The Amorae Potion

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Time was ticking by very slowly.

Harry had been doing nothing for the last fifteen minutes but pace the floor back and forth in front of Ron, who was starting to go slightly dizzy by watching him.

"Could you please stop that, Harry?" he asked irately from the ground he was sitting cross-legged on. He leaned back against the bathroom stale door behind him and folded his arms. "You´re giving me a headache," he complained.

"Ron, we have more important things to worry about then that," Harry snapped, giving the redhead an annoyed look without slowing his pace. "Myrtle´s going to blow up this bathroom and us with it too if we don´t think of something fast."

"But I already thought we had established that we couldn´t think of anything?"

"Ron!" Harry stopped and gave his best friend a shocked look. "Don´t say something like that! You can´t give up on me yet! Not after all we´ve been through. Remember our first year with Quirrell? And what about the Chamber of Secrets and Peter Pettigrew? We survived them didn´t we? Don´t you think that to die now would be an insult to all that?" Ron shrugged half-heartedly. "And what about Hermione?" Harry prompted. "You don´t want to die here and leave her behind, do you?"

Ron stiffened. "Well, of course not, but...."

"Then that´s why we´ve got to get out of here! We can´t die now, especially in something as humiliating as a bathroom."

"That would be rather embarrassing; you´re right about that," Ron said in agreement. "But--" Ron suddenly paused. "Hey, hold on here a minute! I just remembered something."

"What?"

A dark shadow descended on Ron´s face. His features turned cold, and he got to his feet. "There is still a little matter I need to talk to you about, Harry." His voice was casual, but there was definitely a hidden rage behind it. "It´s a matter that has to do with me walking in on you and Hermione by the Great Hall. You were having a snog-fest on the floor if I´m not mistaken....." His voice trailed off as silence fell between them.

Harry was suddenly very still. His mouth fell half-open. He had forgotten about that instance and also that Ron still didn´t know about the potion. Harry didn´t very much want to tell Ron about it at that moment when, within a few more minutes (a half-hour at the very most), they were going to be blown to kingdom come. It seemed like a very bad way of wasting their time, but by the look on Ron´s face....

"You know, now might not be a great time to talk about this, Ron," Harry attempted.

"Oh, I think this is a perfect time," Ron stated with his eyes narrowing. "I´d like to sure know what you and Hermione have going on between one another. That way, when I die, I can know whether or not I want to come back as a ghost and haunt Hermione for the rest of her life or to just kill you now before we explode for being a cheating, back-stabbing jerk with my girlfriend."

Harry was slightly offended. "You know as well as I do that Hermione would never cheat on you, Ron. She´s too noble for that, and you´d think that you´ve known me long enough to realize that I would never do something so awful to you either, even if you are a jackass on most occasions."

Ron´s eyebrows shot up. "So what´s your reason then?"

"Ginny."

"Ginny?" Ron´s face transformed to surprise. "What, have you been snogging with her too?"

A sudden heat rushed into Harry´s face. "What?" he shouted indignantly. "Why, I... No! Of course not! What would I snog Ginny for? She was the one who got me into this predicament."

Ron was confused now. "Ginny got you into this predicament? And how, pray tell, did she do that? Twisted your arm and made you go over and roll around with Hermione, did she? Somehow I strongly doubt that considering she fancies the pants off you and would never want another girl so much as touching you."

"NO! That´s not it at all! I... huh?" It then hit Harry what Ron had said. Ginny fancies the pants off me? he thought in wonder. This was news. He had always known Ginny had had a crush of some sort on him in his second and third year at Hogwarts, but he had never thought much of it. He had figured that after so long she would have gotten over him by now. If he weren't so upset about the potion, Harry would be seriously flattered. But to get back to matters.... "Alright, listen, Ron, ok? Because I´m only going to say this once as we are momentarily a little short of time." Harry caste the door behind them a nervous glance. "Ginny accidentally gave me a love potion that seems to make girls of any kind somehow totally attracted to me. It´s rather a complicated story, but rest assured I had no idea it would affect Hermione the way it did. She was on me before I even knew what happened."

Ron was not convinced. "Ok, so let me get this straight, you´re saying that Hermione was affected by a potion that made her totally attracted to you? I thought those type love potions were illegal."

"Yeah, they are, but Dumbledore was using the potion to show some of his seventh years in Defense against the Dark Arts. You know he´s right now the DADA teacher. Ginny was bringing it to him from Snape and accidentally was intercepted by me, who drank it without realizing what it was."

"Yeah right," Ron muttered. "You´re just plain insane if I ever thought it. Next you´re going to be telling me this so called potion´s an Amorae Potion and that it´s--"

"Wait, how´d you know that´s what it´s called?" Harry interrupted.

