Elliot Tanner and the World's Curse

Lacewings and Spectres

I was let out of the Hospital Wing the next day when I reported no more hallucinations. I slept soundly, probably from exhaustion more so than any sense of inner peace. I found Amit in the Great Hall and we fell into our normal routine. He caught me up on the classes I missed, and then we joked about how lame quidditch players are. Everyone wanted everything to go back to normal, and our wish was powerful enough to make it so.

My secret strategy for normalcy was simple: lie all the time. I'm sure Godric Gryffindor was rolling over in his grave at my genuine lack of morality, but things were worse when I talked about my plans to other people. That was when I had to explain myself, to make sense of my desires. If I didn't tell anyone that I wanted Polyjuice Potion, I wouldn't have to look in their eyes as they asked me if I was a pervert or delinquent. I didn't have to justify using a potion from the restricted section. I didn't have to explain how I was going to make it in secret while I stewed lacewings for twenty one days.

Oh, don't get me started on the lacewings.

Sure, they're easy enough to get your hands on, but the smell is absolutely horrid. Keeping an open flame under a cauldron for twenty-one days was more than hard. Doing it while attending classes and not having anyone wonder why you're making a restricted potion was tricky. But absolutely nothing compared to hiding the smell. I failed to hide most of my attempts in janitor's closets or trying to create huge bags of holding out of pocket dimensions. I had to ask Amit for some money after my fourth batch soured in less than a day. He asked me what it was for, and I told him I was looking into getting a pet rat for a familiar.

A pet rat.

From the look in his eye, I don't think Amit bought it. But he didn't ask any questions, and when I had no rat a few days later, I said it died already and pretended to be in mourning. That conveniently also explained why I was being so aloof and looked tired all the time whenever someone asked. "His rat died," Amit would say, and everyone gave me a sad look and left me alone.

Note the brilliance of my strategy.

However, with the tiny amount of money I conned my best friend out of (I saved feeling guilty for the quiet hours of the morning, which was also when I told myself I was neurotic and losing control for risking my life at Hogwarts all over a single glance in a mirror), I knew I couldn't waste the last batch of lacewings. In the end, I went to Asia and asked where she stewed her lacewings for our potion.

And that's how I learned about an abandoned girls' bathroom on the second floor above the Great Hall. Absolutely no one went there because it was haunted, the scene of multiple murders, and apparently the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets that Harry Potter and his Scooby Gang opened last year.

It was perfect.

So it wasn't until late September that I began stewing my potion for twenty one days, which meant I wouldn't be able to actually drink my Polyjuice Potion until late October. In the meantime, I depended on my strategy. If Amit asked where I was going whenever I had to check on the lacewings, I told him McGonagall wanted me to try out my transformation into a cat. I had no problem becoming one — I managed a beautiful ginger American Bobtail — but it was changing back that I struggled with. It took a while, and if I pulled it off, I often ended up with some unfortunate side effects: tail, fur, whiskers, ears, wrong eyes, an urge to claw the walls, or a genuine need to flail around at three in the morning.

Besides, it was easier to sneak around the castle as a cat than as myself.

So I went to class, studied, did homework, ate with Amit, attended tutoring sessions with McGonagall, and watched my potion. I had to cut some things out, like doing anything remotely fun with Amit. He was a wizard's chess addict, and I fancied a game or twelve-hundred myself, but I told him I was busy mourning Tom (the name of the imagined rat was Tomfoolery, Tom for short). Amit seemed to get over Madeline, and though I expected him to latch onto someone else, he hadn't. Or if he had, it was one of the things that didn't come up over meals or walking between classes. It was unfortunate to let the distance build between us, especially after his kind words in the Hospital Wing, but if we started talking about girls and our inner lives, it wouldn't be long until he found out what I was up to. And I didn't know how to explain to him that what I wanted was the exact opposite of what he understood (proving I'm a real man).