Chapter 37
The next morning started with a dishevelled Mira ambushing Luna. Mira’s eyes were red, like she hadn’t slept the entire night, and she was holding a book, brandishing it right in Luna’s face. The book had a strange creature drawn on the cover, it looked like a mix of a fantasy goblin and a vampire. The title was written in a language Taylor couldn’t read. Mira pointed at Arabelle nested in Luna’s hand.
The spider had grown in the weeks she’d been living with them, perhaps because Taylor made sure she was constantly fed. That made her so much less prone to biting. If she kept growing like that, they’d need that shrinking potion sooner rather than later.
“That is not—” Mira started, then looked around wildly. She shied away, whispering frantically. “Get away from that! That’s not a normal spider, that’s an Acromantula!”
Luna tilted her head, and looked at the spider. “Arabelle, you are an Acromantula.”
Arabelle raised her pincer-like pedipalps and clicked them.
Mira took a step back. “Why hasn’t she bitten you?” her voice raised to a maniacal pitch. “They are XXXXX Class monsters. Wizard killers! They can’t be tamed!”
Luna moved a finger along the spider’s back. “Arabelle is a gentle girl. She almost never tries to bite me any more.”
“Where did you find her?” Mira demanded.
“The forbidden forest,” Luna admitted without a shred of guilt in her voice.
“We have to tell someone. The professors!” she said, turning around and about to head off.
Taylor stepped in front of her. “We can’t.”
“Why? She’s dangerous! And she’s going to grow a lot more! And there might be more of them in the forest.”
“Arabelle has been living with us for months. She hasn’t bitten anyone.”
Arabelle raised her front-legs and clicked her pincers.
“But they can’t be tamed,” Mira said, sounding anguished. “The book says so, dad said so.”
“I wouldn’t say tamed,” Taylor interjected, smiling wirily. “But she’s behaving.”
Mira looked between the three, eyes still wide.
“And I think the professors won’t react well if you tell them.”
“Why?” Mira asked.
“There’s a monster attacking the students.” Taylor looked pointedly at Arabelle.
“How do you know it is not her?” Mira asked.
Taylor shrugged. “I don’t think she was even born when the first attack happened. She can’t speak yet.”
Mira blinked, then stepped back even more. “There’s more of them?”
“You should see her daddy. He’s the size of a house.” Luna added cheerfully.
Mira's mouth flapped like she wanted to say something but didn’t know what.
“They’ve been in the forest for decades,” Taylor said, glancing at Arabelle. “We talked with their progenitor.”
“We need to tell someone,” Mira pleaded.
“Hagrid knows about them; He visits them often.”
“Hagrid?”
“The groundskeeper,” Luna supplied.
“And with everyone scared because of the attacks,” Taylor said, glancing at the spider.
Mira looked between them, then at the spider. “They wouldn’t.”
“Arabelle won’t bite anyone,” Taylor reassured.
“And we are going to brew a shrinking solution for her,” Luna said, walking closer.
“But she’s— she’s—”
Luna raised her hand, offering the spider. “Do you want to pet her?”
Mira covered her face with both hands, and let out a strangled yell.
There was a moment of silent tension, then Mira sighed. “Fine,” she said, glaring at them. She pointed a finger at Arabelle. “If you bite someone, I’m telling.”
Arabelle clicked again.
“Dad is going to kill me,” Mira muttered, glaring at the spider.
Arabelle clicked again, moving forward. Taylor had to use her power to hold Bell, because, for some reason, the spider had been planning to jump on Mira. It didn’t feel threatening. To Taylor, it felt more like curiosity.
“I’ll be watching,” Mira said, eyes flicking between Luna and the spider.
“She likes you,” Luna said, petting Arabelle again. She looked at Mira. “Do you like tea?”
Later that day, after breakfast, Taylor asked the question that had been in her mind since the talk with Mira.
“Are you ready to brew the potion?”
Luna nodded, then shook her head. “I’m ready to try, but I don’t have the ingredients.”
Taylor pondered on that, parsing through everything her bugs had seen. “Snape’s classroom has a cabinet full of them, and no one is using them.”
Luna stopped and turned to fully face Taylor.
Taylor studied her friend’s face. Luna’s big, pretty silvery eyes watched her back without a hint of judgement or condemnation. Or so Taylor thought. She couldn’t really say what went through her friend’s head.
“I’ll ask daddy to send us ingredients by owl,” Luna said, walking again.
Taylor followed.
“We can borrow from the classroom if daddy can’t find everything.”
The first tea-party after the Mira incident was more crowded than Taylor anticipated. Mira did show up, but she had dragged Harriet with her.
