Inquiring Minds

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Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully.

Dr. Joyce Brothers

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Chapter 5: The Art of Manipulation

'Secrets,' Harry pondered with a smirk, 'may very well be the ultimate key to tormenting Slytherins.'

He continued to consider the idea as he walked, ignoring the muttering coming from behind him.

'Why is it,' the Gryffindor wondered, 'that keeping anything from Blaise Zabini gets under her skin so deeply?'

Over the past few Potions study sessions, Harry had called Zabini some absolutely vile names. Though due to his never-failing Gryffindor honor, he only retorted sharply after he had first been insulted, but nonetheless his insults were rather brutal.

The angry Gryffindor had also showered the girl hundreds of hideous glares and been deliberately annoying. This was all for the sake of making it perfectly clear that he hated her company just as much as she despised his.

And yet, through it all the girl always remains perfectly unfazed; returning insults like a pro and glaring right back at him with her eyes narrowed into tiny slits.

'I'm winning this time though,' Harry noted, his smirk getting larger still.

The thick layer of Zabini nonchalance, that he had hardly been able to make a scratch on (something Harry knew she prided herself on), had today all but shattered.

"I swear to Merlin, Potter, if you don't tell me where we're going right now, I will curse you," came the chilled tones of Blaise Zabini, who was none too happily marching down a deserted hallway after Harry Potter.

"Patience, my dear Slytherin. We're almost there." Harry retorted with a smirk, sarcasm dripping off each word as he relished in this feeling of control.

Blaise stifled a groan from behind him and Harry delighted in it.

'Human reaction,' the boy mused, 'is quite interesting. Why is it bothering her so much to follow instead of lead? If she didn't trust me, she wouldn't have come this far.'

'Although' the Gryffindor amended, 'it did take a preposterous amount of cajoling to get her to leave the library. But I got my way in the end.' A devilish smirk made its way onto his face. 'And Merlin knows, I like getting my way,' Harry thought recalling the numerous times over the past year when he had kicked up a fuss in order to get things changed.

The Gryffindor flinched as he recalled exactly how much begging and pleading, and finally cold threatening, he had to do in order to escape his room on Privet Drive, the room he privately referred to as Precinct #4.

'I've got to learn how to get people to do what I want, without begging them to... maybe even without their knowing that they're doing what I want,' The Gryffindor ruminated as he made the third left turn since the staircase.

'I suppose that could be classified as manipu-' Harry's thought was cut short as a beam of blue light was shot straight into his back. The Gryffindor felt the spell as it sizzled through his body and took hold of all his muscles.

Unable to move, he pitched forward and fell, flat as a board, onto his face.

Zabini, it seemed, was more impatient than he had assumed.

Cold hands turned him over onto his back and Harry found himself staring, hardly able to blink, down the end of a dark mahogany wand.

"Tell me where we're going," Zabini demanded in a frigid tone of voice.

The girl's hair was pulled tightly back from her face and wound into an intricate knot and for an instant Harry recalled the face of Professor McGonagall staring at him, with severe eyes as he tried to explain exactly why he had punched Malfoy after the Quidditch match last year.

Of course, the Slytherin girl didn't have the advantage of being a professor, nor a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry was wholly unimpressed.

Snapping back to the present Harry tried to raise and eyebrow, 'How am I supposed to tell you anything,' he thought scathingly, 'when I can't move my mouth, you bloo-'

Yet again Blaise interrupted his thought when she moved her wand from his eyes to his lips and said quickly, "Enervate Agnatio Oris"

Quizzical, Harry tried to move, but found that he still couldn't, "Hey!" he said and as the word escaped his lips he realized that he could talk.

Unfortunately, the rest of him was still under the Body-Bind.

"I didn't know you could do that," the Gryffindor said, amazed, "Where did you learn that?"

"Some of us don't restrict our reading to textbooks, Potter. Now, where. Are. We. Going?" Zabini demanded briskly, her wand jabbing towards him as she spoke.

Harry hesitated. He couldn't very well say the Room of Requirement; it wasn't really something one could explain as easily as it could be shown. But at the Slytherin's hard glare he decided to try.

"Well there's this room. It's not too far from here, actually. Another right turn at the end of this hallway and you're there. And inside-"

"What kind of idiot do you take me for?" Zabini remarked scathingly. "I've attended this school for five full years, and unlike you, I actually pay attention to what's going on around me. Do you think I haven't been down this hallway? I swear Potter, I can't believe I let you and your B.S. about some mystery room that you knew would contain the potions books I need convince me to waste at least ten minutes of my time traipsing around the castle."

