Slythedor

Slythedor

You may belong in Gryffindor,

Where dwell the brave at heart,

Their daring, nerve and chivalry

Set Gryffindors apart;

You might belong in Hufflepuff,

Where they are just and loyal,

Those patient Hufflepuffs are true

And unafraid of toil;

Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,

If you've a ready mind,

Where those of wit and learning,

Will always find their kind;

Or perhaps in Slytherin

You'll make your real friends,

These cunning folk use any means

To achieve their ends.

-The Sorting Hat, Welcoming Feast, 1991

Gabriel wasn't particularly tall, nor particularly dark, nor particularly handsome. In fact, he was just... average. He had red hair, the colour of sunset on a clear evening, and eyes of a strange green-gold colour. His marks in school were average; he passed every subject, but not exceptionally well, unlike his friend Rebecca. Gabriel was quite the gentleman, though, the kind who would refuse to sit till all the ladies were seated. He also tended to rush into things without really thinking about the consequences, or rather, without thinking at all. This could be both endearing and annoying, as found out later on.

Rebecca's cousin Samuel, on the other hand, was tall and handsome, with skin as pale, maybe even paler, as Rachel's. He was blonde and had piercing green eyes, and was the object of many people's affections. He was also really ambitious; he wanted to rule the world - bring all the people, magical or not, human or not, together as one. He planned, unlike Gabriel, and nothing stood in his way once he wanted to do something.

Gabriel really couldn't stand Samuel.

Rebecca was, if possible, even more average than Gabriel. She had brown hair and deep blue eyes, and her only redeeming quality was her intelligence, which was superior to most twice her age. She could do sums that took mathematicians half an hour to do in ten minutes, and, according to most of the mages who had tested her, had an intelligence level of 589, 259 more than the average eighteen-year-old.

Of course, one couldn't forget Hannah, the willowy blonde with the obsidian eyes. She was unswervingly loyal to Rebecca, and sometimes one couldn't help but wonder what it was that made Hannah so attractive. Her looks were all right, as females went, but there were so many more beautiful. Perhaps it was the fact that Hannah stood by her friends no matter what, and that her sense of justice was the only thing that could possibly break that loyalty. Or perhaps it was the bravery that only she had, not the blind courage of Gabriel, nor the underhand ruthlessness of Samuel - just the quiet, understated feeling of right and wrong that was purely Hannah.

These four friends [if you counted Gabriel and Samuel as friends] were taught their magic by Samuel's father, Theodore Stanton. There were no schools for magical children, as the magic folk were still trying to keep it all a secret from the non-magical people, the Muggles.

It was the 15^th of September that the four had their first great idea. All right, their first great collective idea. Rebecca supplied enough good ideas to last three generations, and Samuel's ideas were usually very entertaining, if not great.

"Let's set up a wizarding school."

--

Approximately one thousand, three hundred and fifty-two years later, something was brewing deep in the bowels of the same wizarding school the four had set up. A simple sleeping draught, it was, but the brewer had forgotten about its existence and the small cauldron was left where it had been - above a small fire, in a corner of the room. The fire was magical, so it didn't die out, and the potion, a blue liquid that was about two weeks old, was still simmering gently. It occasionally let out a bubble or two of gas, which rose to the surface of the liquid, grew and then popped with a sharp slapping sound. Wisps of white swirled through the potion like clouds in a summer sky.

This potion, originally meant for the user to have nothing more than a sound night's sleep, was now lethal enough to kill with just one drop. Nobody knew this, however. The cauldron was in a corner with horrible acoustics, and each time the bubbles popped, the sound was small enough to be drowned out by the noise in the next room. The liquid smelled horrible, so the spiders and insects that crawled past avoided it like the Plague of the Tiny Creatures.

However, like all rooms, this room had to be cleaned out. And when the house elf in charge of cleaning this particular room saw the cauldron, he put out the fire, brought it to a bathroom and poured the contents down a sink. It was probably useless now, he reasoned, and wouldn't harm anything.

His reasoning couldn't be any further from the truth.

--

Severus Snape was the Potions professor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the world's second-best Potions Master and a Death Eater spy. He was also a thirty-eight year old with little patience for house elves who didn't do things that they were specifically told to do. Severus didn't like yelling at the timid little things but sometimes they just...

