THE POLYJUICE POTION
“I must ask you, Harry, whether there is anything you’d like to
tell me,” he said gently. “Anything at all.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He thought of Malfoy shouting,
“You’ll be next, Mudbloods!” and of the Polyjuice Potion simmer-
ing away in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. Then he thought of the
disembodied voice he had heard twice and remembered what Ron
had said: “Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in
the wizarding world.” He thought, too, about what everyone was
saying about him, and his growing dread that he was somehow con-
nected with Salazar Slytherin. . . .
“No,” said Harry. “There isn’t anything, Professor. . . .”
The double attack on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick turned
what had hitherto been nervousness into real panic. Curiously, it
was Nearly Headless Nick’s fate that seemed to worry people most.
What could possibly do that to a ghost? people asked each other;
what terrible power could harm someone who was already dead?
There was almost a stampede to book seats on the Hogwarts Ex-
press so that students could go home for Christmas.
“At this rate, we’ll be the only ones left,” Ron told Harry and
Hermione. “Us, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. What a jolly holiday
it’s going to be.”
Crabbe and Goyle, who always did whatever Malfoy did, had
signed up to stay over the holidays, too. But Harry was glad that
most people were leaving. He was tired of people skirting around
him in the corridors, as though he were about to sprout fangs or
spit poison; tired of all the muttering, pointing, and hissing as he
passed.
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