Gerard Way and the Triwizard Tournament

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

I was stuck in Potions class yet again. Slughorn was lecturing about the effects of Baneberry Poison, but I was drawing instead. I really did try to listen, but I just wasn't that interested in Potions.

"Today, you will be creating an antidote to Baneberry Poison," Professor Slughorn said. "Find a partner to work with."

"Gee, do you want to be my partner?" Frank asked.

I smiled. "Sure," I replied. "What are we doing again?"

Frank rolled his eyes. "Slughorn just said. We're creating an antidote to Baneberry Poison. Honestly, I have no idea how to do that, so I hope you have some idea."

I thought about it for a second. "Couldn't we just use a bezoar?"

"Slughorn said that we couldn't do that," Frank said.

"We're screwed," I stated.

Frank shrugged. "We could just throw together a bunch of random ingredients," he suggested. "We could at least get a few points for effort."

"What should we put in there?" I asked as I started up the cauldron.

"Let me see what Slughorn has," Frank said. He ran off to look through Slughorn's potion ingredients while I waited for the cauldron to heat up. When Frank came back, he was carrying several vials filled with potion ingredients, as well as a cup of coffee and a car radio.

"We're putting coffee in our potion?" I asked.

"Sure, why not?" Frank said as he dumped the coffee in the cauldron. He then added some blue rabbit fur while I began to stir the potion. Frank ground up the cherry blossoms and then threw those in as well. The potion was now turning yellow and it had a flowery fragrance.

"My arms are getting tired," I complained. "Can you stir?" Frank nodded and started stirring. I looked through the potion ingredients and found a vial that was clearly labeled "Venom." I handed it to Frank.

"Thank you for the venom," Frank said as he poured the venom into the cauldron.

I then took the car radio and tossed it into the cauldron. Frank turned up the heat so that the radio would melt into the potion. At that moment, a second year boy (I think his name was Tyler or something) ran into the room. "SOMEBODY STOLE MY CAR RADIO, AND NOW I JUST SIT IN SILENCE!" he screamed.

"Go back to class, Tyler," Professor Slughorn said. "I can talk to you later."

Tyler left the room, and Frank and I returned to our potion. The car radio had almost completely melted, and the potion was now a dull gray. I looked through the ingredients one last time and added a hint of asbestos and just a dash of formaldehyde. Frank waved his wand over the potion to finish it off, and the potion turned lavender and started bubbling.

"Whoa, that's cool," Frank said.

Slughorn came over to look at our potion. He studied it for a moment, and then said, "Very good boys. Twenty points for Gryffindor," Slughorn said.

"Wait, what?" I said. There was no way that Slughorn could possibly think that our potion was good. We just threw together a bunch of random ingredients.

"This is quite possibly one of the best antidotes to Baneberry Poison that I have ever seen!" Slughorn exclaimed. "You two should be proud of yourselves. Many competent adult wizards cannot make a potion this well."

I considered telling Slughorn that we didn't follow a recipe and that the potion probably didn't even work, but I decided against it. I wanted to keep those twenty points. "Thank you Professor Slughorn," I said.

"You're welcome," Professor Slughorn said. He then left to check on another group. We watched as the other groups were graded. Ray and Hayley obviously tried harder than we did, but Slughorn determined that their potion was "a bit cloudy."

"I guess that all worked out in the end," Frank told me. "I don't even feel bad about stealing Tyler's car radio."

I laughed. "I guess so."

Potions class ended a few minutes later. Frank and I ended up with the highest grade in the class on that project, and neither of us had any intention of sharing our little secret.