AN: This is the lastest and last of the chapters that have been posted up on ff.net, my yahoogroup, and my website. The next update will be when I finish chapter 6. I do hope you all have enjoyed the fic so far. Happy Readings.
Chapter 5
Harry woke early the next morning and showered. He didn't bother trying to make his hair lie flat and simply brushed his teeth before heading downstairs. He traveled the hallways and staircases easily, having traversed them often in the past. Avoiding the Great Hall, Harry took the door to the right of the main staircase in the entrance hall.
All along the way paintings of food were being eaten by hungry portraits and animals from the upper floors. Harry watched in fascination for a moment at a young girl eating like a cow before shaking his head and briskly walking down a flight of stone steps into a wide corridor with gaily flickering torches. He came to a halt in front of a still life painting of a bowl of fruit halfway down and tickled the pear. Harry grabbed the handle it transfigured into and swept into the Hogwarts kitchens.
"Good morning, Mr. Potter," squeaked a house elf name Swibby, hurrying over.
"Morning, Swibby, can I get something to eat?"
Swibby nodded eagerly and suddenly Harry was being ushered forward by several house elves, all twittering excitedly. He was given freshly made rashers of scrambled eggs, kippers, and bacon. A plate of pancakes and waffles followed, along with fresh milk and orange juice. Wizarding cereal boxes filled the table and despite Harry's protests that he was very full they kept bringing him more.
Personally, Harry felt he was lucky to have made it out of there alive. The elves were always so determined to make him explode from the inside out by stuffing him until he burst. Harry went back up to the entrance hall and ducked into the Great Hall to pick up his schedule from his Head of House, Professor Flitwick, who was eating his breakfast with Snape at the head table.
"Morning Professor," Harry said politely, stepping up in front of the little half-man half-goblin. "Could I get my schedule if it's not too much trouble?"
Harry felt Snape's eyes on him and briefly met the older man's eyes before focusing more firmly on Flitwick. If Snape's glare could kill, Harry would have keeled over where he stood. Flitwick squeaked heartily and ignored Snape's death glare while grabbing from his satchel his students' schedules.
"I'm afraid my hands are still sticky," Professor Flitwick said, holding them out awkwardly between his palms. "Take them and get yours."
Harry took the stack from his Head of House and started rifling through them. He mentally snorted at Hermione's overloaded schedule. How that girl thought taking every N.E.W.T. class offered would help her, he didn't know. Harry shifted back further and found his nestled between Patil and Prachet.
"Thank you, Professor," he said, putting the rest down on the table before him. "Goodbye."
Flitwick beamed. "Goodbye!"
As Harry walked away he heard Snape sneer to Flitwick, "That Potter boy is up to something..." Harry snorted mentally, of course he was up to something, he was going to steal potion ingredients right out from under the Potion Master's nose. Snape just didn't know it yet.
Harry thought his schedule was utterly ridiculous. Transfigurations, Charms, and Potions on Mondays and Wednesdays and every alternate Friday? Transfigurations and Potions together on the same day! He couldn't believe his rotten luck. Then he had Ancient Runes, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Arithmancy on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every alternate Friday.
He made his way back to the Ravenclaw tower and crashed into Hermione as she was coming down. Harry feel down on his arse from the impact and Hermione squealed in horror.
"Merlin! I'm so sorry, Harry!" Hermione exclaimed, reaching down to help him up and hit him with her overloaded backpack.
"Ow!" Harry yelped, rubbing his head where the bag had smacked him when it fell down her arm.
"Oh goodness," Hermione murmured apologetically as Harry climbed to his feet.
"Trying to get rid of the competition for top student already, Hermione?" Harry asked teasingly, clutching his schedule tighter as he rubbed his head with the same hand.
Hermione turned red and opened her mouth to reply scathingly when Harry cut her off with a knowing grin. "You were trying to kill me off weren't you!"
"I was not!"
Harry enjoyed her flush for another minute before smirking and walking away up the stairs to their house.
"I was not!" Hermione shrieked, stomping her foot several stairs below him.
Harry tossed a lopsided grin over his shoulder. "Keep saying that Hermione, and maybe I'll believe it. See you in Transfigurations! Try not to kill anybody before then!"
"You're such a prat, Harry Potter!"
