ne. "It's such a pointless thing to get detention for." Harry sighed. "Yeah, I know," he said. "I s'pose Hagrid'll have to bury Aragog without us." "Yes, he will," said Hermione, looking relieved. "Look, Potions will be almost empty this afternoon, with us all off doing our tests. . . . Try and soften Slughorn up a bit then!" "Fifty-seventh time lucky, you think?" said Harry bitterly.
"Lucky," said Ron suddenly. "Harry, that's it - get lucky!" "What d'you mean?" "Use your lucky potion!" "Ron, that's - that's it!" said Hermione, sounding stunned. "Of course! Why didn't I think of it?" Harry stared at them both. "Felix Felicis?" he said. "I dunno . . . I was sort of saving it. ..." "What for?" demanded Ron incredulously. "What on earth is more important than this memory, Harry?" asked Hermione. Harry did not answer. The thought of that little golden bottle had hovered on the edges of his imagination for some time; vague and unformulated plans that involved Ginny splitting up with Dean, and Ron somehow being happy to see her with a new boyfriend, had been fermenting in the depths of his brain, unacknowledged except during dreams or the twilight time between sleeping and waking. . . . "Harry? Are you still with us?" asked Hermione.
"Wha - ? Yeah, of course," he said, pulling himself together. "Well. . . okay. If I can't get Slughorn to talk this afternoon, I'll take some Felix and have another go this evening." "That's decided, then," said Hermione briskly, getting to her feet and performing a graceful pirouette. "Destination . . . determina-tion . . . deliberation . . ." she murmured. "Oh, stop that," Ron begged her, "I feel sick enough as it is - quick, hide me!" "It isn't Lavender!" said Hermione impatiently, as another cou-ple of girls appeared in the courtyard and Ron dived behind her. "Cool," said Ron, peering over Hermiones shoulder to check. "Blimey, they don't look happy, do they?" "They're the Montgomery sisters and of course they don't look happy, didn't you hear what happened to their little brother?" said Hermione. "I'm losing track of what's happening to everyone's relatives, to be honest," said Ron. "Well, their brother was attacked by a werewolf. The rumor is that their mother refused to help the Death Eaters. Anyway, the boy was only five and he died in St. Mungos, they couldn't save him."
"He died?" repeated Harry, shocked. "But surely werewolves don't kill, they just turn you into one of them?" "They sometimes kill," said Ron, who looked unusually grave now. "I've heard of it happening when the werewolf gets carried away." "What was the werewolf's name?" said Harry quickly. "Well, the rumor is that it was that Fenrir Greyback," said Hermione. "I knew it - the maniac who likes attacking kids, the one Lupin told me about!" said Harry angrily. Hermione looked at him bleakly. "Harry, you've got to get that memory," she said. "It's all about stopping Voldemort, isn't it? These dreadful things that are hap-pening are all down to him. . . ." The bell rang overhead in the castle and both Hermione and Ron jumped to their feet, looking terrified. "You'll do fine," Harry told them both, as they headed toward the entrance hall to meet the rest of the people taking their Ap-parition Test. "Good luck." "And you too!" said Hermione with a significant look, as Harry headed off to the dungeons.
There were only three of them in Potions that afternoon: Harry, Ernie, and Draco Malfoy. "All too young to Apparate just yet?" said Slughorh genially, "Not turned seventeen yet?" They shook their heads. "Ah well," said Slughorn cheerily, "as we're so few, we'll do something for fun. I want you all to brew me up something amusing!" "That sounds good, sir," said Ernie sycophantically, rubbing his hands together. Malfoy, on the other hand, did not crack a smile. "What do you mean, 'something amusing'?" he said irritably. "Oh, surprise me," said Slughorn airily. Malfoy opened his copy of Advanced Potion-Making with a sulky expression. It could not have been plainer that he thought this les-son was a waste of time. Undoubtedly, Harry thought, watching him over the top of his own book, Malfoy was begrudging the time he could otherwise be spending in the Room of Requirement. Was it his imagination, or did Malfoy, like Tonks, look thinner! Certainly he looked paler; his skin still had that grayish tinge, probably because he so rarely saw daylight these days. But there was no air of smugness, excitement, or superiority; none of the swagger that he had had on the
Hogwarts Express, when he had boasted openly of the mission he had been given by Voldemort. . . . There could be only one conclusion, in Harry's opinion: The mission, whatever it was, was going badly. Cheered by this thought, Harry skimmed through his copy of Advanced Potion-Making and found a heavily corrected Half-Blood Prince's version of "An Elixir to Induce Euphoria," which seemed not only to meet Slughorn's instructions, but which might (Harry's heart leapt as the thought struck him) put Slughorn into such a good mood that he would be prepared to hand over that memory if Harry could persuade him to taste some. . . . "Well, now, this looks absolutely wonderful," said Slughorn an hour and a half later, clapping his hands together as he stared down into the sunshine yellow contents of Harry's cauldron. "Euphoria, I take it? And what's that I smell? Mmmm . . . you've added just a sprig of peppermint, haven't you? Unorthodox, but what a stroke of inspiration, Harry, of course, that would tend to counterbalance the occa-sional side effects of excessive singing and nose-tweaking. ... I really don't know where you get these brain waves, my boy . . . unless -" Harry pushed the Half-Blood Prince's book deeper into his bag with his foot. "- it's just your mother's genes coming out in you!" "Oh . . . yeah, maybe," said Harry, relieved.
Ernie was looking rather grumpy; determined to outshine Harry for once, he had most rashly invented his own potion, which had curdled and formed a kind of purple dumpling at the bottom of his cauldron. Malfoy was already packing up, sour-faced; Slughorn had pronounced his Hiccuping Solution merely "passable." The bell rang and both Ernie and Malfoy left at once. "Sir," Harry began, but Slughorn immediately glanced over his shoulder; when he saw that the room was empty but for himself and Harry, he hurried away as fast as he could. "Professor - Professor, don't you want to taste my po - ?" called Harry desperately. But Slughorn had gone. Disappointed, Harry emptied the caul-dron, packed up his things, left the dungeon, and walked slowly back upstairs to the common room. Ron and Hermione returned in the late afternoon. "Harry!" cried Hermione as she climbed through the portrait hole. "Harry, I passed!" "Well done!" he said. "And Ron?" "He - he just failed," whispered Hermione, as Ron came slouching into the room looking most morose. "It was really unlucky, a tiny thing, the
examiner just spotted that he'd left half an eyebrow behind. . . How did it go with Slughorn?" "No joy," said Harry, as Ron joined them. "Bad luck, mate, but you'll pass next time - we can take it together." "Yeah, I s'pose," said Ron grumpily. "But half an eyebrow - like that matters!" "I know," said Hermione soothingly, "it does seem really harsh. ..." They spent most of their dinner roundly abusing the Apparition examiner, and Ron looked fractionally more cheerful by the time they set off back to the common room, now discussing the continuing problem of Slughorn and the memory. "So, Harry - you going to use the Felix Felicis or what?" Ron demanded. "Yeah, I s'pose I'd better," said Harry. "I don't reckon I'll need all of it, not twenty-four 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 ex-plaining 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 Forbid-den Forest, they decided the moment had come, and after check-ing 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 look 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 seemed suddenly not only pos-sible, but positively easy. . . . 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 Ins