Paragraph 4 - 40 : The Daily Prophet’s List

Judith hoped she could use the delay to collect the potion's ingredients and brew it. She was however faced with a dilemma : should she tell her father what the potion did, or try to keep its purpose a secret ? The potion's recipe had already been circulated at school, and it was clear by now it wasn't dark magic. What bothered Judith though was that the potion was one of the key elements of her friendship with the three others, and that the last thing she wanted was to make Ann, Eleanor and Sigismond distrust her, or to make them think that she, on her part, didn't trust them. And disclosing the potion's working to her father was almost tantamount to revealing the existence of the three others, which was in Judith's mind some sort of treason of the group - she didn't know that Eleanor spoke openly at home about Ann, Judith and Sigismond. Judith could try to circumvent this danger by just saying she had discovered the potion's recipe in a book borrowed at Hogwarts' library. She was a good student, after all, it was believable that she had read about this potion while looking for material for an essay. Perhaps it was also time she told the three others what she wanted to do, so that they would at least have their say in it. Embroidered messages were convenient as long as their text was short. Therefore, she only sent :

I'd like to get to the bottom of the Perklus case (see Daily Prophet), and I am ready to use the potion for this

Then she waited for the answers. Sigismond was first to react. He enquired about the date of the newspaper edition in which Judith had read about the 'Perklus case', and Judith quickly replied. Eleanor was surprised by how assertive Judith's apparating post had been. She nonetheless sent back :

Do what you feel is right !

Ann was living in a Muggle family, and she didn't get the Daily Prophet delivered at her home. She wrote :

Any pretense to drink this potion is a good one. Have fun, keep us posted

After one hour or so, finally, Sigismond, who had laid his hands on the right Daily Ptophet edition, embroidered :

This is really a good use for the potion

Judith's issues count was down one unit. She now had to find the right way to introduce the Intuition Potion to her parents. Therefore, the same evening, she updated her parents about the hearing at the Ministry, and she had her potion speech ready :

There is a potion that I found at Hogwarts. It gives people propositions of actions. They can follow them or not. And in the end, it will bring them a piece of information about the thing they are most curious to know. There is no extraordinary or expensive ingredient in this potion, and it seems to fit exactly my purpose, so I plan to use it

Judith's mother said in reply :

Show it to your father, he will tell me what he thinks about it. Now, this is the last request you can make. There shouldn't be any other after this one. Understood ?

The time when Judith's mother was ready to giggle about her daughter's plans was over. She was now clearly concerned by what looked like an escalating situation, consisting in an excessively long sequence of demands. Judith had almost crossed the limit, but she was relieved that, pending a review by her father, she would have everything she needed to perform her investigative tasks. Therefore she answered, in an assured tone :

Yes, of course

Judith's father didn't think much of the potion and its ingredients. Therefore, in the following days, Judith received the first ingredients, which her father had ordered for her. Gathering them was more tedious than at Hogwarts : the school was a place where students were supposed to be able to access anything that would be useful for their studies, and potion ingredients were no exception. On the opposite, Judith's home was almost entirely devoid of ingredients. Mrs. Parry had tried to brew a few potions she deemed convenient in the past, but she was fine performing everyday actions the Muggle way. As a result of the initial shortage of ingredients, Judith was frustrated, since time was ticking - or to be fairer, her eagerness had the better of her - yet on the other hand, she was now on a tight rope. There wasn't any possibility left to displease her parents, therefore, she was stuck with her slower than expected plan, and had to display a somewhat hypocritical appreciation of what her parents were doing for them, as if every intermediate event unfolding was falling perfectly in place, but also in time so to speak. Barely half the necessary ingredients had made their way to her home when she had to go to the Ministry to sign, stamp and register the contract. Once more, her hopes were dashed, since the clerk at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was not aware of any contract she would have for Judith. Seeing the look of despair on Judith's face, the clerk grudgingly agreed to go and ask for more information about a contract involving a Miss Judith Parry. The clerk came back with the precious document, and an inversely lame excuse

