ALOHOMORA | CEDRIC DIGGORY

54〝fifty-four〞

NEITHER ROLF NOR ELLIS APPRECIATED their blunders for what they were until it was too late.

By Sunday's end every House had their own version of what happened to Hermione Granger and Penelope Clearwater, which themselves were bad enough. But when Monday arrived, and people re-accustomed themselves to mingling outside the borders of common rooms and House tables, these ideas cross-pollinated with such synergy so that the theory born afresh was like the result of copious amounts vinegar and baking soda being combined in a too-small container—unpleasant, explosive, and far worse than its original ingredients.

One Potions lesson sufficed to demonstrate this. Ellis's pulp of Flitterby moth had just turned green and she was grinding up some Bouncing Bulb for the next step of her Pompion Potion when—for the first time in existence—Jeremy Harper spoke up at the table.

"How did you do it?"

Both Ellis and Ginny peered up. Harper, however, only had eyes for his fellow Slytherin. His potion was still the intense apricot color it had been when they first started.

"Stir it clockwise—" Ellis briefly fingered drawing a circle in the air to illustrate, for Harper was stirring the wrong way, but he quickly shook his head.

"No," he said, albeit reversed the direction of his ladle. "I mean"—Harper glanced around warily (nobody else was paying him attention), then dropped his voice—"how did you open the Chamber of Secrets?"

Ginny's scales promptly slid to the floor in a deafening clang, scattering purplish dust all over her shoes.

"Five points from Gryffindor, Weasley!" roared Professor Snape from across the dungeon. "And if you don't get a move on, it'll be fifty!"

Harper looked smugger than should be allowed. Ellis had the fleeting impulse to let her wand "slip" and curse that rotten smirk off his face. Ginny, who had dived under the desk to retrieve her scales, resurfaced paler than ever and trembled attempting to crush up more Bulb to make up for her loss.

Meanwhile, stunned as she was by Harper's question, Ellis felt that she should have known better than to think he could have become modest overnight. Harper had never been able to ask for help outright. Not that he assumed his passable work didn't need it, but plainly he considered seeking assistance beneath him. If anything, he was dead set on proving to Snape that he could manage on his own—just like his table mates—though he certainly did not say no to copying whenever he could.

But more dismal than Harper's performance in Potions was no doubt Ellis's failure to realize that the smiles and approving looks she was still receiving from the other Slytherins no longer arose from her contribution to their glorious Quidditch comeback. Keeping to herself the whole weekend as was her norm, Ellis was oblivious to the rekindling of old rumors that she was—in fact—Slytherin's heir.

Her returning to the common room looking disgruntled, shadowed by Dumbledore, and for all to see had appeared to her Housemates so: She had just endured a earful from the headmaster; whether she had been caught or merely suspected, it hardly mattered. Even in the former circumstance, she could have just as easily weaseled her way out of punishment as she had with the famous "flying lesson incident," perhaps by blaming it on someone else entirely (a sentiment later inspired by Sunday's news).

"Come on, I'm pure-blood," wheedled Harper when Ellis neglected to answer, "you can tell me."

Ellis pretended to be very intent on stirring her potion, which was growing steadily scarlet (as it ought to). Harper employed a different approach.

"You're the snitch, aren't you?" he said, pestling an empty mortar (his Bulb had fled unnoticed by him). "Sprout told the Hufflepuffs someone spilled. You blew the whistle on that oaf to get off...but how did you find out why he got expelled? He can't really have opened the Chamber?"

"Watch your Bulb—it's escaping," said Ellis flatly.

Looking around, Harper made a dramatic swipe for it but, amazingly, missed; it leapt into Ginny's bag. He gazed reprovingly into the gape, as though conflicted between recovering his Bulb and touching the shabby satchel. Solving the dilemma was Ginny, who snatched her bag away at top speed and hugged it protectively to her chest, as if Harper was coveting something precious within.

"What were you looking at?" demanded Ginny, half frightful and half ready to hex him to slime.

"Everything that belongs to the dump, I reckon," sneered Harper. "Not that anyone would bother, but I get why you're afraid of people stealing your things, Weasley—your parents don't have the money to replace them."

"It's his Bulb," interjected Ellis, before Ginny could retort, "it jumped inside."

Resentfully, Ginny laid out several of her books to aid in the rummaging—though held adamantly onto a black one, which was unadorned, as raggedy as her bag, and looked vaguely familiar to Ellis. Finally extracting Harper's Bulb, Ginny chucked into his mortar.

Deciding her potion was red enough, Ellis headed off to the store cupboard Professor Snape had indicated earlier to collect the necessary foxglove. Perhaps Harper had awoken her sensitivity to gossip, because she heard aplenty for the short distance she journeyed.

"—Finch-Fletchley had it in for him," Amelia Shepherd was saying. "He actually knocked her over at the Dueling Club. If filth like that knocked into me, I think I'd still be in the showers."

"Wasn't his fault, though, was it?" replied Lyanna Aldrin. "He wasn't the one who cast the spell..."

"Yeah, but that Longbottom bloke's pure-blood," chimed in another of Ellis's roommates, Danielle Scott, "can't have attacked him."

"Apparently Potter knew Finch-Fletchley had his name down for Eton—Eton, for Merlin's sake." Amelia shuddered, as though Eton was as sorry as schools could get.

"And remember when it got out that she was out of bed the same night Creevey got attacked?" added the table's last occupant, Monica Geller. "That prefect—Clearwater! Yes, my brother's from Ravenclaw; he's confirmed it!"

"But what about Granger?" said Lyanna tentatively.

"Well, there was that cat thing," suggested Danielle, "Merlin knows what happened between them over Christmas. Maybe a row over the partnership, or maybe she just knew too much. Pansy says Granger's an absolute know-it-all; she's so glad she's been taken out..."

Now Ellis knew too much too.

She had hoped Harper would have desisted by the time she returned, but he seemed still more determined to discuss her "accomplishments" as he pounded up his Bulb.

"That was wicked what you did on Saturday, by the way," he said, clearly as a compliment. "Striking when everyone was at the stadium—brilliant! So what if Scamander saw you going to the library? When you told him to save you a seat, he probably forgot his name! And Donna Paulsen said he thought you were the one getting attacked"—Harper snorted—"gone off his rocker, that one. Bet you would've done him in first before Creevey if he wasn't pure-blood."

As nonchalantly as possible, Ellis tipped her foxglove slices into her cauldron, fixed on not showing that she was feeling slightly betrayed (Rolf was only being worried about you, she reminded herself, he couldn't have known) and starkly disturbed that people genuinely believed she was Slytherin's heir. Sure, they had done so once, but Harper's harping on about it somehow made it much more tangible than suffering it from afar, not to mention that some—like Harper—seemed totally in awe rather than scared anymore.

Incredibly, Harper wasn't done talking.

"So, who's next?" he said offhandedly, and not exactly in a whisper so that Ginny was sneaking nervous glances at Ellis. "Doesn't matter, though. As long as you're getting rid of Mudbloods, it's all good—"

"Detention, Mr. Harper," interrupted a sharp, murderous voice out of the blue; all three of them started (Ginny's scales landed on the floor again). Snape was towering over them, his dark eyes glinting. "You and Miss Weasley can have the honor of showing the class what these Pompion Potions do."

Snape stooped as if to examine Harper's potion, but Ellis distinctly heard him warn, "And if I ever hear you use that word again, Mr. Harper, you will be wishing to only have a pumpkin for a head."