Emma Potter; Going to War

77: Poems

Harry and I wracked our  brains over the next week as to how we were to persuade Slughorn to hand over the true memory, but nothing in the nature of a brain wave occurred and we were reduced to doing what we did increasingly these days when at aloss: poring over Harry's Potions book, hoping that the Prince wouldhave scribbled something useful in a margin, as we had done somany times before. 

"You won't find anything in there," said Zoe firmly, lateon Sunday evening. 

"Don't start, Anderson," said Harry. "If it hadn't been for thePrince, Ron wouldn't be sitting here now." 

"He would if you'd just listened to Snape in our first year," saidHermione dismissively.

 Harry and I ignored her. We had just found an incantation ("Sectumsempra!") scrawled in a margin above the intriguing words "For Enemies," and I was itching to try it out, but thought it best not toin front of Hermione and Zoe. 

Instead, I surreptitiously folded down thecorner of the page. We were sitting beside the fire in the library; the onlyother people awake and there were fellow sixth years. There had been a certain amount of excitement earlier when they had come back fromdinner to find a new sign on the notice board that announced thedate for our Apparition Test. 

Those who would be seventeen onor before the first test date, the twenty-first of April, had the optionof signing up for additional practice sessions, which would takeplace (heavily supervised) in Hogsmeade. 

Ron had panicked on reading this notice; he had still not managed to Apparate and feared he would not be ready for the test.Hermione, who had now achieved Apparition twice, was a littlemore confident, but Harry and I, who would not be seventeen for another four months, could not take the test whether ready or not. 

"At least you can Apparate, though!" said Ron tensely to me. "You'llhave no trouble come July!" 

"I've only done it once," I reminded him; I had finallymanaged to disappear and rematerialize inside my hoop during our previous lesson. 

Having wasted a lot of time worrying aloud about Apparition,Ron was now struggling to finish a viciously difficult essay forSnape that Me, Zoe, Harry and Hermione had already completed. 

I fully expected to receive low marks on mine, because I had disagreedwith Snape on the best way to tackle dementors, but I did notcare: Slughorn's memory was the most important thing to me now.

 "I'm telling you, the stupid Prince isn't going to be able to helpyou with this, Potter, Emma!" said Zoe, more loudly. "There's only one way to force someone to do what you want, and that's the Imperius Curse, which is illegal —"

 "Yeah, we know that, thanks," said Harry, not looking up from thebook. "That's why we're looking for something different. Dumbledore says Veritaserum won't do it, but there might be somethingelse, a potion or a spell. . . ." 

"You're going about it the wrong way," said Hermione. "Onlyyou can get the memory, Dumbledore says. That must mean youcan persuade Slughorn where other people can't. It's not a questionof slipping him a potion, anyone could do that —" 

"How d'you spell 'belligerent'?" said Ron, shaking his quill veryhard while staring at his parchment. "It can't be B — U — M —"

 "No, it isn't,"I said, pulling Ron's essay toward me."And 'augury' doesn't begin O — R — G either. What kind ofquill are you using?" 

"It's one of Fred and George's Spell-Check ones . . . but I thinkthe charm must be wearing off. . . ." 

"Yes, it must,"I said, pointing at the title of his essay,"because we were asked how we'd deal with dementors, not 'Dugbogs,' and I don't remember you changing your name to 'RoonilWazlib' either."