Chapter 63: 4th September 1991, Wednesday: Part 1

In one of the Slytherin dormitories at one minute to eight in the morning, a well-polished leather shoe was thrown through the air. It arced through the sky and collided with George's head as he lay sleeping in his bed. The shiny shoe smashed into his face with enough power to ricochet off his nose, causing it to bounce over his head and hit the clock beside his bed. The shoe tumbled to the ground but the clock had been knocked over and was on the verge of falling off his bedside cabinet, even the slightest gust of air would be enough to send it careening over the edge.

A moment later, the clock's arms turned to eight and it began vibrating whilst making a chiming noise. The two bells above the face of the clock were repeatedly struck with a tiny hammer, electrical sparks came from the hammer on every chime which flew towards George and zapped his arm. The alarm's vibrations were enough to cause the clock to fall off the table to its impending doom. Just before the clock was about to hit the ground, George reached over and snatched it out of the air. He yawned while stretching his arms before returning the clock to its rightful place on his bedside cabinet, he made sure to push it a few more inches back just to be safe.

George didn't want his present from Remus to break after a single day of use, it would reflect poorly on his character. Before he got out of bed, George reached down into his pyjamas and pulled out his small silver mirror from his leather sack and held it in front of his face. He was paying particular attention to his eyes which had changed colour from light blue to dark crimson. George had to get into the habit of checking his own eyes in the morning since Ellie was no longer waking him up. It was already bad enough that Theodore might have seen his eyes change, he didn't need his other roommates to know as well.

Since his eyes had indeed changed, George reached under his pyjama shirt whilst his expression contorted in pain. He rummaged around for a few seconds before pulling out a small spherical object. The tiny ball was about an inch in size, it looked like a yellow hard boiled sweet with small red squiggles like veins scattered all over it. If he looked at it long enough then he could see the tiny veins slowly pulsating. George placed the 'sweet' inside of his mouth and swallowed It like a pill, the colour of his eyes changed back to normal within seconds of the pill settling in his stomach.

Satisfied with his current 'normal' appearance, George looked over to the dormitory room's exit where the shoe had been thrown from. Just as his head turned around, he heard the sound of frantic footsteps from behind the door as if someone was running away from him.

He frowned whilst thinking, "this wasn't what I had in mind."

George got up out of the bed and stretched his entire body by tensing all of his muscles. Just like usual, every bone in his body cracked simultaneously. He then bent over and picked up the expensive-looking shoe that had woken him up, he looked inside and saw a tag that was labelled 'Theodore Nott' on the inside tongue of the shoe. He walked over to Theodore's bed and saw a left shoe missing its right pair, he placed the shoe back where it belonged. He stared at Theodore's bed and sighed, he knew that their relationship was in pieces after his stunt in the greenhouse.

Theodore had done exactly what George had told him to do, he woke him up so that he didn't miss his breakfast. Being the absolutely petrified boy Theodore was, he opted for the method of standing by the door and throwing his smart dress shoes at George until he woke up. Although this shared many similarities with Ellie's method of waking him up, their reasons were completely different. Theodore scarpered the moment that he saw George waking up, he was acting as if he had just woken up a dragon after stealing its gold.

George didn't want his relationship with Theodore to be a bad one since he now knew that Theodore had a direct connection to the dark lord, his father was a death eater. George had been a little overconfident in his abilities when threatening Theodore yesterday, but he had inadvertently confirmed that Theodore did indeed have family connected to Voldemort. The way Theodore reacted after George said, 'not even your death-eater daddy could save you', was all the proof he needed.

Just like Lucius Malfoy, Theodore's father must have managed to escape persecution after Voldemort's defeat by Harry Potter a decade ago. Since Voldemort was coming back in a major way soon, having a friend on the inside would have been a great advantage. His patron would have definitely appreciated George's initiative, and the odds of receiving a reward would be pretty high. Alas, George felt more confident befriending Draco than he did Theodore at the moment. Regardless of his past mistakes, every great journey started with a single step and George will eventually take that first step in rebuilding his relationship with Theodore.

That first step wasn't going to be taken today since he had a far more important task to accomplish. Today was the day he would establish his secret potion-making laboratory. George got washed, dressed and put on a new fresh set of clothes. He finished by adorning his only robe that wasn't burnt or covered in blood. Whilst he was adjusting his collar, George noticed that there wasn't a pair of orange eyes angrily staring at him. He looked around the room and couldn't find Blinkie, the owl and its cage were gone. Someone must have moved it whilst he'd been asleep.

George didn't stress about this since the house elves probably took the bird to the Owlery, he was meant to take it there yesterday but he had been a little distracted in the Library. It was probably for the best, that bird might have starved if it had been locked up any longer. He would have to remember to check the Owlery at some point to see how Blinkie was getting on. Just as George was about to leave his dormitory, he reached for the door handle and saw that his hand was starting to shake. He knew what this meant and didn't hesitate to pull out a vial from his leather sack and down it in one gulp. The minty liquid slid down his oesophagus and immediately filled him with a sense of tranquillity.

Three of George's Calming Draught vials had been officially drunk and he had at most a four-day deadline to finish making his version of the potion. That time needed to be used to gather the remaining ingredients, prep the ingredients, brew the potion and attend all of his classes at the same time. With all that on his plate, George didn't linger in the room. He left his dormitory and the Slytherin common room to go and get his breakfast at the Great Hall as soon as possible. His grumbling stomach reminded him not to get too distracted with the potion brewing since there were more important dietary requirements that needed to be fulfilled. George was a growing scaly monster after all, he couldn't be skipping meals.