The Printing Service had not notified the Department of Magical Law Enforcement of the new contract's draft

The clerk had turned up with three copies. One for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, one for the Department of Control of Underage Sorcery, and one for a certain 'Judith Pary'. Judith didn't complain about the mistake in her name, and spent two less than thrilling hours coming up and down in the Ministry, to sign the three copies, locate the place where she needed to collect the stamps, put the right stamps on them, go back to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to have the contract registered, and finally deposit the copy intended for the Department of Control of Underage Sorcery at their office. It turned out that this office was very far away from where Judith had attended the hearing with Mrs. Presty and Mr. Irwinning. Judith went back to the hall where the chimneys allowed people to go to and from the Ministry, and used once more her Floo powder. On arriving home, she read the contract after blaming herself for having not looked at its contents before signing it. However, it didn't hold any awful surprise. It was no more than an accurate rendition of what she had consented to at the end of the hearing. She rolled the parchment, put it in some sort of sheath, and thought :

I should keep it with me at all times, in case somebody from the Ministry complains anyway that I am using magic outside of Hogwarts

In the following days, she got delivery of the remaining ingredients, and she started the brewing process. Since she was careful and had already seen two times all the necessary steps - she had also taken part in the potion's making, which meant that she knew by heart what to do at certain stages - the potion's preparation was rather straightforward. Then came the deciding moment, when the gourmet Judith would have to bring through her digestive tract the horribly tasting beverage. She pinched her nose, thinking it would help her avert some of the disgust, and put the vial holding the potion in a position which allowed the purple liquid to flow slowly and very progressively in her mouth. While drinking, she kept repeating to herself

