Beautiful World ~ 𝑫𝑹𝑨𝑹𝑹𝒀

Chapter 2

Hermione was on one side, Ron on the other, and they were arguing over Harry's head about something Harry didn't bother to listen to. They'd been doing that all year, arguing over his head. Ron had always been taller than Harry, and Hermione had grown a lot over the summer. Now she was tall, though her hair was still bushy and she was still very skinny. Harry had hardly grown at all. Still small, slight, pale, with wild dark hair, and enough facial hair to merit shaving once a week. But he didn't care. He didn't care about much, really.

Including Potions, which was where they were walking to the second time Harry nearly died that day. They were walking down a flight of stairs when it started to change, swinging to the left. Hermione and Ron, used to this behavior by now, stopped and continued their argument standing still, waiting patiently for the stairs to come to a stop.

Harry didn't notice, and nearly walked right off the end.

"Harry!" Hermione shrieked, and his stride faltered as he glanced over his shoulder.

"What?"

"Watch it! The stairs are moving."

"Oh." He glanced around, vaguely surprised. Then he glanced down and saw that one more step would have sent him over the edge. Oh.

"Didn't you notice, Harry?" Ron asked, frowning, as the staircase stopped changing and they continued on their way.

"You nearly died, Harry!" Hermione cried.

"At least dying would be real," Harry mumbled, too quietly for her to hear.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Hermione worried, touching his arm hesitantly.

"One more today and I'll be fine," he mumbled.

"One more what?" asked Ron.

Harry didn't reply. One more brush with death, of course. Because Harry had by now noticed that they were coming three a day. And this was the third day. Maybe the third time on the third day would have some sort of significance, and maybe he'd actually die.

Strangely, Harry smiled for the first time that day at the prospect.

Three times the charm, after all.

"This," Snape said, moments later, as he slammed a large jar full of olive green pickling fluid on his desk, "is a flesh eating slug. Dead, of course." There was a chorus of 'eews' from the class, even a few Slytherins looking ill at the sight of the slug, which was roughly the size of one of Harry's trainers, a bloated sort of black colour with a sheen of yellowy green. Its underside was pressed against the side of the jar and they could see its mouth, a perfectly round hole rimmed with three rows of needle-like teeth meant to rip flesh from bones. "Quite nasty creatures, and quite common. Flesh eating slug repellent is quite useful for keeping them away, but it's useless in getting rid of them once they're already present. Today, you will learn to brew flesh eating slug pesticide."

He always said it that way. Today you will learn. Not today I will teach you, or today you will attempt to brew. It was always you will learn. Or I will punish you.

He explained the potion's properties (instant death to any slug it touches) and described the properties of each of the ingredients, ending his lecture with, "You are brewing the condensed form, if this potion were to actually be used, it would be mixed one part to four water. It is quite toxic, so kindly refrain from drinking it. Anyone who loses their Pesker Pod will also lose one hundred house points. Get to work."

Hermione fetched all of their ingredients while Ron and Harry set up their cauldrons. They were to brew the potion alone as Snape had stopped assigning pair work at the beginning of fifth year.

A few minutes later, as Harry set the first few ingredients to boil, Hermione and Ron were arguing again. Harry wasn't listening. Well, he wasn't aware that he was listening. However, that little part of him that wanted to die must have been.

"A hundred points?" Ron scoffed. "For losing a Pester Pod?" He waved the pod in question about as he spoke.

"It's Pesker Pod," Hermione corrected, rescuing Ron's. "And it's a fair punishment. These are very rare, and very valuable. Besides, all the venom in the potion comes from the pod. One pod, if used in a more advanced and deadly potion, can kill an entire army, if we lose our pod, someone else could find it and use it for something worse than killing slugs."

"Wow, Hermione, you actually condone the murder of innocent slugs?" Ron smirked.

She grew sulky. "Do shut up, Ron." Harry stirred his potion carefully, laying out his ingredients in the order that he'd need to add them so that he wouldn't have to look at the instructions anymore. He folded them up carefully and watched the liquid in the cauldron. Every time it changed colours, he added the next ingredient, until he'd added them all. The potion had turned from black to a strange, off-white sort of colour.

"Remember," Snape said from his desk as he watched. "The end result should be opaque and give off a faint scent vaguely reminiscent of black licorice."

Harry poured about a cup of his potion into a glass tube and held it up to his nose, sniffing cautiously. It certainly smelled, though he worried that the scent was more like petrol than licorice. Frowning, he lifted the tube to the light and squinted up at it, checking if light could filter through. Opaque meant that all light would be prevented from passing through the cloudy liquid.

Tilting his head a bit and holding the tube up to the light, Harry felt eyes on him. Someone was looking at him.

No one had really looked at Harry in days. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he shivered, his eyes siding away from the swirling liquid and flickering lower, towards the eyes that watched him.

Draco Malfoy. Holding two Pesker Pods and smirking that smug smirk he'd always had, his eyebrows raised in challenge, his lips twisted, his gray eyes... glowing.

Harry's eyes didn't glow that way anymore.

Harry opened his lips, licked them, opened them further, as if to speak.

He would never get the chance to know what on earth he planned to say, for at that moment, Neville's cauldron blew up, sending the other boy smashing into Harry's chair, jolting him badly, and causing him to pour the tube of flesh eating slug poison onto his upturned face, and into his open mouth.

It burned, and he began to choke, coughing as he dropped the tube and it shattered.

Hermione was the first to scream. "You've poisoned him! He's poisoned! Harry's dying!"

The shrieks after that grew loud and rabid, wild, and Harry's heart rate quickened as he started panting with excitement - no, panic. Certainly panic. Who would be excited at the prospect of their own death by slug poison?

But his breathing sped up and it went to his head, making him dizzy, and Harry slumped to the floor, gasping and choking, his eyes wide, a small smile on his lips.

The Gryffindors were crowded around in panic, and Snape was shouting. He was holding what must have been the antidote in one hand, but the hysterical Gryffindors wouldn't let him through.

"I'm dying," Harry said out loud, rather bemusedly. "I'm dying."

"You're not." Cold voice, colder hands, touching Harry's hand. He blinked and forced himself to focus. Draco Malfoy was bending over him.

Already dead and gone to hell then, because for one frightful instance, Harry though that Draco was going to kiss him.

Draco looked very pissed off, really. Annoyed. And coldly amused all at once. "Damn it, Potter, save poisoning yourself until I haven't sabotaged your potion." And then Draco was gone and Harry realized that he hadn't been holding his hand after all. Draco had been putting something in it.

With the air of one about to die and resigned to whatever gift Draco had given him to celebrate his passing, Harry opened his hand.

It was his Pesker Pod. Draco had stolen it in an attempt to take one hundred points from Gryffindor, and in doing so, had saved Harry's life.

The irony of it made Harry laugh.