Harry chuckled and took the stairs two at a time, winding his way to the top. A stern librarian looked at him from her frame. She had horn-rimmed glasses with peacock feathers in her hair. Harry nodded to her as he gave the password, ookkee, from the word bookkeepers, and glided into the common room.
He saw Luna Lovegood petting an odd looking owl as she collected the newest edition of the Quibbler from it. A few other students were up and about. Ravenclaws, as a whole they liked to get up early and get the day started and work accomplished.
Harry took the right stairway and walked up to the boy's dormitories and walked into the one labeled 7th year. He saw Serion basking in the puddle of sunlight that struck his bedspread and quickly pulled the hangings shut so the others didn't see the snake and react badly to it. Serion hissed unintelligibly, already taking a nap for the morning. Harry knew the snake liked to sleep more than once during the day.
Grabbing his satchel, Harry opened his trunk and stuffed in it the books and things he'd need for the day's classes. He placed the preshrunk potions kit carefully in the side pocket, and the three textbooks he'd be carrying in on the other. A couple of ink wells, several quills, three rolls of parchment, and three notebooks later and he was ready to go.
§Later, Serion,§ Harry called after checking the others in his dormitory had gone into the shower or downstairs.
Serion raised his head and hissed angrily, §Stop talking or you'll ruin a perfectly good dream.§
Harry retorted, his voice laced with sarcasm, §A thousand apologies.§
Not bothering to see what the response to that would be, Harry ducked back downstairs and started making his way back to the main areas of the castle. He had Transfiguration first, and with Professor McGonagall;, he couldn't afford to be late. Especially because of how she acted towards him; it was like her panties were in a twist. He wasn't sure if she had wanted both Potter twins in her house or if she was upset that Harry was better than Daniel in her class.
McGonagall was standing beside her desk when Harry walked into her classroom. She didn't acknowledge him, merely continued to watch the door for more students. Harry didn't let it bother him and sat down at a table to the right of the classroom. He pulled out a notebook, a quill and well set, and his textbook and put them in front of him.
He started rereading the textbook, Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Transfigurations by Pollygonna Patterson. He was so absorbed reading the chapter about animagi that he didn't notice the first or second bell ring. The chattering students never penetrated his thoughts either. Harry did hear however, Professor McGonagall call the class to order and looked up surprised. He quickly set aside the textbook and snatched up his quill readying himself to do some note taking.
"Now that I have all of your attention, class. This is your N.E.W.T. year and I expect you all to do your best for them. They are what their title implies, so I suggest you do your class work and your outside schoolwork with enthusiasm and hard work. The rules of my class are stricter, the assignments more time-consuming, and my grading harsher. If you thought 5th year was bad, then you might reconsider taking Transfigurations as a N.E.W.T. level course. By the end of the week, this offer is no longer available. Shall we get right to it?"
Harry wrote furiously as Professor McGonagall went on to lecturing about turning a wombat into a sugar glider. Later during the double period, they got to practice on imported wombats. McGonagall had asked Hermione to pass them out. She'd given one to everybody but Harry when she was done and Harry wrinkled his nose in disgust.
Back to normal.
He didn't bother to raise his hand and ask for one, instead he silently sent an accio at the remaining creature and flew it over to his desk. It took several tries and a few rereads on the lesson from his notes before he got it right. The sugar glider was disgustingly cute and very tiny. How he had ended up making a baby one, Harry wasn't too sure, but he did do it and looked over at McGonagall.
But Professor McGonagall wasn't paying attention seeing as all of her attention was on Hermione who was biting her lip in frustration. Harry watched her wand movements for a few moments before turning back to his desk and playing with the fuzz ball he'd transfigured.
Harry transfigured his inkwell into a foam ball for the sugar glider. He watched the little critter run after the ball before it tired itself out and fell asleep. It was just as well because the dismissal bell rang and it was time to pack up.
"Since nobody was able to correctly transfigure his or her wombat before the end of the class, I expect a 2 foot scroll to be written on what you were doing wrong."
Groans were heard round about the class at her announcement and Harry rolled his eyes.
"Figures," Harry muttered, banishing his sugar glider back into the box not bothering to untransfigure the thing. Let McGonagall try and figure out who did it.
"I also expect from you lot at least 3 hours of practice or until you are proficient with the spell. The wombats will be available after scheduled class hours. You are dismissed."