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Fifteen minutes later and George was casually walking to his first and only lesson of the day after retrieving a huge chunk of black pudding from the Great Hall. He had initially been disappointed with his snatch and grab, but the Hogwarts black pudding was far better than what he had eaten at the Linwood's house. He would never have guessed that pig's blood could have so many unique flavours until today. George arrived at his defence against the Dark Arts class a little early and decided to wait inside the classroom since the door was unlocked. The door led to a staircase that spiralled up to the Defence Against the Dark Arts room.

The classroom shared many common traits found in other rooms at Hogwarts, although, the massive dragon skeleton hanging from the ceiling was quite unique. Three large arched windows flooded the room with natural light, ironically making this the brightest classroom he had yet to attend. George sat down at one of the desks at the back of the class and pulled out his quill and parchment in advance. He looked toward the end of the classroom and saw the staircase that lead up to the defence against the Dark Arts teacher's office, the office door was currently closed.

Quirrel wasn't in the Great Hall during breakfast so he was most likely in the office, George concentrated but he couldn't hear any noises coming through the door. He was a little hopeful he might overhear some whispers between the two-headed man. Who knows what interesting evil scheming they could be getting up to in there? If only George could just introduce himself to Voldemort as a fellow schemer, they could exchange notes on how to best infiltrate Hogwarts. It was a shame that Tom wasn't exactly known for his friendly demeanour nowadays, overwise George would have said hi.

Since George had nothing better to do, he took this moment of peace to re-evaluate everything he had failed to achieve last night. Yesterday at the Library had been a massive failure, many hours had been wasted looking through the endless shelves of potion books. He hadn't managed to find any books related to the Calming Draught except the advanced potion-making book used by all NEWT students. He had read it last night and noticed that there was a clear reason why students didn't brew a potion on their first attempt. The ambiguity in the instructions was excessive, to say the least.

Apparently, according to the book, the potion-making process differed for everyone due to their unique magic alignment. George's rubbish radar was flashing after reading the first paragraph, it was the same nonsense as the books from Flourish and Blotts. The only thing that book was good for was to give George a basic overview of the brewing procedure and more importantly the recipe. He had known some of the ingredients in advance, such as lavender and peppermint. No book was responsible for giving him this information, he learnt this from physically smelling and tasting the ingredients when he first drank the potion.

Luckily, George had already purchased a decent amount of both lavender and peppermint whilst at Diagon Alley and had the Hogwarts greenhouses to top up his supply. The good news ended there as he learnt yesterday that the Calming Draught also required unusual ingredients such as crocodile hearts. This was a problem since George hadn't purchased many of them when he was at Diagon Alley, he would at most be able to brew the potion twice with his current supply. Not only did he need to gather more books related to making the Calming Draught, but he also needed to 'source' more ingredients.

George planned to take a visit down to the dungeons to look around the potion classrooms. Judging by Snape's office, there was bound to be a few ingredients lying around that he could 'liberate' whilst browsing the classrooms. He'll just have to keep an eye out for Filch and leave no trace of his rule-breaking activities. Speaking of which, if George got very lucky, he could potentially find a certain teacher's old notebook which would help him out immensely. As fun as that all sounded, George had other plans for his limited time today. He couldn't start brewing potions until he had a location where he could do so covertly, that was his main concern for now.

After a few minutes of waiting, other students started turning up in the classroom and filling the space. They mostly ignored George as he hid in one of the few shadowy corners of the room, just like in Astronomy. Every student turned up to class by the time Quirrell finally left his office, the professor hesitantly descended the stairs to the classroom like someone with severe vertigo. He was dressed in a long black robe similar to Snape's with a large purple turban on his head. If George didn't already know Quirrell's secret passenger, he wouldn't have ever guessed that the world's most dangerous wizard was right in front of him. Even the turban hiding Tom's face didn't appear to be enchanted. George felt he could partially see some sort of dark enchantment, but it could have easily been a placebo effect.

George went into this class a little excited since he was going to get taught defence against the Dark Arts by the master of all things dark, but his expectations didn't match the reality. Quirrell told the class that Defence Against the Dark Arts in the first year only taught the students basic spells which could at most hinder an opponent but not harm them, such as the knockback jinx or the red sparks charm. There was only one spell that George liked the sound of and it was the smokescreen spell. A quick spell that could shroud him in a black fog should be effective in making a quick getaway. It might be useful if Filch was about to catch him in the act.

Quirrell stuttered his way through the entire lesson and gave George the impression that this year was predominantly going to be learning about magic and not practising it. These classes were definitely going to be either copying things off the board or copying things Quirrell had said, even the other eleven-year-olds picked up on this depressing fact. It was such a waste of dark talent, George would have loved to compare Voldermort's teachings to his patrons. It seemed that most of his Dark Arts education would have to come in the form of extracurricular activities. To be fair, the watered-down teaching wasn't something that surprised him since the three unforgivable curses wouldn't even get a mention until the fourth year.

Due to this less-than-motivating learning environment, George started daydreaming about his plans to set up his potion laboratory. Quirrell was so incredibly nervous that he didn't seem to notice George's glazed-over eyes looking right past him. George was thinking about the best strategy to befriend a rather tricky individual, this introduction might be more challenging than Hermione. If he was able to make a good first impression on a certain ghost, then he would be able to secure an excellent location for all of his potion-brewing needs. He wasn't going to mess it up this time, George 'Smooth Talker' Linwood was in the house.

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