FicWad

Chapter 9

By the time New Years arrived, we'd managed to poison six of our test rats, although three of the nine survived. None of those three showed any signs of being sleepy after getting a dose of our 'new and improved' Sleeping Draught, so we wrote the whole experiment off as a total failure.

Except for the one potion we didn't test on the rats, of course.

We dutifully wrote up our results, noting that while our attempts at improving the Sleeping Draught failed, we did save future experimenters the trouble of testing our ingredient substitutions. We also mentioned one positive outcome, which was that we learned a valuable lesson in potion making: Study the theory before you go blindly mucking about.

I was surprised that Madam Hooch awarded us each the full five extra points, but I suppose that she was simply relieved that no one died. And besides, the five points didn't cost Madam Hooch anything.


-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-


We were sitting on 'our' sofa waiting for the Hogwarts Express to arrive with the returning students. 'Lying' on the sofa would be more accurate. Janie was at one end and I at the other with the soles of our shoes pressed against each other's and our raised legs forming an arch between us.

"What do you think?" I asked Janie, holding up my hand. "It looks a little feathery to me."

We were practicing our Animagus transformations and I had gotten my fingernails to take on the texture of chicken feathers.

"A little bit - yeah," she nodded. "How about my nose?"

"Definitely gray," I encouraged her. "And a little scaly, too, I think."

Janie smiled and checked her nose in her mirror again. "I didn't think it would be this difficult," she sighed.

"You're good at mental things," I shrugged, "but this is physical."

"It's mind over body," she replied absently, concentrating on her nose. "That should count as mental - at least the 'mind' part."

"The 'body' part seems to disagree," I grinned. "Besides, I think it's really 'magic over body' rather than mind."

Janie was silent for several minutes, then she suddenly let out a gasp.

"What's wrong!?" I said, raising my head to look at her between our arched legs. "Wow!" I gasped.

Janie's nose had gone all scaly, some of the scales gray and some black. Her nostrils had moved upwards and were facing front, just like a snake's.

"You were right! It's 'magic over body' instead of 'mind over body'!" she turned away from her mirror to face me. Her voice sounded a little strange - a bit 'hissy' - probably due to her altered nasal passageways.

"It's sort of funny," Janie noted, several minutes later.

"What is?"

"Well, you wanted to be an eagle and I wished to be a dragon. You're a bird, although not an eagle, and I'm a reptile, but not a dragon. Our grandiose dreams lost a little of their luster on their way to becoming reality."

"And now we won't be able to go flying together," I sighed.

"That would have been impossible, anyway. Dragons are much too large to fly during daylight - I'd surely be spotted - and eagles are not nocturnal."

"Still, I'd liked to have been an eagle," I insisted.

"Eagles and snakes are mortal enemies," Janie reminded me. "Think about the flag of Mexico. Would you want for us to be mortal enemies?" she grinned at me between our raised legs.

"Not hardly!" I smiled back. "By the way, Janie - I hate it when you're right, you know."

"I'm afraid that you'll just have to get used to it, Jamie," she laughed and stuck out her tongue at me - very maturely, of course, the way only a twelve-year-old can manage.

I returned the gesture, though much more childishly, I'm sure.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-


Something must have happened over the Christmas holidays, as far as Pansy Parkinson was concerned. She took a sudden interest in Crabbe and Goyle, Draco Malfoy's two thuggish friends whom we'd met on the train back in September. The two began acting as her personal bodyguards, following her around everywhere she went. Pansy also took an interest in one Hermione Granger, and it wasn't a friendly interest.

The first time Pansy's book bag caught Janie's shoulder as they passed in a corridor we thought it was an innocent accident. After the second time, Janie always walked between me and the wall.

In double Potions, Madam Hooch ran her classes much differently than Snape had done. There was discussion. Questions were asked. Points were awarded for correct answers. In other words, it was more like a normal class.

A large number of the points awarded went to Gryffindor, and more specifically to Hermione Granger.

Parkinson started it, but the other Slytherins soon joined in. Whenever Janie would earn points for answering a question, there would be a lot of throat clearing from the Slytherin side of the room, and it sounded suspiciously like 'Mudblood.' This tactic soon spilled over into the corridors and was taken up by many second- and third-year Slytherins, too.

Unfortunately, The Book was of no help. In our Weasley strategies, Malfoy would have been the one harassing us and Ron would have jumped in and drawn the brunt of the Pureblood's ire. Neither Draco nor Ron were a factor now, however.

"We kill them?" Janie suggested a solution to our problem.

"We'd have to eat them," I reminded her.

"Maybe just Parkinson, then? The Weasley twins could throw a pig roast in the common room."

