Mudbloods!'- come on, you've only got to look at his foul rat face to
know it's him -"
"Malfoy, the Heir of Slytherin?" said Hermione skeptically.
"Look at his family," said Harry, closing his books, too. "The whole lot
of them have been in Slytherin; he's always boasting about it. They
could easily be Slytherin's descendants. His father's definitely evil
enough."
*158*
"They couldve had the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries!"
said Ron. "Handing it down, father to son ......
"Well," said Hermione cautiously, "I suppose it's possible ......
"But how do we prove it?" said Harry darkly.
"There might be a way," said Hermione slowly, dropping her voice still
further with a quick glance across the room at Percy. "Of course, it
would be difficult. And dangerous, very dangerous. We'd be breaking
about fifty school rules, I expect -"
"If, in a month or so, you feel like explaining, you will let us know,
won't you?" said Ron irritably.
"All right," said Hermione coldly. "What we'd need to do is to get
inside the Slytherin common room and ask Malfoy a few questions
without him realizing it's us."
"But that's impossible," Harry said as Ron laughed.
"No, it's not," said Hermione. "All we'd need would be some Polyjuice
Potion."
"What's that?" said Ron and Harry together.
134
"Snape mentioned it in class a few weeks ago -"
"D'you think we've got nothing better to do in Potions than listen to
Snape?" muttered Ron.
"It transforms you into somebody else. Think about it! We could
change into three of the Slytherins. No one would know it was us.
Malfoy would probably tell us anything. He's probably boasting about it
in the Slytherin common room right now, if only we could hear him."
"This Polyjuice stuff sounds a bit dodgy to me," said Ron, frowning.
"What if we were stuck looking like three of the Slytherins forever?"
"It wears off after a while," said Hermione, waving her hand
*159*
impatiently. "But getting hold of the recipe will be very difficult.
Snape said it was in a book called Moste Potente Potions and it's
bound to be in the Restricted Section of the library."
There was only one way to get out a book from the Restricted
Section: You needed a signed note of permission from a teacher.
"Hard to see why we'd want the book, really," said Ron, "if we
weren't going to try and make one of the potions."
"I think," said Hermione, "that if we made it sound as though
we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance ......
"Oh, come on, no teacher's going to fall for that," said Ron.
"They'd have to be really thick . . . ."
C H-H A P T V It T 1' N
THE ROGUE BLUDGER
ince the disastrous episode of the pixies, Professor Lockhart had not
brought live creatures to class. Instead, he read passages from his
books to them, and sometimes reenacted some of the more dramatic
bits. He usually picked Harry to help him with these reconstructions;
so far, Harry had been forced to play a simple Transylvanian villager