The girl stood up sharply and her face twisted into a horrible scowl. She looked as though she had sucked on a lemon and was going to spit the disgusting juice into directly into his face.

"I'm tempted," she slowly remarked, "to leave you right here. It's a rather unused corridor. By the time someone found you, I'd already be safely back in my dorm, leaving Dumbledore and McGonagall with nothing but your word as evidence."

By the end of her statement the girl was nodding to herself and before he could get a word out, she had tucked her wand back into her wrist holster and turned on her heel to leave.

Thinking fast, Harry decided to see if he was any good at this manipulation stuff.

Resisting his initial urge to plead with the girl to remove the spell, he stayed silent. His heart beat quickened as the sound of Blaise's heels against the marble grew steadily fainter.

But then his hope was restored when she abruptly stopped walking.

"I suppose you've come up with some half-baked story to tell Dumbledore that he would undoubtedly shallow whole," Blaise's voice came from a few feet away. "That man would believe you if you said Longbottom was plotting to take over the world and make Draco his love queen. Stupid Golden Boy crap."

Had Harry not been focusing on perfecting his attempt at manipulation he would have snorted at the images the girl was coming up with.

Her footsteps were drawing closer once more.

"Indubitably, your crackpot story would land me in detention and Severus would drag me for a lecture. The year's just started and I already got detention from Sinistra for making some rather... unsavory comments about the position of Orion's belt in relation to Uranus," the girl muttered with a snicker.

"Really it's the Averys' fault," the girl was talking to herself now, Harry realized, "Who names their children after stars anyway? There are only about five million nasty remarks that are just begging to be made."

Harry had stopped listening at "Who names their children after stars?" His thoughts had immediately gone to Sirius and he felt himself grow cold.

If you follow the line made by Orion's belt, the boy recalled vaguely, you'll be sure to find Sirius - the Dog Star.

The brightest star in the night sky.

It had been months, but the mere mention of his godfather caused the boy pain. Over time the pain had evolved. At first it felt as though he had a hollow spot in his chest, but now he seemed to have filled it with dangerously sharp icicles. Each time he thought of Sirius, the hole contracted tightly and the frozen daggers pierced his insides.

Thoughts of Sirius never failed to lead to thoughts of the Department of Mysteries. Undoubtedly his most revoltingly moronic venture yet, each time he thought of it he made himself promise to never let a situation get so beyond his control again.

He would never forget the feeling of complete helplessness that seized him when he realized the mess he had gotten his friends into and the stinging remorse that pinched at his heart whenever he thought of Sirius's end.

"Finite Incantatem."

The words were said from above him and Harry felt his muscles instantly relax. For a moment he allowed himself to melt into the cold floor beneath him, his green eyes darkened by the shadows of past failures come to haunt him.

Finally, without a word to Blaise, he stood and made his way to the Room of Requirement. Without even thinking about it, he stuck to his little plan and walked a bit past the patch of brick on which the door to the room would appear.

Blaise ended up standing right in front of the blank wall.

Harry turned his dark eyes on the Slytherin who had been about to make yet another "unsavory comment" about Gryffindor stupidity and said sharply, "What led you to follow me here? What did you imagine when I said there was a room that had all the books you wanted in it? What did you, in that one instant, wish for?"

Blaise's scowl returned, but before she could say anything a door appeared out of the stone wall. The door was of a dark colored wood stylishly shaped and cut; the knob was of elegantly molded silver.

Distracted for a moment, Harry let his dark reflections rest. Now he was curious. Just what had she been hoping for?

His eyes moved from the door to the girl who was staring at it as though she scarcely believed what she was seeing.

"Go on then," Harry said softly and Blaise's eyes turned to him, startled.

For an instant Harry saw her brown eyes without their usual layer of ice. Without the frigid coating, he found that they were quiet revealing.

But before Harry could examine exactly what was there to see, Blaise had turned away and placed her hand on the knob.

As she pushed it down and slipped the door open Harry moved to stand behind her and they both inhaled sharply when the inside of the room was revealed.

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"Impressive," Minerva McGonagall noted dryly as she entered the room behind a wide-eyed Tonks, "Ms. Zabini has quite the imagination."

