Fishing
The dungeon door opened with a bang interrupting all conversations and shortly after Slughorn appeared as the students filed into the room.
When Harry entered the dungeon it was curiously already full of vapors, odd smells, and large bubbling cauldrons. While they passed by them everyone tried to sniff what they contained, as always the students ended up distributed by house leaving Harry sharing a table with his fellow Griffindors, they chose the closest one to an expensive-looking gold cauldron that gave off the most alluring scent Harry had ever smelled.
He closed his eyes and breathed slowly and deeply the potion’s fumes trying to get drunk on the wonderful smell. It was like a gust of snowy wind off the peak of a mountain that carried the earthy fragrance of pine mixed with the sweet burn of salt of an icy ocean wave. Every time Harry inhaled he discovered a new thing, some citrusy notes, a hint of iron, smoke, a bit of chocolate, and something he didn’t have words to name. His head started to become fuzzy and a wave of contentment washed over him, making him feel safer than he had ever felt.
“--scales out, everyone…” Harry managed to snap out of his trance when he heard Slughorn mention scales. How the hell did Slughorn know about his scales? Did he accidentally transform? After frantically checking his appearance he relaxed when he made sure he still looked like a wizard and noticed that the professor meant the potion ingredients and was still talking. “and potion kits, and don’t forget your copies of Advanced Potion-Making…”
Unfortunately, that made him start panicking again and raise his hand “Sir?”
“Harry, m’boy?”
“I haven’t got a book or scales or anything — nor’s Ron — we didn’t realize we’d be able to do the N.E.W.T., you see —” He left the sentence hanging hoping the professor would offer some solution. Thankfully Slughorn permitted them to use ingredients from the store cupboard and strode over to a corner cupboard and rummage through it until he emerged with two sets of tarnished scales and two rough-looking copies of Advanced Potion-Making by Libatius Borage that he assigned to Harry and Ron until they wrote to Flourish and Blotts for their copies.
After resolving that problem, Harry tuned out of the class opting to calm his heartbeat. Even though it had been a few months since he inherited he still panicked every time someone mentioned anything that could be remotely related to dragels. Surprisingly he had somehow managed to keep it a secret from everyone, but there had been a few close calls.
Thanks to Hermione answering all the questions Harry gathered that Slughorn had prepared a few potions for them to look at. There was Veritaserum, a colorless, odorless potion that forced the drinker to tell the truth but looked like plain water boiling away inside a cauldron. The next one Harry recognized as Polyjuice Potion, the slow-bubbling, mud-like substance in the second cauldron gave Harry flashbacks of his second year. The next potion was the one in the golden cauldron in front of them, Amortentia, the most powerful love potion in the world. According to Hermione the steam spirals that rose from the cauldron were characteristic of the love potion along with its distinctive mother-of-pearl sheen. The color of the potion reminded Harry of his wings the few times he had dared to have them out, though his scales did have shades of peach that the potion lacked. Finally, the last characteristic to identify Amortenia was the scent, it was supposed to smell differently to each of them according to what attracts them. Harry tried to not think about that too much and focused on Slughorn’s rant about the dangers of the potion “Amortentia doesn’t really create love, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room — oh yes,” he said, nodding gravely at a few students who were smirking skeptically. “When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love. . . . “And now,” said Slughorn, “it is time for us to start work.”
“Sir, you haven’t told us what’s in this one,” said Ernie Macmillan, pointing at a small black cauldron standing on Slughorn’s desk. The potion within was splashing about merrily; it was the color of molten gold, and large drops were leaping like goldfish above the surface, though not a particle had spilled.
“Oho,” said Slughorn again. Harry was sure that Slughorn had not forgotten the potion at all, but had waited to be asked for dramatic effect. “Yes. That. Well, that one, ladies and gentlemen, is a most curious little potion called Felix Felicis. I take it,” he turned, smiling, to look at Hermione, who had let out an audible gasp, “that you know what Felix Felicis does, Miss Granger?”
“It’s liquid luck,” said Hermione excitedly. “It makes you lucky!” The whole class seemed to sit up a little straightened “Quite right, take another ten points for Gryffindor. Yes, it’s a funny little potion, Felix Felicis,” said Slughorn. “Desperately tricky to make, and disastrous to get wrong. However, if brewed correctly, as this has been, you will find that all your endeavors tend to succeed . . . at least until the effects wear off.”
