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He looked at Hermione. Hermione looked back, unconvinced.

“If you’re talking about Malfoy—”

“Of course I am!” said Ron. “You heard him—‘You’ll be next, Mudbloods!’—come on, you’ve only got to look at his foul rat face to know it’s him—”

“Malfoy, the Heir of Slytherin?” said Hermione skeptically.

“Look at his family,” said Harry, closing his books, too. “The whole lot of them have been in Slytherin; he’s always boasting about it. They could easily be Slytherin’s descendants. His father’s definitely evil enough.”

“They could’ve had the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries!” said Ron. “Handing it down, father to son…”

“Well,” said Hermione cautiously, “I suppose it’s possible…”

“But how do we prove it?” said Harry darkly.

“There might be a way,” said Hermione slowly, dropping her voice still further with a quick glance across the room at Percy. “Of course, it would be difficult. And dangerous, very dangerous. We’d be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect—”

“If, in a month or so, you feel like explaining, you will let us know, won’t you?” said Ron irritably.

“All right,” said Hermione coldly. “What we’d need to do is to get inside the Slytherin common room and ask Malfoy a few questions without him realizing it’s us.”

“But that’s impossible,” Harry said as Ron laughed.

“No, it’s not,” said Hermione. “All we’d need would be some Polyjuice Potion.”

“What’s that?” said Ron and Harry together.

“Snape mentioned it in class a few weeks ago—”

“D’you think we’ve got nothing better to do in Potions than listen to Snape?” muttered Ron.

“It transforms you into somebody else. Think about it! We could change into three of the Slytherins. No one would know it was us. Malfoy would probably tell us anything. He’s probably boasting about it in the Slytherin common room right now, if only we could hear him.”

“This Polyjuice stuff sounds a bit dodgy to me,” said Ron, frowning. “What if we were stuck looking like three of the Slytherins forever?”

“It wears off after a while,” said Hermione, waving her hand impatiently. “But getting hold of the recipe will be very difficult. Snape said it was in a book called Moste Potente Potions and it’s bound to be in the Restricted Section of the library.”

There was only one way to get out a book from the Restricted Section: You needed a signed note of permission from a teacher.

“Hard to see why we’d want the book, really,” said Ron, “if we weren’t going to try and make one of the potions.”

“I think,” said Hermione, “that if we made it sound as though we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance…”

“Oh, come on, no teacher’s going to fall for that,” said Ron. “They’d have to be really thick…”

THE ROGUE BLUDGER

Since the disastrous episode of the pixies, Professor Lockhart had not brought live creatures to class. Instead, he read passages from his books to them, and sometimes reenacted some of the more dramatic bits. He usually picked Harry to help him with these reconstructions; so far, Harry had been forced to play a simple Transylvanian villager whom Lockhart had cured of a Babbling Curse, a yeti with a head cold, and a vampire who had been unable to eat anything except lettuce since Lockhart had dealt with him.

Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf. If he hadn’t had a very good reason for keeping Lockhart in a good mood, he would have refused to do it.

“Nice loud howl, Harry—exactly—and then, if you’ll believe it, I pounced—like this—slammed him to the floor—thus with one hand, I managed to hold him down—with my other, I put my wand to his throat—I then screwed up my remaining strength and performed the immensely complex Homorphus Charm—he let out a piteous moan—go on, Harry—higher than that—good—the fur vanished—the fangs shrank—and he turned back into a man. Simple, yet effective—and another village will remember me forever as the hero who delivered them from the monthly terror of werewolf attacks.”

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1. A blank silence greeted Hermione’s words. She looked around at all the faces upturned to her, rather disconcerted.
2. A few moments later, Mr. Weasley came into the warm living room carrying his dinner on a tray. He looked completely exhausted.
3. A few of the centaurs looked worried now. Hermione, however, gave a gasp.
4. A few people looked around. Rita Skeeter’s eyes widened behind her jeweled spectacles as she saw who had spoken.
5. A few sparks shot out of the end of his wand, which was still pointed at Black’s face. Hermione fell silent.
6. A lamp flickered on. It was Hermione Granger, wearing a pink bathrobe and a frown.
7. A loud rattling noise behind them announced Hermione’s reappearance with the box of S.P.E.W. badges.
8. A seam had split on Hermione’s bag. Harry wasn’t surprised; he could see that it was crammed with at least a dozen large and heavy books.
9. All usual pursuits were abandoned in the Gryffindor common room the night before the match. Even Hermione had put down her books.
10. Almost against his will he glanced from Ron to Hermione, both of whom looked devastated.
11. An aged witch stood in front of him, holding a tray of what looked horribly like whole human fingernails. She leered at him, showing mossy teeth. Harry backed away.
12. An odd, dreamy expression suddenly came over Hermione’s face. She slowly raised a hand and ran her fingers through her hair.

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