Harry trotted after the rest of the Ravenclaws out of the classroom and watched with bemusement as several broke off and headed out to Care of Magical Creatures. Professor Hagrid was nice and all, but Harry couldn't believe anybody would be foolish enough to take his class considering what he thought to be cute and cuddly, let alone a Ravenclaw.
Through a crowd of students up ahead, Harry saw Hermione walking quickly with her head down. She, like he himself, was probably headed to the Charms classroom. He also figured she was muttering the incantation and waving her wand in hoping to have the spell mastered by the end of the day.
Not bothering to catch up with her, Harry walked along through the herd of students rushing to their next class and tried to find the quickest way to do that. Doing that of course took a lot of luck since the classes moved around as did the stairwells and most secret passages. When the rush of the first week died down, most of the classrooms stayed on the same corridor, but not always. Of course, the smart student would have mastered a point me spell and do as Harry was doing, consulting with it and maneuvering his way steadily through the halls of Hogwarts.
He reached the classroom in plenty of time to locate a seat close to the podium his Head of House taught from. Stacked on the stool beside it were tons of books that the short Professor stood on. Hermione walked in behind a gaggle of girls from Gryffindor and it was then that Harry realized this class was a double house class.
"Great," Harry said out loud, folding his arms over his textbook and resting his chin on them. "Just what I need, seeing and hearing my brother before lunch."
Most of the class was mingling amongst each other when Flitwick called them to order. He climbed up onto his stack of books and proceeded to lecture everybody about the importance of N.E.W.T.s and what was to be expected of them. This Harry tuned out taking the time to plot against Snape and figure out how to get into his hoard of potion supplies.
Harry's attention was diverted from his devious task when Professor Flitwick cleared his throat and said, "We're going to go a little off schedule and cover something that we weren't going to cover until after Professor Hobday went over them in his class."
Flitwick looked around at them, his face suddenly a little grimmer. "If it weren't for the efforts of Daniel Potter here, a little girl would have died from the attack on the train."
At this Daniel ducked his head trying to look modest beside Ron as the gaggle of girls that had followed Hermione inside swooned in delight and a few other Gryffindor boys reached over and patted him on the back.
"Professor Dumbledore thought it would be beneficial for you to know how to deal with them. Does anybody know the type of creature that attacked the train?"
Hermione raised her hand immediately and Harry mentally snorted.
"Yes, Miss Granger?" Flitwick asked eagerly.
"Tragoloths, sir. They are deviations of the Lethifold and instead of sucking consciousness and eating flesh, they snack on a witch or wizard's magic. If they get the chance, like a Dementor, they will try to kiss you. Their kiss will steal your magical core however instead of your soul."
"Very good, Miss Granger, 10 points to Ravenclaw."
Hermione beamed and opened her notebook to tally the points in her running log. She liked to keep track of how much points she earned Harry knew, and even went so far as to categorize them by class and cross-categorize by week and theme. It was almost as if she was trying to set and beat her own personal records.
"Does anybody know how to fend off a Tragoloth?"
Daniel tentatively raised his hand and Professor Flitwick called on him. "I used the incantations Expecto Patronum and Magica Esse, sir."
"Partially true," Flitwick said, nodding. "5 points to Gryffindor. The Patronus charm doesn't actually work against the Tragoloth. The use of it however in the skirmish was a good idea to boost the morale of those fighting."
Ron looked upset at the number of points awarded and was turning an infamous Weasley red as Harry looked on. Daniel was practically preening under the female attention that Parvati, Lavender, and Jessica gave him so adoringly. Some boys from both houses were looking on with envy.
Harry took notes finally when his Head of House got to lecturing. He took careful notes when Flitwick got around to explaining why and how the Magical Essence Shield worked. They then broke off into pairs and practiced.
Daniel made a translucent silver shield on his first try and Flitwick remarked that it must have been the adrenaline of what was happening on the train that pushed it to completion. Hermione made a slightly more solid shield and Harry with three stabs of his wand produced a flawless shield in one go. Professor Flitwick didn't see it and Harry let it drop.
Students were beginning to form faint shields by the end of the period and Professor Flitwick assigned them an foot-long essay due by the end of the week on how the ME Shield Charm was designed to tackle the Tragoloth and how that differed from the Patronus Charm working against a Dementor.
