Chapter 469 - 20: Polyjuice Potion (Bonus - for 200 Power Stones)

Chapter 469: Chapter 20: Polyjuice Potion (Bonus Chapter for 200 Power Stones)

"You owe Scabbers an apology!" Ron held his pet rat in one arm and aimed his wand at Rita with the other.

Rita remained unmoved, merely checking whether the photograph her photographer had just taken was usable. "Dear, I had no idea it was someone’s pet. You have to admit it looks terribly filthy. Hasn’t it been abused too?"

Fortunately, it wasn’t much of a problem; it just looked like a miserable big gray rat had accidentally wandered into the shot.

Rita showed a flash of displeasure at Ron’s rudeness, only to be drawn immediately to the thing in his hand. "Oh, is that your wand? I mean... you use that thing as a wand?"

"You—"

"Ron! How did Scabbers fly over here?" Harry reminded him.

Only then did Ron look toward the direction Scabbers had come from. He saw a strange cat—one that could probably be classified as a magical creature—staring motionlessly at them with one paw still raised.

Because Yimi did not want to carry the rat in her mouth, she had been batting it along like a ball. She had originally planned to bat it all the way over to the flying cat she usually paid special attention to and feed it to her, but accidentally knocked it to their feet instead.

"It was this cat!" Ron aimed his wand at Yimi and shouted a spell he had barely used before. "Petrificus Totalus!"

"Meow!" Yimi nimbly dodged the light from his wand and stared at him with wide eyes.

You’re using the wand I gave you against me?

Yimi reached behind herself, somehow pulled out her own wand, and held it in her cat paws toward Ron. "Levicorpus!"

"Whoa!" Ron cried out in terror as he was hoisted into the air by one ankle.

"Why?"

Hermione stared in confusion at the cat casting magic, while the reporter’s eyes flickered, though she said nothing.

Leaving Ron hanging there, Yimi put away her wand and stormed off, grumbling to herself.

The jinx was one of the prank spells that had been fairly popular when Snape was a student. It was written in that textbook too.

The little kitty could tell from smell alone that this rat was definitely no good. How could anyone keep something like that as a pet?

"This school must have plenty of other big stories waiting to be dug up. Perhaps I should find some time to interview you separately, Harry," Rita said before turning to leave. As far as she was concerned, the two interview snippets she had just obtained, together with the bonus photographs, were already more than enough.

...

Ron was eventually lowered by Snape using the counter-jinx to Levicorpus, Liberacorpus. Naturally, that did not spare him from a round of cutting sarcasm.

Snape compared Ron to a rooster hanging in a Muggle marketplace. As Snape was leaving, Harry could not resist adding, "Goodbye, Professor Prince," and successfully earned himself a week of detention.

That evening, Ron brought back extra crackers from dinner to feed Scabbers and soothe his injured feelings. Harry and Hermione were somewhat surprised by Ron’s reaction, since whenever Ron mentioned Scabbers, he usually sounded disgusted with him.

The rat had not even been a pet Ron bought or found himself. Just like the wand he had inherited from one of his brothers, Scabbers had belonged to his other brother, Percy, who no longer wanted him and passed him down. According to Ron, Scabbers had already lived for quite a few years, spent almost all day sleeping, and had already been missing one toe when Percy first got him.

Even after Charms class the next day, Ron was still grumbling about the incident.

"That rotten cat. Someone in Gryffindor must be secretly keeping it. I left Scabbers in the common room. There’s no way he could’ve gotten out by himself."

"Hey, the snake outside is gone. Hagrid finished processing it in a single day?" Harry stood by a third-floor window and looked outside.

"All I care about is whether it’s going to show up at dinner. I still remember the little kitty saying she wanted to eat it after she killed it." Ron put a hand over the wand at his waist.

There was nothing wrong with the wand itself. The only problem was that if he accidentally dropped it during class, the sound it made hitting the floor could turn every head in the room toward him.

"Hey, that reporter really did write it like this!" Hermione held the Daily Prophet delivered by owl. The photograph beside the article was unmistakably the one taken yesterday.

Nobody knew what sort of magic Rita had used. Hermione’s original expression—simply her attempt to choose her words carefully—had been edited into an angry moving image. Paired with the article, it looked as though she were furious because Lockhart had attacked her friends, while the startled rat in the picture seemed frightened by Hermione’s rage.

