't come up yet...

And she had created part of it.

They stepped through the next doorway, and immediatly, flames began to flicker from both doorways, trapping them. The door they had just come through was now covered in purple flame, the door at the other end covered with black flames. Hermione looked at Harry with fear.

"Now what!?"

"Look." Aidy was looking at a table with seven bottles, all of them different shapes and sizes, studying a roll of parchment.

"What is this?" she muttered.

"Let me see!" Hermione said, running to her friend, reading aloud from the parchment:

"Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,
Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,
One among us seven will let you move ahead,
Another will transport the drinker back instead,
Two among our number hold only nettle-wine,
Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line
Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:
First, however slyly the poison tries to hide
You will always find some on nettle wine's left side
Second, different are those who stand at either end
But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;
Third as you see clearly, all are different size
Neither dwarf nor giant hold death in their insides;
Fourth, the second left and the second on the right
Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight." Aidy shook her head, scoffing.

"Leave it to Sev to come up with something like this. That's why he had me add the lavender to one half..." Harry looked at her, bewildered.

"What?" Aidy's eyes were steeled on the bottles.

"I brewed every potion in this room." she said, after a long pause. "I'll be able to tell you which two are neither wine or poison. But!" She said, looking at Harry and Hermione's elated faces. "But, I won't be able to tell you which one transports you through the black fire and which one will get you through the purple. The formulas are too similar to tell by. The only difference between them is the additives to tell which color of flame it corresponds to." she pointed at the paper that Hermione was still clutching. "That poem isn't magic, it's logic, a puzzle. Most wizards, including myself, would be stuck in here forever."

"Because-"

"Most wizards haven't got an ounce of logic, yes. Hermione, do your magic." Hermione stepped up to the table bravely, reading the poem over to herself several times.

"Everything we need is on this paper. Seven bottles, three are poison, two are wine. One gets us through the black fire, one gets us back through the purple."

"So how do we know what'a what?" Hermione looked at the paper for a moment, muttering to herself as Adriana and Harry exchanged a look. Hermione snapped her fingers.

"Got it! That bottle, there." she pointed at a rounded bottle at the end of the line. "That gets you through the black. The smallest bottle will get you through the purple." Harry looked at the tiny bottle with a skeptical expression.

"That's barely enough for one swallow." Hermione nodded.

"Two of us will go forward. only one can go back."

"I'll go back." Aidy said, reaching for the tiny bottle. Hermione slapped her hand away.

"Don't be ridiculous." She said. "Aidy, if it really is Snape - I'm not saying it is! then you're the only one of us that can talk to him! And plus, you're a whiz at protective enchantments and hexes. I'm going to go back for Ron and to send a message to Dumbledore . You're the two who need to do this. Not me, not Ron, you." Harry and Aidy looked at each other, and then nodded. Hermione quickly gulped down the potion, and shivered.

"It's not poison!" Harry exclaimed.

"No, but it's very like ice." Aidy explained, gulping down her own swig of potion. Just as Hermione was about to step through the purple flames, she looked at Harry and Aidy.

"Please, you two, try not to die today." and without another word, Hermione stepped through the purple flames.

After Harry sipped his potion, he gently let the bottle slip from his fingers and back onto the table. He took Aidy's hand, and gently pulled her through the fire. They both shuddered as they passed through it; the flames had an unpleasant tickling sensation associated with them. Aidy vaguely wondered if this was the same sensation that a ghost might feel while walking through a wall.

The next room they entered was a wide chamber, with the Mirror of Erised sitting in the middle of it. But the person looking into the mirror wasn't Snape. It wasn't even Voldemort.

It was Quirrell.

"You!" Harry gasped.

"Me." Quirrell said, without a stutter. "I was wondering if you would show your face. And, what a surprise, you brought your lady friend with you." Before Aidy could raise her wand in defense, Quirrell had sent her flying into the stone wall. She slumped to the floor in agony, having broken (From the sound it made) several vertebrae and her coccyx.

"Don't kill her..." a whisper sounded. "Let her feel real power." Quirrell had already conjured tight ropes around Harry, and once again raised his wand against the girl, who was breathing heavily to try to contain her screams of pain. Harry panicked.

"But Snape, I thought-"

"Oh, Harry. I told you..." Aidy whimpered. Paying no attention to the bespectacled girl, who lay there in agony, he addressed Harry.

"Oh, yes, he does seem the type, does he not? It was extremely convenient to have him swooping around like an oversized bat."