"I told you lot not to wash my robes together with the rest of the school's! They're to be hand-washed, not magically washed, and the water just ruined yet another set! This is the fourth now! Anymore and I'll kick the lot of you out."

The little green creature nodded fearfully. "Yes, Mister Professor sir, Indy will tell them right away, sir."

"Yes, yes, now go."

The elf fled. Severus sighed and shook his head. Twenty Galleons down the drain again. So far it added up to about ninety. The pay here at Hogwarts wasn't shabby, and he had quite a large inheritance, but ninety Galleons was a lot. Not to mention that the newest ruined set of robes had been an original by Hannah Henderson. Not that anyone noticed.

Needless to say, Severus was in quite a bad mood when the bell rang, signalling the start of classes for the day. Seventh year Slytherins and Gryffindors. Harry Potter and his lot. Great.

"Make sure your cauldrons are washed properly," he instructed the students. "Any magical residue could render the potion we're making today useless or fatal, depending on your skills." He shot Neville Longbottom a look as he said that. The boy was liable to make the potion useless anyway.

"Now, make sure the fire is at a constant 96 degrees, and fill the cauldron with water..."

The lesson proceeded splendidly. Severus hardly had to yell the whole day. Even Longbottom's potion seemed to be all right.

"Good, everything seems to be in order. Switch vials with your partner and sprinkle some of the potion onto the flowers."

If everything had been correct, the daisies in the pot would have started to glow. However, every single plant either exploded or wilted.

"What the - what happened?" A few students were clutching at their eyes, which had been injured in the explosion. Severus sent them to the hospital wing, and put everyone else to cleanup work. "And nobody touch the potions. I want to find out what happened."

Severus had cause to be worried, especially after the report from Madam Pomfrey came back. The students were temporarily blinded, and not because of the intense glare of the explosions or fragments of the pots or any other physical cause. They had been blinded magically. They would recover, of course, but it could take days, maybe weeks, or even months.

Hermione Granger couldn't help but scream when she heard the news - how would she ever be able to keep up with the homework? Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, her two best friends, thought of an idea; they could record the lessons on tape and then play it back for her. Hermione shattered that idea by reminding them that electronics like tape recorders and such did not work in Hogwarts. And that they really should read Hogwarts: A History.

"No point, Hermione, you know it too well, if we quoted from there, you'd correct our punctuation or something. We could ask someone to charm the recorder for us, and then it could work," Ron mused.

"Will that work? I wonder what happened. The way Snape was acting... it was really out of character. And having everyone's potion go wrong at the same time is far too strange to be a prank. I mean, Malfoy and Parvati are still unconscious," Harry added, glancing over at the dark girl and pale boy at opposite ends of the ward.

"Yeah, well, I guess we'll know sooner or later. It's dinnertime, and you know my brain doesn't work on an empty stomach." Ron said his goodbyes to Hermione and went to the door. "Harry, come on, the good food will be taken if we don't hurry!"

Harry leaned closer to Hermione to tell her, "I know his brain doesn't work, empty stomach or not." Then he straightened, said bye to Hermione and ran to join Ron.

Meanwhile, Severus Snape was conducting test after test on the potions. He had taken Draco Malfoy's and Hermione Granger's as samples; they were by far the best in the class, and if theirs had gone wrong...

"Ingredients correct, amount correct, everything was put into the cauldron in order... what in the world went wrong?" Severus muttered to himself.

"Might I suggest running a test for magical reasons? The students were blinded by magic, after all."

Severus would have jumped, had he not been trained as a Death Eater for over ten years. He whirled around, wand ready, and faced Albus Dumbledore.

"Hello, Severus."

"Stop sneaking up on me like that," Severus muttered, turning back to the potions. A test for magic sounded like a good idea. In fact, he should have thought of it himself. Damn. He waved the wand and mumbled something, revealing a few layers of colour over the potion like a mist.

"Green, yes, that's the potion. But what's this blue?"

Dumbledore leaned over to take a better look. "Blue? It looks more like grey to me. I think it's cause for worry."

"No, really, I hadn't realised." Severus rolled his eyes. Dumbledore liked to state the blatantly obvious. "No magic is blue, Albus. The only blue magic I can think of is the spell that keeps Quidditch balls in the pitch, and that's probably not it. So what the hell is this?"

