Love From, Your Secret Admirer || Harmione

Part 6

Oblivious to the connotations of what he just said and how it ever so fluttered Hermione's heart, Harry informed the crowd of his new findings.

"Thanks to Hermione's utter - and usual - brilliance, I've concluded yet another vital bit of information in my investigation into who sent this letter: they were sorted into Hufflepuff and it took the Sorting Hat seven minutes to sort them."

Mutterings of 'oh, of course' and 'how could I not see that?' radiated through the enlarging crowd. Students of all houses had congregated, and Harry wondered whether or not the author of the love letter was in that very crowd, listening to him dissect their letter.

Harry was almost there, he could feel it. There was just one more thing missing...

He reached back into his bag and pulled out a miniature cauldron as well as various ingredients stored in a small box, and other potions utensils. Enlarging the equipment, he placed the cauldron on the table and filled it with water with a quick aguamenti.

Everyone looked on in confusion as Harry set out to create a potion of sorts. He began by heating the water to boiling point before chopping up gillyweed and very carefully crushing a small chunk of Erumpent horn into powder using a pestle and mortar.

It didn't take long for Hermione to realise what he was making as he stirred the mixture in the cauldron twenty-eight times anti-clockwise at a rate of half a stir per second.

"Harry? I-is that Plocombe's Parchment Probe Potion? T-that's incredible, that's a mastery level potion!" she exclaimed.

Harry grinned at her and reveled in her praise momentarily until a voice he very much did not want to hear cut through the Great Hall.

"POTTER!" Severus Snape shouted, stomping and slicing through the crowd to get into Harry's face "What do you think you are doing? Are you so arrogant that you think you can-"

All of a sudden, Snape stopped speaking as he looked into Harry's cauldron.

"I-is that Plocombe's Parchment Probe Potion? T-that's incredible, that's a mastery level potion!" Snape exclaimed, stunned, then he looked down to his feet (just as Hermione muttered 'that's what I said' to herself) and said through gritted teeth, "T-twenty points to Gryffindor."

Everyone stood gobsmacked as Snape slithered silently out of the Great Hall, presumably to wallow in misery in his private quarters. Snape never gave points to Gryffindor, and then he just gave twenty to Harry of all people! Harry could already see some students rushing off to the owlery, most likely to tell their parents and contacts within the Daily Prophet about this monumental event.

Harry put the finishing touches into the potion - a single drop of firewhiskey (not that he'd tell Hermione where he got that from) that turned the potion pink - and cracked his knuckles, preparing for what would hopefully be the big reveal. Carefully ripping off a corner of the letter, he dropped the piece of parchment into the cauldron and it floated downwards through the air.

As it slowly drifted down, chatter within the crowd built up again, the shock from Snape's proclamation put to one side. It dropped gently into the pulsating pink liquid and... nothing happened.

Ron, looking confused, leaned over the cauldron to see what was (or what wasn't) happening. Before Harry could realise Ron's mistake and pull him away from the cauldron, the potion erupted into a large flame, singing off all the hair on Ron's head and face.

It wasn't a pretty sight, but at least he wasn't ginger anymore.

Harry, meanwhile, looked into the very much ruined cauldron and, with a flick of his wand, levitated the smoking piece of parchment that was somehow still intact. Bringing it up to his eye, unaware of all the other eyes currently watching him in anticipation, Harry let out a great sigh.