Sirius sat at the dining room table listlessly stirring his bowl of porridge. At least there was fruit in it today. Fruit always made the porridge taste better. Not that it was a fantastic meal in the slightest, but it was still better than what he had been eating. Porridge was by far and away better than nothing.
He had a goal now, one which he would not fail at: he was going to see Harry.
He wasn’t sure why there was such secrecy around where Harry was or why he needed to keep it secret from everyone, but he would not fail. If he had to cut out his own tongue to prevent himself from telling the wrong person, he would do so. He would do whatever it took to see his godson again. Hell, he’d even be nice to Snape if that’s what it took.
He hoped that wasn’t what it took.
There was one thing that he didn’t want, however, and that was for Harry to be worried about him. He hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten until he finally looked at himself in the mirror when Remus was helping him get cleaned up for the first time in weeks. While it wasn’t as bad as when he had first escaped from Azkaban, he certainly didn’t look well. His cheeks were gaunt and pale, his eyes had horrible bags under them again, and his hair had turned into a matted mess once again. He looked as ill as he felt.
Bathing was the first step. Immediately upon taking a shower and getting a comb through his hair, he felt significantly more human. He didn’t feel better, per se, but he did feel more like his old self and less like the bump on a log he had been for the past few months. The next step was eating.
He hadn’t felt hungry in several weeks; all the food he ate turned to ash in his mouth as he thought of all the meals Harry was potentially missing. But Harry was apparently being taken care of, so now it was his turn to eat. Now it was his turn to get healthy.
The peaches were a bit mushy though and tasted like they had been bruised and left in the sun.
“Hi, Padfoot!” Remus said as he traipsed into the kitchen, a large knapsack in hand which he dropped on the table causing the dishes to rattle. “How’s it going?”
“Mmm,” Sirius grunted, spearing a peach and shoving it unenthusiastically into his mouth. “Whatchu got there?”
“Books for the project I was working on,” Remus said, a sly grin on his face as he started pulling out the books and placing them one at a time on the table. “Actually, it wasn’t even my project to start with, it was Harry’s.”
Sirius’s head shot up, staring at his friend for a moment before he exclaimed, “Are you joking?!”
“Not in the slightest,” Remus said as he pulled the last book out of his sack and set it on the table with a thunk and sighing. “I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t. Not right now.”
“He’s safe though, right?” Sirius said quietly, staring at the books on the table curiously.
“As safe as he can be,” Remus said with a smile. “Honestly, he’s probably safer now than he was before he ‘disappeared.’”
Sirius nodded and swallowed another bite of porridge before calling it on the food for now. He’d try again with lunch but that was just a foul combination. It was too mushy and was rather sour for some reason. Honestly, Kreacher was probably trying to poison him or something as punishment for trying to get better. Awful creature.
“So, what is it that he was studying?” Sirius said, banishing the bowl to the sink and picking up one of the strangely bound books. These were clearly not books from the wizarding world; their paper was thin and white and they were bound far too uniformly. Even their spines didn’t have the raised bands from where the signatures were bound together. “Something muggle?”
“This project gets quite technical, Padfoot,” Remus said, cracking open one of the larger books and summoning a piece of parchment, a quill, and some ink.
“Oh, come off it Moony,” Sirius growled, grabbing another book off of the pile and opening it himself. “I’m sure I can manage to understand… electricky.”
Remus snorted at the mispronunciation. Sirius wasn’t an idiot, despite what Snape said. He had managed to get into the Auror program without the financial backing (aka bribery) of his family. He had done the work, he had completed the studies, and he had been well on his way to becoming one of the finest Aurors on the force when the attack on the Potters had happened. Perhaps getting his input on the project wouldn’t be that bad of an idea.
“Fine,” Remus sighed dramatically. “It started out as a project trying to find out why electricity and magic didn’t work well together. Magic would prevent electrical devices from operating properly and too much electricity causes magic to malfunction. I think the initial idea of the project was just trying to get electrical devices working around magical beings, but it ended up being so much more.”
Sirius nodded encouragingly as Remus rambled. He hadn’t seen his friend this excited for a project since they had decided to become Animagi back in their fourth year of school. Though Remus hadn’t been able to actually participate in the process, his input on their research had certainly helped speed the process along. Whatever it was about this project that had him interested, it would only be to his benefit to have someone to bounce ideas off of.
