Harry Potter and The Last Horcrux

My Lost Conscience

"You-Know-Who thought to have been spotted again?" Ginny questioned out loud. "That's complete nonsense. Rita Skitter must have passed on her skill of 'making something interesting with a few fibs' to the current Daily Prophet writer."

"Harry?" Hermione asked me to see what I was doing. "What book did you get that information on the Drifter from?"

I sat up and held out the large, old book in my hand.

"It's called Dark Magic and Potions," I answered as I gave it to her.

She and Ginny examined the page of the book on Drifters as Ron and I had a conversation.

"Do you think Percy is going to send more Aurors to Hogwarts since there was a possibility of seeing...him?" I asked Ron.

"Well, I could always owl him to tell him not to," Ron shrugged. "I don't think he will. He was pretty disciplined as a teenager."

"Psh! Unlike someone I know!" Hermione scoffed behind us.

"Hey! The 'someone' is sitting right here!" Ron fired back jokingly.

I began to think about previous years at Hogwarts. There was Professor Quirrel...the possessed Ginny Weasley...Petter Pettigrew and my godfather, Sirius...the revival of Voldemort...the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army...the Half-Blood Prince's Potions book and the death of Dumbledore...the end of Voldemort - er, maybe not.

"Hey!" I exclaimed in realization. "Maybe we can use Professor Snape's old potion book to find something that could help us...I mean...there were even spells in that book. There's a good chance that there's a splash potion that can make the Drifter visible to us."

"That bloody brilliant!" Ron smiled in excitment.

"You guys go and find it...we'll stay here and get more research on Drifters," Ginny said.

"Alright...be safe," I said reluctantly as I left the Room of Requirement.

Ron and I were unfortunately caught in a large amount of students in all the hallways. We both walked along sides of the hallways and corridors to get to the Potions classroom. The students were all just released from class, so we had about five minutes to get to class before one of the very prompt students arrived to class. We finally made it to the Potions classroom, here the door was left ajar for students to come in. The Potions Professor stood there shocked to see us.

"Excuse me...professor...you wouldn't happen to have an old potions book in the closet would you?" I asked him.

"Yes I do, but before you start rummaging through old schoolbooks, my name is Professor Dirtwater," he said, "and yes, I do realize how hysterical my name is."

"Sir, we wouldn't have laughed at you anyway," I stuttered.

"Alright well you may get your book," he said as he let more students enter the classroom.

In the dusty closet, we found no books. Over the years they had switched to a different brand of textbooks for potions. After silently closing the closet, we stared at each other. I walked back over towards Professor Dirtwater to ask him about the book.

"Excuse me, Professor, but do you have an old book about potions that may have been here about seventeen years ago?" I asked as he began to look in his desk and personal library. "It's old...torn...and may have the name Half-Blood Prince on it?"

He leaned back up from his desk and gave it to me. I could tell by his face that he didn't exactly like me...or Ron as he stood in the back near the closet. We both left the classroom with chills up our spines.