Healed & Broken (HP) {Book 4 of the Wild & Free Series}

11. The New Keeper

The next day Harry and I confided in Ron, Rowan, Lucy and Hermione the task that Dumbledore had set us, though separately, for Hermione and Rowan still refused to remain in Ron's and Lucy's presence longer than it took to give Ron a contemptuous look.

Ron thought that Harry and I were unlikely to have any trouble with Slughorn at all.

"He loves you, Harry," he said over breakfast, waving an airy forkful of fried egg. "Won't refuse you anything, will he? Not his little Potions Prince. Just hang back after class this afternoon and ask him."

Hermione, however, took a gloomier view.

"He must be determined to hide what really happened if Dumbledore couldn't get it out of him," she said in a low voice, as they stood in the deserted, snowy courtyard at break. "Horcruxes... Horcruxes... I've never even heard of them..."

"You haven't?"

Harry and I were disappointed; we had hoped that Hermione might have been able to give us a clue as to what Horcruxes were.

"They must be really advanced Dark Magic, or why would Voldemort have wanted to know about them? I think it's going to be difficult to get the information, Harry and Liana, you'll have to be very careful about how you approach Slughorn, think out a strategy..."

"Ron reckons we should just hang back after Potions this afternoon..."

"Oh, well, if Won-Won thinks that, you'd better do it," she said, flaring up at once. "After all, when has Won-Won's judgment ever been faulty?"

"Hermione, can't you — ?"

"No!" she said angrily, and stormed away, leaving Harry and me alone and ankle-deep in snow.

Hermione didn't know anything about Horcruxes, so Harry and I tried with Lucy. Unfortunately, she didn't know anything about it, too.

Potions lessons were uncomfortable enough these days, seeing as Rowan, Lucy, and I had to share a desk. Today, Rowan moved his cauldron around the table so that he was as far from Lucy as possible, ignoring both Lucy and me.

"Settle down, settle down, please! Quickly, now, lots of work to get through this afternoon! Golpalott's Third Law... who can tell me — ? But Miss Granger can, of course!"

Hermione recited at top speed: "Golpalott's-Third-Law-states- that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-to-more-than- the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-separate-components."

"Precisely!" beamed Slughorn. "Ten points for Gryffindor! Now, if we accept Golpalott's Third Law as true..."

I was going to have to take Slughorn's word for it that Golpalott's Third Law was true, because I had not understood any of it. Nobody apart from Hermione and Lucy seemed to be following what Slughorn said next either.

"...which means, of course, that assuming we have achieved correct identification of the potion's ingredients by Scarpin's Revelaspell, our primary aim is not the relatively simple one of selecting antidotes to those ingredients in and of themselves, but to find that added component that will, by an almost alchemical process, transform these disparate elements —"

"...and so," finished Slughorn, "I want each of you to come and take one of these phials from my desk. You are to create an antidote for the poison within it before the end of the lesson. Good luck, and don't forget your protective gloves!"

Hermione and Lucy had left their stools and were halfway toward Slughorn's desk before the rest of the class had realised it was time to move, and by the time Rowan and I returned to the table, Lucy had already tipped the contents of her phial into her cauldron and was kindling a fire underneath it.