Butterfly Effect ; H. Potter

107. poisoned.

The next day Harry and Antheia confided in both Ron and Hermione the task that Dumbledore had set Harry, though separately, for Hermione still refused to remain in Ron's presence longer than it took to give him a contemptuous look.

Ron thought that Harry was unlikely to have any trouble with Slughorn at all.

"He loves you," he said over breakfast, waving an airy forkful of fried egg. "Won't refuse you anything, will he? Not his little Potions Prince. Just hang back after class this afternoon and ask him."

Hermione, however, took a gloomier view.

"He must be determined to hide what really happened if Dumbledore couldn't get it out of him," she said in a low voice, as they stood in the deserted, snowy courtyard at break. "Horcruxes ... Horcruxes ... I've never even heard of them ..."

"You haven't?"

Harry was disappointed; he had hoped that Hermione might have been able to give him a clue as to what Horcruxes were.

"They must be related to Dark Magic if Voldemort asked about them," said Antheia to Harry. "And if he asked Slughorn for help, that means he couldn't find out enough about them from the library."

"I think it's going to be difficult to get the information, Harry, you'll have to be very careful about how you approach Slughorn, think out a strategy ..." suggested Hermione.

"Ron reckons I should just hang back after Potions this afternoon ..." said Harry.

"Oh, well, if Won-Won thinks that, you'd better do it," she said, flaring up at once. "After all, when has Won-Won's judgement ever been faulty?"

"Hermione, can't you –"

"No!" she said angrily, and stormed away.

"When d'you think they'll make up?" asked Harry to Antheia. "If ever."

"After Ron stops using Lavender as a vacuum cleaner for his mouth," said Antheia.

Potions lessons were uncomfortable enough these days, seeing as Harry, Antheia, Ron and Hermione had to share a desk. Today, Hermione moved her cauldron around the table so that she was close to Ernie, and ignored both Harry and Ron.

"What've you done?" Ron muttered to Harry, looking at Hermione's haughty profile.

But before Harry could answer, Slughorn was calling for silence from the front of the room.

"Settle down, settle down, please! Quickly, now, lots of work to get through this afternoon! Golpalott's Third Law ... who can tell me –? But Miss Granger can, of course!"

Hermione recited at top speed: "Golpalott's-Third-Law-states-that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-to-more-than-the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-separate-components."

"Precisely!" beamed Slughorn. "Ten points for Gryffindor! Now, if we accept Golpalott's Third Law as true ..."

Harry was going to have to take Slughorn's word for it that Golpalott's Third Law was true, because he had not understood any of it. Nobody apart from Hermione seemed to be following what Slughorn said next, either.

"... which means, of course, that assuming we have achieved correct identification of the potion's ingredients by Scarpin's Revelaspell, our primary aim is not the relatively simple one of selecting antidotes to those ingredients in and of themselves, but to find that added component which will, by an almost alchemical process, transform these disparate elements –"

Ron was sitting beside Harry with his mouth half open, doodling absently on his new copy of Advanced Potion-Making. Ron kept forgetting that he could no longer rely on Hermione to help him out of trouble when he failed to grasp what was going on.