they?"
"Nope!" Tracey Davis said proudly. She too was now marching by General Potter's side, her wand gripped low and watchful as her eyes scanned the surrounding forest. "I threw up a Prismatic Sphere like a split second before Mr. Goyle's hex got Zabini, and the way Mr. Goyle had his other arm stretched out I think he planned to knock down the General, too." The Slytherin witch smiled with vicious confidence. "Mr. Goyle tried a Breaking Drill Hex, but learned to his dismay that his weak magic was no match for my newfound dark powers, hahahaha!"
Some Chaotics laughed with her, but a queasy sensation was starting in Neville's stomach as he realized how close the Chaos Legion had come to complete disaster. If Mr. Goyle had managed to disrupt both Transfigurations -
"Report!" snapped the Dragon General, doing his best to conceal the fatigue he felt after casting seventeen Locking Charms, with more yet to come.
Beads of sweat now dotted Gregory's forehead. "The enemy got Dylan Vaughan," Gregory said formally. "Harry Potter and Blaise Zabini were each Transfiguring something dark-grey and roundish, I don't think it was finished but it looked like it would be big and hollow, sort of cauldron-shaped. Zabini's was smaller than Potter's. I couldn't get either of them or disrupt their Transfigurations, Tracey Davis blocked me. Neville Longbottom is on a broomstick and he's still a terrible flyer but his aim is really good."
Draco listened, frowning, and then he glanced at Padma and Dean Thomas, who both shook their own heads, indicating that they also couldn't think of what might be big and grey and shaped like a cauldron.
"Anything else?" said Draco. If that was it, they'd lost a broom for nothing -
"The only other weird thing I saw," Gregory said, sounding puzzled, "was that some Chaotics were wearing... sort of like goggles?"
Draco thought about this, not noticing that he'd stopped marching or that all of Dragon Army had automatically stopped with him.
"Was there anything special about the goggles?" Draco said.
"Um..." Gregory said. "They were... greenish, maybe?"
"Okay," said Draco. Again without thinking, he began walking once more and his Dragons followed. "Here's our new strategy. We're only going to send eleven Dragons against the Chaos Legion, not fourteen. That should be enough to beat them, now that we can neutralize their special advantage." It was a gamble, but you had to take gambles sometimes, if you wanted to come in first in a three-way battle.
"You figured out Chaos's plan, General Malfoy?" said Mr. Thomas with considerable surprise.
"What are they doing?" said Padma.
"I haven't the faintest idea," said Draco, with a smirk of the most refined smugness. "We'll just do the obvious thing."
Harry, having now finished his cauldron, was carefully scooping acorns into the container while the scouts searched for a nearby source of water that could be used as a liquid base. They'd come across frequent sinkholes and miniature creeks in the forest before, so it ought not to take long. Another scout had brought a straight stick that would serve as a stirrer, so Harry didn't have to Transfigure one.
Sometimes, even though you were looking straight at something, you didn't realize
There was a cautionary tale the Potions Master had told them (with much sneers and laughter to make the stupidity seem low-status instead of daring and romantic) about a second-year witch in Beauxbatons who'd stolen some extremely restricted and expensive ingredients, and tried to brew Polyjuiceso she could borrow the form of another girl for purposes better left unmentioned. Only she'd managed to contaminate the potion with
Harry hadn't realized what that
Nobody in any army had tried brewing any potions up until then. But Professor Quirrell would let you get away with nearly anything, if it was something you could also have done in a real war.
So Harry had retrieved his copy of
Sometimes, even though you were looking straight at something, you didn't realize
Every recipe in
Someone else might have given up at that point.
Harry had turned the pages from one recipe to another, skimming faster and faster in dawning realization, confirming what he had already read and was now
Every single Potions recipe seemed to demand at least one magical ingredient,
Charms required no material components at all; you just said the words and waved your wand. Harry had been