ALULA (VOL. 4)

9- greengrass & gaunt

greengrass & gaunt

{1996}

Gryffindor Common Room

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Hogwarts seemed strangely normal in such dark times. For or the rest of the week's Potions lessons Harry continued to follow the Half-Blood Prince's instructions wherever they deviated from Libatius Borage's, with the result that by their fourth lesson Slughorn was raving about Harry's abilities, saying that he had rarely taught anyone so talented. Neither Ron nor Hermione was delighted by this. Alula was also slightly annoyed. Although Harry had offered to share his book with them, Ron had more difficulty deciphering the handwriting than Harry did, and could not keep asking Harry to read aloud or it might look suspicious. Hermione, meanwhile, was resolutely ploughing on with what she called the "official" instructions but becoming increasingly bad-tempered as they yielded poorer results than the Prince's. Alula had a feeling that she recognised the handwriting, but wanted to pass Potions on her own merit rather than the Prince's.

Harry and Alula wondered vaguely who the Half-Blood Prince had been. There was barely a page on which the Prince had not made additional notes, not all of them concerned with potion-making. Here and there were directions for what looked like spells that the Prince had made up himself.

"Or herself," said Hermione irritably, overhearing Harry pointing some of these out to Alula in the common room on Saturday evening. "It might have been a girl. I think the handwriting looks more like a girl's than a boy's."

"Mio-"

"The Half-Blood Prince, he was called," Harry said. "How many girls have been Princes?"

Hermione seemed to have no answer to this. She merely scowled and twitched her essay on The Principles of Re-materialization away from Ron, who was trying to read it upside down.

Harry looked at his watch and hurriedly put the old copy of Advanced Potion-Making back into his bag.

"It's five to eight, I'd better go, I'll be late for Dumbledore."

"Ooooh!" gasped Hermione, looking up at once. "Good luck! We'll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!"

"That means we want to actually know everything and not just the stuff you think we want to hear," Alula said, arms crossed.

"Got it," Harry said, smiling as he stretched the back of his head.

"Hope it goes okay," said Ron, and the three of them watched Harry leave through the portrait hole.

"So, Al..." Hermione started and watched Alula head rise from behind Romeo and Juliet.

"What?"

"What did you smell in the Amortentia?"