Chapter 85

Chapter 85

Harry returned with an expression that was neither happy nor unhappy. If one had to choose a word for it, he looked baffled.

Professor Sprout was asking a question as he came back.

“Who can tell me the properties of a Mandrake?”

The question presented no difficulty to Hermione, who had already memorised the second-year Herbology textbook. Suer knew the answer too, but graciously left her the opportunity to shine.

“Mandrake is a powerful restorative,” Hermione answered. “It is used to return people who have been Transfigured or cursed to their original state.”

As she spoke, Neville murmured the answer under his breath.

“If you knew it, why didn’t you raise your hand?” Suer asked.

Neville only gave him a bashful smile.

A Mandrake’s root was shaped like a human body, with its leaves growing from the top of its head. As these were only seedlings, they looked more like babies. Most of the students had never seen one before and gave soundless cries of surprise.

By the end of class, nearly everyone was drenched in sweat and covered with earth. The Mandrakes had no desire to be pulled from their pots or shoved back into fresh soil. They writhed furiously in the students’ hands, kicking their legs, waving tiny pointed fists, and baring their teeth.

A few people remained comparatively clean. Suer was one of them. Thanks to Neville, he had managed to put his Mandrake into its new pot with very little trouble.

“They have one particular weakness: they’re terribly ticklish,” Neville explained. “You only need to tickle their feet gently and they’ll behave. But watch their hands.”

“None of that is in the book.” Hermione’s eyes widened in wonder. “How did you discover it?”

Neville removed his dragon-hide gloves and scratched his head sheepishly.

“I often come here to help look after the plants. I noticed it by accident.”

“I told you you’re brilliant, Neville.” Suer patted him on the shoulder and teased, “You should be bolder next time. You can’t let Hermione steal all the glory.”

Hermione smacked Suer indignantly, forgetting that she had not removed her gloves.

A distinct muddy handprint appeared on his arm.

“Well, now I’m dirty too,” Suer said helplessly.

Their second lesson that morning was Transfiguration. The Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs carried the soil from the flowerpots straight into Professor McGonagall’s classroom.

The stench of dragon-dung compost made her frown.

“Scourgify.”

She cast a spell to preserve the cleanliness of her classroom.

The other students noticed nothing special about it. It was only a small cleaning charm. Suer, however, stared.

He had spotted the crucial point.

He had only ever tried a cleaning charm on one person at a time. As far as he knew, it was a single-target spell.

Yet Professor McGonagall had cast it once and removed the dirt and smell from everyone in the room.

I’ll ask her about it during the break, he thought.

The first stage of second-year Transfiguration involved turning a live beetle into a button, complete with a simple pattern.

It followed naturally from the previous year’s material. Suer remembered that their final examination had required them to turn a mouse into a snuffbox. A mouse, however, was much larger than a beetle and did not scuttle unpredictably in every direction.

Naturally, the task posed little difficulty for the two strongest students in their respective houses. Both Suer and Hermione completed it easily.

“What happened to your wand?” Suer waved away the thick smoke drifting towards his nose. It reeked of rotten eggs and came from Ron’s battered wand.

“The Whomping Willow broke it.” Ron flung up his elbow in frustration. In the course of his wild wand-waving, he had accidentally crushed his beetle beneath it. “Stupid, useless thing.”

Ron’s wand seemed to take offence and erupted in a shower of sparks. Ron grew even angrier and accidentally killed Harry’s beetle as well.

The two of them had to ask Professor McGonagall for replacements.

After class, they walked to the Great Hall for lunch. On the way, Harry suggested that Ron write home and ask for a new wand.

“No chance. I don’t want another Howler.” Ron shoved the wand, which he had stuck together with some unidentifiable substance, into his belt.

“I can already hear what she’ll say: ‘It’s your own fault your wand snapped!'”

Listening beside them, Suer shook his head. He parted from the others in the Great Hall when he saw Justin waving to him about something.

That afternoon, Suer and his roommates attended History of Magic with Professor Binns and the Slytherins. He settled his head comfortably on the thick textbook and slept the entire afternoon, waking only after class had ended.

Since Hufflepuff’s actions the previous year had knocked Slytherin out of the running for the House Cup ahead of schedule, the badgers no longer resented them quite so fiercely. Relations during this particular lesson were reasonably cordial.

They had shared a friendly nap.

Hogwarts had no strict rules about where students must sit at ordinary meals. After a full year at school, Suer knew a great many Gryffindors.

“Evening, Suer.”

“Good evening.”

Suer nodded with a smile and sat down at the Gryffindor table as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The first-years did not recognise him, but they did recognise the Hufflepuff crest on his robes. They whispered among themselves, asking why a Hufflepuff was sitting at their table.

Ginny answered them.

“I know him. He’s really nice. I met him in Diagon Alley.”

Suer had come, of course, to wait for Hermione so that they could have dinner together. He was passing the time by talking to Fred and George when a crowd poured in through the Great Hall doors.

It was the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, just released from Defence Against the Dark Arts.

They did not look well. Several were rubbing their ears with bitter expressions.

“What happened?” Suer asked curiously.

“Don’t ask,” Ron said. “It was a complete disaster. I told you Lockhart was useless.”

Harry nodded in agreement, looking rather ill.

“You should call him Professor, Ron,” Hermione protested. “That lesson was merely an accident.”

“If a wizard who can’t handle a few Cornish pixies deserves to be called a professor…” Ron said furiously, still rubbing his ears.

Hermione fell silent. She had no answer to that.

Harry and the others were hardly alone in discussing the debacle. Suer soon pieced together everything that had happened.

“Dear me.” He shook his head.

Even Dumbledore could misjudge someone. Then again, perhaps the old bumblebee had some deeper purpose.

“Still, Lockhart might sign a library permission slip for me. All I’d have to do is flatter him a little,” Suer murmured.

Looked at that way, Lockhart was not entirely useless.

“A library slip? What book do you want?” Hermione’s sharp ears had caught every word.