It was time for lunch and every student was shoving their way out the door to get to their house table before the food was all eaten. Every hallway was jammed with kids from first years to seventh years trying to navigate to the Great Hall. Harry saw Draco picking on some third year and silently sent a tripping hex his way as he passed by the Slytherin.
The Great Hall was crowded and very noisy. Harry could see Ron and Daniel picking up food from the table and stuffing it in their mouths as they made their way to their seats. Hermione was buried in a book with a sandwich in front of her untouched. Luna was dreamily sitting across from her with her new Quibbler upside down.
Harry decided to sit next to them and plopped his book bag beside Hermione's on the floor. He sat down on the bench and started grabbing food from the nearby dishes. Neither girl glanced his way as he heaped ridiculous quantities of fish and chips on his plate. He took a couple of dill pickles and placed them on the side then poured himself a tall glass of pumpkin juice to go with his meal.
As he ate, Harry glanced thoughtfully up at the head table. His eyes met Professor Snape's momentarily before he smirked and looked away. He knew just how dismal potions was going to be this year, but he'd get even with the greasy git. The best way to do that was to steal from his storage cupboard. The mystery would drive the man crazy.
First he'd need a good distraction during class time. Harry chewed his fish for a minute in contemplation of a good distraction. Then it came to him. He glanced carefully out of the corner of his eyes at Hermione who was reading up on their potions book trying to memorize it all before class so she could earn their house points. Fat chance at that, Harry thought.
With the distraction in place, Harry pondered over how he'd get to the cupboard and break the wards around it without alerting Snape. He'd have to analyze the wards again, because he was sure Snape had altered them from the last time he broke into the cupboard. Then he'd have to get in, steal the ingredients, get out, replace the wards, and get back to his seat. From there he'd have to hide the evidence and hurry his potion along so that it'd be on track with everyone else's.
Harry left the Great Hall when he was done eating and made his way to the library to collect some reading material for his essays assigned earlier that morning. Madam Pince watched him beadily, making Harry extremely uncomfortable. She'd never bothered with him before so why was she glaring at him now? Shaking off the irritable itch between his shoulders, Harry browsed the aisles and finally selected three books for the essays. Madam Pince begrudgingly stamped the books out and gave them to him and Harry scurried down to the dungeons as fast as he could.
Professor Snape's class was the only class Harry sat himself down in the back and not in the front. The reason for this was because Snape was an evil arse who took pleasure in insulting Harry by telling the whole class how he wanted to be like his arrogant brother and have all the fame.
The potion lab was empty upon his arrival and Harry knew why too. Nobody liked to be in Professor Snape's class longer than they absolutely had to be. Many would show up just as the final bell rang and try to sneak into their seats.
Harry set his stuff down on the table before him and unpacked his potions kit. He waved his wand and silently cast the unshrinking spell. His cauldron and ingredients grew and grew and grew until Harry cut the spell off with a flick of his wrist. Best have all "wand-waving" finished with before class started considering Snape's dim view on the subject.
Harry grabbed an abused lime green notebook from his bag and opened to a fresh page. He labeled the top with the date, school year, and title of the potion. Then he copied furiously all the instructions from the board onto the clean blank pages. Afterwards he double-checked to make sure he didn't miss a line anywhere.
Next Harry flipped the textbook to the correct pages on the potion, which was Lulijuice and double checked the instructions he wrote down. Snape was known to purposefully switch one little thing that would ruin the potion. Other times he placed improvements in the production of the potion. Harry used the remaining time before class to figure out which was which and make sure that his instructions were as perfect as they could be.
The class was filing in and Harry noted with a wince that he shared it with Hufflepuffs. The Badgers were notorious for exploding more cauldrons on a daily basis than Neville Longbottom in a year. Harry could just see the destruction now as he eyed Justin Finch-Fletchley and Ernie Macmillan taking their positions near the front of the class.
The rest paired up and sat down, leaving Harry by himself in the back. Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones sat with Hermione at the other desk in the front row. Terry Boot and Anthony Goldstein sat behind them and started unpacking their things. He was okay with this as he wasn't too sure he'd want to be paired with a Hufflepuff. Now Hermione on the other hand, wouldn't make a bad partner but she'd already tripled up with two other girls. Her friends, Padma and Su, were nowhere to be seen and Harry guessed correctly that the pair were with Professor Butterworth in N.E.W.T. Muggle Studies.