"Huh?" Ron gapped at Harry. "You´re.... You´re joking, right?"

"What do you mean?" Harry asked curiously. "And how come it´s always me who never knows about these things anyway? All the people I´ve met knows about this stupid potion but me. It´s getting really annoying!"

Ron looked frantic. He grabbed Harry´s shoulders and shook him. "Harry, please don´t play games with me right now. Just tell me truthfully, did you really get infected by an Amorae Potion?"

Harry blinked in confusion then nodded slowly. "Is that bad? he asked cautiously.

Ron smacked his forehead. "Is that bad, he says! Harry, you just got infected with an Amorae Potion!"

"Yeah, tell me something I don´t know."

"But you don´t understand. The Amorae Potion is one of the single-most worst potions in all time. The consumer will become completely irresistible to anyone of the opposite sex. Every hour he is infected with the potion, it´s powers increases, and he will become more and more desirable until there is no way of stopping it. Harry, if what you´re saying is true, you´ve got a lot more things to worry about then just You-Know-Who trying to kill you and all."

Harry gulped. "But there´s a cure for it, right? I mean, every potion has an antidote to it."

Ron looked doubtful. "If there is, I´ve never heard of it."

Harry made a sound of great dismay and plopped against the stone wall at the very end of the bathroom. "Tell me, could this get any worse?"

"Well," Ron said thoughtfully. "We´re right now missing Divination...."

"Oh, shut up, will ya?"

"Sorry."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Right. So do you believe me then?"

"Um, I guess so.... It´s nice to know that Hermione was faithful before I die. Unless.... I don´t suppose you have any ideas of what are we should to do, do you?"

"Pray," Harry muttered without looking up. "It never hurts to pray."

"Er, I was.... kinda hoping for something better then that, actually," Ron stated lamely.

Harry shrugged. "Why don´t you think of something? You are the one, after all, who brought us in here."

"Hey!" Ron protested loudly. "You better not be blaming this one on me."

"I´m not blaming anything on you," Harry said calmly. "I was merely stating a fact. You just infer too much."

Ron crossed his arms and scowled. "Yes, well, I certainly can´t think of anything to get us out of here, unless you want to start shouting for help and hope one of the teachers hear us before Myrtle ignites the bombs."

"No good. All the teachers will be in their classrooms right now. Plus, we don´t really want to piss off the crazy, lust-filled ghost, now do we?" was Harry´s cool, logical reply.

"Well, what about a distraction," Ron tried. "You could distract Myrtle while...."

"Do you think I have a deathwish?" Harry snapped.

Ron flustered. "Well, what does it matter, Harry? We´re both going to die anyway!" he yelled.

An odd looked crossed Harry´s face. His left eye started to twitch and his eyebrows knitted together. The last tiny bubble of sanity that had been left in him suddenly gave a very loud `pop´ in his head, and all calmness and reason remaining disappeared quicker then it would take Neville Longbottom to forget a key ingredient in a potion. "I," he began in a strained voice. "I.....I am not going to die in here!"

Ron quickly backed away from Harry in surprise as the raven-haired youth leaped up from where he was seated with a maddening glint in his eyes and balled his fists. "I can´t! I just can´t die in a place like this!" he exclaimed. "I´m the Boy Who Lived, damnit! I´m the guy who defeated Voldemort, what, three times now! To die now would be humiliating! I would never be able to live it... wait; I´d be dead so I couldn´t very much live it down, but.... Oooow!" Harry threw his arms up and began to pound the wall behind him hard in anger. "It´s not fair! It´s just not fair!--"

As he was proclaiming this, his fist made solid contact with a group of bricks to his right and, to his surprise; they fell in on immediate impact. The wall suddenly gave a mighty rumble as the punched in bricks started glowing, and below the two boys feet a passageway rose from the floor, becoming wider and longer until it was a good seven feet high and five feet wide. Harry blinked, shocked at the doorway standing conveniently in front of him and Ron. "Ok, now that´s just totally wrong!" he stated.

"Oh for Pete´s sake, Harry, don´t complain! Let´s just get out of here!" Ron said in irritation. He frowned and then asked: "So are you going to go in it first or me?"

Harry reached for his wand in his pocket and took it out. "Uh, I´ll go first, I guess," he said.

With a whispered Lumos from both of them, Ron and Harry entered the dark tunnel in the boys´ bathroom wall with Harry in the lead. It was a narrow tunnel with stale, dusty air. The glows from their wands sent eerie shadows on the cobwebbed walls beside them as they crept slowly along them.