This will help Peter…

This will help Peter…

This will help Peter…

When the vial was empty, Judith waited. But nothing came, she didn't feel any of those urges the other drinkers had immediately had after drinking the potion. She grew disappointed, and more and more worried : maybe she had been overconfident in her skills, and had done some hasty slapdash work while brewing the potion. Perhaps she had drunk something that actually was dangerous for her health. This moment was in no way the beginning of the success she had plotted for weeks. She tried to put on a brave face at dinner, and abstained from telling her parents what had happened, or, to be more precise, what had not occurred. Judith thought that at least one thing did happen as expected : the potion was purple and its taste had been retching-inducing. Yet, when she got to bed, she couldn't prevent herself from sobbing. She had most likely failed. But of course, she was a Hufflepuff, and she knew what most students from other Houses thought about Hufflepuffs : good heart, full of goodwill for study, but prone to fail. This return to her own human nature was such a contrast with the apparent triumph of the end of the 1983-1984 school-year, when Hufflepuff had won the House Cup, and Judith had been able to lay her hands on the Cup. This win didn't matter anymore. When she awoke the following day, Judith was somewhat depressed, but the psychological pain of the previous evening was slowly subsiding. Though disheartened, she woke up after her parents had left for work, and picked up the Daily Prophet. Nothing that she could read in it looked relevant. She noted that there was nothing about the Perklus case, too. At the end of the newspaper, the kind of information that few wizards and witches would read was making up the bulk of the articles. On reaching that bottom part of the periodical, she started going through the content superficially. Nevertheless, at that point, one thing caught her eye : a lecture was taking place in two days. Judith would usually discard this kind of opportunity, but when learning of this lecture, she became upbeat instead. Was it some effect of the potion after all ? Or was it just Judith trying to persuade herself that the potion was working ? The lecture's title was 'Beyond Unregistered Spells', and next to it was a hefty list of Portkeys that the wizards and witches who wanted to attend could use. Judith's house was her mother's house, that is, a Muggle house, although Mr. Parry had added a few magical objects, which he had to keep locked away whenever his wife invited Muggle guests, and a chimney connected to the Floo network. Thus, the nearest Portkey was three miles away from her house, in the middle of nowhere. She would have to walk the full distance twice. However, Judith had been used to walking, either to reach the spot she had found for the four friends' meetings near the lake, or to get to places far enough from the Hogwarts castle to take advantage of Side-Along Apparition. And this was the only hope she could entertain that the potion was producing some effect. It would be a good opportunity to put on again the blue dress that she had worn twice at the Ministry. Judith spent this day and the following one with a significantly lifted mood. Then, the lecture day came. Judith was allowed to use magic, but she didn't want to give the impression she was bragging about the fact that she had been granted a dispensation from the Ministry. Moreover, she wasn't hundred percent sure that this lecture was related to the Perklus case, and even if it were the case, it might be difficult to convince the Ministry that using magic while going to the lecture was within the bounds of her contract : magic was allowed to Judith only insofar as it was exploited to shed light on the Perklus case. As a consequence, Judith would just carry in a bag-pack the parchments, the quills, the bottle of ink, her meal and the water she wanted to bring to the lecture. Additionally, she had taken a map, and had cautiously allocated to the task double the time she would normally need in order to reach the Portkey. The trip went well in spite of a few moderate rainfalls. Even the cautious-but-emboldening Judith Parry could forget one might need an umbrella in Great Britain, including during summer. She got to the Portkey - a muddy brush - well in advance. Then, progressively, wizards and witches showed up. Judith had expected to be the only teenager around the Portkey, but there was something she hadn't : every wizard, every witch was wearing a hat. Judith was the only hat-less member of the group waiting before using the Portkey. Not only that, but these people were impeccably dressed, at least from a wizarding point of view. The fashion standards around the muddy Portkey were far higher than at the Ministry. Judith got the very intimidating impression that most of the people were wearing silk clothes, with gold or silver embroidery. Most of them clearly knew each other, and had to be regulars at this kind of event, because the group had divided itself into two subsets, in which the wizards and witches were discussing with a yes-obviously-my-dear-this-shall-happen-I-was-talking-about-it-to-the-Minister-yesteryear condescending tone, characteristical of people who are absolutely sure they know better than ninety-nine percent of the population what is right or wrong. Judith hated hearing people talk this way, and with every minute of this snobbish conversation, she was growing more and more irritated. When Judith considered she had had enough, she went to the Portkey, touched it, and was transported in front of some kind of huge and tall square building with chimneys at so weird angles that they would have collapsed without magic. A covered passageway ran around the construction, the walls and flat roof of which were made of a haphazard mixture of wooden and stony irregular pieces. At each angle of the passageway stood a frail column decorated with an abundance of painted motifs. A thin painted frame around the tall doors made it possible to distinguish them from the wall in which they were embedded. Unfortunately, the crowd who were populating the surroundings of the building were exactly the same as the people Judith had left behind near the muddy brush. Hats, gold and silver threads, silky robes, and noisy discussions with assured tones. She cast a look at her watch : the lecture would start in fourty minutes. She thought :

At least, if I enter first, I will be able to pick my seat. It will be the situation opposite to that of the Quidditch game, when I had found my seat late after the first arrivals of supporters. The differences are, I am fairly sure that the kind of people I have seen outside will do their utmost not to seat next to me, and I don't want to be near them. Therefore, I can choose my spot

Having reached that conclusion, she went for the doors. Something was annoying, though : could one just push them open, or would she need to cast a spell she didn't know to open the doors ? She would be unhappy if she had to ask for help from her future by-sitters. She moved her hand forward to push tentatively one of the doors, but the door pivoted open before her hand could touch it. Judith had before her eyes a wide corridor between high stands made of the same combination of randomly shaped wooden and stony parts. At the end of the corridor, several feet apart from the beginning low end of the stands, was a little desk, with a chair behind it. The ceiling was covered with a giant painting representing an array of events : duels between Renaissance-era wizards and witches, battles involving Goblins, Giants, house-elves, wizards and witches, a giant ship anchored in a beautiful bay -

