Suffocating In Darkness

Chapter 18

The next day Harry confided in all of us the task that Dumbledore had set him, though separately, for Hermione still refused to remain in Ron's presence longer than it took to give him a contemptuous look. Oliver, Harry, Lyra and I all had a bet going on how long this will last.

Ron thought that Harry was unlikely to have any trouble with Slughorn at all.

'He loves you,' he said over breakfast, waving an airy forkful of fried egg. 'Won't refuse you anything, will he? Not his little Potions Prince. Just hang back after class this afternoon and ask him.'

'I don't know, if Slughorn wants it hidden...' Oliver told Harry fairly. 'I've known him most my life and he's never mentioned Horcruxes. I wonder what they are.'

Hermione, however, took a gloomier view.

'He must be determined to hide what really happened if Dumbledore couldn't get it out of him,' she said in a low voice, as we stood in the deserted, snowy courtyard at break. 'Horcruxes ... Horcruxes ... I've never even heard of them ...'

'You haven't?'

We were disappointed; we had hoped that Hermione might have been able to give us a clue as to what Horcruxes were.

Lyra was silent, she was deep in thought, I suspected that she was thinking of Horcruxes. That's when she gasped before running off.

'LYRA!' I called after her.

'I'LL EXPLAIN LATER!' She shouted back.

'They must be really advanced Dark magic, or why would Voldemort have wanted to know about them? I think it's going to be difficult to get the information, Harry, you'll have to be very careful about how you approach Slughorn, think out a strategy ...'

'Ron reckons I should just hang back after Potions this afternoon ...'

'Oh, well, if Won-Won thinks that, you'd better do it,' she said, flaring up at once. 'After all, when has Won-Won's judgement ever been faulty?'

'Hermione, can't you -'

'No!' she said angrily, and stormed away, leaving us alone and ankle-deep in snow.

Potions lessons were uncomfortable enough these days, seeing as Harry, Oliver, Ron and Hermione had to share a desk.

Today, Hermione moved her cauldron around the table so that she was close to Ernie, and ignored both Harry and Ron. Oliver moved over to my table because a message came through that Lyra wasn't going to be in the lesson.

'What has Harry done?' Olicer muttered to me, looking at Hermione's haughty profile.

But before I could answer, Slughorn was calling for silence from the front of the room.

'Settle down, settle down, please! Quickly, now, lots of work to get through this afternoon! Golpalott's Third Law ... who can tell me -? But Miss Granger can, of course!'

Hermione recited at top speed: 'Golpalott's-Third-Law- states-that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-to- more-than-the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-separale- components.'

'Precisely!' beamed Slughorn. Ten points for Gryffindor! Now, if we accept Golpalott's Third Law as true ..."

I was going to have to take Slughorn's word for it that Golpalott's Third Law was true, because I couldn't understand any of it. Nobody apart from Hermione seemed to be following what Slughorn said next, either.

'... which means, of course, that assuming we have achieved correct identification of the potion's ingredients by Scarpin's Revelaspell, our primary aim is not the relatively simple one of selecting antidotes to those ingredients in a of themselves, but to find that added component which will, by an almost alchemical process, transform these disparate elements -'