“Welcome, and please come in,” Taylor said, repeating the words her mum had often said when receiving friends at her gatherings.
The two girls walked in, looking around. Mira’s eyes stayed on the silk strips and all the improved decorations Taylor had added to the place. Harriet, on the other hand, was more interested in the table and the tea and snacks in the centre of the room.
Nneka had arrived before the duo, and had already taken her customary seat. Taylor guessed Ginny wasn’t showing up, since she was huddled inside her dorm room, under a pile of blankets.
Mira went straight for the table, sitting across Nneka, who, like usual, was devouring the cake. Harriet followed, sitting with her arms crossed.
“Hi!” Nneka said. Bits of cake flew everywhere.
“Hullo,” Mira said, glancing at the tea and cake.
Nneka nodded toward the cake. “I don’t know where Luna gets them, but they’re amazing.”
“What are we here for?” Harriet asked, looking at Mira.
Mira looked away from Harriet, cheeks rosy.
“Quidditch,” Taylor answered, moving beside Luna. She didn’t have anywhere to sit, because they hadn’t been expecting Harriet to come as well.
Nneka glanced up from her cake. “Huh?”
Harriet pointed at the window partially covered in snow. “In this cold?”
Taylor followed Harriet’s finger. The weather the past few days hadn’t been great. The pitch had been frozen, then mud, then frozen again, and the wind coming off the lake would make flying miserable. Not something she actually wanted to deal with, when she could barely fly as it was.
Nneka sipped from her tea. “Why do you want to play, anyway?”
Taylor sighed. “I wanted to cheer Ginny up. She likes Quidditch, I thought it was a good idea.”
Luna took the moment to feed everyone. She sliced cake and served it to Mira and Harriet, got a few strips of dried meat for Nap.
There was a moment of quiet with the only sound being people sipping tea and eating snacks.
Harriet was the first to disturb it. She finished eating the cake, then placed the cup down.
“Thank you for the tea,” she said, getting up, “but I have homework to do.”
She walked toward the door, and stopped there, looking at Mira.
Mira gave them an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” she muttered, finishing her tea and leaving after Harriet.
“What’s wrong with her?” Nneka asked after the duo had left.
“I think she’s scared,” Luna said.
“Of what?”
Taylor didn’t want to ponder that. She pulled her wand. “Practice?”
It had been a few days since Luna sent Nap to ask her dad for ingredients. She received it that morning, the poor owl struggling to carry the big box, and causing a mess at breakfast.
“I got the cauldron,” Taylor said, setting up the cauldron over an improvised fire. They were at the tea room, their go-to place for privacy. “Did we get everything?”
Luna was organising ingredients by the table. “Yes, daddy sent more than I asked for.”
“Can I see the instructions list before we start?”
Luna handed over a long parchment. Each step on the list had a number of comments scribbled with Luna’s pretty handwriting on the sides.
“Minced daisy roots, peeled shrivelfig, sliced caterpillars…” Taylor read through everything, circling back to the rat spleen part. “Did you find out if it’s before or after stirring?”
Luna shook her head. “I’ll try before, if it doesn’t work, we can try after.”
“Right,” Taylor said, glancing at the cauldron. “How long is it going to take to brew it?”
Luna looked over the ingredients. “A couple of days.”
Taylor glanced at Arabelle, who had grown even bigger. “Right. Let’s get started then.”
Trying to catch Ginny in a conversation proved harder than it should have been. Even if they shared classes Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Ginny managed to slip away before Taylor could ambush her. So Taylor had to cheat, resorting to bugs to track Ginny.
She managed to corner her redhead friend near Myrtle’s corridor. Which was good enough, since there was no one near to hear their conversation.
“Ginny,” Taylor called out before the girl could slip away again.
Ginny whirled about, eyes wide. Her eyes were red and puffy, which only made the bags under her eyes more prominent.
“Taylor.”
“It’s been a while,” Taylor said.
Ginny nodded. She looked at the end of the corridor, then back at Taylor.
“How have you been?” Taylor pushed on, ignoring the discomfort.
“I’m fine.”
Taylor looked at her friend again. Her crumpled clothing, matted hair, slouched posture and sickly pallor. She was hugging her diary like her life depended on it.
“Did something happen during the holidays?” she asked. Better to rip out the band-aid upfront.
Ginny took a shuddering breath. She looked at the end of the corridor again. She opened her mouth, closed it. She took a few more shuddering breaths. “I—” she started to say, then stopped. Soon after, she started crying again.
Taylor walked closer, but stopped short of doing anything. She wasn’t sure what to do, really, so she opened her arms and asked. “Do you want a hug?”
