Chapter 78: 6th September 1991, Friday: Part 7

The stairwell ended with a second door that wasn't locked, George quickly opened it and entered the large poorly lit classroom. He soaked in his surroundings and appreciated the craftsmanship of the beautifully decorated room. No corner of this room was perfectly straight as every single open space or pathway was arched and curved with intricately carved stone. Every stone arch was decorated with gold leaf which spanned every corner of the ceiling, Latin was written in jet black along the golden arches.

The shelves and tables were exquisitely made out of dark well-varnished wood, they were of the same quality that could be found in the Slytherin common room. The collection of vials, potions and jars vastly outnumbered anything he had seen in the other rooms at Hogwarts, even Snape's office is put to shame by this monumental collection of potion oddities. George could quite happily spend an entire day wandering around this room to see what of value he could scavenge, but, he wasn't there for leisure. For the first time today, he felt he was on the right track.

George looked to his right and saw a cabinet, he immediately went over and opened it. He saw a large pile of two dozen books which were all purple and were named 'Advanced potion-making by Libatius Borage'. He frantically looked down the stack of books until he saw a very ragged copy, which looked on the verge of falling apart, at the very bottom of the pile. George lifted the rest of the books up and carefully pulled out the ragged book without getting any blood on it. He was being particularly careful not to damage this potentially priceless artefact.

Worried to get his hopes up prematurely, George wanted to see the last page of the book as a final confirmation. Only then could he be sure he had found his treasure. He immediately turned to the last page and saw the following written in black ink, 'This book is property of the Half-Blood Prince'. George read that writing over and over again to check that his eyes weren't deceiving him. After all the trouble he had run into with his mind and body, he had come to doubt his senses. George allowed the information to soak in and then he felt such a large amount of relief, he could have fallen asleep there and then. So many of his worries had just vanished before his eyes.

George was broken out of his reverie as Gemma entered the room with her hands against her chest. She must have been trying to avoid marking any surface with George's blood. It was good practice, as a fellow thief, George could appreciate her professionalism.

She demanded quietly, "what are you doing? You better not be dripping blood over those books."

George snapped back into reality and closed the book before making up a response, "I was just checking the cupboards. There seems to be nothing in there other than a bunch of old books."

Gemma didn't seem suspicious as she just shook her head, "nah, they would never keep potions in there. Make sure to put that book back carefully, we can't leave any evidence that we've moved anything."

George obviously wasn't going to do that, so he decided to redirect Gemma's attention by pointing to another corner of the room.

He asked, "so, where do we start?"

Gemma turned around and looked into the room, she took a few steps forward and looked down the various paths that divided up the space.

She turned back around with a look of determination, "leave it to me. I'm just gonna go and wash my hands and robes first in the sink. You stay here and don't touch anything. And definitely don't leave anything behind."

Without waiting for a response from George, Gemma turned around and disappeared down one of the paths. He smiled as he discreetly slipped the book down into his enchanted sack, he finally had Snape's potion book secured in his possession.

A few minutes passed and George was wincing whilst Gemma was using a pipette to drop droplets of a purple liquid onto his open cuts. They were currently seated on stools in the centre of the room next to the large wooden table on which the professor would normally perform demonstrations. Gemma had pulled out a small bottle from a metal cupboard at the far side of the room, the bottle was labelled 'Wound Cleaning Potion'. This potion seemed to be the magical equivalent of antiseptic with a few healing qualities mixed in.

Every droplet that landed on George's open wound stung like it was boiling and it smoked like Gemma was lighting his hand on fire. That being said, he was exaggerating the amount of pain he was currently in, he would rate it a two out of ten at most on his pain scale. Compared to his transformations, this was a gentle kiss from a loving mother. George felt that Gemma didn't need to know that he had a high pain threshold since she still saw him as her younger brother, he had to be vulnerable to a certain extent in her company. She, on the other hand, seemed to be taking pleasure out of watching George suffer, the stress of breaking the rules seemed to have fizzled away after watching George squirm for a few minutes as she applied the potion.

The potion's effects added to George's regenerative abilities to cause his wounds to heal at a visible rate, they could watch the cuts close up like a video playing in fast forward. Gemma was highly surprised by the effectiveness of the potion, she was completely unaware that his super-human body had contributed. Luckily, Gemma didn't seem to be a massive fan of potions class and therefore lacked the knowledge to understand this was far beyond any potions capabilities unless it had phoenix tears as an ingredient. She stopped applying the potion just before the cuts were about to heal completely.

Then she placed the pipette back into the small bottle and said, "I'm going to leave your wounds slightly open so that we still have something to show Madam Pomfrey. We can just tell her that you fell into a rose bush and cut your hand on the thorns. She should believe that since I've used it as an excuse before to get out of trouble.

It's a long story so don't ask."

George felt weird knowing that both Gemma and himself sometimes use the same excuses, great minds must truly think alike. She stood up and returned the bottle from where she had taken it, she even made sure to close the cabinet doors the same amount as before she had opened them. George couldn't fault her, Gemma was an expert when it came to hiding her tracks. Like him, she was clearly a veteran at this shady stuff.

