Harry Potter and the Order Of the Phoenix [159]
“Five…”
He sneezed.
“Four…”
Dean set that container down. He was sweating now… he evidently didn’t have a clue as to which one was correct, and which was wrong. It all came down to a fifty-fifty chance, a guess, with a lot at stake.
“Three…”
Dean quickly looked back and forth between the two substances, as if playing some sort of game to help him decide which one.
“Two…”
Dean, not being able to wait any longer, chose the sticky substance.
“One…”
Dean grabbed a bunch of the goo from inside the container, put some water on it, and threw it at his test, which was now a floating flame.
“Zero.”
The goo hit the paper. Then, it appeared that someone had hit the rewind button on the paper. The flames immediately disappeared and tiny pieces of the paper flew in from all directions, forming the original sheets. The paper fell from its hovering position, right onto Dean’s desk. He breathed a huge sigh of relief, and wiped the sweat from his face. Professor Snape, on the other hand, looked livid. He looked as though the Grinch had stolen Christmas, and he was supposed to get the best present of his life.
“Dumb luck,” he mumbled as he walked with clenched fists back to his desk, grabbing everyone’s tests as he went along. He threw them into a drawer, and shut it hard, causing an enormous “bang!”, making his hair fly all over the place, giving him a look of insanity.
This was the Professor Snape they had all known and loved.
“For the rest of you that want to try at the Advanced O.W.L.,” he said through clenched teeth, “please come up to my desk.”
Everyone in the room, except for Dean, slowly walked up to the head if the class, making a circle around his large desk, which was now covered with papers.
“Now, the usual exam involves me chopping off one of your limbs, and forcing you to make a potion that will somehow grow them back, or heal them,” he growled to them. “Well, the Ministry of Magic thought that was going too far, so this year, I’ve been forced to come up with a new test.”
With that, he opened a drawer in his desk, and took out a small stack of tiny pieces of parchment.
“Making a potion is just as much about magic as it is about logic,” he said, giving a slip to everyone. “On this pieces of paper, there is a riddle about the ingredients for a potion. List the correct ingredients, and what the final potion will be. If you get them all correct, you get the O.W.L. And hurry up! You’ve only got about forty minutes left!”
Harry ran back to his seat, and looked at his sheet of paper. It read:
“I am one third the word used when declaring something ‘is’,
One third ‘piz’,
And one third the word that a baby says.
I am something you may find in your hair,
Under a car,
And inside fair.
The last piece of me is the god of gold,
It makes everyone greedy,
And keeps you very old..
What is the potion described?”
Harry scratched his head hard. What kind of test was this? Everyone else in the class seemed to be stuck on it as well. Harry glanced at it again.
“What does it mean? I don’t get it,” thought Harry to himself. Even though he had been through other riddles before (once in his first year, and last year), he just couldn’t seem to make sense of this one.
“I must be tired from the other tests,” said Harry to himself. “I can’t think straight…. Well, let’s see here. I’ll break it down. Maybe each paragraph is describing an individual ingredient….
“So, hmm… what is a word used when declaring something ‘is’? Oh, I got to think back to my years a Muggle school… what was the infinitive form of the verb ‘is’…? Ah yes! To be! So, it is ‘be’. And the other part, oh, he gives it to us, ‘piz’… but I don’t know any ingredients that start with ‘bepiz’. Oh well, how about the last clue? A word that a baby says…. That one’s easy! ‘Ga’! All babies say ‘ga ga’. So, ‘bepizga’? No, that’s not it… oh! Begapiz! That’s a very common ingredient. I think it makes stuff stronger…”
Amazed and happy with himself for figuring out he first ingredient,