“Why don’t people drink it all the time, sir?” said Terry Boot eagerly.
“Because if taken in excess, it causes giddiness, recklessness, and dangerous overconfidence,” said Slughorn. “Too much of a good thing, you know… highly toxic in large quantities. But taken sparingly, and very occasionally…”
“Have you ever taken it, sir?” asked Michael Corner with great interest.
“Twice in my life,” said Slughorn. “Once when I was twenty-four, once when I was fifty-seven. Two tablespoonfuls taken with breakfast. Two perfect days.”
He gazed dreamily into the distance. Whether he was playacting or not, thought Harry, the effect was good.
“And that,” said Slughorn, apparently coming back to earth, “is what I shall be offering as a prize in this lesson.”
There was silence in which every bubble and gurgle of the surrounding potions seemed magnified tenfold.
“One tiny bottle of Felix Felicis,” said Slughorn, taking a minuscule glass bottle with a cork in it out of his pocket and showing it to them all. “Enough for twelve hours’ luck. From dawn till dusk, you will be lucky in everything you attempt.
“Now, I must give you a warning that Felix Felicis is a banned substance in organized competitions . . . sporting events, for instance, examinations, or elections. So the winner is to use it on an ordinary day only... and watch how that ordinary day becomes extraordinary!”
“So,” said Slughorn, suddenly brisk, “how are you to win my fabulous prize? Well, by turning to page ten of Advanced PotionMaking. We have a little over an hour left to us, which should be time for you to make a decent attempt at the Draught of Living Death. I know it is more complex than anything you have attempted before, and I do not expect a perfect potion from anybody. The person who does best, however, will win little Felix here. Off you go!”
There was a scraping as everyone drew their cauldrons toward them and some loud clunks as people began adding weights to their scales, but nobody spoke. The concentration within the room was almost tangible. Harry bent swiftly over the tattered book Slughorn had lent him.
To his annoyance, he saw that the previous owner had scribbled all over the pages so that the margins were as black as the printed portions. Bending low to decipher the ingredients (even here, the previous owner had made annotations and crossed things out) Harry hurried off toward the store cupboard to find what he needed.
Everyone kept glancing around at what the rest of the class was doing; this was both an advantage and a disadvantage of Potions, that it was hard to keep your work private. Within ten minutes, the whole place was full of bluish steam. Hermione, of course, seemed to have progressed furthest. Her potion already resembled the “smooth, black currant-colored liquid” mentioned as the ideal halfway stage.
Having finished chopping his roots, Harry bent low over his book again. It was really very irritating, having to try and decipher the directions under all the stupid scribbles of the previous owner, who for some reason had taken issue with the order to cut up the sopophorous bean and had written in the alternative instruction:
Crush with flat side of silver dagger, releases juice better than cutting.
The sopophorous bean was proving very difficult to cut up. Harry turned to Hermione. “Can I borrow your silver knife?” She nodded impatiently, not taking her eyes off her potion, which was still deep purple, though according to the book ought to be turning a light shade of lilac by now.
Harry crushed his bean with the flat side of the dagger. To his astonishment, it immediately exuded so much juice he was amazed the shriveled bean could have held it all. Hastily scooping it all into the cauldron he saw, to his surprise, that the potion immediately turned exactly the shade of lilac described by the textbook.
His annoyance with the previous owner vanishing on the spot, Harry now squinted at the next line of instructions. According to the book, he had to stir counterclockwise until the potion turned clear as water. According to the addition the previous owner had made, however, he ought to add a clockwise stir after every seventh counterclockwise stir. Could the old owner be right twice? Harry stirred counterclockwise, held his breath, and stirred once clockwise. The effect was immediate. The potion turned the palest pink.
“How are you doing that?” demanded Hermione, who was red-faced and whose hair was growing bushier and bushier in the fumes from her cauldron; her potion was still resolutely purple.
“Add a clockwise stir —”
“No, no, the book says counterclockwise!” she snapped.
Harry shrugged and continued what he was doing. Seven stirs counterclockwise, one clockwise, pause… seven stirs counterclockwise, one stir clockwise…
Across the table, Ron was cursing fluently under his breath; his potion looked like liquid licorice. Harry glanced around. As far as he could see, no one else’s potion had turned as pale as his. He felt elated, something that had certainly never happened before in this dungeon.
