Harry Potter and The Alchemist's Cell

Animal Instincts

The heavy door to the dungeon clicked shut as Harry slipped out of it. He slipped off his Invisibility Cloak and bunched it up inside his robes for safe-keeping, as he made his way along the corridor. The one thing he hadn't slipped was the cheeky note he half-wanted to leave in Snape's Storeroom - in place of the stolen potion ingredients - that would have read something like 'Cheers for the stuff Snivelly, I'll buy you some Crisp 'n Dry to wash your hair in, Merry Christmas from Harry'.

But he decided that might be a little too far to get away with.

Still, it made him chuckle mutinously as he hurried along past dungeons Five and Six, to number Seven at the end, where Luna and Neville were busily brewing away. This was a practice potion dungeon and Harry, like with so many aspects of his magical surroundings, had only that week learned that it was here at all. It would have been easy to blame Ron for making him so ignorant, but he'd spent just as much time with Hermione - who must have known about these research rooms - so that was no excuse.

Harry sighed ... turns out he really was a dunderhead after all.

He was still tittering away at his own foolishness as he entered the dungeon. Luna and Neville were hunched over a cauldron in the far corner. Harry was happy to see that Luna was in charge of the brewing, knowing just how nervous Neville tended to be whenever he was within three feet of a softly simmering solution. Watching over them was the art teacher, Professor Bobross, who Luna had sweet-talked into helping them, convincing him that it was an extra credit project to aid her regular classwork.

"Easy now, you want the stirring to be cloud-soft, barely touching, just pretend your hand is a whisper floating over the cauldron," the Art Professor advised. He had the most soporific, calming voice Harry had ever heard. He rather thought it might be worth enrolling in the class just to hear the man chatter away.

"Like this?" Luna asked, following the instruction.

"That's it," Professor Bobross commented. "Remember, this cauldron is your world. You can create anything you want in here. Talk to it, make friends with it, with the happy little bubbles inside. Give them names, make up stories about them. It's okay to be a little strange, we're artists - people expect us to be a little different. And that's okay."

Neville spotted Harry at that moment and it was clear he was struggling to fight a bout of laughter just dying to explode from behind his eyes. Harry crossed the dungeon to join them.

"How's it going?" he asked, peering into the cauldron to look at a potion that was Van Dyke Brown in colour.

"Coming along nicely," Neville replied. "Did your ... er, delivery turn up?"

Harry looked confused a moment, until he caught on to Neville's ruse. "Oh, yeah ... I've just come from the owlery now."

Harry fished into his robes and handed over the ingredients he had swiped from Snape's potion store. Professor Bobross looked curiously at him.

"No packaging?" he asked.

"Oh, well, I had to open it to check I had the right stuff," Harry invented quickly. "Then the owls nicked the box. I think they're nesting, you know."

"Yes, it is that time of year," Professor Bobross agreed. "I have an owl in my home, we call him Pea Pod. We've built him a great big cage ... we call it Owl Hilton. He's just begun gathering things for a nest, too."

"Mmm," Harry mumbled. He turned to Luna. "So, is that everything you need?"

"For the general potion, yes," Luna hummed back. "But then we just need to make it specific to the subjects. Oh, and we have to finish your portrait."