Bagsy hated to admit it, but Starrett had been right. She didn't have time for quidditch.
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, she had to attend lessons on Artifisiary, whatever that was, with Professor Starrett.
On Wednesday, Starrett had made her run while shooting jets of gold paint at her. On Friday, she'd made the entire floor of the Charms classroom slanted, slippery and with small firecrackers sliding about it. She'd asked Bagsy to make her way to the other side. Any time she had stopped to catch her breath, Starrett had spelled one of the firecrackers to move in her direction. By the time the session was done, Bagsy was beyond exhausted.
It also just so happened that the Hufflepuff quidditch team practised on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the same time Bagsy had Artifisiary. She could make the last ten minutes, but by the time Starrett had finished making her jump through hoops, sometimes literally, she didn't feel up to it. Kat had been understanding, but sad.
'I really didn't mean for this,' Bagsy had tried to explain, to a crestfallen Kat.
Kat had given her a thankful nod. 'It's not your fault, Bagsy. It's just that Ford is gone now, and no one else tried out for the team, so we're currently down a player and practise is looking pretty sparse.'
Teresa shot a look in Bagsy's direction. 'Just tell Starrett to move your lessons. It's not that big of a deal. You guys make drama out of the smallest thing.'
Kat had frowned. 'That's not very helpful, Teresa.'
Teresa had shrugged. 'I just tell it like it is.'
Neve, without looking up from the paper folding she was focussing hard on, had coughed meaningfully.
Teresa had sighed. 'Fine. Sorry. Neve's been trying to get me to be more sympathetic. I'm working on it, okay? That does sound unfair, Bagsy. We all know Starrett can be a right git.'
It was with a heavy heart that Bagsy continued to miss quidditch. However, something else was beginning to trouble her more. As the weeks rolled by, Mezrielda was acting in more and more disobedient ways.
It started in Transfiguration. Professor Hilkins had asked the class to turn a block of wood into a mixture of two substances; coal and ice. Some students, like Tod, managed to get pretty close in creating a murky mixture of black sludge. Mezrielda had given it a go but after her third try she'd slammed her wand down on her desk and given up.
Hilkins had politely asked her on multiple occasions to do the work.
'I've already shown you I'm more than talented enough,' Mezrielda had spat, to the surprise of many students who, after Mezrielda's efforts last year, had held her to a high esteem.
Hilkins had mumbled in surprise, looking rather sad, and left her alone for the rest of the lesson.
In the next Transfiguration lesson, Hilkins was more forceful. When Mezrielda continued to refuse to cast spells his sadness turned to frustration. Bagsy worried how long it would be before Mezrielda got detentions. If those went down on her school record, would they hurt her chances of remaining with her parents?
To make matters worse, she recognised the look of curious scheming in Primrose's eyes as she watched Mezrielda closely.
On Thursday afternoons, Bagsy had double Potions. The previous years, Professor Blythurst had been a silent presence. Now, Professor Stery guided every session.
For the first time in a long time, Bagsy could brew her own potion without the pressure of knowing everyone was copying her. It was so relaxing she often had a second cauldron bubbling with something experimental to challenge herself.
The other students found Stery insufferably strict. Odd interaction in Australia aside, Bagsy thought he was great. If you misbehaved once your name was written on the board. If you misbehaved twice you'd spend your evening emptying the ghost's ectoplasm from the pipes or cleaning the mucky Potions room ceiling.
No one had misbehaved a third time. Bagsy was terrified what might happen to someone who did.
Stery's strictness protected Bagsy from any silliness from Primrose, it was wonderful, and he always had helpful tips.
When Stery pointed out that Bagsy's stirrings needed to be more uniform, she realised he was right. When he told her she should coat her cauldron in oil before adding ingredients to avoid them sticking, she felt like she'd been hit with a spark of obvious genius. By the end of each lesson, she could name three knew things she'd learnt which was good, given Stery didn't let them leave without writing three facts on the blackboard to prove their learning.
Bagsy was half way through finishing her crackle-snap potion, as well as experimenting with a wiggenweld potion, when Stery paused next to her station. The clink of spoons on cauldrons and the scrape of jars made it difficult to overhear what others were saying, so Bagsy felt fairly comfortable talking with him. If he said anything odd like he had in Australia, at least it would only be her who'd hear it.
'What are you doing?' asked Stery.
'Me?'
