Daisy Potter and the Heir of Slytherin (Book 2, Harry Potter ff)

Chapter 10 - Quidditch and the Revolting Quill

"Who can it be, though?" Hermione said in a quiet voice. "Who'd want all the Squibs and Muggle-borns out of Hogwarts?"

"Let's think." Ron said in mock puzzlement. "Who do we know who thinks Muggle-borns are scum?"

He looked at Hermione. Hermione looked back, unconvinced.

"If you're talking about Floppy -"

"Of course I am!" Ron said. "You heard him: 'You'll be next, Mudbloods!' Come on, you've only got to look at his foul rat face to know it's him -"

"Felix Malfoy, the heir of Slytherin?" Hermione said sceptically.

"Look at his family." I said. "I've been to Draco's 'house' -" Harry snorted and I glared at him, "-he's filthy rich, it's an old wizarding family, the lot of them have been in Slytherin, and old Lucius is definitely evil, what's the odds that his cousin will be the same? They could easily be Slytherin's descendants."

"They could've had the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries!" Harry said. "Handing it down, father to son ..."

"Well." Hermione said cautiously. "I suppose it's possible ..."

"But how do we prove it?" Harry and I said darkly and dramatically.

"There might be a way." Hermione said slowly, dropping her voice still further with a quick glance across the room at Percy. "Of course, it would be difficult. And dangerous, very dangerous. We'd be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect."

"Well, I'm a pro at that. I've been breaking school rules since I was four. Actually, no, since I started nursery, which was three ..." I said, as Ron was saying irritably in the background, "If, in a month or so, you feel like explaining, you will let us know, won't you?"

"All right." Hermione said coldly. "What we'd need to do is get inside the Slytherin common room and ask Floppy a few questions without him realising it's us."

"But that's impossible." Harry said, as Ron laughed.

"Oh no it's not." I said slowly, looking at Hermione. "Polyjuice Potion!"

"Exactly." Hermione said.

"What's that?" Ron and Harry said together.

"Snape mentioned it in class a few weeks ago -"

"D'you think we've got nothing better to do in Potions than listen to Snape?" Ron muttered.

"I only knew that because ... well ..." I muttered, and I mumbled a few other things - I'm sure the others only caught the words 'Fred', 'George', 'Terry', 'Filch's office', 'Confiscated and Highly Dangerous Drawer', 'Insurgent's' and 'Marauder's'.

Hermione explained all that Polyjuice Potion does and how we'd have to get the recipe - it's in a book in the Restricted Section in the library. We'd need a signed note from a teacher to get in there.

"Hard to see why we'd want the book, really." Ron said. "If we weren't going to try and make one of the potions, I mean."

"I think that if we made it sound as though we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance."

"Oh, come on, no teacher's going to fall for that." Ron said. "They'd have to be really thick ..."

~~~

In DADA the next day, I had to act out the part of a werewolf for a demonstration in class. As I acted, I sent winks Dean and Seamus's way, and they couldn't stop laughing, I thought they were going to have a fit.

When we went up to Lockhart at the end of class to get a signature from him, he took out this revolting peacock quill, and Ron and I stared at it with these disgusted faces. Lockhart mistook the looks on our faces and said, "Yes, nice, isn't it? I usually save it for book signings."