Up and Down

Plots and Plans

Spoilers for "The Polyjuice Plot".

There are many shadows in the night.

What is just one more?

Hogwarts castle is ancient and mischievous, with passages appearing and disappearing, stairways and doors to nowhere, forgotten corners and secret rooms.

Anna takes advantage of it as she creeps through the shadowy halls under a Disillusionment spell. She did it many a time, exploring and causing trouble, but this time neither is her purpose.

Professor Fig's classroom stands locked, but her time chasing Demiguise moons was not in vain. She makes quick work of the lock and lets herself inside.

The classroom is just the same as Fig left it. But her focus is elsewhere, and she strides quickly into the office in the back.

Once inside, she begins to search through various trunks and boxes. Fig was very Ravenclaw when it came to the number of books scattered about. There would always be those for whom the floor is just an extension of the bookshelves, and she is among them. The Ravenclaw tower is frequently inundated with so much paper and parchment all over the carpets and floors one has to be careful not to walk on someone's errant star chart or trip over an inkpot with every step.

She searches for something she knows is hiding somewhere nearby. Something she would rather not make herself, something she isn't even sure she can pull off or has the time to do.

As paper and pages fly in her wake, she continues to go through the remnants of her mentor's life, and a few times she has to bite back tears. But purpose always had a way of lighting a fire inside her, burning away the grief for now.

"Specialis Revelio!" She taps on every cabinet, every chest, every suitcase with her wand. One of them must...

The bottom of one of the trunks seems a bit higher than it should be. Anna probes it with her fingers and feels a slight give. She smirks to herself and grabs a letter opener from Fig's desk. Forcing the blade into the narrow crack between the false bottom and the side of the trunk, she pries it open.

"I knew it," she whispers as she is greeted with two familiar vials, each filled with midnight-black viscous liquid that she knows for a fact tastes like tar pitch, expensive cigar smoke and sourest lemon.

There was no way Fig brewed enough Polyjuice potion for only one bottle. There had to be more. His mischievous smile of 'you never know when you might need it' is still fresh in her mind.

Anna blessed Fig's precaution because it might just save Anne's life.

Two vials. Two hours she can appear to the world as an adult man. Doesn't particularly matter which one for this purpose, but that Black has an insufferably upper-crust profile and tone of voice is a bonus, for once.

After all... who would doubt a gentleman requesting a visit from the doctor to aid his poor niece, and has travelled so far to the capital, to get the best help available?

Anna tidies up the mess she made in her frantic search and replaces the false bottom of the trunk. She moves to leave the letter opener back on the table but pauses.

It's an elegant silver blade with an ornamental handle in the shape of a lion head, a garnet set in its eye.

She has nothing of Fig's to remember him by. Even the wand he let her borrow, once belonging to his now-deceased daughter, she gave back.

Would it be stealing, to keep this as a reminder?

Before she lets herself get tangled in the treacherous web of arguments and considerations, she pockets the paper knife and puts the vials of Polyjuice potion carefully into her bag.