Stery put a hand above his eyes as if searching the horizon. 'I don't see anyone else at this work bench.' He was right. Bagsy shared potions with Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, so she and Mezrielda weren't next to each other like they had been last year, and Arice was giving Bagsy more space this time around, which she very much appreciated.
'I'm making the crackle-snap potion.' She pointed at the mixture that was crackling and snapping.
'I meant this.' Stery indicated the extra cauldron.
'Am... am I in trouble, sir?' Bagsy stilled her hands that, until then, had been a blur of motion. Her eyes drifted towards the white board, worried her name would end up next to Primrose and Rebekah, who'd already picked up a warning for jokingly flinging husk shells at each other.
'No,' said Stery soothingly. 'No, not at all. I'm just curious what you're doing.'
'It's... sort of dumb.'
'Brilliant. Tell me more.'
Bagsy looked over her messy desk to find what she was looking for. 'Here.' She pointed to the page she had open in the copy of Beyond the Fundamentals: What Makes Potions. 'This book says that, for a potion to be a potion, it has to have a foundation, an additive and a binding.'
Stery frowned at the book. He took the book to look at the title before reading the blurb. 'This is way above your year. I'd be expecting a seventh-year student to use this, not a fourth.'
'Oh! I'm really sorry, I didn't know–'
'It's nothing to be worried about.' Stery placed book gingerly back down. 'It's something to be very proud of.' He nodded at Bagsy's crackle-snap potion, which looked about ready for a second helping of shifty nails.
Bagsy added the second portion. 'I wanted to see... oh it's dumb.' Stery looked at her with raised eyebrows, waiting for her to divulge what she'd been doing. 'I'm trying to see if it's possible to brew a potion without using a foundation at all. Only additives and bindings.'
'How intriguing.' Stery peered at the extra cauldron. 'And how's that been going for you?'
'I, um. Keep failing.' The potions often didn't work or evaporated in protest.
'That means you keep finding out what you shouldn't do. Keep at it, it's an interesting thing to pursue. Even if it turns out to be impossible, I don't doubt you'll gain good insights along the way.'
'Yes,' someone croaked in a hoarse voice. Bagsy looked up to see Professor Blythurst, barely managing to sit himself up to look at her, nodding his very pale head. 'You can go far, Bagsy,' his managed. 'Keep trying and remember. Take your time.'
As if all his energy was gone, Blythurst slumped back into his seat and closed his unevenly shaped eyes.
Blushing from all the praise, Bagsy returned to her brewing, focussing on the task at hand, and not the compliments she'd received.
Things were beginning to settle into their usual rhythm. Potions and Herbology lifted her spirit while spell casting subjects were a chore. She was a fourth year, for merlin's sake, and she was even using the walnut wand since her hornbeam wand had been destroyed last year. She still felt a disconcerting pull towards the walnut wand yet no sparks of magic came forth from it.
Mezrielda had been proactive with their Herbology bookings and secured them a slot to plant their pota-toes just after dusk so they could still get a good night's sleep. As they began to set the digging trowels into motion and measure out the precise locations they'd be burying the pota-toes using a floor grid to guide their blind hands, Mezrielda was waiting excitedly to tell her something.
'What is it?' Bagsy asked, she could feel Mezrielda's eagerness from where she was, eyes wide in the pitch blackness, trying to feel if she'd buried the pota-toe in the correct place.
'I can't tell you, not here,' Mezrielda said. Then, in a hushed voice, 'I received a letter from Wayne. It arrived at dusk. It's... huge.'
'Huge? In terms of size or what it tells us?'
'Both.'
Their work fuelled by a desire to discuss the letter, Mezrielda was swift in telling Bagsy what to do where. It was Mezrielda's job to keep a track of where they were standing in relation to everything else, and guide Bagsy. Meanwhile, it was Bagsy's job to operate the heavy trowels and plant the pota-toes. Without their well thought out division of the tasks, they would have ended up very lost in the dark, like Neve and Teresa. One plot over, they could hear the two grumbling complaints as, for the seventh time, they bumped into each other.
'Hurray!' Bagsy said, securing the last pota-toe into the ground.
'Make sure there's a thick layer of soil,' Mezrielda reminded her. 'We don't want any light touching them.'
Bagsy gave the plot a last check over. 'I think we're done.'
'Spiffing,' Mezrielda announced haughtily, to giggles from Bagsy. 'What?'
'Nothing. You're just ridiculous sometimes.'
'Hmph.'
