Our American Cousin

IX

Who Said Four Heads are Better than One?

Sara stirred the gently simmering potion in the prescribed figure eight style. Snape, while insisting that all work be done solo for the NEWTs prep, was allowing them to partner up during the extra tutoring sessions, on the condition that he picked the partners. As a result, Sara found herself trying to keep up with the second best potions maker in school, Draco Malfoy.

"Draco, does this smell right to you?"

"Its suppose to smell like Blast-Ended Skrewt." Draco sighed, a painfully bored look on his face.

"I've never smelled a Blast-Ended Skrewt, thank you very much."

"Is that my fault?"

"Just smell this, would you." Draco leaned over the cauldron and made a face.

"That's about right."

"Good."

"If you really want to be sure, take a smell of Granger's," injected Blaise Zabini from the other side of the counter. "Hers is always right." Sara and Draco looked over to where Hermione was scowling over her own potion and absentmindedly rubbing her forehead. She also seemed to be hissing. Draco shuddered.

"It's so disconcerting when she does that."

"Does what?"

"Channels Potter."

"What?"

"That's right." Draco smirked. "You weren't here last year."

"No, I wasn't. What do you mean 'channels Potter'?" Draco looked around, then hunched over conspiratorially.

"Last year, the golden Gryffindors managed to get themselves nabbed by Voldemort. He had this weird ritual planed that was suppose to suck out Harry's powers." Sara shivered a bit.

"Yah, I heard a bit about that."

"Well, Professor Snape stopped the ritual halfway, but when he did something weird happened, and Potter, Granger, and Weasley got their brains fused together."

"Serious?!"

"Yeah."

"That must have been amusing."

Draco's half grin turned into a grimace. "For about a day-then it got creepy. You never knew which one you were really talking to. Weasley kept on walking into Potions convinced he was late, Granger cried when the Chudley Cannons lost, and Potter..." Draco looked over to make sure Snape was engrossed in something else, then dropped his voice even lower.

"What?"

"After a couple of weeks, all three of them started getting really violent and kept trying to curse each other. Then one night, during dinner Potter threw up the Dark Mark calling all loyal Death Eaters to her, while Granger and Weasley tried to kill each other."

"Really." Sara was rather sorry she had missed the incident. A part of her mind thought it sounded terribly entertaining.

"Turns out that their brains had also fused with Voldemort's. Dumbledore managed to mostly separate them, but there's leftovers like that." Draco gestured to Hermione. "That's Parseltongue she's trying to cast in. Only Voldemort and Potter speak it. She probably doesn't even know she's doing it."

"You know, it's funny-they kind of left that bit out."

"Would you admit to it?"

"Probably not, but damn..." Sara looked over to where Hermione seemed to be getting more and more frustrated. Sara cleared her throat. "Hey Hermione, can I smell your potion?"

"No!" Hermione snapped. "It's completely wrong." The entire Potions class looked up at her words. Hermione being completely wrong was a true rarity.

"That is because you were casting in Parseltongue again, Miss Granger," Snape pointed out in tones unusually gentle for him. Hermione snarled and slammed down her spoon. In past years, Snape would have taken away points for the outburst, but the truth was that neither Granger, Weasley nor Potter were completely safe to be around when in these moods, no matter what Dumbledore said. Snape rather feared what the NEWTs themselves were likely to bring on. He could only hope that any breakdown of Miss Granger's would filter back to Riddle. Snape gently picked up the pot of lilac-smelling liquid. Having no idea what Hermione might have created, Snape knew he would have to carefully dispose of it himself. "Start again, Miss Granger, and tell Mr. Potter to keep his bad habits to himself." Hermione took a large breath and calmed herself.

"Yes, Professor Snape." She gave a thin smile and tried to clear any traces of Harry or Voldemort from her mind. Sara shook her head at the display and tried to remember what was on the Hogwarts course list, or rather what wasn't on it. She was fairly certain that she hadn't seen anything resembling classes in group magic. Potter had mentioned having some Occlumency lessons, but it obviously wasn't required learning, the way it was at NewMexMagic.

Considering everything else that was going on, Sara decided it was time to hunt down a real phone and have some things sent from home. It was also probably time to write the Hogwarts Board of Directors a stern letter.