"She did not imagine this on her own," Snape observed crisply as he entered the elegant room. "If I recall correctly, this is the exact library that is in the west wing of the Zabini ancestral home in Italy."

"Her father," Snape continued as he moved closer to Blaise, gauging her reaction, "doesn't allow her inside it."

There was a momentary pause because Tonks spoke up.

"Why?" the Auror asked as she peered into Harry's face. The young woman was starting to get over her fear of the memory-Harry turning to her and dryly requesting that she please stop staring.

"Because the contents of the books in this library are not all very suitable for Ms. Zabini's perusal and though it was news to Potter, anyone who knows Blaise knows that she is always looking for a new book of spells to learn or Potions to experiment on.

"I suspect," the Potion's Master said softly as he perused the titles on the shelves, "that her father didn't want her to blow herself up trying to alter the ingredients of a Marrow Melting Potion."

Mad-Eye Moody looked around the room silently, thinking that it looked like a prime place to hide some dark artifacts. He wondered exactly where this ancestral home was in Italy and how soon he could get a team of Aurors over there to investigate.

Before he could give the idea some more thought Dumbledore had placed one of his wrinkled hands on the ex-Auror's shoulders.

"Let's remain focused, shall we?" the old headmaster said with a smile, but Moody couldn't help but notice that the man's blue eyes were darting around the room, taking in its every detail as well.

Despite its beauty, the small library did have an ominous air about it.

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"This is," Harry began as his eyes darted around the miniature library before him, "nice."

"Nice?" Blaise echoed softly as she looked around. The room was exactly as she remembered it from the first and only time she'd been able to sneak into it.

She had been about twelve at the time. The summer right before her second year she and her father had elected that they spend her vacation at the mansion in Italy. It wasn't the first time they had gone, but it was the first time that the young girl had managed to find the second library her father had told her never to look for and never to enter.

The girl had been surprised to find that there were no wards on the beautiful door leading into the room and practically squealed in delight as she closed the door behind her.

The floor of the rectangular shaped room was white marble with thousands of flecks of black in it that seemed to shift under the light from the moon. Directly opposite the door was a large window that took up about half of the dark gray painted wall and beneath that was a black fireplace with a highly polished mantle.

There were only about six bookshelves in the room, which left Blaise feeling a bit put off. But there were two pitch black armchairs and a round table in the center of the room, before the fireplace, evenly dividing the bookshelves.

The chairs gave the girl the impression that these books were the sort that would leave you so captivated that chairs had to be put in the room for when you were utterly enthralled and unable to wait to continue reading one of the tomes.

Sadly, before Blaise had been able to even touch one of the books, her father had come storming into the room, proving that there had indeed been some slyly hidden wards on the door. The furious man nearly fractured her wrist as he dragged her from the room, already in full lecture mode before the door had even closed.

After her severe reprimand and punishment Blaise hadn't been stupid enough to go look for it again. Or at least not while her father was home... she was a Slytherin after all.

Blaise was brought back from her thoughts when she realized that Potter was staring at her. Feeling more relaxed and the tiniest bit giddy Blaise stared right back. "So tell me, Potter, just what story were you going to feed Dumbledore about how I had attacked you in the hall?"

Potter smirked (yes, smirked!) at her as he moved lazily toward the bookshelves. "There was no story. You were absolutely correct the first time, there was no evidence and the Headmaster never would have been able to do anything to you because of that."

Blaise narrowed her eyes, her former happiness slowly leaving her. Before she could get too riled, Potter said, "I'm afraid you gave my sway with the Headmaster a bit too much credit. Not that I was about to correct you."

Blaise stared at the Gryffindor who was now giving her an easy smile. The still somewhat miffed girl quickly tried to think of exactly how she could turn this situation around on him, a way to steal his victory away.

"That was quite Slytherin of you, Potter, I'm sure you realize." Blaise looked away from Harry, sure that the comment would put a stricken look on his face. Thus, the girl didn't see Harry's unusual response to the comment.

The boy merely raised an eyebrow and It was Blaise's turn to smile as a bit of a crestfallen look came across the Gryffindor's face.

Satisfied with her triumph, the girl moved toward the bookshelves. Her curiosity was now impossible to stifle. As she approached she wondered if the books would be the ones actually in the library or the books that she had "wished for" as Potter had put it.

As she reached the first bookshelf and found herself staring at copies of Most Potente Potions and Dangerous Draughts for the Risk Taking Healer, the exact two books she had been wishing weren't in the restricted section of the library when she and Potter had been there earlier, she had her answer.

