Butterfly Effect ; H. Potter

99. house of gaunt.

For the rest of the week's Potions lessons Harry continued to follow the Half-Blood Prince's instructions wherever they deviated from Libatius Borage's, with the result that by their fourth lesson Slughorn was raving about Harry's abilities, saying that he had rarely taught anyone so talented. Neither Antheia, Ron, nor Hermione was delighted by this. Although Harry had offered to share his book with both of them, Ron had more difficulty deciphering the handwriting than Harry did, and could not keep asking Harry to read aloud or it might look suspicious. Antheia, on the other hand, seemed to prefer following her own book rather than being paraded around by Slughorn. Hermione, meanwhile, was resolutely plowing on with what she called the "official" instructions, but becoming increasingly bad-tempered as they yielded poorer results than the Prince's.

Harry wondered vaguely who the Half-Blood Prince had been. Although the amount of homework they had been given prevented him from reading the whole of his copy of Advanced Potion-Making, he had skimmed through it sufficiently to see that there was barely a page on which the Prince had not made additional notes, not all of them concerned with potion-making. Here and there were directions for what looked like spells that the Prince had made up himself.

"Or herself," said Hermione irritably, overhearing Harry pointing some of these out to Ron in the common room on Saturday evening. "It might have been a girl. I think the handwriting looks more like a girl's than a boy's."

"The Half-Blood Prince, he was called," Harry said. "How many girls have been princes?"

Hermione seemed to have no answer to this. She merely scowled and twitched her essay on "The Principles of Rematerialisation" away from Ron, who was trying to read it upside-down.

"Harry, put that book down," said Antheia suddenly.

"I've told you, Theia, there's nothing suspicious about -"

"No, I meant to look at the time!"

Harry looked at his watch and hurriedly put the old copy of Advanced Potion-Making back into his bag.

"It's five to eight, We'd better go, we'll be late for Dumbledore."

"Ooooh!" gasped Hermione, looking up at once. "Good luck! We'll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!"

"Hope it goes OK," said Ron, and the pair of them watched Harry and Antheia leave through the portrait hole.

Harry and Antheia proceeded through deserted corridors, though they had to step hastily behind a statue when Professor Trelawney appeared round a corner, muttering to herself as she shuffled a pack of dirty-looking playing cards, reading them as she walked.

"Two of spades: conflict," she murmured, as she passed the place where Harry and Antheia crouched, hidden. "Seven of spades: an ill omen. Ten of spades: violence. Knave of spades: a dark young man, possibly troubled, one who dislikes the questioner -"

She stopped dead, right on the other side of Harry and Antheia's statue.

"Well, that can't be right," she said, annoyed, and Harry heard her reshuffling vigorously as she set off again, leaving nothing but a whiff of cooking sherry behind her. Harry waited until he was quite sure she had gone, then hurried off again until he reached the spot in the seventh-floor corridor where a single gargoyle stood against the wall.

"What was it again?" muttered Harry to Antheia.

"Acid Pops," said Antheia. The gargoyle leapt aside; the wall behind it slid apart, and a moving spiral stone staircase was revealed, on to which Harry and Anthea stepped, so that they were carried in smooth circles up to the door with the brass knocker that led to Dumbledore's office.