And then, he'd try to catch up on the three days' worth of reading and homework he'd been putting off.
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Friday morning at breakfast, Harry almost fell asleep in his porridge. Well, no wonder; he'd been up all night working. The essay had taken so long to finish that he hadn't quite caught up on all his homework, though at least he'd made a cursory attempt to get through his required Potions readings. What a grim weekend this is shaping up to be, he thought, depressed. Not only did he have to miss out on Hogsmeade and probably put up with a full day of Draco being rude, he was going to have to spend his Sunday poring over tomes and texts and alternate readings!
No help for it, though.
"You guys go on to Charms without me," said Harry as he grabbed an oatcake and stood to leave. "Professor Sprout has a free hour this morning so I'm going to ask her to help me get the plants I need."
"Are they rare?"
"Uh, don't really know," Harry told Hermione as he fished the list from his pocket. "Sarsaparilla, nettle, alyssum, plantain, and Echinacea. What do you think?"
"I think she'll fix you right up on everything except plantain."
"I wanted the well-wish for tomorrow," grumbled Harry. "If owl-order can't get me the plantain by then... hmm, maybe I should come up with something else for P."
Ron narrowed his eyes. "Why P, in particular? Oh... sarsaparilla, nettle... I get it. Why do that?"
"I'm trying to make a point. You know, I'm all right with his new name. Draco's sort of sensitive about it."
"Draco. Sensitive."
"Well, he is," Harry said, then tried to rein back his impulse to defend his brother. "Anyway, if Flitwick asks for me you can say I'm consulting Professor Sprout about some plants I need. I'll see you both at lunch."
"Harry," Hermione warned. "You aren't supposed to go anywhere alone."
Harry hadn't exactly forgotten that, but it was seeming less urgent to him all the time. Still, he hardly wanted to hand Snape even more reason to be annoyed with him. "Right. So you tag along and miss Charms, too."
Hermione's eyes went wide. "I can't skive off a class!"
Ron, Harry suddenly realised, was staring at him in a way that would have made him realise his gaffe even if Hermione's tone of voice hadn't. "Sorry," he mumbled, ducking his head. "Tired."
Hermione made a rather motherly noise. "Just how late were you up?"
"Uh, all night..."
She sighed, but only said, "Well, I can go see Professor Sprout with you during lunch. How's that?"
"Too late, that's what it is." Harry didn't want to be a pain, but Hermione didn't seem to understand. "I have to do the well-wishing ceremony tomorrow. If I don't, Draco'll think I don't wish him well."
"He won't be as silly as that--"
"Ha. You haven't seen him lately. But anyway Hermione, he had mine ready to go the instant my official adoption certificate came through. And the mood he's in, he'll see it as an insult if I delay any longer! For all I know, even Snape is wondering why I haven't gotten it together before now! So I can't wait until lunch to see if I need to order something. I have to go see Sprout now!"
"Are you more worried about disappointing your brother or your father?" asked Hermione, raising an eyebrow toward her bushy hairline.
"I..." Harry thought about it. "Not sure, actually."
"I'll go with you to the greenhouses," volunteered Ron with a nasty glint in his eye. As soon as he kept speaking, Harry realised the reason for it. "Some of us value our friend's needs more than an hour practicing charms."
"Well maybe what he needs is to be in class where his father expects him to be, instead of wandering the grounds with only you to protect him!"
Harry decided this was an argument he wouldn't win. "Ron, you coming?"
Hermione pursed her lips and waved a bit sarcastically for them to leave.
Harry and Ron were almost to the door of the Great Hall when Nott fell into step alongside them. "Have a minute, Potter? I'd like to talk to you." He paused. "Alone. There's an empty classroom a couple of halls down..."
Reflex had Harry glancing toward the Head Table, even though he'd noticed earlier that Snape must be breakfasting with Draco. Which was good, he hurriedly told himself. Of course it was good.
As for alone... well, Harry had talked to Nott more-or-less alone that day they'd walked back from Care of Magical Creatures together, but they'd been in view of several students at all times, including Ron and Hermione both. An empty classroom, though, that was a little different.
"Ron and I are actually a bit busy," Harry said, and felt Ron relax a bit beside him. That soon changed, for Harry added, "You could walk with us if you like."
Nott frowned. "I have to be in Transfiguration in ten minutes but... oh, all right." After that, though, he didn't seem terribly inclined to say much. Or maybe he was just waiting until they were well away from the Great Hall.
He stopped walking when they reached the bailey.
Glancing at Ron, Harry saw that his friend's hand was on his wand grip, ready.
"So what did you need to talk to me about?"
Nott looked left and right, then stared at Ron as though deciding something. "You asked me about the plague. About why I had it worse than practically anyone else, remember?"
Actually, Harry had asked him what the symptoms were like, but he was hardly going to quibble. When he thought back, he realised his question could have been taken that way. "Yeah."
"I couldn't say anything, not there with the whole House trying to overhear us," Nott confided, his voice dropping as he seemed to shrink in size, as though trying to hide. "But I thought you ought to know, so you could tell your father. Bella caused the plague. Well, Bella and Erik both."
Harry thought a little scepticism was called for. It actually wasn't too hard to dredge up. "Bella and Erik. Right."
"The thing is..." Nott looked furtively around. "I think it was a mistake, see. They were trying to do something else, and it went wrong."
"Well, what were they trying to do, Nott?" put in Ron.
Nott looked Ron squarely in the eyes. "Kill me, that's what."
"But why would they have wanted to kill you?"
"Because," Nott whispered, "they'd started telling Aurors that they'd seen Malfoy rushing down the Owlery stairs! Now, if one thing is certain, it's that Draco has a better sense of strategy than that. Even if he'd killed Pansy in a fit of oh, who knows, jealous rage or something, afterwards he'd look at every angle and pick the best one. No way would he do something that made him look guilty. And besides, I told you, I never could see that he had any reason to kill her anyway--"
"Is this leading to an actual point?"
"Well, yes, Weasley. Actually it is," insisted Nott, still in that low, cautious voice. "You see, I was sure that Bella and Erik were lying, and I wanted to know what was really going on. I watched them pretty carefully for a bit, but that didn't get me anywhere. So then, I confronted them. I... uh, well actually I told them that I'd been hanging out at the foot of the Owlery stairs and I didn't see Draco come down. And anyway, it wasn't too long after that I got sick, see?"
No, Harry didn't see. His expression must have said so.
"They cursed me! With some awful new spell nobody's ever heard of. My guess is they're working for Lucius Malfoy and got it from him! But they cast it together to give me a double dose or something, hoping to kill me like I said, but instead the extra power made the spell spread out all over the Slytherin common room and out as far as the dormitories. They ended up cursing themselves, even. But they must have meant to target me in particular, or else why would I have gotten so much sicker than most of the others? Or do you think it was a coincidence that the other students who were as sick as me happened to be the same ones who were standing right by me just a few minutes after I'd confronted Bella and Erik? My guess is, Lucius Malfoy gave them that spell to incapacitate anybody who might contradict their testimony at the expulsion hearing!"