Once they were in the warm amber light of the torches lining the walls of Hogwarts, Mezrielda and Bagsy hurried to the library nook.
'Uh, uh, uh!' The young librarian stopped them short, pointing at their mud-covered robes. 'You're not coming in here in that state. You're not.'
With angry sighs, they turned and trudged away.
'Hey,' a nasally voice said. Primrose, flanked by Rebekah, looked them up and down. 'Why are you so messy?'
Mezrielda scowled at her. 'We've been planting our pota-toes, obviously.'
'I know that. Me and Rebekah are on our way to do the same thing.'
'I,' Mezrielda corrected her. Primrose tilted her head in confusion. 'It's 'Rebekah and I'.'
Primrose hissed. 'I don't care. What I do care about is why you haven't cleaned yourselves up using magic.'
Mezrielda opened her mouth, but no words came out. Primrose's gaze narrowed suspiciously.
'It's a fashion thing?' Bagsy tried.
Primrose and Rebekah shared a look, then burst out laughing.
'If you say so,' said Primrose and she and Rebekah set off, shoulder barging them as they went buy. 'Fashion thing,' she snickered to Rebekah as their voices faded into the distance.
'So mature,' Mezrielda huffed, looking angrily down at her robes. 'But she's right. Before I would have magicked this away.' Bagsy looked at her quietly. Mezrielda sighed. 'It is what it is. I can't change what happened.'
That only made Bagsy feel more deflated. 'Let's look through the letter from Wayne.'
Mezrielda nodded glumly. 'Sure.'
They decided on the Eagle Club room. Now that Winifred and Robin were gone, it was abandoned.
They sat in the centre as Mezrielda fished a letter out of her sleeve. It was incredibly thick, and quite wide. With the noise of crinkling paper, Mezrielda forced it open, and a wealth of newspaper articles spilled out, as well as a neatly written letter.
Mezrielda seized it up and began to read out loud. 'Dear Mezza and Baz.' She made a disapproving face at the nicknames while Bagsy smiled widely. 'At first, I didn't find much. No one mentions the breathing blight by name in any documents in Quolldron college library. But then I read what you said about the blight; how he makes flowers wither and flies multiply, and I remembered something. Sheila's dad runs a paper here in Australia, called The Toothy Times. They've run stories on a string of magical mysteries, stretching back for centuries. I've sent you everything I could fit into the largest letter size they'll allow to travel across the continents. I hope this will help. All the best, Wayne.' Mezrielda staring at the letter. 'Well, I guess we better take a look at what he sent.'
There were all sorts of news clippings. The most recent one reported a woman found dead from an unidentified illness, surrounded by wilted flowers with an abnormally high number of flies nearby.
Some stories were loosely related, with one or two wilted flowers in the area, or an unexpected bout of insects, but others seemed far more suspect. There was one from a century ago where a man had been found in a ditch with grey and black veins the solidity of concrete. The vegetation of the embankment was dead, and the skies were so filled with flies the muggles believed it had been a storm cloud.
'Look,' Mezrielda said, arranging the stories in a specific order. 'There're evenly spread out. About once every few months. The most recent one was...' Mezrielda's face paled. 'Morgana ...'
'What?' Bagsy crouched next to her to look. The most recent clipping stated a woman had died on the 28th of August that year, in the Blue Mountains of Australia. Bagsy's mind was erratic as she looked at the moving photo of flies. 'That's when we were there...'
'This was a few miles from us,' Mezrielda added.
'Was...? Was the breathing blight in Australia at the same time as us?'
'I think he might have been.'
Bagsy sucked in a breath. 'We need to head back to Australia if we want to talk to him, then?'
Mezrielda gathered the evidence and arranged it back into the envelope. 'Perhaps. But that's going to be tricky.'
'We'll find a way.'
Mezrielda shook her head. 'If it weren't for the obvious censorship, and how untrustworthy Fitzsimmons is, I'd say we should tell someone about this.'
'No!' Bagsy said. In her mind, she heard Bontie's voice, berating her for not seeking adult help. She felt stubborn indignation flare within her. If she didn't absolutely have to, she wouldn't involve any adult in this. It wasn't like any of them had helped her all that much, anyway, and those who had helped were either not trustworthy or had betrayed and lied to her in some way, like Cora or Bontie. 'We deal with this ourselves.'
Mezrielda shot her a searching look. Eventually, she said, 'I concur.'