"Language, my dear boy."

It took all of Severus' energy not to growl at Dumbledore. As it was, he was already glaring death at the much older man.

"Well, for starters, there's the library," Dumbledore suggested. "Don't tell me you don't do research anymore."

"I do."

"Well, get to it. Go on. Oh, wait, you have to have dinner first. Let's go."

Severus followed the far-too-cheerful Headmaster down to dinner, grumbling all the way, then to the library, where they bumped into Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't - Professor Dumbledore?" Potter asked incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

"Research, Harry. Surely you didn't think an old man like me did nothing but sit around and rot?"

From the red staining the boy's pale cheeks, it was obvious that he did think somewhere along those lines. "Well. So what are you researching about?" he asked, trying to cover up his embarrassment.

"The potion incident, that's what. Now if you would excuse us?" Severus growled, glowering at the two seventh years. He couldn't snap at Dumbledore, but he could at these two. Not that he needed much of an excuse - they deserved to be snapped at.

Weasley's sullen face brightened. "We've come to a conclusion on that!"

Severus stared. "You have? You have?"

Potter and Weasley looked slighted. "We've been looking through books since before dinner," Potter explained shortly. "And the water's been contaminated."

Dumbledore looked thoughtful. "Good theory. Now, let's all just sit and talk, shall we? I think one of the rooms should suffice." He led them to a wall, where a door suddenly materialised. They all went in and sat around the round oak table.

"See, we thought about it. Even Hermione and Malfoy's potions exploded, which means that it wasn't something to do with our being lousy, it was something in the ingredients. But Sn..." Potter glanced at Severus. "Professor Snape wouldn't give us defected ingredients, so it had to be either the cauldrons or the water. The cauldrons had been locked in the dungeons since the previous lesson, and nobody could get through those charms. So it had to be the water," Potter finished triumphantly.

Severus was stunned. Potter had basically complimented him. Twice. Not that it mattered, but Potter. Had. Complimented. Him.

"Yes, yes... that's true... Severus, I think we have to check that. Forget about the blue magic for a while," Dumbledore added as Severus opened his mouth to remind him about the magic.

"Right."

Dumbledore thanked the boys and the two adults left the library, deep in conversation. Harry turned to Ron.

"Blue magic?"

Ron shrugged. "Let's go ask Hermione."

Hermione was ecstatic that they came to a conclusion that even Snape couldn't rebuke. She was stumped when it came to the blue magic, however. "Never heard of such a thing," she mused. Her eyesight was returning, although all she could see was vague shadows. Parvati was awake and was able to walk around - her eyesight had not been affected - but Madam Pomfrey refused to let her go yet. Malfoy was still out cold.

"I'll think about it," Hermione promised the other two as the nurse shooed them out. "You two go look it up."

Ron spun a book idly as Harry pulled out tome after tome that had the very basest of clues on coloured magic. "I don't think that's what Snape meant, you know," he remarked as they sat down at a table to start reading. "Lots of spells have colours as they shoot you. Expelliarmus is red, Avada Kedavra is green... you know?"

Harry sighed. "Yeah. But we have to start somewhere." They looked through book after book, without much progress. The most they found was, as Ron said, the colours of spells.

"Wait. This looked good. This spell is sort of a Technicolour Priori Incantatem thing... you cast it over something and it shows the colours of the different types of magic performed on the object, or the spells on it, or... well, you know," Harry trailed off uncertainly. "But the only colours listed are yellow, red and pink. Pink? Er - well, yeah. No blue."

Ron shrugged. "Let's run it by Hermione. She may know something."

Just then, the librarian, Madam Pince, came by and informed them that the library was going to close in five minutes. The boys selected a book each and walked back to the common room.

They walked in silence for a while, then Ron suddenly burst out, "How come Malfoy hasn't woken up yet? Not that I care, but don't you think the blast should have worn off by now?"

Harry looked up from the page he was reading as he walked. "Malfoy? He can drop dead for all I care. Not like Daddy dearest will complain much about Snape."

"That's not very nice."

"I think you're spending too much time around Hermione."

"Shut up." But Harry couldn't help but notice the way Ron's ears were a nice shade of pink.