“If my theory is correct, electricity is magic but only with a different name,” Remus said, his excitement rising. “Or at the very least, this project may lead to the discovery of how the magical core works and the link between the wizarding and muggle populations.”
“So…” Sirius frowned as he pondered the subject. “Like where the wizarding world came from?”
“Potentially,” Remus said. “Though this project keeps opening up more and more doors and I honestly have no idea what to do with the information I keep finding. My biggest issue right now is that I have copious amounts of information on how muggles create electricity, but I don’t have much information on how wizards create magic. All of our texts are on how to use it, but not how it’s made.”
Sirius frowned as he thought about this for a moment. All of the ‘pureblood education’ he had gone through growing up had taught him of the superiority of the wizarding world and that magic was an intrinsic part of life. In some ways, he had been taught not to question it, that it was what it was. There were the haves and the have nots in the world and he was lucky enough to be a part of one of the most long lasting and purest of houses. Though he hadn’t put much effort into learning the material, he also couldn’t remember the question of why this difference existed.
“Why would it matter how it’s made?” Sirius murmured, lost in his own thoughts. “Why would we care?”
“Because the muggles are making all sorts of strides in technology and we are rapidly falling behind,” Remus said firmly. “Every little thing we do is reliant on magic, but it greatly depends on the caster as to how powerful and long lasting the spell is. Some wizards can apparate internationally with little problem, others can hardly make it two cities away. It’s not consistent. Muggles can do many of the same things we can, but in different ways and consistently. They aren’t able to learn how to transfigure something, but it’s only a matter of time before their technology is advanced enough to do so.”
“I think…” Sirius paused for a long moment as he pondered how to say what he was thinking, aimlessly leafing through the book in front of him. “I don’t think you’ll find an exact ‘this is how it works’ book about magical cores. I don’t think you’ll get anywhere that way.”
“So I’ve found,” Remus said, rubbing his forehead. “But I can’t think of a good place to start.”
Sirius thought for a moment before he snapped his fingers and threw the book down on the table. He may not understand electricity, or how the magical core worked, but he did know of a lead they could follow. A lead which very well could lead somewhere.
“Have you looked into potions?” Sirius said, standing so quickly he got a bit of a head rush. “There are a lot of potions which can augment the way the core works. Force it to produce more magic or change the way magic is utilized, things like that.”
Remus smiled a toothy, feral grin as he, too, stood. “And you wouldn’t happen to have any books on these potions here, would you, Mr. Padfoot?”
“Mr. Moony, of course I do! The Great and Noble House of Black has many books on potions, poisons, and the like!”
“Sirius, how many different books on potions does your family have?” Remus said, looking in awe at the pile of books they had amassed in the short time they had been looking.
Sirius shrugged as he sat on the floor, pulling one of the books on healing potions and flipping rather haphazardly through the pages before throwing it over his shoulder. “I dunno, I never counted.”
Remus shook his head and gingerly settled himself on a pillow that Sirius had thrown on the floor at some point and grabbed a book from the nearest pile to him and opened it. Groaning, he realized he would be looking through the pile with the books on poisons. As fascinating as the topic was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know all of the different poisons available to the wizarding world to make. Sure, some poisons did have other purposes other than torturing or killing another person, but there was still the underlying fact that most of these potions were not made with the intent of helping another being.
Thankfully, the first book he grabbed was far more innocuous and contained mostly pesticides, but this did nothing to help them in their quest to find potions which could manipulate the magical core. On and on they searched, the piles of books behind them growing larger and larger, much to the chagrin of Kreacher who was angrily grumbling to himself about how he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up and how disrespectful the duo were to the heirlooms of his mistress.
“Ugh!” Sirius exclaimed, flopping backwards onto the dusty, wooden floor in exasperation. “We’ve been at this for hours! C’mon Moony, can’t we stop for today?”
“One more book, Padfoot,” Remus said, reaching for one more from his pile. “One more and we’ll take a break for … dinner I guess.”
Sirius rolled his eyes and grabbed a book from the middle of Remus’s pile, causing the already precarious stack to tumble over with a crash. Kreacher let out a loud moan of frustration from the corner at the noise.
“Fine,” Sirius grumbled, flipping through the book of poisons with only mild interest. “This is more frustrating than trying to become an animagus, you know. At least then there was a set path to follow!”