"Only her face resembles a pig," I shook my head. "I think people would notice. What about Crabbe and Goyle?"

"In the grand scheme of things, they're too dumb to matter," Janie shrugged. "They're expendable. If they happen to be there when we take out Parkinson, fine, but they're not worth the risk of being targeted separately."

"Is she on your enemies list?" I asked. "In The Book, I mean?"

"She wasn't, but she is now."

"What!!? You mean The Book updated itself!?"

"No!" Janie chuckled. "I simply penciled her in."


-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-


By mid-January we had procured a charmed music box via owl-order. We set off that Saturday night for the third floor corridor.

After lulling Fluffy to sleep we levitated the trap door open, just as the Ravenclaws had done, only we tipped it all the way back. We didn't have the luxury of four wands.

Next, Janie levitated me down into the hole, my wand glowing brightly inside Janie's flashlight casing as I descended.

"What is it?" Janie whispered down to me.

"Some sort of vine," I informed her, shining my improvised flashlight around. "It has moving tendrils but it seems to be afraid of the light from my wand."

"Devil's Snare!" Janie quickly recognized the species. "I'll set you down out of its reach, then you can lower me down."

We reached the next room without incident - the one with the flying keys.

"There!" I spotted the silver one.

"Immobulus! " Janie pointed her wand at it but the spell had no effect.

"We'll have to use the brooms," I said, pointing to the three leaning against the wall. "Why three, I wonder? I mean - if they appeared magically when we entered the room, there should be only two. If the professors were expecting us and they provided three, do you think it's because Ron was supposed to be with us?"

Janie frowned at the brooms for a moment. "Who cares," she finally shrugged. "Just grab one and let's get that key!"

There was a problem with that strategy, however. As soon as I mounted a broomstick, the flock of lazily circling keys became a mad swarm of darting keys. Trying to catch the silver one would be tricky at best, impossible at worst.

"Wait!" Janie said, thinking furiously. "Put the broom down."

As soon as I leaned the broomstick against the wall, the keys resumed their slow circling pattern.

"Wingardium Leviosa! " Janie pointed her wand at me once more. "Where is it? Do you see the silver one?"

"Over there!" I pointed, after a moment of searching.

Janie maneuvered me within reach of my goal and I easily plucked it out of the air.

"Careful," she warned as I stuck it in the keyhole. "Don't damage its wings. When the Ravenclaws show up, we don't want to leave any hint that someone has already been here."

With the door open, Janie grabbed two of the brooms and dashed through - before the other flying keys could react.

Once through the door, I stuck the silver key into the keyhole on the other side and locked the door behind us. I left the key in the lock so it couldn't escape and I added a sticking charm for good measure

"It's a good thing that none of the chess pieces are called 'archers,'" Janie laughed as we flew over their heads. One of the knights thought to fling his sword at us but missed. By the time he'd retrieved it to have another go, we were gone.

The troll didn't think to throw his club. He merely watched us stupidly as we zoomed to the other side of the room and out the exit.

"Hmm," Janie furrowed her very 'furrow-able' eyebrows as she stared at the note on the potions table. "This one takes us forward and that one takes us back," she pointed. "This is a problem."

"What?" I wondered. Everything had been going so well up to this point.

"It's only a single dose," she held up the tiny vial of 'forward' potion. "Only one of us can go through. That's bad enough, but then there will be none left for the Ravenclaws."

"What will we do?"

"We'll stop here for now. We'll take both potions back with us and I'll analyze them and make more. We'll return later, replace the originals, and use our own potions to get through the flames - both ways - forward and back."

"But we're almost there!" I protested. "Let's get the Stone now!"

"Jamie," Janie replied calmly, "the 'Claws had the right idea: Don't rush in blindly when you don't need to. They explored Fluffy's room and the trap door and left with no one the wiser. We should take a lesson from them and do the same, here."

"Is there enough potion in the large flask for us both to get back?" I sighed in defeat.

"I should think so," she nodded as she held it up to examine it. "It's nearly full."

So that's what we did. We each took a swig of the 'back' potion - leaving plenty in the flask for Janie to analyze - and then we navigated the troll and the chess pieces on our broomsticks.

We released the silver key - undamaged - to fly amongst its friends and we levitated each other past the Devil's Snare and up through the trap door.

"This might take some time to research," Janie held up the smaller vial once we were safely out in the forbidden third floor corridor again and our music box had been silenced.

"I wonder..." I considered. "What if Snape made extra? What if he saved some - you know - like you did with the Animagus Revealer potion? What if there's some down in the Potions lab?"

"Jamie!! You're brilliant!! Let's go!!"


"Alohomora! "

The Potions lab door opened easily.