--

Draco Malfoy had flown on broomsticks and had been put through curses that caused pain like nothing else on Earth. He had brewed potions to put the drinker through a slow, unknowing death, had been to ballroom dancing lessons and had once drunk five Martinis at one go. He had seen prisoners being given the Dementor's Kiss and had been chained, topless, in a wet, freezing, pitch black, three-feet-by-five-feet stone room for three days, with absolutely no food and no water simply because he had walked in on one of his father's Death Eater meetings and had overheard the orders given by the Dark Lord. He had killed a dragon and had nearly been killed by its mate, and had raised their hatchling single-handedly.

However, despite all that he'd seen and done, he'd never been in a place like the one he was currently in.

There was no up or down, left or right, front or back. There was a disorienting blue haze as far as the eye could see, and there was no sound, no smell, and the fog didn't feel cold or wet or anything at all. It was scaring him, and Draco Malfoy did not scare easily.

"Hello?"

His hoarse whisper was like a kettledrum in the silence. Draco winced. "Is anyone here?"

No answer, which he expected, anyway. Should he start walking? Draco felt around for his wand. Not there. Not good. He put one foot forward. It was strange, walking on what seemed like air, but there was something for him to push against, to push off and propel himself forward.

What the hell is this? I only remember Snape's stupid potion exploding... no, it was the flower that exploded... well, then I was here.

Something jarred the strange universe. It was as if the place had a shoulder, and someone was shaking it.

"Draco..."

Draco spun around. The voice echoed around the... area?... and died out. It was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it. It sounded female, or perhaps it was a child. Not likely. Children never came near him.

"Draco William Nicholas Malfoy."

What the... how did the voice know his full name? But it was a different voice - this one sounded male. It sounded like... like his father.

"Father? Is that you?"

No response. He didn't expect one. His father never answered him. He had no qualms about chaining his son up in a dark room - what made Draco think he would answer now?

--

Ronald Weasley was seldom afraid. Well, all right, he was scared to death of spiders. And the time Hagrid told them to follow the spiders... why spiders? Why not follow the butterflies? But the thing is, Ron was seldom scared. Now, however, he was. He was very afraid.

Hermione had been blinded in a Potions accident, and was in the hospital wing, and Ron couldn't even blame Snape for it.

"Ron, it's time for you to go."

Hermione was closing the book in front of Ron. "Don't worry about me, I'm doing fine."

Ron opened his mouth and was about to say something when he thought the better of it and shut his mouth again. "All right. I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

"Of course. Good night."

"Good night, Hermione."

As Ron walked back through the twisting corridors of Hogwarts, he couldn't help but ask himself what it was that attracted him to Hermione. She was pleasant-looking, but was no beauty like Fleur Delacour or even Parvati Patil. She was smart, but tended to be bossy and overbearing. She was...

She was Hermione. And that, Ron realised, was her attractiveness. Hermione didn't use make-up or fancy robes to enhance anything, nor did she attempt to be someone she wasn't. She did what she wanted to do, said what she wanted to say and, most of all, befriended who she wanted to befriend. Everyone liked her [except Malfoy, but who really cared about him?], and she seemed to like everyone.

Ron sighed and said the password to the Fat Lady before going up to bed and collapsing upon it.

--

"Ron, look at this."

Ron looked at it. "What? It's a letter."

"It's from Professor Lupin!"

Ron looked at the letter again. "OK, it's a letter from Professor Lupin. What's the big deal, Harry? He writes you every week!"

Harry looked at Ron as if he were daft. "He's coming to Hogwarts."

Now Ron was interested. "Really? What for? Is Si - Snuffles coming as well?"

"Yeah, he is. Lupin's coming to help research the potion fiesta. Much to Snape's horror, of course, but Dumbledore decided that an extra brain could help," Harry explained excitedly.

Later that day, as Harry and Ron were making their way from the hospital wing to the library, they ran into a huge black dog that greeted them very enthusiastically. "Snuffles! Hi! Where's Professor Lupin?"

"Behind you," a voice said behind them. The boys whirled around to see their ex-teacher standing in a beam of sunlight streaming in from a large window. He looked much better than when they had last seen him, which was the year he had resigned from Hogwarts. His thick brown hair had grown out by quite a lot, and was gathered at the base of his neck. "Hello."