"Whatever, it doesn’t make much difference. You two need to help me remember whether any girls might secretly have a cat. This is serious!" Ron was furious at having the subject changed on him twice in a row. "If it weren’t for that cat, I’d be settling accounts with that reporter right now."

"There is—me. I’d really like to have a cat. Both of you have pets, and I’m the only one who doesn’t." Hermione put away the paper and told Ron, "The important part should be the magic that cat used. She may be an Animagus, Ron. I read about them in a book. An Animagus is a witch or wizard who can transform into an animal, but only one kind of animal..."

She briefly explained the concept to the two boys.

"You mean the little kitty?" Ron finally understood.

"No, that’s impossible." Hermione shook her head. "Learning that magic takes a very long time—probably years. How old is she? Besides, becoming an Animagus doesn’t make a person stronger."

But then she remembered that Yimi’s wand and the one the cat had produced were both white.

Ron was about to say something when Harry nervously pointed ahead. "Lockhart was dismissed, right? If that’s the case, we shouldn’t have Defence Against the Dark Arts for now. So why did that classroom door just move?"

Their next lesson after Charms today was originally supposed to be Defence Against the Dark Arts, but because Lockhart had been dismissed, that period was currently free time.

Hearing Harry, Ron forgot to be angry about the topic changing again. If a new teacher had arrived, Dumbledore should have announced it.

Then again, none of them had checked the noticeboard that morning. What if Dumbledore, who normally respected every professor, had suddenly changed his style and notified them this way? They would already be several minutes late.

"Go take a look?"

The three exchanged glances and cautiously walked in that direction.

In case Lockhart had returned to take revenge on someone, Ron used his rebar rather disrespectfully to push the classroom door open. Hermione certainly had no objection this time.

"You’re late." A childish and familiar voice answered them.

"?"

Harry stared blankly as Yimi suddenly jumped down from the lectern. Then he looked at the seats below and relaxed only after seeing that not a single person was there.

"What’s going on?" Hermione asked.

"Starting today, I’m the teacher for this class." Yimi straightened her back to make herself look more convincing.

She did not know Hogwarts’s timetable, so she had run into the classroom early in the morning and waited. After half a day, only these three people had come in—and one of them had previously used the wand the little kitty gave him to attack the little kitty.

Hagrid had finished processing the giant snake the previous evening. Yimi went to the kitchens and asked a large group of house-elves to help her cut the pale snake meat into chunks, leaving a large piece for Hagrid.

She had originally wanted to leave some for the house-elves too as thanks for helping, but the entire group suddenly became frightened and uneasy, as though Yimi had proposed something deeply insulting.

As for the rest, she put it all into her Storage Space. It fit as long as she stacked it upward; the Storage Space did not seem to have any height limit.

Harry and the others were not fooled by Yimi’s claim. "Did Dumbledore agree to let you be a teacher?"

"He did." Yimi’s eyes slid to the side as she put both hands behind her back.

The signs of lying were far too obvious.

"Are you an Animagus?" Ron asked bluntly.

"Animagus?" Yimi looked puzzled. She remembered Grandma Cat calling her that before too.

"He means, are you a witch who can turn into a cat?" Hermione rolled her eyes at Ron, wondering who would answer such a direct question honestly.

Yimi shook her head. "No."

She was a cat who could turn into a human.

"We’ve never really had a chance to ask you. You said you knew about the Chamber of Secrets because of Riddle’s memories, but how did you get those memories?" Harry asked.

"I bit a diary." Yimi looked up at Harry’s forehead.

Harry’s forehead had previously given off the same smell as the diary and the diadem.

"Where did the diary come from? And where is it now?" Harry was beginning to find talking with her exhausting.

"A red-haired older girl. She left it in the library. Grandma Cat took it." Yimi pointed unhappily toward the seats. "You should sit down, and raise your hands before speaking."

"Red hair? It couldn’t be Ginny, could it?" Ron’s face went pale, and he forgot all about interrogating Yimi over whether she was an Animagus. "How could it be her? She hasn’t seemed like anything was wrong at all!"

"Lucius." Harry, who had suspected Malfoy all along, immediately remembered. "When we were buying textbooks before term, Lucius took out the secondhand book in Ginny’s cauldron to mock us. He must’ve slipped the diary in then."