Soon the light from the bathroom started to fade behind them slowly when they got further down the path until it completely disappeared as they turned a corner. Harry and Ron´s eyes met in the dim lighting and they nodded to each other. At once they sped up a little bit and ran down the tunnel, both of them feeling the pull of urgency on them, like a prick in the back of their necks.

Only a little while later behind them, there was a sudden bang. Then an ominous roar came, and the whole ground began to shake underneath Ron and Harry´s feet, growing from a tiny trimmer to a mighty earthquake. A cloud of dirt and dust rushed towards them from the direction of the bathroom, causing the teens to raise their arm to shield their eyes. The increasing shaking set them off balance, and they both stumbled back, tottered, then fell to the ground, thrown by the force of the impact. They rolled over and covered the back of their heads as the deafening sound from a explosion rattled through the tunnel causing rubble and debris to fall down all around them.

"Blimey!" Ron shouted over the noise. "I hope she didn´t blow up the whole hallway!"

Harry nodded dumbly in agreement beneath his arms.

They waited a little longer until the shaking lessened into a small vibration in the ground before getting shakily to their feet.

"We´d better go," Ron said after he had gone to go take a look a little ways off at the area where the bathroom had been. The light was completely gone and the dust and dirt made a thick screen in Ron´s eyes, inhibiting any hopes of seeing what all happened to the bathroom. He doubted there was much to see anyway.

Harry picked up his wand again and shown the light ahead of them towards the unknown tunnel way. "I guess we have no choice but to continue down here," he said. "Let´s hope it leads us to somewhere where I can get some help."

For some strange reason, Harry felt that someone was laughing at him when he said that.

_________________________________________

Ginny swayed on the spot and would have probably fallen over again if it weren't for Snape, who leveled her out. He shot her an annoyed look until he noticed how pale she´d gotten. He frowned and looked back up at Dumbledore. "Hello, Professor Dumbledore," he greeted. He dragged the obstinate Ginny with him inside the Greenhouse.

Dumbledore whipped a bead of sweat off his face and leaned against the large, clay flowerpot next to him. "You need something from us, Professor Snape?" he asked politely as Sprout emerged from one of the many rows of Mandrake plants. She was lugging behind her a rather heavy looking plant with funny little red flowers shaped much like that of muggle light bulbs perturbing all around it. The plant was a good two feet high above Ginny´s head and look to her to be a lot like a palm tree, only without the palm leaves and coconuts.

"Alright, this is the last one we´ve got to transplant and we´re done," Sprout announced breathlessly as she paused for a brief rest next to Dumbledore.

"Oh good," Dumbledore said with a relieved smile. He rolled up a sleeve of his wizarding robe that had fallen down his arm and looked over at Professor Snape then Ginny, who was standing, opened mouth, staring at them. "Perhaps you and Ms. Weasley will be willing to assist us, Severus?"

"But.... what.... are those?" Ginny asked in a choked voice as she was still getting over the shock of her mistake in thinking that Dumbledore and Professor Sprout were.....well, never mind that.

Dumbledore seemed pleased at this question. "Why, they´re Yama trees, Ms. Weasley." He patted the trunk of the tree Professor Sprout had brought over. "Fearful things, these Yama trees are. You see, they repel all forms magic around them and make it impossible for any magical creatures to use their powers properly when under their influence. They make very important potions for subduing dangerous magical creatures or criminals. One drop from the potion made from this tree´s sap, and it will render the victim as helpless in using magic as a five-year-old muggle. Pretty neat, don´t you think?"

"Oh, so is that why you and Professor Spout are doing this all manually?" Ginny asked.

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes ma´am."

"And.... And that´s all you two´ve been doing in here?" Ginny asked hesitantly. "You´ve..... done.... nothing else?"

"Well, we did have a cup of tea before we started if you want to be technical," Dumbledore stated amicably. "But come, best get to work. You go over there and help Professor Sprout, Ms. Weasley. Severus and I will take care of the pot."

And so, for the moment, Ginny´s detention assignment Snape was planning and her needing to save Harry was taken from both the professor´s and student´s mind as they went over and helped in taking out the extremely heavy plant from it´s old pot that it was by far out growing and putting it into a newer, larger one.

"Ow! Do be careful where you put it, Severus. The roots are extremely delicate," Sprout piped furiously at Snape as he and Dumbledore struggled to level the giant plant into its pot gently.

"Sorry, Professor Sprout," Snape apologized meekly before muttering under his breath. "Damn nag of a Hufflepuff."

"I heard that!"

"Oops, I mean, sorry."

"You know I could always do with some help with the Venemous Tentacula. It´s been having a rather nasty toothache for three days now."

Snape paled under the threat and laughed uneasily. "Funny one, Professor."