Demigods at Hogwarts 2 (Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince)

Chapter 6

Hi guys,

Sorry it's been so long since I updated. I've been really busy again, but I couldn't stop think about the fact I hadn't updated in ages. Thank you to the people who commented, asking me to update, it really motivated me.

Also sorry for the random 3rd person POV for this chapter, that's what I've been writing other stuff in recently, and I just automatically wrote in that. Enjoy the chapter.

As soon as Professor Slughorn dismissed them, Harry made a dash for the storage cupboard. He had no textbook for this subject, as he had not expected to take it, and as such he had to borrow one from the school until he could order his own. Ron had the same issue.

They reached the cupboard at the same time, scanning the heavily loaded shelves for the book they needed. Harry was the first to notice the small pile of textbooks, hidden under a glass jar filled with some... fairly unsavoury looking things.

He lent forward to grab the book on top, but Ron saw what he was doing. Harry and Ron both seized the book, locking themselves in a silent battle to get the better looking textbook. Ron won, yanking the textbook out of Harry's hand and walking away. Harry grabbed the only other textbook, the one covered in graffiti, and ran to catch up to him.

They arrived back at their bench together. Hermione had already started her potion, and Annabeth and Percy weren't far behind. Nico, Thalia, and Hazel had dropped this class, so it was just the five of them in the dungeon.

Harry and Ron prepared their ingredients. As Harry worked, he examined his textbook. It was covered in old fashioned handwriting. The previous owner had scribbled all over the pages, and left notes in the margins, making it hard to decipher the text.

The five students worked in silence, the mood in the room heavy. Each person wanted the reward for themselves. Harry glanced at Draco, who was staring into his cauldron with a look of confusion and desperation. He saw Harry looking at him, and glared at him angrily. Harry turned back to his own textbook, which now instructed him to cut the bean. Whoever the old owner was, they had crossed out this instruction, instead telling the user to crush the bean. Harry decided to go with the person's annotations. What could go wrong?

Harry easily crushed the bean, releasing a copious amount of juice. He poured the juice into his cauldron, and continued following the textbook's instructions.

"Harry, did you just crush that bean?" Annabeth asked.

"Yeah."

"The book says to cut the bean, not crush it," Hermione interjected.

"The previous owner of my book wrote a note that said to crush it, I figured I might as well try that."

"Don't just follow some random instructions! What if they're dangerous?"

"It's fine, Hermione," Harry reassured her.

While they were talking, Annabeth had walked up behind Harry, and started reading the notes in the book. She started talking before Hermione could respond.

"Whoever wrote these notes, it sounds like they knew what they were talking about, and you can't deny that the textbook instructions are not very good," she said, indicating at her sadly dark potion.

"Maybe you just missed a step," Hermione suggested.

"And you missed the exact same step, along with the entire class, bar Harry and Percy? That seems unlikely."

Hermione didn't reply, and Annabeth returned to her seat.

Harry worked further down the recipe, following the printed instructions. He continued making his potion, as instructed, until he reached the last step. He stopped and consulted the book again. The previous owner had annotated this step, instructing the user to stir the potion six times anti clockwise, and one clockwise, as opposed to the textbook, which instructed seven anti clockwise stirs.

The writer clearly knew what they were talking about before, and Harry decided to go with what they suggested, ignoring Hermione's advice. He followed the handwritten instructions, and soon he had a perfect potion.

Looking around the classroom, only one other person had a good potion. Percy lazily stirred his lilac potion, which looked to be the exact right colour. Being the son of the God of the Sea, and by extension water, definitely gave him an unfair advantage in this class. Annabeth's was almost as good, a slightly darker shade of purple that the book said it should be. Clearly Percy had helped her.

Hermione stood over her cauldron, a dark look on her face. There was a smear of soot on her temple, and her hair seemed to be extra frizzy. She was muttering to herself furiously, consulting her textbook religiously, her potion a dark shade of purple. Ron's potion was a mess, but he didn't seem to really care.

The potions of the rest of the class were in varying states of disaster. Draco's wasn't too bad, and a few of the other students had fair potions. Crabbe's potion was an ugly shade of green, and seemed to resemble a thick custard in consistency. There were a few other terrible potions, but none quite as bad as Draco's sidekick's.

As the class drew to an end, Slughorn began examining each cauldron. He pronounced Hermione's good, and Annabeth's excellent. He avoided Ron's, congratulating him on his effort. He saw Percy's and clapped excitedly, before looking at Harry's.

"Great job both of you!" He said to them.

"Potter and Jackson have both brewed a perfect potion, come and have a look after I have seen you potion please," he announced to the class, before continuing around the classroom.

Hermione looked livid.

"How did you make such a perfect potion?" She interrogated Harry and Percy.

"Water god magic," Percy replied, looking dead serious, before turning back to Annabeth with a laugh.

"I followed the instructions in my textbook," Harry explained.

"You followed unofficial instructions, with no idea what they would do!" she cried.

"Relax 'Mione, nothing bad's going to happen. This person just knew how to make potions."

"Is there a name in the book, maybe we could find out who wrote the notes," Annabeth suggested, interrupting Hermione's continuing tirade.

Harry turned to the inside front cover, and read the name.

"The Half-Blood Prince."

"Weird name," Percy said.

Annabeth sighed at him.

"Do you know anyone who goes by the nickname Half-Blood Prince."

"No."

"Well then-"

As Hermione prepared to argue her her point, Slughorn cleared his throat.

"Congratulations everybody, this is quite a challenging potion to brew, and most people did admirably. I will now award this prize of Felix Felicis to Mr Potter, and Mr Jackson, as they both brewed perfect potions."

"Harry can have it," Percy said quickly.

"How nice of you Mr Jackson, here you go Mr Potter, you're lucky to have such a great friend in Mr Jackson. Now that is the end of class, go find yourselves something to eat."

The classroom was filled with sound of scraping chairs and chattering. Hermione took the chance to start her argument again.

"Put it back now Harry, don't play with things you don't understand."

"It's not doing me any harm Hermione, in fact, it helped me quite a lot today, in case you didn't notice."

"Harry please, I don't want to have another Tom Riddles's diary to deal with."

"Relax Hermione," Harry said as they walked out of the classroom. Hermione finally stopped talking at him when they met met up with Nico, Thalia, and Hazel in the corridor, and began discussing their classes.

Another Authors Note: Also, WHY IS THE TEXTBOOK WRONG? Sure, textbooks sometimes have a few mistakes, no one's infallible, but this is ridiculous. Did no one test the book? Did no one complain? How lax is Hogwarts? This really infuriates me for some reason.