"If your whole life turns out to be a lie, what will you do then?"
"If everything you knew turns out to be a hoax, what will you do then?"
Graciana Duerre Weasley, twin sister of Ron Weasley, is a troublemaker. Mischievous but a little introvert, bo...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
***
GRACE WRACKED HER BRAIN over the next week as to how she was to persuade Slughorn to hand over the true memory, but nothing in the nature of a brain wave occurred. Harry, on the other hand, was reduced to doing what he did increasingly these days when at a loss: poring over his Potions book, hoping that the Prince would have scribbled something useful in a margin, something Hermione (and a little bit Grace), absolutely hated.
"You won't find anything in there," said Hermione firmly, late on Sunday evening.
"Don't start, Hermione," said Harry. "If it hadn't been for the Prince, Ron wouldn't be sitting here now."
"He would if you'd just listened to Snape in our first year," said Hermione dismissively.
They were sitting beside the fire in the common room; the only other people awake were fellow sixth years. There had been a certain amount of excitement earlier when they had come back from dinner to find a new sign on the notice board that announced the date for their Apparition Test. Those who would be seventeen on or before the first test date, the twenty-first of April, had the option of signing up for additional practice sessions, which would take place (heavily supervised) in Hogsmeade.
Ron had panicked on reading this notice; he had still not managed to Apparate and feared he would not be ready for the test. Hermione, who had now achieved Apparition twice, was a little more confident, and Grace, who had done it many times, wasn't worried in the slightest. But Harry, who would not be seventeen for another four months, could not take the test whether ready or not.
"At least you can Apparate, though!" said Ron tensely to Harry. "You'll have no trouble come July!"
"I've only done it once," Harry reminded him.
Having wasted a lot of time worrying aloud about Apparition, Ron was now struggling to finish a viciously difficult essay for Snape that Grace, Harry and Hermione had already completed.
"I'm telling you, the stupid Prince isn't going to be able to help you with this, Harry!" said Hermione, more loudly. "There's only one way to force someone to do what you want, and that's the Imperius Curse, which is illegal —"
"Yeah, I know that, thanks," said Harry, not looking up from the book. "That's why I'm looking for something different. Dumbledore says Veritaserum won't do it, but there might be something else, a potion or a spell. . . ."
"You're going about it the wrong way," said Hermione. "Only you and Grace can get the memory, Dumbledore says. That must mean you can persuade Slughorn where other people can't. It's not a question of slipping him a potion, anyone could do that —"
