Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Harry helplessly flipped through the Half-Blood Prince’s book, hoping to find something to save the situation.

And there it was, scrawled right across a long list of antidotes:

Just shove a bezoar down their throats.

Bezoar?!

Harry stared at these words for a moment. Hadn’t he once, long ago, heard of bezoars?

Hadn’t Snape mentioned them in their first-ever Potions lesson? “A stone taken from the stomach of a goat, which will protect from most poisons.”

Yes, he had definitely said that. Harry had a deep, deep impression of that lesson…

A bezoar could neutralize many poisons, regardless of their ingredients.

It was not an answer to the Golpalott problem, and had Snape still been their teacher, Harry would not have dared do it, but this was a moment for desperate measures. He hastened toward the store cupboard and rummaged within it, pushing aside unicorn horns and tangles of dried herbs until he found, at the very back, a small cardboard box on which had been scribbled the word bezoars.

At this point Slughorn called out, “Two minutes left, everyone!”

Evan had just finished bottling the last of his antidotes when he looked up and saw Harry returning from the store cupboard with something in his hand.

Hey, what was he going to do? It wasn’t until he saw the shriveled brown object in Harry’s hand that he realized it was a bezoar. Of course, it was a drug that could detoxify and was one of the essential ingredients for many powerful antidotes.

It wasn’t the correct answer for this lesson, but Harry had indeed found a way to counteract the poison. Who knew what Slughorn would say?

Beside him, Hermione was trying to cram a few more ingredients into her bottle. Slughorn’s poison comprised a total of fifty-two ingredients, and correspondingly, fifty-two antidotes were required, which was very complicated.

Hermione had misidentified four or five of the poison’s ingredients and was now making her last-ditch efforts.

Adding more antidotes to the cauldron wouldn’t necessarily work, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Hermione was sweaty-faced and had soot on her nose, and she had even thrown a chunk of her own hair into the antidote that was now bubbling sluggishly.

It was useless, hair couldn’t neutralize poison.

Besides, there was no time left!

Evan could do nothing about it, and he didn’t know what Hermione had done wrong.

“Time’s … UP!” called Slughorn genially. “Well, let’s see how you’ve done!”

Slowly, he moved around the room, examining the various antidotes.

Aside from Evan, nobody had finished the task. Among all the others, Hermione was the one who was closest to success, but it was of no use. This was the characteristic of many poisons. If one of the poison ingredients was not solved, the entire antidote would be ineffective.

With fifty-two toxic components, an incomplete antidote meant one thing: death.

However, from an academic standpoint, Hermione’s score would still be higher than the others’. At the very least, she should pass.

Compared to hers, other people’s antidotes were even more unbearable to look at.

Ron, to Evan’s left, had given up completely, and was merely trying to avoid breathing in the putrid fumes issuing from his cauldron.

Harry stood there waiting, the bezoar clutched in a slightly sweaty hand.

Slughorn looked from table to table, saying nothing about Hermione’s potion.

Then, he stopped in front of Evan’s cauldron, studying it carefully before nodding in satisfaction.

“Excellent! Perfect! A truly flawless antidote!” he declared. “Well done, Evan. Ten points to Gryffindor. Of course, a multiple-poison antidote with only fifty-two components isn’t too difficult. At the N.E.W.T.s level, we deal with over a hundred and fifty. Now, let’s see what our other Potions prodigy has prepared …”

He walked over to Harry and Ron’s table.

He did not linger over Ron’s cauldron, but backed away swiftly, retching slightly.

“And you, Harry,” he said, frowning in confusion at Harry’s empty workspace, “What have you got to show me?”

Harry held out his hand, the bezoar sitting on his palm.

Slughorn looked down at it for a full ten seconds. Harry wondered, for a moment, whether he was going to shout at him. Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

“You’ve got nerve, boy!” he boomed, taking the bezoar and holding it up so that the class could see it. “Oh, you’re like your mother. … Well, I can’t fault you. … A bezoar would certainly act as an antidote to all these potions! And an extra ten points to Gryffindor for sheer cheek!”

Hermione’s face was livid, and she looked like she wanted to bite someone!

Being with Elaine often, Hermione seemed to have developed this bad habit of biting people to vent her dissatisfaction.

Of course, so far, she had only bitten Evan secretly at night, once, and it hadn’t hurt at all…

If that was Hermione’s way of expressing her emotions, Evan wished she’d do it more often.

She could bite him anywhere she wanted; he definitely wouldn’t resist.

Hermione was just pretending at best, unlike Elaine, there was a certain chance that this child would really bite.

If Hermione truly wanted to “punish” Evan, she had better methods, like turning him into a cat or something…

As for dealing with other people, her skill in lecturing and debating was practically unbeatable.

Hearing Slughorn’s praise, Hermione asked through gritted teeth, “And you thought of a bezoar all by yourself, did you, Harry?”

“That’s the individual spirit a real potion-maker needs!” said Slughorn happily, before Harry could reply. “Just like his mother, she had the same intuitive grasp of potion-making, it’s undoubtedly from Lily he gets it. … Yes, Harry, yes, what you did was absolutely brilliant!. If you’ve got a bezoar to hand, of course that would do the trick. You don’t have to bother preparing an antidote… But, kid, you have to know that they don’t work on everything, and are pretty rare, so it’s still worth knowing how to mix antidotes. You should make the right antidote like Evan did. I know you can do it. You just wanted to show your adventurous spirit…”

Well, judging by Slughorn’s words, it almost sounded like spending all that time and effort brewing the antidote, like Evan did, was a bit foolish. After all, there was bezoar! Bezoar! Bezoar! Why bother making a complex multi-poison antidote when you could just use that instead?

Of course, Slughorn seemed to realize that what he said didn’t quite sound right, so he quickly backtracked and smoothed things over.

But anyone could probably tell that, deep down, he was actually more impressed with Harry’s approach.

Harry stealing the spotlight in Potions class had practically become the norm lately. Slughorn’s endless praise had gone from shocking everyone at first to now being something they had just come to expect. The only one still truly frustrated about it was Hermione, losing to the Prince yet again was driving her mad.

By the way, the only person in the room looking angrier than Hermione was Malfoy. He didn’t seem to be doing well lately!

In addition to being low-key, Malfoy looked even more haggard. He must have been under a lot of pressure.

The task Voldemort had given him was far beyond his abilities. For Malfoy, it must have been pure torment…

Perhaps this was exactly the effect Voldemort wanted.

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