Picking up the copy of Dangerous Draughts, she asked Potter, who was running his fingers over the spines of books in the next bookshelf, "You want to tell me how this room works and more importantly, how you know about it?"

"Do I want to?" Potter began, his annoyingly sly smile back in place. Blaise opened her mouth to reply but before she could beat his ego into submission, the Gryffindor proceeded to explain the properties of the Room of Requirement.

It didn't escape Blaise's notice that he neglected to mention how he had discovered the room, but she found she didn't really care once she found the Chirurgia Serum described in detail in the book in her hand.

Absently she moved from the shelf to one of the black chairs before the fireplace, setting Most Potente Potions on the table before her, opening to the chapter on The Serum in Dangerous Draughts as she did so.

"This project just got a great deal easier, wouldn't you say?" Potter said smugly as she brought over three more books, laid two on the table, and began to scan the third.

Blaise narrowed her eyes and looked up, "You've saved us an extra day or two, Potter, but if this book is anything to go by, this Potion is going to be virtually impossible to modify, as is our assignment."

Harry's eyes widened the tiniest bit and he slowly asked, "Why would it be so hard to change?"

"The Chiruria Serum," Blaise began, "is an 'obscure potion' mainly for the reason that it doesn't produce the desired effect on everyone. The potion, as we found out, is supposed to work as a sedative as well as a type of anesthesia. In some people it does have the desired effect; in others though, it doesn't."

Almost afraid to ask, the Gryffindor bit his bottom lip, "What does it do?"

Blaise chuckled darkly, "Nothing too horrible I assure you. There are typically two reactions to the potion outside of the intended numbness and painkilling effect. The first is described by this book as a sort of 'hyperawareness.'

"While the person under the influence of the serum cannot feel anything, one of their other senses is heightened to sometimes dangerous levels. I'm sure you'll be able to find records of someone under the potion claiming that sounds were magnified about 100 fold - so much so that they were crying out in pain at as much as a peep."

Harry winced in sympathy and looked down at the book in his hands: First Hand Accounts: Effects of So-Called Healing Potions. Suddenly he was a bit more interested in reading it. Before he could open the book, Blaise was continuing.

"The second effect is a bit more," here the girl paused and looked up from the book she had been staring at, "odd. Supposedly those who experience this reaction to the potion become a bit...lost in themselves. No one who has ever experienced it says a word while under the potion. At first the Healers assumed that the anesthetic effect had taken hold and proceeded with their painful surgeries or complex healing rituals only to discover that the patient was aware and feeling the entire time."

Harry inhaled sharply and stood up. He paced as he said, "You mean to tell me that some of these people were in excruciating pain, but were too 'lost in themselves' to say anything. To scream, to do... anything."

"Yes," Blaise responded calmly from her seat, "The doctors only discovered that the pain had never been numbed when the Potion wore off and the patients were experiencing extremely painful after effects and had to be given a great deal of relief potions. After several of those incidents, Healers decided that it was too much of a risk to use the Potion as they were never sure which effect it was having on a patient. They stopped using the potion and the Chirurgia Serum fell into obscurity as Healers reverted to using stupefying charms and sleeping potions on patients."

"Good riddance," Harry said bitingly as he sat back down.

"Merlin, Potter, don't you see? The entire reason the potion was used as often as it was that for some people it was a miracle potion. It had the combined effect of a numbing potion and a healing potion. For those it worked properly on, the Chirurgia Serum allowed them to go through a life threatening procedure with no lingering pains, no daily doses of pain relief potions. Nothing! They were in and out."

Blaise ran her hands along the sides of the book in her lap. She looked as though she was itching to get up and hit him with it, "Potions Masters have slaved away over this serum for years trying to change the ingredients so that it would produce that effect on everyone, but always came up short! Why? Mainly because no one knows why it could work one way on me and a different way on you - it's a mystery that has puzzled the very masters of the subject for decades!"

The two sat in silence for a long few minutes. Finally Harry groaned, "Trust Snape to give us a Potion that no body has ever been able to adjust."

Blaise looked up sharply, "I said that no one has ever been able to fix it. Adjusting it, I'm sure is possible. Just incredibly difficult, given how volatile the ingredients are. Professor Snape," the girl said laying heavy emphasis on the title, "is giving us the chance to experiment and push ourselves. He's encouraging us to expand our knowledge which, if I recall correctly, is exactly what a Professor is hired to do."

