On Thursday, the dungeon air felt heavier than usual, thick with the scent of damp stone and pickling brine.
The classroom was buried so deep beneath the lake that the windows were little more than reinforced slits of darkness. Without the torches guttering in their iron brackets, the room would have been a tomb; Potions demanded a certain gloom, a sanctuary for delicate reactions that light would otherwise ruin.
Wrapped in the silken weight of the Invisibility Cloak, Elijah drifted into the room like a ghost behind the crowd of students. He trailed Harry to his workbench, but where Harry stopped, Elijah continued.
He moved with predatory silence, skirting the professor's dais until he reached the heavy wooden door leading to Snape's private office.
Snape entered with a violent sweep of black wool, his robes flaring like the wings of a giant bat. He didn't speak immediately; he simply stared at Harry until the boy looked away.
"Today," Snape began, his voice a low, dangerous silk, "you will brew a Swelling Solution."
His eyes cut across the Gryffindor side of the room. "The concentration must be exact. If an accident occurs—" a thin, mirthless smile touched his lips, "—whether you receive a Shrinking Potion afterward will depend entirely on my goodwill."
Neville turned the color of old parchment. Seamus fidgeted. Harry just gripped his stirring rod, jaw set.
Disaster in this room was never a question of if, only when. With Neville and Seamus as neighbors, Harry was constantly living in a blast radius. The Slytherins knew it, too; Malfoy was already snickering, leaning back in his chair with a look of bored superiority.
"Well?" Snape snapped. "Why are you not starting?"
Elijah watched from his unseen vantage point. He raised Ginny's wand beneath the cloak.
A singular, brilliant spark hissed through the air and landed squarely in Crabbe's cauldron.
The explosion was magnificent. A geyser of Swelling Solution erupted, drenching half the class in a hot, sticky spray. Screams filled the room as the potion began its work.
Malfoy clutched his face, his nose ballooning into a grotesque, purple bulb; Crabbe staggered blindly as his eyelids swelled shut like overripe fruit.
"SILENCE!" Snape roared.
Elijah held his breath, perfectly still. Snape's gaze swept the room with the precision of a searchlight, settling—as it always did—on Harry.
Under the cover of the screaming and the chaos, Elijah slipped into the office.
As he passed Malfoy, he reached out and plucked several strands of pale hair from the boy's head. Malfoy's howl rose another octave.
Once inside the office, Elijah's wand-tip flared with a soft Lumos.
"Horn of a Bicorn. Boomslang skin."
The shelves were a treasure trove.
Snape's collection was more than impressive—it was obsessive.
Elijah began to harvest. He took what was needed for the Polyjuice, but he didn't stop there. He took ingredients for vitality, for sustaining a body under the strain of possession, for fighting off the exhaustion that was starting to hollow Ginny out.
He felt no remorse. Snape wouldn't be able to trace this theft back to him; at worst, the man would complain to Dumbledore.
And Dumbledore, Elijah knew, was playing a very long game. The Headmaster was watching. He was letting the boy who lived face the shadows, testing him, tempering him. If Ginny Weasley was a casualty of that tempering, Dumbledore would mourn her, but he wouldn't stop the wheel from turning.
Elijah slipped back into the classroom just as Snape was finishing the last of the Shrinking Solutions. The professor was standing over Crabbe's ruined cauldron, his eyes narrowed to slits.
"A faint spark," Snape murmured. His eyes locked onto Harry's. "Clever. Casting spells was your mistake."
He held out a hand, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Harry Potter. Hand me your wand."
Prior Incantato.
Elijah smiled beneath the cloak.
Snape seized the holly wand and muttered the spell. A translucent, ghostly image burst from the tip—an Engorgement Charm.
"This was taught by Professor Flitwick," Harry said, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and defiance.
Snape studied him for a long, agonizing minute. Then, without a word, he shoved the wand back at Harry and turned away. "Ten points from Gryffindor for a solution that is far too thin."
"Ten points!"
Harry was still fuming later that evening, pacing the damp tiles of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. "He was just looking for a reason! He knew it wasn't me, but he took them anyway."
"Your potion was a bit thin, Harry," Hermione said, though her eyes were bright with relief. "But that spell... we were lucky."
Ron frowned, leaning against a cracked sink. "What's strange is that Snape just dropped it. He didn't even give you detention."
Elijah, sitting quietly on a closed toilet lid, said nothing. He was thinking of the eye contact between the professor and the boy.
Snape was a master of the mind; he had likely seen the truth behind Harry's eyes and chosen to maintain the theater.
Inside the narrow cubicle behind them, the Polyjuice Potion was a thick, bubbling sludge. Hermione worked over it with the devotion of a priestess. "One more week.. Let's get out of here before Filch finds us."
...
Snape returned to his office alone, his mood as dark as the ink in his wells.
"Bicorn horn. Boomslang skin." He moved to his cabinet, a grim, knowing smirk on his face. "Polyjuice. So, the children think they are spies."
He had no intention of stopping them. If they wanted to play at being heroes, let them. Dumbledore wanted the Chamber matter resolved, and if a few reckless Gryffindors did the legwork, so be it.
Then, he opened the inner cabinet.
His breath hitched. The smirking stopped.
His dragon blood—the rare, twelve-use variety—was nearly gone. The phoenix tears he'd practically begged from Dumbledore's bird were missing. His vials of Runespoor venom... he could live with that. But then he saw the empty snake boxes.
"They took that...," he whispered, his voice cracking.
Chimera hair. Gone. He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, his vision beginning to swim with pure, unadulterated fury.
"A jar of morning dew," he croaked. "Collected... leaf by leaf... in the Forbidden Forest."
His knees hit the floor and he fainted on the spot.
...
"I don't think he'll let this go," Ron said later, eyeing Ginny. "You didn't take anything extra, did you? You look... well, you look better today."
Elijah produced three snake eggs from his pocket. He held them over the tip of his wand, roasting them until the shells began to hairline and split.
"No," Elijah said, his voice perfectly calm. "Not extra."
He handed one to Ron. Ron cracked it open, the rich, savory aroma filling the corner of the common room. He took a bite and his eyes widened.
"Blimey, Ginny. This is delicious."