Chapter 18: Birthday Surprises
The next day Harry confided in both Ron and Hermione the task that Dumbledore had set him, 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 really advanced Dark magic, or why would Voldemort have wanted to know about them? 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 …"
'Ron reckons 1 should just hang back after Potions this afternoon …'
'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, leaving Harry alone and ankle-deep in snow.
Potions lessons were uncomfortable enough these days, seeing as Harry, 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-separale- 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 a 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.
'… and so,' finished Slughorn, 'I want each of you to come and take one of these phials from my desk. You are to create an antidote for the poison within it before the end of the lesson. Good luck, and don't forget your protective gloves!'
Hermione had left her stool and was halfway towards Siughorn's desk before the rest of the class had realised it was time to move, and by the time Harry, Ron and Ernie returned to the table, she had already tipped the contents of her phial into her cauldron and was kindling a fire underneath it.
'it's a shame that the Prince won't be able to help you much with this, Harry,' she said brightly as she straightened up. 'You have to understand the principles involved this time. No short cuts or cheats!'
Annoyed, Har…