"Yes, well we should send our congratulations to the Professor, then, shouldn't we? As this must be the first time the man has ever done 'exactly what a Professor is hired to do'," Harry said with an edge to his voice, but catching Blaise's glare, he quickly reached over for a book and looked up the Serum in the index.

Across from him, Blaise took a long roll of parchment from her bag and began to copy notes from her books.

And for a long while, there was silence broken only by the turning of pages and the scratching of a quivering quill.

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Orange eyes watched as a pair of green eyes scanned the pages of a large volume wearily.

And as yawn number twenty-three slipped past the lips of one sleepy Harry Potter, Nymphadora Tonks decided that she was getting sick of this.

They hadn't been watching long. In fact, when the Auror thought about it, Dumbledore has said that time was passing much slower in the world outside the Perlustrare, so really they had watched a few days and couple of sessions in probably less than one hour.

But the young Metamorphmagus couldn't help but feel annoyed; so far her soap opera dreams had been a bust.

Where was the fiery romance?

The lust-filled stares?

And more importantly, where was Theodore Nott in all of these annoyingly non-romantic recollections.

So caught up in her thoughts, it took the young Auror a moment to notice that Dumbledore had begun fast forwarding through the memory.

'Thank Merlin,' she thought, relieved if not a bit nauseous as she watched Harry and Blaise turn pages and scribble things down in hyper speed.

Harry had apparently become interested in their assigned Potion after the two had discussed it, and it seemed as if they had let this session go on for hours.

Dumbledore slowed the memory down as the two exchanged extraordinarily brief farewells and Blaise made one last parting shot to which Harry responded with a cool stare and a clever retort.

Tonks' last glimpse of the memory before it faded into the next was of the girl summoning a few more books off a shelf, curling herself further into the couch and lighting the fireplace with a flick of her wand.

It appeared Severus was right about Blaise's reading obsession. The girl appeared to be settling in for an evening of reading, even after all the time she had just spent studying with Harry.

The next time Harry and Blaise saw each other was in class, where they glanced each other's way purely by accident, and then a day or so later when they both reached McGonagall's desk at the same time to obtain a salamander to transfigure.

The next time, though, was a bit more interesting.

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"So then I told the whiny little brat to take her problems to someone else, as I was certainly in no position to help her. Honestly, when a second year has the audacity to come up to me and ask for advice of all things, I know I've lost my touch," Orion Avery said with a smirk as he walked beside Blaise.

The girl smirked, giving a Hufflepuff a bit of a shove to the side as she kept pace with the taller boy's longer strides.

"I assume," Blaise said, her words laced with amusement, "that you took the opportunity to refer the little darling to someone else."

"Of course," Orion promptly responded, "I patted her little head and pointed her in the direction of the nearest prefect."

Blaise stopped walking for a moment and stared at Orion, fighting the smile that threatened to creep onto her face.

Orion seemed to have anticipated her move for he stopped walking a second after Blaise had, causing a third year Ravenclaw to stumble as he stopped short to avoid a collision.

The post-dinner crowd bustled around the two sixth year Slytherins who had stopped to talk in the middle of the crowded entrance hall.

"Was it my fault that the nearest prefect happened to be one Draco Malfoy?" Orion finished and Blaise was biting her lips to keep from laughing.

"You should have seen it Blaise," the boy continued aware of her struggle against laughter and determined that she lose it. "The girl goes skipping up to Malfoy, chipper as you please, and yanks on his sleeve. Mind you, darling little Draco had just had a - shall we call it a tender rendezvous with one Pansy Parkinson - so he was a bit more finely dressed than usual.

"So he turns around," Orion continued, now acting out the scene in the middle of the entrance hall which was steadily clearing, "and looks at this girl who unknowingly had yanked his sleeve so hard that one of his precious diamond cufflinks fell off. Before the little twit realized what she did he was letting loose with the profanities. I swear you'd think the girl had just killed his father.

"'How dare you even touch me, you filthy little Mudblood! That cufflink, I'll have you know, is worth more than your life!'" Orion imitated with grandiose gestures that finally had Blaise laughing with abandon at the gestures which were a spot on imitation of Draco.

Orion smirked at the sight of the girl laughing.

To Harry who had watched the entire scene from the top of the staircase, it was the most gentle and oddly soft smirk he had ever seen.

