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“They must be really advanced Dark Magic, or why would Voldemort have wanted to know about them? I think it’s going to be difficult to get the information, Harry, you’ll have to be very careful about how you approach Slughorn, think out a strategy. …”

“Ron reckons I should just hang back after Potions this afternoon. …”

“Oh, well, if Won-Won thinks that, you’d better do it,” she said, flaring up at once. “After all, when has Won-Won’s judgment ever been faulty?”

“Hermione, can’t you — ?”

“No!” she said angrily, and stormed away, leaving Harry alone and ankle-deep in snow.

Potions lessons were uncomfortable enough these days, seeing as Harry, Ron, and Hermione had to share a desk. Today, Hermione moved her cauldron around the table so that she was close to Ernie, and ignored both Harry and Ron.

“What’ve you done?” Ron muttered to Harry, looking at Hermione’s haughty profile.

But before Harry could answer, Slughorn was calling for silence from the front of the room.

“Settle down, settle down, please! Quickly, now, lots of work to get through this afternoon! Golpalott’s Third Law … who can tell me — ? But Miss Granger can, of course!”

Hermione recited at top speed: “Golpalott’s-Third-Law-states-that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-to-more-than-the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-separate-components.”

“Precisely!” beamed Slughorn. “Ten points for Gryffindor! Now, if we accept Golpalott’s Third Law as true …”

Harry was going to have to take Slughorn’s word for it that Golpalott’s Third Law was true, because he had not understood any of it. Nobody apart from Hermione seemed to be following what Slughorn said next either.

“… which means, of course, that assuming we have achieved correct identification of the potion’s ingredients by Scarpin’s Revelaspell, our primary aim is not the relatively simple one of selecting antidotes to those ingredients in and of themselves, but to find that added component that will, by an almost alchemical process, transform these disparate elements —”

Ron was sitting beside Harry with his mouth half open, doodling absently on his new copy of Advanced Potion-Making. Ron kept forgetting that he could no longer rely on Hermione to help him out of trouble when he failed to grasp what was going on.

“… and so,” finished Slughorn, “I want each of you to come and take one of these phials from my desk. You are to create an antidote for the poison within it before the end of the lesson. Good luck, and don’t forget your protective gloves!”

Hermione had left her stool and was halfway toward Slughorn’s desk before the rest of the class had realized it was time to move, and by the time Harry, Ron, and Ernie returned to the table, she had already tipped the contents of her phial into her cauldron and was kindling a fire underneath it.

“It’s a shame that the Prince won’t be able to help you much with this, Harry,” she said brightly as she straightened up. “You have to understand the principles involved this time. No shortcuts or cheats!”

Annoyed, Harry uncorked the poison he had taken from Slughorn’s desk, which was a garish shade of pink, tipped it into his cauldron, and lit a fire underneath it. He did not have the faintest idea what he was supposed to do next. He glanced around at Ron, who was now standing there looking rather gormless, having copied everything Harry had done.

“You sure the Prince hasn’t got any tips?” Ron muttered to Harry.

Harry pulled out his trusty copy of Advanced Potion-Making and turned to the chapter on antidotes. There was Golpalott’s Third Law, stated word for word as Hermione had recited it, but not a single illuminating note in the Prince’s hand to explain what it meant. Apparently the Prince, like Hermione, had had no difficulty understanding it.

“Nothing,” said Harry gloomily.

Hermione was now waving her wand enthusiastically over her cauldron. Unfortunately, they could not copy the spell she was doing because she was now so good at nonverbal incantations that she did not need