The doors banged open behind him and Harry mentally rolled his eyes. The dramatic entrances were getting old. Snape immediately launched into the importance of N.E.W.T. level potions. He went on to describe how his course would be extremely difficult this year and that he had the rights to throw out any he found wanting. At the last, Snape had met his eyes and smirked at him.
Harry resisted the urge to give him a finger and pasted a bored look on his face. Snape's eyes narrowed and Harry felt a prickling sensation behind his left eye. Dropping his gaze, Harry immediately felt better.
"Great," Harry muttered aloud. "The git must be getting laser vision."
"What was that Potter?" Snape sneered next to him. "Trying to stand out from your brother again?"
"I said nothing, Professor."
"Then you will get started on the Lulijuice, Potter," Snape returned silkily and glided back to the front of the classroom.
The other students took this as their cue to unpack and get started. Harry stood up to go to the student storage cupboard and get out the ingredients for the potion. He grabbed lacewing flies, sappy weed, mandagora leaves, green-glider skin, and squid ink. As he passed by the Hermione's table flashed a grin her way and headed on past to the back.
Deftly organizing his ingredients in accordance to order of placement into the potion, Harry got everything ready. He read over the first few lines of instructions from his notebook and grabbed a knife. With ease, Harry chopped the green-glider skin into sickle size pieces before setting it aside. He ran his finger down the page and found the next set of preparation lines and set to work. He shredded the sappy weed, ground the mandagora leaves, measured out a half-vial of squid ink, and chopped lacewing flies.
By the time Harry was done with prep work, the classroom was filled with pale pastel colored smoke. Hermione's was blue whereas the two girls at her table and the those two tables back had yellow and Ernie and Justin had pink. Harry shook his head, wondering how on earth some of the students had made it into Snape's N.E.W.T. class.
Harry poured in his base and added two beakers of water and set the potion to boil. The minute it started boiling, Harry took it off the flame and carefully stirred green-glider skin in, one piece at a time. His potion emitted cerulean colored fumes once he set it back onto the burner.
Sappy weed he just tossed in to let it stew for fifteen minutes while he stirred counterclockwise the whole time. He didn't let up on the motion and the potion started to swirl. It turned a deep sea green and Harry knew he was doing good. He strained the weed out and poured the finely powdered mandagora leaves into the cauldron. Twelve minutes on a low simmer later and Harry was mixing the squid ink into the potion and watching as it turned yellow-green.
Harry had one final ingredient to place into his potion and ten minutes before he could do it. In the downtime he wrote his observations from the process down at the end of the written instructions. Harry detected movement to his left and looked up sharply. Snape was peering down into his cauldron, his long beaky nose practically in the bubbling liquid. Harry held his breath.
If one thing was even slightly off, Snape would evanesco the whole cauldron and give Harry a zero for the day. He'd then take points off and attempt to assign him a detention. He let out a sigh of relief when Snape grudgingly walked away down another aisle to torment some Hufflepuffs.
Near the end of the lesson, Harry added the lacewing flies and placed a stopper in a sample vial of his potion. He then snuck a beaker full of his potion into his potions kit before Snape saw and evanesced the rest away. He cleaned up his area and carefully took his potion ingredients to the front.
After Hermione had stopped a vial of her potion he set his plan into motion. From across the room by the student store cupboard, Harry cast a silent wingardium leviso on a jar of dung beetles with his wand and sent it her way. Hermione backed right into the floating jar and it toppled over into Susan Bones' potion just before she cleared it away. The results were immediate.
A large boom echoed throughout the room as Susan's potion exploded. The girls and Professor Snape were coated in thick yellow slime and it didn't take long for Snape to start yelling at them. Harry ran over to Snape's personal stores and started analyzing his wards.
Four tense minutes later, Harry got them unwound and the cupboard opened without alerting the still ranting Potions Master. Quickly scanning the shelves Harry started to cast multiple accios on the items he needed and stuffed them into his robes. In under two minutes he had enough stolen ingredients to make both animagus potions and quickly shut the cupboard door.
He was sweating now, and had to wipe his face with the sleeve of his robe before setting the wards back up. Harry's spectacles were fogging because of his heavy breathing by the time he was done. Shortly after he was slinging his backpack over his shoulder and sprinting down the hallway to dinner, his heart hammering wildly the whole way. The best laid plans were always the most obvious.