The Gryffindor had passed the two on the staircase, on his way back to the Tower after dinner with Ron and Hermione, when he recalled something he had needed do.

Hermione was a bit late for a Potions session with Malfoy so she had no objections and said goodbye before rushing off to the library. Ron though, had offered to come with him until he heard that Harry had to ask his Potions partner about something.

The red-haired boy had been steadfastly pretending that the project did not exist and at any mention of it, he recalled something else he had to do.

This time it was something to do with History, Harry didn't care too much to find out what, as he knew that whenever he got back to the common room he was going to find Ron playing chess.

The raven haired boy smiled at the thought of his friend, so predictable it was endearing.

After Ron left, Harry elected to just wait at the top of the stairs for the two Slytherins to come up. The Gryffindor had frowned at their cruel remarks, but honestly couldn't help but find the Orion's whole reenactment kind of funny, though obviously not as funny as Blaise had found it.

Harry watched slightly amazed as the girl had finally let go and laughed. He had been working with her for a bit over three weeks on their potions project and he had never seen her laugh before.

He felt some unidentifiable emotion well inside him as he listened to her carefree laugh. He certainly wouldn't call it desire, he knew what that felt like, thanks very much. This was a bit of... was it envy? But of what? It wasn't as if he didn't laugh.

Perhaps it was annoyance. Why was it that she had to make things so difficult between the two of them all the time? She obviously had somewhat of a sense of humor, why couldn't she ever lighten up when they were working together?

Yes, Harry decided, it was definitely annoyance.

"The absolute funniest shit I'd seen in a long time. If I was a prefect I would give myself ten points just for setting up something that funny," Orion was saying to Blaise as the pair finally made their way up the stairs.

"Well it's a good thing you aren't a prefect," Harry couldn't help but reply as the two made their way closer to him.

Blaise had still been smiling as she walked up the stairs beside Orion, but the smile immediately left her face when she heard him speak. "Yes," she quickly quipped, "or that'd be twenty points from Gryffindor for eavesdropping. It's a punishable offense, Potter.

"But perhaps we'll let this one slide," the Slytherin girl continued, "as you were obviously driven by your distinct lack of a life to listen in on the conversations of people who actually discuss things other than Quidditch and Exploding Snap."

"Touché," Orion commented from Blaise's left as the two continued to glare at each other. "I assume, Potter, that you have something to discuss with your Potions pal here, so I'll leave you two to it, shall I?"

"Orion," Blaise muttered darkly under her breath, her eyes still on Harry's.

"Sorry, darling," the boy drawled, "but I've got a massively long History of Magic essay to do. You're perfectly capable of giving him hell on your own. Later, Blaise."

With that parting remark Orion continued down the hall and made the turn leading to the Slytherin common room.

'Perhaps there actually was History homework,' Harry pondered vaguely, but he was distracted when Blaise pushed past him and continued walking down the hall towards Slytherin.

"Wait, Blaise," Harry started, but stopped when the girl turned around and leveled him with a glare.

"Call me Blaise one more time and I'll make you eat your tongue. Got it, Potter?"

"Merlin," Harry replied trying to reign in his annoyance as he followed her down the hall, "There's no need to be so hostile. Look... I'm sorry."

The Gryffindor appeared to believe those words would spark some reaction in the Slytherin, but she kept walking.

"Zabini, you have to stop. First of all, because you're leading me directly to your common room," Harry informed her with a smirk.

The girl immediately stopped moving.

"And second," Harry continued as he backtracked a bit to stand in front of her, "because I need to ask you a favor."

"A favor, Potter? You may have the rest of the world eating out of the palm of your hand, but let me tell you the day I do you a favor is the day-"

"Come on!" Harry interrupted the girl. "I know it's a lot to ask, but you're my Potions partner and we're supposed to be able to go to each other for help in Potions, right?"

"Where's your Muggle-born encyclopedia?" Blaise replied scathingly.

"Hermione's working on her assignment with Malfoy, and plus," the boy said with an odd tone to his voice, "I need someone to explain the Potions we need to know for tomorrow's test, not preach at me."

"So Granger can't teacher, huh?" the Slytherin said getting a bit too much enjoyment out of the idea than Harry thought was normal.

"Yeah well when you explain things about our Potion to me I seem to understand them. So I thought I'd give it a shot. I can't afford to do bad on this test, not when my spot in the class is on the line," Harry said, a frown marring his features as he thought of what Snape would say if he failed the first test.