“I know, I know,” Remus said, pausing briefly on a page and scribbling something down onto his parchment. “But some headway is better than none!”
“Some headway is better than none,” Sirius repeated mockingly, lazily flipping through his book and doodling in the corners of his parchment with the self-inking quill he had found. Between the two of them they had come up with several short lists of potions which affected the magical core. “Hey, I found one.”
“Which one?” Remus said, raising an eyebrow and looking at his own list to see if he had written it down.
“Per Fulgur Excrucior,” Sirius said, the latin rolling off his tongue easily. “Also known as Fulgur, though there are a few colloquial spellings. Says it was invented in Romania during the 16th century as a means of trying to apparate long distance to escape a witch hunt, however the inventor died shortly after taking it in a … rather gruesome manner. Apparently they were filled with lightning, though they did manage to apparate from Romania to Latvia in one trip before their death.”
Remus nodded, but didn’t add the potion to the list. “Already had that one, sorry.”
“Damn,” Sirius said, continuing to flip through the book for a moment before Remus grabbed it from him, a frown on his face. “What?”
“I just want to see that entry on Fulgur for a minute,” Remus said, flipping back a few pages and pulling out his wand and muttering a spell.
Remus froze, eyes wide as he stared at the page for a moment before slamming the book shut and quickly running from the room with the agility of someone half his age. Sirius listened with confusion as Remus’s pounding footsteps descended the stairs and turned into the kitchen before stopping for a moment.
“You good, mate?” Sirius called, walking to the door of the library as Remus began running back up the stairs two at a time.
Remus ignored him in favor of flipping through this other book for several moments before stopping on a particular page and casting the same spell he had on the potions book. A smile blossomed on his face before he began laughing hysterically. Tears rolled down his face as he sat the books next to each other for comparison’s sake.
“The hell, Moony?” Sirius said, sitting next to his friend and looking at the books. “What’s got you all riled?”
“Fulgar!” Remus said, pointing at the word on both pages. “Or Fulgur, or Fulger. It’s all the same!”
“You’re cracked mate,” Sirius said, raising an eyebrow at his friend while looking at the book Remus had brought up from the kitchen. “What even is this?”
Remus took a deep breath and wiped his eyes, trying to contain his laughter. “It’s a book El- Harry had gotten from Durmstrang a while ago. He had been having problems finding any information and decided to reach out to a few different schools to see if they had anything. Beauxbatons didn’t want to help-”
“Bloody frogs,” Sirius muttered, rolling his eyes.
“-but Durmstrang and Ilvermorny both ended up sending what books they had. I hadn’t really thought much of the Durmstrang one as it was mostly building codes and propaganda, but the books from Ilvermorny were what really sent me down this research path. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before!”
“Think of what?” Sirius raised an eyebrow before grabbing the book from Durmstrang and flipping through it with a frown. Remus definitely needed some sleep; he seemed well and truly cracked.
“Fulgur the potion, I’ve… I’ve heard of it before,” Remus said, stumbling slightly as his brain caught up to his mouth. “I’ve heard of it being used for medicinal purposes, but I never really thought about what the name of it meant.”
“Okay?” Sirius asked, confused as to where this was going.
“Lightning. It literally means lightning,” Remus said excitedly. “It’s electricity! Don’t you see Sirius?! It’s all electricity!”
Sirius looked at his friend as though he had thoroughly lost his mind. He was somewhat following what Remus was saying, but thus far the explanation had been so extremely disjointed he wasn’t quite sure he was following. “Remus, start from the beginning. I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“Ok,” Remus said, taking a deep breath. “So, back during the communist era, the Romanian government had these plans to move everyone into government houses. Apparently the Romanian equivalent of the Ministry of Magic decided this was a good idea and decided to move the magical communities to new locations as well, completely ignoring the old ley lines the traditional magical settlements were on in favor of these new locations.”
“Wait, wait,” Sirius stopped him, holding up a hand. “That is a terrible idea! That would weaken the community!”
“Not necessarily,” Remus said with a conspiratorial grin. “The new communities were built next to newly built muggle ‘power plants’ designed to make electricity. The electricity from these power plants was apparently enough to offset not living on or near a ley line. The houses in these communities were also built with devices to attract electricity, though the residents were told it was to protect them from lightning strikes. The word for lightning is the same in Romanian and Latin, just with different spellings!”