"It really was Malfoy?" Hermione opened her mouth in surprise.

"Can that count as evidence? When the house-elf named Dobby warned me that the school was dangerous, he looked miserable and kept smashing his head into things to punish himself." Harry’s thoughts suddenly became much clearer. "Dobby belongs to the Malfoy family?"

"That doesn’t prove anything. What are they trying to do?" Ron said irritably. "That cat was definitely sent by Malfoy too!"

"Meow?" Yimi made a questioning sound.

Ron rolled up his sleeves and headed for the door. "I’m going to beat him up and make him tell us what conspiracy they’re planning. This definitely isn’t over yet."

Hermione grabbed his robes. "That’ll only earn you another detention. You already have a record, Ron."

"Then what do you think we should do?" Ron stopped angrily.

Harry suggested, "Ask Goyle and Crabbe. They’re Malfoy’s followers, so they must know something. The important thing is that they’re both idiots."

He saw Yimi begin pacing around the three of them, apparently unwilling to let them ignore their new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.

"You just said they’re idiots... Oh, I remember. Snape mentioned a potion in class that can temporarily make you look like someone else." Hermione thought back. "Polyjuice Potion, I think it was called. But I don’t know how to make it. The book with the recipe requires a professor’s signature before it can be checked out."

She saw Yimi walk into the middle of the three of them, making it impossible to ignore her long shrine-maiden hat.

Harry could not resist reaching out to touch it. "Your signature won’t work, little kitty."

"You should call me ’Professor Yimi.’" The little kitty folded her arms unhappily, closed her eyes, and turned her face away from him. "I know how to make Polyjuice Potion, but I’m not telling you."

"You’re talking non— I mean, Professor Yimi, please tell me how to make Polyjuice Potion." Harry hurriedly corrected his form of address.

He had been about to say Yimi was talking nonsense, but then remembered that her reserves of magical knowledge really did seem greater than theirs.

Yimi opened one eye to look at him, still hugging her arms. "I said I’m not telling you, unless you’re willing, to attend my class."

"You mean Defence Against the Dark Arts? But..."

Harry was about to object when Hermione leaned toward his ear. "She won’t keep this game up for long. Did you ever stick with anything when you were little?"

"Fine. If we have time, and Dumbledore hasn’t hired a new professor," Harry agreed immediately.

Only then did Yimi tell them, "Twelve lacewing flies, stewed for twenty-one days, one ounce of crude antimony, four leeches with their mouthparts removed..."

"All of those things can only be found in Snape’s storeroom." Hermione wrote as she spoke, then asked Yimi, "You’re not making this up on the spot, are you?"

Yimi pouted and imitated the other professors as she pointed at Hermione. "Five points from Gryffindor."

"What did you say?" Hermione stared at her wide-eyed.

As if you have the authority to deduct points!

"How are we supposed to get this stuff? Are we expecting Snape to just give it to us?" Harry muttered dejectedly.

"You probably don’t need me here for now, right? I need to go ask Ginny what’s going on. She’s never told me, her own brother, anything about this!" Ron blurted out anxiously, then turned and ran away at full speed.

"Did he forget Ginny should still be in class right now?" Hermione said speechlessly.

Yimi pointed toward the direction Ron had gone. "He skipped class. Another five points from Gryffindor."

After thoroughly enjoying playing teacher, Yimi hugged Snape’s textbook to her chest and gave Harry and Hermione a very teacher-like wave. "Students, class dismissed."

"..."

Unaware that the three students several years older than her were merely humoring her, Yimi marched proudly back to McGonagall’s rooms. The little kitty was now Professor Yimi.

Yimi had originally planned to look for Professor Sprout again and see if she could get more catnip, but besides that, she also needed to experiment with the snake meat she had just obtained. If everything went well, she could enjoy some spicy strips by lunchtime.

As she cooked, the little kitty kept recalling how Lockhart had behaved as a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.

Time passed without her noticing, and Professor McGonagall returned after finishing a Transfiguration class.

McGonagall looked slightly displeased. "You’re cooking in my room?"

"I’m researching." The little kitty stood up to greet her and remembered how Lockhart did it.

She lifted one paw toward McGonagall in greeting. "Ah~ Minerva, you’re back."

"..."

She got two smacks on the backside.