“And time’s… up!” called Slughorn. “Stop stirring, please!”
Slughorn moved slowly among the tables, peering into cauldrons. He did not comment, but occasionally gave the potions a stir or a sniff. At last, he reached the table where Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ernie were sitting. He smiled ruefully at the tarlike substance in Ron’s cauldron. He passed over Ernie’s navy concoction. Hermione’s potion he gave an approving nod. Then he saw Harry’s, and a look of incredulous delight spread over his face.
“The clear winner!” he cried to the dungeon. “Excellent, excellent, Harry! Good lord, so perfect I dare say one drop would kill us all. Here you are, then, here you are — one bottle of Felix Felicis, as promised, and use it well!”
Harry slipped the tiny bottle of golden liquid into his inner pocket, feeling an odd combination of delight at the furious looks on the Slytherins’ faces and guilt at the disappointed expression on Hermione’s. Ron looked simply dumbfounded.
Harry would like to say that he had forgotten about the tiny bottle of golden liquid but the truth was that it was always lingering in the back of his mind or he was reminded of its presence by someone else. He had been meaning to save it for some opportunity that could help him with the whole I’m-an-extinct-an-highly-ilegal-dark-creature thing but now Ron and Hermione seemed set on making him use it to get Slughorn’s memory.
“So, Harry — you going to use the Felix Felicis or what?” Ron demanded.
“Yeah, I suppose I’d better,” said Harry. “I don’t think I’ll need all of it, not twelve hours’ worth, it can’t take all night. . . . I’ll just take a mouthful. Two or three hours should do it.”
“It’s a great feeling when you take it,” said Ron reminiscently. “Like you can’t do anything wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” said Hermione, laughing. “You’ve never taken any!”
“Yeah, but I thought I had, didn’t I?” said Ron, as though explaining the obvious. “Same difference really…”
As they had only just seen Slughorn enter the Great Hall and knew that he liked to take time over meals, they lingered for a while in the common room, the plan being that Harry should go to Slughorn’s office once the teacher had had time to get back there. When the sun had sunk to the level of the treetops in the Forbidden Forest, they decided the moment had come, and after checking carefully that Neville, Dean, and Seamus were all in the common room, sneaked up to the boys’ dormitory.
Harry took out the rolled-up socks at the bottom of his trunk and extracted the tiny, gleaming bottle.
“Well, here goes,” said Harry, and he raised the little bottle and took a carefully measured gulp.
“What does it feel like?” whispered Hermione.
Harry did not answer for a moment. Then, slowly but surely, an exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity stole through him; he felt as though he could have done anything, anything at all… and getting the memory from Slughorn suddenly seemed not only possible but positively easy…
…and the farthest thing in his mind.
He got to his feet, smiling, brimming with confidence.
“Excellent,” he said. “Really excellent. Right… I’m going down to Hagrid’s.”
“What?” said Ron and Hermione together, looking aghast.
“No, Harry — you’ve got to go and see Slughorn, remember?” said Hermione.
“No,” said Harry confidently. “I’m going to Hagrid’s, I’ve got a good feeling about going to Hagrid’s.”
“You’ve got a good feeling about burying a giant spider?” asked Ron, looking stunned.
“Yeah,” said Harry, pulling his Invisibility Cloak out of his bag. “I feel like it’s the place to be tonight, you know what I mean?”
“No,” said Ron and Hermione together, both looking positively alarmed now.
“This is Felix Felicis, I suppose?” said Hermione anxiously, holding up the bottle to the light. “You haven’t got another little bottle full of— I don’t know —”
“Essence of Insanity?” suggested Ron, as he took the potion back from Hermione.
Harry laughed, and Ron and Hermione looked even more alarmed. “Trust me,” he said, taking the bottle back from Ron and delicately keeping the remaining potion in his pocket. “I know what I’m doing… or at least” — he strolled confidently to the door — “Felix does.”
He pulled the Invisibility Cloak over his head and set off down the stairs, Ron and Hermione hurrying along behind him. At the foot of the stairs, Harry slid through the open door.
Harry strode off through the castle. He did not have to creep along, for he met nobody on his way, but this did not surprise him in the slightest: This evening, he was the luckiest person at Hogwarts.
