Harry Potter 06 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

‘Golpalott’s-Third-Law-states-that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-to-more-than-the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-separate-components.’
    ‘Precisely!’ beamed Slughorn. ‘Ten points for Gryffindor! Now, if we accept Golpalott’s Third Law as true …’
    Harry was going to have to take Slughorn’s word for it that Golpalott’s Third Law was true, because he had not understood any of it. Nobody apart from Hermione seemed to be following what Slughorn said next, either.
    ‘… which means, of course, that assuming we have achieved correct identification of the potion’s ingredients by Scarpin’s Revelaspell, our primary aim is not the relatively simple one of selecting antidotes to those ingredients in and of themselves, but to find that added component which will, by an almost alchemical process, transform these disparate elements –’
    Ron was sitting beside Harry with his mouth half-open, doodling absently on his new copy of Advanced Potion-Making . Ron kept forgetting that he could no longer rely on Hermione to help him out of trouble when he failed to grasp what was going on.
    ‘… and so,’ finished Slughorn, ‘I want each of you to come and take one of these phials from my desk. You are to create an antidote for the poison within it before the end of the lesson. Good luck, and don’t forget your protective gloves!’
    Hermione had left her stool and was halfway towards Slughorn’s desk before the rest of the class had realised it was time to move, and by the time Harry, Ron and Ernie returned to the table, she had already tipped the contents of her phial into her cauldron and was kindling a fire underneath it.
    ‘It’s a shame that the Prince won’t be able to help you much with this, Harry,’ she said brightly as she straightened up. ‘You have to understand the principles involved this time. No short cuts or cheats!’
    Annoyed, Harry uncorked the poison he had taken from Slughorn’s desk, which was a garish shade of pink, tipped it into his cauldron and lit a fire underneath it. He did not have the faintest idea what he was supposed to do next. He glanced at Ron, who was now standing there looking rather gormless, having copied everything Harry had done.
    ‘You sure the Prince hasn’t got any tips?’ Ron muttered to Harry.
    Harry pulled out his trusty copy of Advanced Potion-Making and turned to the chapter on Antidotes. There was Golpalott’s Third Law, stated word for word as Hermione had recited it, but not a single illuminating note in the Prince’s hand to explain what it meant. Apparently the Prince, like Hermione, had had no difficulty understanding it.
    ‘Nothing,’ said Harry gloomily.
    Hermione was now waving her wand enthusiastically over her cauldron. Unfortunately, they could not copy the spell she was doing because she was now so good at non-verbal incantations that she did not need to say the words aloud. Ernie Macmillan, however, was muttering, ‘Specialis revelio!’ over his cauldron, which sounded impressive, so Harry and Ron hastened to imitate him.
    It took Harry only five minutes to realise that his reputation as the best potion-maker in the class was crashing around his ears. Slughorn had peered hopefully into his cauldron on his first circuit of the dungeon, preparing to exclaim in delight as he usually did, and instead had withdrawn his head hastily, coughing, as the smell of bad eggs overwhelmed him. Hermione’s expression could not have been any smugger; she had loathed being out-performed in every Potions class. She was now decanting the mysteriously separated ingredients of her poison into ten different crystal phials. More to avoid watching this irritating sight than anything else, Harry bent over the Half-Blood Prince’s book and turned a few pages with unnecessary force.
    And there it was, scrawled right across a long list of antidotes.
    Just shove a bezoar down their throats.
    Harry stared at these words for a moment. Hadn’t he once, long ago, heard of bezoars? Hadn’t Snape mentioned them in their first ever Potions lesson? ‘A stone taken from the stomach of a goat, which will protect from most poisons.’
    It was not an answer to the Golpalott problem, and had Snape still been their teacher, Harry would not have dared do it, but this was a moment for desperate measures. He hastened towards the store cupboard and rummaged within it, pushing aside unicorn horns and tangles of dried herbs until he found, at the