“So the potion…”
“The potion is liquid lightning, that’s literally its name!” Remus laughed before his face suddenly dropped as the realization of what this meant sunk in. “The potion is liquid lightning.”
With a sigh, Elias turned over in his bed and stared at the wall nearest to him. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, the dreams of the shadowy figures he now knew to be Death Eaters had woken him up several times and left him with a migraine of epic proportions. The one thing he was thankful for was the fact that he hadn’t actually felt the poor Death Eater being tortured last night, however his head had been so full of the buzzing, static sound that he was sure that was the reason for his migraine now.
It was miserable. Every part of his head throbbed with a fiery intensity. Closing his eyes hurt. Opening his eyes hurt. Moving made him nauseated and he was constantly moving due to his spasms. The light from the windows felt like daggers piercing his eyes. The sound of Lockhart’s quill scratching on the parchment made him want to claw his ears off of the side of his head. And then there were the conversations.
He couldn’t even focus on what was being said, let alone follow a conversation. All he knew was he just wanted everyone to be quiet. Lockhart was notoriously loud, the healer’s voices were soft yet somehow still grating, and the poor lady who had partially turned herself into a dog could only respond by barking. The sounds were ringing in his ears as he tried in vain to block them out with his pillow, tears leaking from his eyes as the world spun around him.
A sudden lurch in his stomach sent him leaning over the edge of the bed, vomiting what little he had in his stomach onto the floor. A moan involuntarily escaped his lips as the pressure in his head increased to almost blinding levels, the sound of static echoing in his ears as his breath came in hiccuped gasps.
“Shhhh!” a woman tried to shush the rest of the room.
“Oh, dear!” Healer Strout exclaimed, her heels clacking loudly on hard flooring as she strode towards his bed. “Elias, dear are you ok?”
Elias moaned, leaning over the edge of the bed with his eyes closed and breathing through his mouth so as to not smell the acrid scent of his own vomit. His head was throbbing in time with his heart and he wanted to cry but was too afraid to because his head was pounding so badly. He just wanted to be back in his own bed with his soft blankets and his multitude of pillows and his da to help hold his hair back and make sure he was doing ok.
“Shhhh!” the woman shushed the room again, slightly more frantically this time. “Shhhh!”
“It’s ok, Alice,” Healer Strout said in a much softer voice. “I’ll make it quieter for him, ok?”
Elias heard a grunt from the woman moments before the sounds in the ward muffled to a far more tolerable level and the light levels dimmed greatly. He vaguely noticed a set of heavy curtains being pulled around his bed, further dimming the light and muffling the sounds. Tentatively, he looked around in relief before collapsing back on his bed and throwing an arm over his eyes.
Maybe he’d be able to sleep this off?
A soft blanket was thrown over his head, surprising him greatly. Who could have done that? Could they not just leave him alone?
“Frank!” the now far more muffled voice of Healer Strout said. “No, no, dearie! Leave him alone! Come now, it’s time for potions. Back to bed, the lot of you!”
Elias heard the muffled creak of the potion’s cabinet’s door on the other side of the curtain nearest the wall and the slight clack of Healer Ogden’s heels as she walked over to the cabinet as well. While he wasn’t sure if the cabinet itself was warded, he knew from his time in Ward 34 that certain potions required two healers to double check the dosages before they were given. His Fulgur being one of them.
He didn’t much care about those details now, however. He only hoped there was a potion for a migraine in with the potions he was going to be getting right now. It had to have been nearly noon, so he wasn’t due for much right now anyways. Maybe they would just leave him alone and let him sleep. If they didn’t, he knew he would probably be a handful later if his head was still feeling this bad when he started to get confused.
He didn’t even want to think about how poorly he would act in a few hours. It wasn’t like he could really control it. Occasionally he would catch a few stories about what he had done from the healers when they were reporting off to one another, but otherwise he had very few memories of what he had done. In fact, he had better memories of the nightmares he had than of the hours preceding them.
“Oh, good afternoon Professor!” he vaguely heard Healer Strout say from over by the cabinet.
“Good afternoon, Healer Strout,” his father’s dark timbre sounded through the muffling charm. “Is Elias napping? I’ve never seen his curtains shut here.”
“No, the poor dear has had a migraine all morning,” Healer Strout said sadly before letting out a small chuckle as she measured a few potions into several small glass cups she had sat before her. “I don’t know what it is, but Frank and Alice have taken a liking to him.”