Why he knew that going to Hagrid’s was the right thing to do, he had no idea. It was as though the potion was illuminating a few steps of the path at a time: He could not see the final destination, he could not see where Slughorn came in, but he knew that he was going the right way. When he reached the entrance hall he saw that Filch had forgotten to lock the front door. Beaming, Harry threw it open and breathed in the smell of clean air and grass for a moment before walking down the steps into the dusk.
It was when he reached the bottom step that it occurred to him how very pleasant it would be to pass the black lake on his walk to Hagrid’s. It was not strictly on the way, but it seemed clear to Harry that this was a whim on which he should act, so he directed his feet immediately toward the water.
There was something wrong with the lake. It was called black for a reason but the way that it began to shimmer and darken, the way there wasn’t a single hint of blue, made Harry’s buried instincts rise. As if something was hidden underneath and about to breach the surface.
Harry continued walking to the shoreline as if an invisible string was pulling him to the water, ignoring the clawed marks that were carved in the muck. The pull led him to a fat mess of shrubs several feet away from the water’s edge. There was quite a bit of muddy ground surrounding it as if water had collected into a man-made puddle of some sort.
Harry knew this was it, this was what he had been searching for. Carefully he started to shake and move the bushes until he found himself looking at a thin figure. The white fabric covering their body was drenched and torn revealing pale blue skin beneath.
The figure was immobile and if it wasn’t for the subtle rising of their chest he wouldn’t have known they were alive. Despite looking dead Harry had never seen such a beautiful creature before. Delicate fluted ears stuck out from between the long, wet clumps of pale sky-blue hair that clung to thin, bared shoulders, splaying over a flat chest and draped sleeves of pure white.
There were strange navy blue marks around their neck, in some sort of curved pattern but the blood oozing from their wounds made it hard to see what they were exactly.
Something rose from the lake and lunged directly at them causing Harry’s wings to snap open and surround them like a cocoon welcoming them in his protection and under the invisible cloak. A sickly and grayed creature with glazed whitened eyes was suddenly in front of them with its mouth hanging open and algae and slime poured out of it. Harry crawled backward as fast as he could while hugging the blue person closer to his body trying to put some distance between them and the thing that had emerged from the lake knowing the cloak was enough protection against it.
So Harry lurked behind the fabric, feeling at peace with the world and watching the strange creature.
Unfortunately, the blue person chose that moment to start squirming and their eyes fluttered open revealing wide panicked eyes. Harry quickly used his hand to cover their mouth, muffling whatever words they were going to say, trying to avoid the creature hearing them but he wasn’t quick enough and the creature lunged forward.
Harry wasn’t scared though, the luck potion sang in his veins reassuring him that everything was going to be better than fine. It was going to be perfect. The blue stranger didn’t know it though, so he raised his wings to block the other person's view, shielding them from the potential impact.
It never came.
Instead, he heard a roar and when he opened his eyes again he found himself staring straight at big blue eyes. It reminded him of the basilisk back in his second year and he was content staying under the protection of the cloak. It seemed the blue stranger had other plans because they started squirming and Harry felt cold hands trying to pry his wings open.
Harry made a disapproving sound at the other’s actions “Stop that! I’m not going to hurt you” It looked like the stranger was going to answer but a roar interrupted them before they could say anything. The creature that had been previously in front of them was launched back to the water by a powerful blast of blue magic and in their place now stood a frowning blue person.
It seemed the stranger was looking for someone, promises of revenge and multiple curses spewed from the stranger’s lips making Harry giggle. He received an odd look from the stranger in his arms but he paid them no mind.
Seized with an immediate desire to reveal himself, Harry pulled off the cloak with a flourish. His soul singing for the person in front of him and his mind stuck repeating the same word.
Mine, mine, mine, mine.
The stranger’s lips were moving, probably saying something but he couldn’t understand it. It didn’t matter, Harry knew what he had to do, he opened his mouth and let a soft and quiet cry fall from his lips. He waited but nothing answered and he frowned at being denied. He opened his eyes, not realizing he had closed them, and glared at the one who dared to refuse him. If only someone had explained things to Harry maybe he wouldn’t be in this situation. If only someone had warned him of the dangers of attracting an immortal’s attention maybe things would have been different. As it was, marked by fate, under the cover of death and with luck running through his veins he stood no chance.
What was that saying again, throw a lucky man into the sea, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth?
Harry parted his lips and repeated the cry this time louder daring the blue person to oppose it.