Suffocating In Darkness

Chapter 21

"You won't find anything in there," said Hermione firmly, late on Sunday evening as Harry searched his Potions book, hoping that the Prince would have scribbled something useful in a margin, for someway to persuade Slughorn to pass the memory over.

"Don't start, Hermione," said Harry. "If it hadn't been for the Prince, Ron wouldn't be sitting here now."

"He would if you'd just listened to Snape in our first year," said Hermione dismissively. "And Minnie knew!"

"Don't bring me into this!" I snapped at her.

Harry ignored her. I peered over his shoulder, Harry had just found an incantation "Sectumsempra!" scrawled in a margin above the intriguing words "For enemies," and was itching to try it out, but thought it best not to in front of Hermione.

Instead, he surreptitiously folded down the corner of the page. We were sitting beside the fire in the common room; the only other people awake were fellow sixth years. There had been a certain amount of excitement earlier when they had come back from dinner to find a new sign on the notice board that announced the date for the Apparition Test. Those who would be seventeen on or before the first test date, the twenty-first of April, had the option of signing up for additional practice sessions, which would take place (heavily supervised) in Hogsmeade.

Ron had panicked on reading this notice; he had still not managed to Apparate and feared he would not be ready for the test. Hermione, who had now achieved Apparition twice, was a little more confident, Oliver couldn't actually care less, he had become distracted lately, but Harry and I, who would not be seventeen for another four months, could not take the test whether ready or not.

"At least you can Apparate, though!" said Ron tensely. "You'll have no trouble come July!"

"I've only done it once," Harry reminded him; he had finally managed to disappear and rematerialize inside his hoop during our previous lesson.

"And we still can't take the test can we!" I scoffed.

Having wasted a lot of time worrying aloud about Apparition, Ron was now struggling to finish a viciously difficult essay for Snape that the rest of us had already completed. I fully expected to receive low marks on his, because I had disagreed with Snape on the best way to tackle dementors, but I did not care.

"I'm telling you, the stupid Prince isn't going to be able to help you with this, Harry!" said Hermione, more loudly. "There's only one way to force someone to do what you want, and that's the Imperius Curse, which is illegal -"

"Shut up Hermione!" I shouted at her slamming my book shut. "Nobody cares about your morals! Someone has outsmarted you, deal with it!"

That was the moment Oliver walked into the common room, he paused at our silence and put his bag down. "Hello everyone?"

"Yeah, I know that, thanks," said Harry, driving the conversation on from the awkward silence. "That's why I'm looking for something different. Dumbledore says Veritaserum won't do it, but there might be something else, a potion or a spell. . . ."

"You're going about it the wrong way," said Hermione. "Only you can get the memory, Dumbledore says. That must mean you can persuade Slughorn where other people can't. It's not a question of slipping him a potion, anyone could do that -"

"How do you spell 'belligerent'?" said Ron, shaking his quill very hard while staring at his parchment. "It can't be B - U - M -"

"No, it isn't," said Hermione, pulling Ron's essay toward her. "And 'augury' doesn't begin O - R - G either. What kind of quill are you using?"

"It's one of Fred and George's Spell-Check ones, but I think the charm must be wearing off."

"Yes, it must," said Hermione, pointing at the title of his essay, "because we were asked how we'd deal with dementors, not 'Dug-bogs', and I don't remember you changing your name to 'Roonil Wazlib' either."