For the rest of the week's Potions lessons Harry and Danny continue to follow the Half-Blood Prince's instructions whenever they deviate from Libatius Borage's, with the result that by our fourth lesson Slughorn is raving about Harry's and Danny's abilities, saying that he has rarely taught anyone so talented. Ron, Hermione and I are not delighted by this. Although Harry offered to share his book with all of us, Ron has more difficulty deciphering the handwriting than Harry and Danny do, and can not keep asking Harry or Danny to read aloud or it might look suspicious. Hermione and I, meanwhile, are resolutely ploughing on with what we call the "official" instructions, but becoming increasingly bad-tempered as we yield poorer results than the Prince's.
I wonder vaguely who the Half-Blood Prince was. Although the amount of homework we have been given prevents Harry from reading his whole copy of Advanced Potion-Making, he has skimmed through it efficiently to see that there is barely a page on which the a Prince hasn't made additional notes, not all of them concerned with potion-making. Here and there are directions for what look like spells that the Prince made up himself.
"Or herself," I say irritably, overhearing Harry pointing some of these out to Ron in the common room on Saturday evening. "It might have been a girl. I think the handwriting looks more like a girl's than a boy's."
"The Half-Blood Prince, he was called," Harry says. "How many girls have been princes?"
I have no answer to this. Hermione merely scowls and twitches her essay on "The Principles of Rematerialisation " away from Ron, who is trying to read it upside-down.
I am still silent as Danny looks at his watch and Harry hurriedly puts the old copy of Advanced Potion-Making back into his bag.
"It's five to eight, you'd better go, you'll be late for Dumbledore," says Danny.
"Ooooh!" I gasp, looking up at once. "Good luck! We'll wait up, we want to hear what he teaches you!"
"Hope it goes OK," says Ron, and the lot of us watch Harry leave through the portrait hole.
*
Question of the day: Yvonne or Mrs Dursley?
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Dawn Rivera
Fanfiction"One is the lock, one is the key, one is the sacrifice the world shall shall grieve." Dawn has wanted to go to Hogwarts ever since she was a little girl, and nothing her older sister Gertrude says will discourage her. Little does she know that the m...