"Did you ever think, Potter that you getting kicked out of the class would make my day?" Blaise said in soft and dangerous tones, "I could do this project on the Chirurgia Serum alone and probably get an even better grade than I am going to now because I wouldn't have you bothering me all the time to explain things."

"Well, did you ever think," Harry returned darkly, "that it would look particularly bad if Dumbledore, who obviously designed this whole inter-house partners project, noticed that the partner of the best Potions student in the class flunked out of it?"

"Are you implying that your pet Headmaster would blame me for your failure?" Blaise remarked her fists clenching at her sides.

"Not at all, Zabini," Harry said darkly, "I'm just noting the fact that it wouldn't really look that great."

"Fine, Potter," the girl said, seriously pissed off, "Get your books and meet me in that room of yours in half an hour. If you are as much as thirty seconds late I'm leaving and you can tell Dumbledore to shove it."

The girl continued to stalk down the corridor and Harry let out a great puff of air he had unknowingly been holding in his mouth.

"That probably wasn't the best way to go about that," the Gryffindor remarked to himself as he turned to head back towards the tower to get his books.

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Twenty-five minutes later Blaise found herself entering the ever-changing Room of Requirement with a few books under her arm and a scowl on her face.

Tonight Potter appeared to have entered the room without thinking about much of anything, as the spell on the room obviously had decided to reflect his mood.

The area was smaller than Blaise would have preferred and the predominate colors of the room and its sparse furnishings were blue, dark brown, and navy.

Presiding in the middle of it all was Harry Potter, sitting on the floor in front of a low table, one hand in his hair and other flipping through a book way too quickly.

"Trying to learn how to speed read, Potter?" Blaise quipped as she entered, "I assure you tomorrow's test will have a lot of questions, but I'm sure reading it won't require that particular skill."

Harry looked up from his Potions text and his eyes lit up in a way that Blaise found decidedly disconcerting.

"I didn't think you'd come," the boy said briskly, standing up to meet the girl's eyes.

"Yes, well, I recalled a comment you made once about my overestimation of your sway with the Headmaster and seriously considered letting you rot in here," Blaise said setting down her books and sitting in a navy armchair easily.

"However, Pansy was ranting on in the dorm about how 'that Mudblood is monopolizing all of her time with Drakey' and I decided that leaving the area, even if it was to come here, was the best course of action."

Seeing Harry's skeptical look Blaise continued, "And I also realized that this tutoring situation would give me perfect license to mock you mercilessly and have it written off as constructive criticism."

Harry smirked a bit and sat back down, now satisfied that she had no hidden agenda. Other than to mock him, of course, but that was a given.

"So what's on this test," the boy said with a sigh as he settled in with a quill and parchment.

Blaise looked at him with a wide smirk and a raised eyebrow, "What? Do you think Professor Snape gives me the tests in advance or something?"

Harry furrowed his brow for a moment and said, "No, but surely you have an idea of what's on it."

"Surely," Blaise mocked him slowly, "You have an idea as well."

"Well, we've covered what? Four potions so far? The first he said was supposed to be review, though let me just say I found that one just as hard as-"

Harry stopped his rambling at Blaise's impatient look.

"Alright, so I suppose it's safe to say that the other three are going to be on this test, but what kinds of questions are there to be asked about Dreamless Sleep, Solidifying Solution, and the Migraine Potion?"

Blaise scoffed, "Well to start, he could ask for their proper names. Do you realize that the potions aren't actually called those three names? Those are the common names which describe what they do for the every day user, yes. But those are not by any stretch what they are referred to by the Potions experts who actually know what they're talking about."

Harry looked down at his notes and sighed, "He had the proper names on the board, but once I found out what they were commonly called, I didn't copy the first ones down."

"Well, then I suggest you crack open that book," Blaise said gesturing with one hand to the book on the low table, "And never make that mistake again. You'd think that after five years you'd have realized that everything Professor Snape writes on the board is worth copying. Exactly as it is."

Harry had the grace to look a bit ashamed, but Blaise was absently looking around the room Harry had created and missed it.

For about an hour, Harry read over his notes and the text on the three potions. He didn't feel as though he was making too much headway and was growing annoyed at his "tutor" who obviously had come down to the room for the exact reason she had stated earlier - to escape Pansy Parkinson.

On the occasions that he actually dared to ask a question, Harry found that it wasn't really worth it as his pride always came back severely bruised. Though, as he chewed on the end of his quill, he wondered why he had expected any better.