“Oh?” Severus muttered, looking at the variety of potions contained within the cabinet with unbridled curiosity. Many of them he could recognize by sight, but others he was curious about what they were.
“Oh yes! Alice kept trying to make everyone be quiet and Frank… Frank tried,” Healer Strout said, shaking her head in exasperation. “They both seemed to know something was wrong, but Frank… I think he was trying to make Elias more comfortable. He gave him his favorite blanket. Or rather, he threw it over Elias’s head.”
Severus’s eyebrow shot up rather involuntarily as he looked over at the elder Longbottom who was now staring off in the direction of the window, his eyes unfocused and unmoving. “Do the Longbottoms get migraines as well?”
“Hm,” Healer Strout hummed as she capped the potion vials and put them back into the cabinet. “Not for a long time. Not in recent memory at least.”
Severus frowned as he watched the two former Order members. It was well known that they had lost their minds due to Cruciatus exposure and were unable to care for themselves. That was how they ended up here. But were their minds truly gone? They both certainly seemed as though they were capable of some sort of thought process, although it seemed to be far more of a lateral form of thought than a cohesive one.
“Is there any chance they knew what was going on with Elias?” he found himself asking, genuinely curious. “Or that they remember the migraines?”
“Oh, it's certainly possible,” Healer Strout huffed, closing the cabinet, locking it with a simple key and handing one of the smaller cups to him. “The mind is a fickle thing. Even the most renowned healers in the mind arts have only the barest of understanding of how it works. Now, give this to Elias, if you will. He was asking for you earlier.”
Severus looked at the cup in the light and nodded. He would recognize that migraine potion anywhere, he only hoped that it would work for his son this time around. It was a migraine potion which had ultimately landed him here after all. Between the soul fragment, the connection with the Dark Lord, and the Cruciatus exposure on multiple occasions, it was no wonder Elias got migraines to begin with.
Nodding his thanks to the healer, he quickly stepped through the curtains, making sure to pull them closed behind him to dampen the amount of light filtering in. Clearly the healers had put some rather substantial charms on the curtains to keep the noise and light levels to a minimum, though he could still tell that Elias was quite uncomfortable as he was cradling his head and moaning softly.
“Elias?” Severus said softly, stepping nearly silently to the head of the bed and squatting so he was at eye level with his son. “Elias, I have a potion for you I need you to take.”
“D-d-da?” Elias stuttered out, his eyes shining with pain, a slight sweat having broken out on his brow. “H-hurts!”
“I know it does,” Severus said, uncorking the vial with expert ease. “Swallow this please, it will help.”
Draco sat in the back of the potions classroom, arms folded in front of his chest as he watched his classmates laughing and having fun. Despite one third of their trio missing, the Gryffindors seemed happy, relieved almost. They were laughing and joking with one another, even ribbing Longbottom good naturedly as they prepared themselves for class.
It wasn’t fair.
How did everything good happen to them? How come they could go from sullen, angry, and suspicious to happy and carefree in the course of only a few weeks? What part of their lives were so nice and easy that they had this luxury? He was the one who was supposed to have the easy life. He was the one who was supposed to be happy and confident and joking around with his friends in his Head of House’s class. Not them!
He was a pureblood. He was from one of the most noble houses. He was wealthy beyond anything they could possibly imagine. He could easily ask his parents for anything he wanted and get it. And yet, here they were: happy about something.
He could only imagine one thing that could make them act this way: someone must have gotten in touch with Potter.
It wasn’t fair at all. Their missing friend had been found. Meanwhile, he and the other Slytherins had lost so much in such a short period of time.
He may not have liked Thomas Nott as a person, but he couldn’t deny the fact he had made some major contributions to the welfare of those Slytherin who were not as well off. He had made it so they could get better jobs, so they could pull themselves out of poor situations so long as they put in the work. He had made the wizarding world a far more accepting place for those with the ambition to do something with their lives but who lacked the means. His death had come as a major blow to the house.
But that wasn’t what had hurt the most.
Even Professor Snape had seemed to be reeling from the fact that Nott had died at the same time his own son had required hospitalization. The fact Elias had become that sick was a kick in the gut after having been punched. The fact Elias had almost died had been rolling around in his mind since the day Professor Snape told them.