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She jogged to the exit of the room and looked back to George while saying, "come on. You might have forgotten but we're not meant to be here. I don't even want to imagine how long of a detention I would have to serve if Professor Snape caught us.

Actually, before we leave."

Gemma looked George up and down before continuing to say, "you've got far too much blood staining your robes, it looks more like you've murdered someone than fallen into a rose bush. Do you have a spare clean robe handy in your dorm room?"

George cheekily smiled whilst reaching down into his pants and pulling out a new, slightly torn, robe whilst saying, "ta-dah!"

Gemma held her head and shook it in disbelief, she could not even begin to guess why George would have a spare robe tucked down his pants. He removed his bloody robes and replaced them with new ones, a few small tears and dust marks could be seen littering these robes which raised even more questions in Gemma's mind.

She had to ask, "why do you have a torn-up robe down your pants?"

George stood up from his stool and started to walk towards the exit as he nonchalantly said, "it's a long story. I thought you said that we shouldn't stay here, shouldn't we get going before we are caught?"

Gemma didn't look happy at all having her words used against her. She would probably have given him a lecture on how she was right and he was wrong, but even she knew there wasn't enough time to get into an argument. The two of them ascended the stairwell and waited beside the door to hear if anyone was walking down the corridor. They had only been in the classroom for fifteen minutes and the dinner hour was only halfway through, there shouldn't be any students wandering around at this time. Filch might have turned up but he would have given up looking for them after a few minutes of checking the corridor.

Just as they anticipated, there were no sounds of anyone walking on the other side of the door. They both quickly opened the door, walked through it, and locked it behind them. Gemma told George that she didn't know the spell to put the anti-theft charm back on the door, this meant that a teacher would eventually find out someone broke in. If Snape did ask Gemma about the door then she would say that she had opened the door forcefully because she thought she had heard a student whaling behind it, she was trying to be a hero saving a poor child.

The cover didn't end there, Gemma had put a lot of thought into it. If questioned, she planned to use the excuse of not reporting this to the teachers because she didn't want to be embarrassed. Apparently, that wouldn't be the first time that something like this had happened to her. She was almost as creative at lying as George was, she kept finding more ways to impress him as time went by. Whilst they were walking back down the corridor to the moving stairwell, George abruptly leaned over and hugged Gemma. He only hugged her for a few seconds before letting go just as abruptly, he quickly retreated to her side with a red face.

George quietly spoke whilst his lips were pressed together, "thank you… for everything."

Gemma seemed to be in shock as she wasn't expecting that, her body had remained stiff throughout the entire physical contact. It was only after hearing George's words that she felt a warm and fuzzy feeling building up inside of her chest, a feeling that she normally only felt from making her younger brother laugh. Gemma realised at that moment that everything she had just risked, whether it be detention or losing her prefect badge, was well worth it in exchange for such a simple and honest thank you from George.

For once, Gemma wasn't wrong to feel like this because George genuinely felt thankful for her help. That impromptu hug hadn't been completely an act. She hadn't been in the original plan he had made for Hogwarts and yet she had become the greatest factor in ensuring its success. She had earned so many friend points that there was a monumental gap between her in first place and Neville in second. George had no intentions of poorly treating Gemma in the future if all of his plans worked out, he prided himself on repaying his debts to those he deemed worthy. Perhaps an anonymous donation of a few thousand galleons was in order.

Gemma turned towards George with rosy cheeks and a big smile. Even during her intense teasing about his so-called 'girlfriend', he had never seen her so happy. She wrapped one arm around his shoulder and pulled him close so that she could use her other arm to ruffle his hair. George pretended to put up a feeble resistance that amounted to nothing. He would just have to remember to knock a few hundred galleons off that reward.

Gemma spoke cheerfully, "you are very much welcome. Just remember that you owe me soooo much for this, like around one hundred favours at least."

Gemma laughed maniacally like an evil villain in a movie whilst she dragged George towards the moving staircase in a headlock. This was probably the happiest he could feel whilst being mildly suffocated by another. George didn't realise it but he didn't seem to mind Gemma's teasing as much anymore, something small inside him had changed.

Just as Gemma wanted, George went to Pomfrey's hospital wing with her and had his injuries treated. He gave Pomfrey the 'rose bushes' excuse Gemma had made up for him. Gemma did a great job of filling in the gaps in the story by explaining how she bravely rescued George from almost certain death and vanquished the vile thorns that threatened his life. Pomfrey wasn't so entertained by the heroin saga, she felt like the injury was too insignificant and he should have just waited a day or two for the cuts to heal naturally. Little did she know, George had to physically re-open the wound over and over again just to make sure it didn't disappear right in front of her eyes.

Gemma insisted on George staying in his dorm for the rest of the night after she escorted him to the Slytherin's common room. Only once he begrudgingly agreed to her demands did she leave. She was willing to stay with George but he insisted that he was fine, he told her that he was going to read a book and have an early night. After Gemma left the common room, he dashed after her but avoided running into her by taking an alternate path to the moving staircases. As much as Gemma didn't deserve to be lied to again, George absolutely needed to get to the girl's bathroom as soon as possible.

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