Maybe that's a depiction of the discovery of America

she thought - some allegoric depictions involving barely dressed men and women of Magic uniting humans and creatures, and extracts from Merlin's life. Judith advanced towards the little desk while gazing at the ceiling, and on seeing she was now at the low end of the stands, went up in the left part of them, to the top, where she sat. She was now so high in the stands - and this reminded her of Quidditch too - that when bending over the railing on her right she had an almost bird's eye view on the corridor below. She looked up at the ceiling, waiting for the rest of the audience to join her in the stands. When the door opened again, she looked down at the corridor, and saw a group of hats move along it. The hats looked surprisingly small from the top of the stands, which started filling up with wizards and witches. As expected, nobody went within ten feet of Judith's seat. The latter was growing worried, though, because the objectively small desk now looked tiny : maybe she wouldn't hear well the speaker, if they were to remain seated at the desk, especially if the spectators were still talking to each other in the middle of the lecture, as was at that point the case. Her doubts were quickly alleviated. A wizard wearing black robes and matching hat, and carrying rolls of parchments in his left hand, Apparated next to the desk, sat at the chair behind it, stacked his rolls of parchments on its surface, took out his wand, directed it at his throat. Suddenly, his voice echoed loudly in the room. The ambient chatting became whispering. He introduced himself :

Hello to all of you, ladies and gentlemen. I am Norus Likkom, researcher in applied theoretical spell-casting. Today, for a couple of hours, I will be talking about unregistered spells, that is, of course, spells which the Ministry of Magic of Great Britain doesn't recognize or track. Note however that some magical institutions in foreign countries do take these spells into account. Those of you who are interested in the full list, refer to my latest paper, published in Wize Wizardry, 'Steps Towards the Reasonable Use of Unregistered Spells Within the Boundaries of Klapstock's Theorem'. For those unfamiliar with Klapstock's findings, you will only need for this popularizing lecture to consider, even if it is slightly over-simplified, that Werner Klapstock concluded that the rarer the use of a given spell, the wider the range of unexpected side-effects. To be more accurate, the way the spell has been discovered, and the inventor's wand's working mitigate or amplify the risk, but we will leave these complex elements aside and focus on three spells today : Anjou, Moveren, and Diminutio. The first two spells owe their names to the action of their inventor. The first inventor wanted to honour the region of the world in which he was born, which was called Anjou. This spell makes some permanent transfigurations possible. You will find that all three spells kept their initial name, given by the inventor, which is fairly rare, but the spells themselves are rare. That is why nobody has ever felt the urge to change their names. Since the word 'Anjou' is somewhat difficult to pronounce for many people around the world, it can give bizarre results when they utter it, but nothing dramatic. The second name is a pun based on the fact that the corresponding spell makes it possible to change the circulation of information, in other words, move information in a different way. Since the inventor's name ended with 'ren' he called his new spell 'Moveren'. The last one is fairly self-explanatory. It makes it possible to lower during a long time the abilities to use magical powers. It has almost exclusively dark uses, but anyway very few people dare undertake the process which allows one to cast it. Since all those spells require tremendous trust from the wand, only through surviving the trials brought by a 'Provo' spell can a wizard or a witch gain sufficient trust. As a young researcher in the field, I cast this spell, and overcame the hurdles it conjured. Nobody can prepare for the tasks that the 'Provo' spell entails. It is clear that the trials differ widely from one person to another. I was able to talk to other researchers who used the spell. They all faced very different things. Recovering from a sixty-feet dive, making a dragon disappear, using a Muggle appliance to generate the energy needed to move a huge wall, and so on. I have never heard about anyone dying, though. Nobody really knows what happens if you fail, probably because the people who attempt to go through the Provo spell effects are in general more skilled than average