"I'll bet Snape used to put a lot more than a simple locking charm on his door," Janie grinned. "What a shame that all of his spells were cancelled when he died," she smirked.

"And Madam Hooch is nowhere near as skilled as Snape," I pointed out.

"Nor as paranoid," Janie nodded.

"Do you see anything that looks promising?" I asked as I perused the shelves of ingredients.

"No. What we're looking for would more likely be in Snape's private stores," Janie nodded to the storeroom off the main potions lab.

"Alohomora! " I cast at the storeroom door and it swung open. "Ta-dah!" I smiled at Janie proudly, ushering her inside with a wave of my arm.

"Wow!" Janie picked up a small, stoppered bottle from its shelf. "Veritaserum!" she read the label.

"Is that good?" I asked.

"I can be invaluable," she smiled, grabbing a small vial and filling it from the bottle. "And Polyjuice!" she eyed a larger labeled flask. "Do you realize what we can do with this?"

"What?"

"Make ourselves look like someone else," she grinned.

About half of the flask's contents went into another empty bottle and then into Janie's pocket. Those weren't the only potions Janie pilfered that night. I wasn't sure what all of them were, but she seemed to think they were important.

It took us a while but we found what we were looking for. Snape had indeed saved the rest of the batches he had brewed - and he'd been thorough and labeled them! We refilled the large flask that we had drunk from, then filled two other empty bottles with the 'forward' and 'back' potions.

"We still have enough time to go back and get the Stone..." I said eagerly as I checked my watch.

"But we're going to wait until tomorrow," Janie shot me down as she affixed labels to the 'forward' and 'back' bottles. "I'm tired and you probably are, too. We can't afford to make any mistakes."

Grudgingly, I had to admit that she was right. We locked the Potions storeroom and classroom doors and then silently made our way back to Gryffindor Tower.

"Can we try it again tomorrow?" I whispered as we were about to part company for the night.

"Okay," Janie smiled back. "I'll hide the potions in my trunk. Get some sleep. You look like a zombie."

"Hah-hah!" I made a face at her. She was right, though. I think I fell asleep even before my head hit the pillow.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-


The following morning we awoke early but well rested. Dumbledore was not at breakfast, so we decided to make our second attempt in broad daylight - but without the aid of the Invisibility Cloak. There was no need to take unnecessary chances.

We navigated the traps as we had done the previous night, arriving in the room with the potions riddle. We placed the original potions containers in their original positions, then we each took a sip of our 'forward' potion and dashed through the flames.

"The Mirror!?" Janie gaped at it.

"Yeah - the Stone's inside it, somehow," I explained.

"That part wasn't in my version of The Book."

"That's because there should have been only one dose of 'forward' potion. You and Ron were to go back and leave me to fight Quirrell on my own."

"That's NOT going to happen, Jamie," Janie glared at me. "When the time comes, we face him together - promise?"

"Okay - I promise. Now let me get the Stone and we can leave."

"Well?" Janie interrupted my concentration after a minute or two.

"It's not working," I admitted. "I'm supposed to just stand in front of the Mirror and imagine myself with the Stone."

"Let me try," Janie nudged me out of the way. "Is this what you're looking for?" she handed me the Philosopher's Stone after only a few seconds.

"What did you do!?"

"The mirror shows our heart's desire, right? I just desired that I have the Stone so we could be done with it and get out of here. What did you do?"

"I wished for the Stone - same as you," I shrugged.

"Maybe it was an intent-based charm. I've read about those - they're used to ward homes against people with hostile intent. My intent was to keep it from Voldemort. What did you intend to do once you got the Stone?"

"Make gold, of course! Lots of gold!"

"Maybe that's the difference," Janie considered, snatching the Stone out of my hand. "No matter - we have the real Stone, now let's fashion a fake one and set it up."

I withdrew the pouch of garnet pebbles from my pocket and we set to work, sparingly using the sticking charm to put the best bits together to roughly approximate the real Stone. Then Janie tilted the Mirror forward at an angle and I balanced our fake stone out of sight on the top edge of the fancy carved molding. When someone tilted the Mirror up straight, the loosely-stuck-together fake would slide off the back side and shatter on the stone floor.

"Let's test it," I said, taking a position behind the Mirror.

Janie tilted the Mirror up and I caught the fake stone before it hit the ground.

"It looks good," Janie nodded her approval after we reset the trap. "Let's go!"

We cautiously made our way back to the forbidden corridor and then hurried up to the Gryffindor common room. It was a Sunday and the older students were in Hogsmeade, so the common room was sparsely populated. We casually walked up to my room and hid the real Stone and our pouch of left-over garnet in my trunk.


-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-