Ginny wiped her eyes with her sleeves, and nodded. She stepped into the offered hug. Taylor held her friend, while Ginny sniffled. She didn’t ask questions and Ginny didn’t seem in a mood to talk either.
That might have gone on for a few minutes, with Ginny getting quieter. At some point Taylor even thought Ginny had fallen asleep standing. Her breathing had turned slow and steady, but of course, her friend hadn’t.
Ginny pushed away, blinking. Her eyes were wide awake, unlike the tired look from just a few minutes ago.
“I have to go,” Ginny said. Her voice sounded strange. She turned around and walked away without glancing back.
Caught by surprise, Taylor didn’t have time to protest.
“Are you sure?” Taylor asked, looking at the bubbling cauldron.
Luna nodded. “It is ready.”
Taylor glanced at Arabelle, and then at the potion again. “Let’s try it on something else first.”
Luna dipped the ladle into the cauldron, and poured the liquid over a nearby chair.
Taylor watched, amazed as the chair shrunk and shrunk, until it was hard to see it on the ground.
“Maybe a little less?”
But Luna wasn’t really paying attention to that. Luna had a smile on her face. She turned to the spider.
“Do you want to try?”
Arabelle clicked her pincers.
Taylor watched as Luna dripped a few drops onto a plate, and placed Arabelle near it.
“Just a little,” she said to the spider.
Arabelle drank from the potion, and shrunk to about the size of a normal tarantula.
Luna picked the spider up, giggling. “You’re so small!”
Taylor hugged her friend from behind. “You did it!”
That called for a celebration. An impromptu tea-party was just what they needed after days working on the potion. After making sure the rest of the potion was safely stored, they got snacks and tea.
Unfortunately, the potion didn’t seem to be perfect. About half an hour later, the chair grew again, and soon after, Arabelle.
“It was the rat spleen,” Luna said, looking at the no-longer-shrunk spider.
“Do we still have ingredients to brew it again?”
Luna nodded. At least that was good news.
That night, it was Taylor’s turn to sneak onto Luna’s bunk.
She’d kept an eye out for anything Heir related, but there hadn’t been a single thing that looked out of place for the past month. Most students weren’t even talking about it any more, and the panic had died down. Which made sense. It had been months since the last attack.
The one notable detail was that the wonder trio were about to do something probably stupid. From what Taylor had overheard, the trio hadn’t got anything with their polyjuice potion quest, aside from trouble for Hermione. The bushy haired girl had been in the hospital wing the whole holidays and been released not so long ago.
In that timespan, Ron had convinced himself that Snape had blown up his own lab to hide evidence. How that logic tracked out Taylor had no idea. Harry seemed on the fence about it but willing to check it out, while Hermione was sceptical about the whole thing, but wasn’t about to let them go alone.
So the trio was planning on sneaking out in the night under Harry’s invisibility cloak (Taylor really wanted one as well), to investigate Snape’s blown office for any clues about the Heir without anyone being the wiser.
“Harry and his gang think Snape know something about the Heir, and that’s why he blew his lab.”
Luna glanced at Taylor and smiled.
“I know, right?”
Luna giggled.
Taylor pulled the blankets closer, and wished them good luck.
Taylor woke up screaming, bile filling her mouth. She didn’t even have time to feel sick when a spike of pain drove into her head and she screamed again. The bugs she had stashed near Myrtle’s bathroom were gone from her perception. More bugs in the corridors died as soon as they saw something that she couldn’t parse. The only thing that made an impression was the yellow colour.
Every new bug’s death was like a new needle inside her head.
Taylor could hear a ruckus somewhere far in the castle. Peeves was yelling and trashing a whole corridor. He wasn’t the only one. All the professors and headmaster were up, along with a trove of prefects.
In the distance, through the few bugs that hadn’t died, she heard hissing and footsteps, moving toward Myrtle’s bathroom.
Immediately closer, Taylor could feel someone trying to help her up and failing miserably. Closer still, Taylor felt like her face was filled with gunk, like she’d slept too much and now her eyes were full of crust.
In the corridors near Peeves, the professors and prefects had stopped near a group of three students, who weren’t moving. Taylor recognised them through her bugs’ eyes. Hero-Harry and gang. They looked as still as statues.
Far from where the trio had been petrified, in that same bathroom where most of her bugs disappeared from, she heard a hiss and the sink, which had never worked, moved revealing a passage down into the castle depths. A long sinuous creature vanished inside.
With the horror gone, her bugs stopped dying, but the pain in her head was still very real.
Taylor heard a hiss, almost like a snake, and the sink moved again, hiding the tunnel below.