Judith had taken out in haste from her bag-pack the parchments, the quill, and the bottle of ink, which she had put on the floor, twenty inches away from her feet, so as to minimise the risk of inadvertently kicking it. She started writing feverishly what she could grasp. She marveled at the fact that being a researcher in magic could imply putting one's life in danger. Since Judith's mother was a general practitioner, she had heard about Muggle researching procedures, and what Judith had gathered from the Muggle science was that people in laboratories were either very well protected, or just sitting all day behind a computer. Anyway, she soon had no time to let her mind go off-topic, since she quickly became overloaded with the pieces of information flowing from Mr. Likkom's mouth that she felt compelled to write down. When the two hour lecture finished, more or less on time, Judith was exhausted. The audience clapped, but not as enthusiastically as she had anticipated. This was polite applause, no more. Judith found herself being once more the lone individual standing out, as she clapped noisily. For once, the people around her weren't making up a group in which she felt necessary to fit in. She was packing her things, ready to leave, when she noticed that the chatting noise stemming from the former audience had resumed. Judith had expected everybody to leave as quickly as possible, but the exact contrary was happening. The former spectators had now gathered at the bottom of the stands. They were apparently waiting something. Judith was puzzled, and stayed at her seat, far above the action, to be able to easily see what was coming. Something was already off, and she understood in a matter of seconds what it was : the little desk had vanished. Several minutes elapsed, and some people looked now impatient. Then, a wizard Apparated at the back of the room, and a flurry of ecstatic 'Ah's rose from the crowd. The newcomer conjured a table that stretched from the leftmost part of the hall to the rightmost one. The pack of people shuffled, because the once dignified-looking wizards and witches were now doing their best to be as close as possible to the table, pushing inelegantly their neighbors aside in the process. Obviously, something extraordinary was going to appear on this table that was wider than any of the tables in Hogwarts' Great Hall. Sure enough, within seconds, lots of little things were on display in what was looking like a double line of silver plates. Judith thought :

Wait, is that food ?

All of a sudden, people rushed their hands towards the little things on the table, and brought them speedily to their mouths. Yes, this was food. Gourmet Judith was at the most distant point from a table loaded with petits fours. She was witnessing a display of pure gluttony. And it dawned on her : all these snubbish wizards and witches elbowing each other to lay their hands on macarons were here in order to socialise, eat and be seen. From her vantage point, Judith was only seeing the second line of canapés, the first line being blocked from her view by the tight pack of attendees. And by the look of what was left in this second line, she guessed that the first line had been consumed the way a automatised assembly line of a factory swallowed primary goods. Very soon, Judith couldn't even see anything on the second line save the plates. The battalion of haute cuisine eaters then moved away from the tables, and dispersed. Judith put her bag-pack on her shoulder, and went down to the table. She looked from the left extremity of the table to the right one. She was in shock : there was now nothing to eat. All these people whom she had thought a few hours earlier they were distinguished, impressive and learned grown-ups, had actually behaved as vain children. She turned around to sit on a bench at the low-end of the stands, hoping the former spectators had at least left the Portkey in place. Judith took out her meal, since apparently it was more than acceptable to leave crumbs behind oneself in this room, and ate, looking now and then at the painted ceiling. She then carefully cleaned up after her, put her bag-pack once again on her back, and left the room. Before crossing the threshold towards the countryside, she cast a last glance at the wonderful ceiling : pity that it wasn't enchanted like the pictures and the portraits were. Probably because the people depicted at the peak of the room were not around anymore when the piece of art had been composed. She slowly made her way back to the muddy brush, and was soon at her departure point. She then took out her map, and walked towards her house. Once home, she wanted to do only one thing : go to bed. She put down her bag-pack in her bedroom, took a shower, put on her pajamas, and went under the blankets. In the following morning, after having breakfast, Judith went back to her bag-pack, extracted the rolls of parchments that were now filled with her notes from the lecture, and reread them. If the potion had actually been the drive behind her coming to the lecture, the solution she needed to make progress in her investigation about Peter's case had to be in these scripted lines. Maybe not, actually : when Sigismond drank the second Intuition Potion, it wasn't an action involving directly Sigismond that had helped the four friends getting some information, but Judith losing her little box at the Ogre's Buffet. She vaguely smiled : something important had happened at a restaurant, and the lecture she hoped would prove decisive had taken place because some barely mature wizards and witches wanted to eat petits fours.