He had known Elias was sickly, but not that bad! He hadn’t thought about how his condition could affect him other than the struggles he had on a daily basis or how he could potentially get worse. He hadn’t wanted to think about that, especially not after finding him so totally and utterly confused during his exacerbation over the summer. He had seemed like he was doing ok, like he would be in the same boat as the rest of them when it came to trying to study for OWLS. though he was obviously going to be doing things slightly differently. He had seemed fine, then suddenly he wasn’t.
Then Professor Snape seemed to disappear as well. Oh, he was around, just not in the same capacity as he had been previously. Draco wasn’t the only one to notice this either; several other Slytherins had commented on something similar. Normally he would spend a decent amount of time in the Slytherin common room answering questions, offering advice, and helping keep the room under control. If any student had anything troubling them, he always seemed to be around.
Not anymore, however. Now he almost seemed to be in the camp of the Gryffindors. He had pulled the mudblood and the blood traitors to the side several times and spoken with them. He had even taken them into his office to speak with them, but no yelling had been heard as had been expected. There could have been a silencing charm up, but, even still, the Gryffindor trio didn’t look as though they had just been thoroughly eviscerated. In fact, they came away from the encounter looking rather… happy.
Draco scowled at the laughing trio before slamming his book on the table and angrily flipping it open to the potion they would be working on that day. He needed to talk to Professor Snape. He needed to ask him some questions. Questions that couldn’t wait until the man was suddenly back on the side of the Slytherins.
Questions which were of life or death importance.
He was rapidly running out of time to do so. Christmas was coming and he was supposed to make his decision then. He would then spend the next few months being groomed and trained for what would be his official role. Then, over summer holidays, he would finally be given the opportunity to do what he had always dreamt of doing: taking the Dark Mark like his father.
He had dreamt of doing this. He had always thought this was his future when the Dark Lord returned. So many of the things the Dark Lord stood for he believed in whole-heartedly. Blood purity was what set certain families apart. The goal of the wizarding world should be to be as independent from the muggle world as possible. Wizards were superior in every way with purebloods at the top of the caste system.
But now, he wasn’t sure. He had witnessed Professor Snape being tortured over the summer simply for not having the answer to the Dark Lord’s questions. He had been a part of the potion’s making process for the man and had found the entire experience to be nothing like what he had thought it would be like. He had thought he would feel honor at being chosen to work on potions with the greatest potion’s master in Britain. He thought he would feel pride at what he had accomplished.
All he had felt was fear. Would he be the next to stand before the Dark Lord and feel his wrath? Would his skills be good enough to evade torture? Would one of the many many poisons they had made be used on him?
Then there was Elias. Real, tangible proof of the devastation the Dark Lord and his followers had wrought on the world. He had never thought about what it was like to live on the other side, to not be in the Dark Lord’s good graces. He had never thought about what the repercussions of not being a favored child in his eyes would be like.
Elias was one of the only friends he had ever made which did not have a political lean to it. He was one of the few friends his father hadn’t hand picked for him when he was younger. He wasn’t a pureblood. He wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t like anyone Draco had ever met before.
And suddenly he was gone; ripped away by the very curse the Dark Lord loved to use on those who angered him.
Draco didn’t know if he could do it. He didn’t know what he really wanted, but his father’s plan for him sure didn’t seem like what he wanted for himself anymore and it scared him.
He just needed a few moments to speak with Professor Snape. The man, despite being a known Death Eater, had never pushed any of his students towards joining their ranks. Whenever anyone asked him questions about the possibility of joining, he was very deliberate in how he worded his answer so it was never clear what his true stance on the matter was but his knowledge and insight into what it actually meant to join was invaluable. Some who were waffling had joined, others had managed to finish their schooling and evade joining in spite of any pressure they received from their family.
“Mr. Malfoy,” Professor Snape’s voice cut through his thoughts. “If you would be so kind as to not continue shredding your shrivelfig into oblivion, thus turning your potion into an explosive device, that would be fantastic.”
“Sorry, sir,” Draco drawled, putting the shredded herb down and taking advantage of the situation. “May I speak to you after class?”
“Unfortunately, I have a prior arrangement with Professor Umbridge this afternoon,” Professor Snape said testily. “You may come in during my next office hours.”
Draco sighed and grabbed a new shrivelfig and began shredding it once more, paying more attention to what he was doing. He would speak to the man, even if he got himself a detention to do so.
Chapter 40
Chapter End Notes:
Oooooo, I'm so excited for the next chapter!!!