"Professor!" Handshakes and slaps on the back were exchanged, and the man waved them towards a door.

"Let's go in there to talk, shall we?"

Once the door was safely locked behind them, the black dog transformed into a tall, thin man with black hair. He hugged Harry and grinned at Ron, and sat down on the floor.

"This potion exploding thing is worrying," Sirius Black mused. "I suppose Snape is losing sleep over it - his potion going wrong. The horror."

"Don't be mean, Sirius," Remus Lupin chided. Then he looked at the boys. "Do you have any idea what the cause of this may be?"

Ron nodded. "The water we used was contaminated."

"That makes sense... Severus would never allow his ingredients to be sabotaged. The effects of the explosion are blindness and unconsciousness, right?"

"Yeah. Everyone but Hermione and Malfoy are all right. Hermione can see a bit better now, though, but Malfoy's still out of it. Oh, and many people are down with food poisoning. Ron and I think that these people drank the contaminated water straight from the tap. It's unlikely that the food prepared came into contact with the water, because if that were so, the whole school would be sick. Either that, or the heat from cooking destroyed whatever it was. But then again, it's magical contamination, so..."

"I see... I think we should go and see Dumbledore. His office was where we were headed before we came across the two of you."

The two pairs separated, and the students continued on to the library. Meanwhile, the werewolf and the Animagus went to the Headmaster's office.

"Remus! Sirius! What a pleasure! Tea?" Dumbledore beamed around at the three men in his office: Remus, Sirius and Severus Snape.

"Yes, please, with no milk."

"No, I'll pass."

"No thank you."

After the tea and biscuits had been served, the one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old man leaned back into his large, stuffed purple chair, the smile fading. "All of you know why we're all gathered here, I'm sure. And Severus has some disturbing news, or so he says."

The Potions professor nodded, his eyes fixed on the phoenix behind the Headmaster. "Voldemort claims to know nothing about this water contamination, but plans to use it to his advantage. The food doesn't seem to be contaminated, thank Merlin, but those who are sick all have one thing in common - they drank water straight from the tap. Fools," he added. "Anyone knows that you have to boil water before drinking, even in the UK."

"Thank you, Severus." Albus Dumbledore looked at the other two. "Any ideas?"

"Nope," Sirius said through a mouthful of shortbread.

"Not at the moment," murmured Remus, hands clasped around his teacup.

"Then let us retire for today."

--

"EUREKA!"

Harry threw Ron a disdainful look. "You don't smell that great yourself, you know."

"No, no... that's by some Muggle guy who found out something... it's a word. What I mean is, look at what we're doing now."

"Charms homework."

"Yeah, and what are we doing in the homework?"

"Charms."

"Erm... all right, let me put it this way. If you want to solve an Arithmancy problem, you...?"

"Write an equation, I guess. I don't take Arithmancy."

"Yes, and if you want to check your answer?"

"Do the entire thing back... Ron, you are a genius."

"I like to think so."

Harry and Ron sprinted out the common room and to the gargoyle guarding Dumbledore's office in record time. As they guessed the password, it sprung open, revealing Remus, Sirius, Snape and Dumbledore himself.

"Professor! I think we've got a solution!"

"You do?"

"Yeah. See, the potion we made was the... the..."

Snape sneered at Harry. "The Lumosinox Serum."

"Yeah, that's it. So, let's say we did the thing correctly, and we wanted the flower to stop glowing, we'd make a potion that made stuff... stop glowing." Suddenly, Harry felt rather silly. "But then again, there may not be such a thing. Never mind."

Dumbledore held out a hand. "No, no... I think you're on to something here. I have heard of such a potion, but it is not a very orthodox formula. It's a form of the Dark Arts, in fact."

Snape seemed to emerge from the shadows once again. "It's used to quell a person's cheerfulness. Personally, I think it'd come in useful a lot," here he glared at Harry, "but it is illegal to brew."

"There you go. It's all right, Professor, we'll think of something else." Ron grabbed Harry's shoulder and the two of them walked away.

Remus looked at Dumbledore. "Why shouldn't we try it? Malfoy's already unconscious, he certainly doesn't have any cheerfulness to be robbed."

--to be continued--