Finally, when Harry was trying to memorize the steps to brewing the Dreamless Sleep Potion (properly referred to as the Alucinor Deminuo Potion), he decided to ask a question that he'd always wondered about Potions in general.

"Hey," Harry said, continuing when Blaise looked up from the book in her lap, "Why is it that you have to stir counterclockwise after you add the poppy seeds to this potion? Does it really matter if you stirred clockwise?"

Blaise stared at him for a moment as if trying to see if he was having her on, "This is basic, Potter. Please tell me you're joking." At the boy's blank look she frowned.

"How is it that you're in N.E.W.T. level potions?" she asked scathingly and Harry's infamous temper finally erupted.

"Listen!" the Gryffindor said standing up abruptly, slamming his things together as he spoke.

"I asked you to come here to help me and you agreed to it, yes reluctantly," the boy said forestalling her immediate retort, "But you agreed nonetheless. The least you could do would be to answer one of the only questions I've asked you. Be it basic or not!"

"But apparently," Harry said making his way over to the door, his papers about to fall messily out of his hands, "That's too much to ask of the high and mighty Blaise Zabini!"

Before he reached the door, Harry's quills and books did indeed hit the floor with a messy splatter and the furious boy stared at them for a moment, his face furiously red.

In his anger, Harry pulled out his wand, and with a swift motion, banished the materials against the far wall. The force of the books hitting the wall was immense, and one of them ripped at the seam.

Harry glared at the pieces before turning towards the door, deciding that at this point he'd rather leave without them than gather them together in the presence of Zabini.

Just as his hand hit the doorknob Blaise softly said, "Potter, what is added right before the poppy seeds?"

Confused, Harry turned his head back to face the Slytherin sitting on an armchair facing away from him.

"What?" the boy said.

"Before the poppy seeds. In the Alucinor Deminuo Potion, what comes before the poppy seeds?" the girl asked again in the same quiet tone.

"The sliced mandrake roots?" Harry responded uncertainly, letting his hand fall from the door knob.

"Correct," Blaise said finally turning her head to face the Gryffindor, "And what, if you recall, did the mandrake roots do when added to the solution?"

"They started to, er- fizz. I guess?" Harry responded fumbling over his words a bit.

"Right, they released a gas. Now when the roots were added to the edge of the cauldron the potion was being stirred clockwise. Then the poppy seeds go in and you start stirring counterclockwise. Why would you do that?" Blaise asked her eyes boring directly into his.

"I guess," the boy started, "so that the poppy seeds wouldn't get touched by the, er- gas the roots had just given off. But that couldn't work for too long could it? I mean they are going to touch eventually."

"Right," Blaise said, "which is why you have to-"

"Add the shredded newt skin within thirty seconds of adding the seeds!" Harry said with a light of understanding in his eyes, "I did notice that once we did that the fizzing stopped."

Blaise nodded slowly still staring at the boy in an unnerving manner.

"I guess I didn't realize how detailed the whole process is. Every little thing matters," Harry said slowly.

"That, Potter," Blaise said finally, her normal, biting tone of voice returning at last, 'is why I love Potions."

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After Potter's mind-blowing revelation, Severus Snape watched as Blaise explained to Potter every detail of the brewing of the Alucinor Deminuo Potion.

The little brat actually did seem to understand things a lot better when he knew precisely what was going on and why each ingredient had to be prepared in a certain way.

The Potions Master was frankly amazed at Blaise's patience.

After Potter's initial meltdown he had expected the Slytherin girl to let him storm out of the room and then perhaps hang around to laugh when he eventually came back to retrieve his books.

Instead the girl had answered the question that would start a landslide and basically signed herself up to teach Potter a great deal of information that he should by all means already know.

After the first round of question on Dreamless Sleep Potions, though Blaise had finally handed Potter one of the books she had brought with her which detailed some of the intricacies of preparing the Callosus Solution (commonly known as the Solidfying Solution).

The two then sat in silence as Potter absorbed the new information and Blaise continued to take notes in the margins of a book she was reading.

Finally after a few minutes Blaise said something to Potter that made the Potions Master's heart stop. He really should have seen it coming, but somehow he hadn't.

"Hey, Potter," the brunette said, meeting the bright eyes of her partner over their books, "How adverse would you be to trying the Chirurgia Serum?"

Blaise was going to make Potter her guinea pig.