HP: Those Years Sleeping with the Half-Blood Prince

"The pus from the tuber of the baboon, after being diluted and mixed with the juice of the sleeping bean, will cause intense but short-lived itching and erythema on the skin within six to eight hours upon contact, similar to contact with poisonous tentacles or cheap soap."

"If ingested accidentally, even in small amounts, it can cause hiccups and mild numbness of the oral mucosa, lasting for about an hour. The symptoms are usually mild, and the school hospital usually diagnoses it as 'unexplained allergy' or 'improper diet'."

Kevin's eyes lit up as he listened, and Aris nodded in agreement: "Delayed onset and common symptoms make it difficult to diagnose, but the ingredients and dosage must be handled with extreme care."

"Ingredients," Severus stood up, walked to the old wooden chest beside his bed, unlocked it, and took out several inconspicuous small bottles. "I have some processed stock here. Dilute and mix, and it can be done tonight."

Ian stood up as well, his face showing a mixture of mischief and excitement: "The potion part is yours, Severus. I'll add some... 'creativity'."

He turned to Kevin and Aris, lowering his voice: "You two, do me a favor at breakfast tomorrow..."

The next day at breakfast time, the auditorium was filled with the aroma of pumpkin porridge and grilled sausages.

James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter sat around the Gryffindor table. James was still fuming about the points he lost last night and Professor McGonagall's scolding, and he was stabbing a sausage hard.

"Just you wait, one day I'll teach that snotty-nosed guy and his bunch of slut friends a lesson..." he muttered.

Sirius lazily spread butter on his bread, his gray eyes sweeping across the Slytherin table. Ian was standing with his back to them, seemingly telling Kevin a joke, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

"There are plenty of opportunities," Sirius mumbled, taking a bite of bread.

Just then, a short, chubby first-year Hufflepuff student carrying a tall stack of books hurried by. He seemed to be tripped by James's leg, which was stretched out into the aisle. He exclaimed in surprise, and the books in his arms scattered all over the floor, several of them sliding right to James and Sirius's feet.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" the chubby boy apologized hastily, frantically picking up his books.

"Watch where you're going, you idiot!" Sirius snapped irritably, kicking aside a copy of "The History of Magic" that was lying at his feet.

James frowned, but still helped Remus pick up the "Elementary Transformation Guide" that had rolled to the side and threw it back to the student—his fingers inadvertently brushed against the wet cover, seemingly getting some stale pumpkin juice on it, and he disgustedly wiped it on his robe.

The chaos quickly subsided, and the chubby boy ran off with his book. James and Sirius continued eating breakfast, neither paying any attention to the little incident.

Only Ian, who had been keeping an eye on things out of the corner of his eye, smiled briefly before picking up the pumpkin juice and taking a sip as if nothing had happened.

The morning spell class went smoothly.

At lunchtime, a suppressed commotion arose from the Gryffindor table.

Blake suddenly started hiccuping incessantly, one after another, loud and comical, his face turning bright red.

Potter frowned, scratching incessantly the back of his hands and neck, where faint red spots had appeared, making him restless from the itch.

"Merlin...uh...his...uh...pants!" Sirius tried to drink some water to suppress his hiccups, but almost choked, and the hiccups got even worse.

"What's wrong with you two?" Lily looked at them worriedly. "James, your neck..."

"It's nothing!" James said irritably.

The Slytherin students around were already chuckling softly.

Ian slowly cut the pie on his plate and said to Severus in a voice that only they could hear:

"The dilution ratio of the tuberculous pus from the Barbadian tuber was perfectly controlled, Siever. The timing of the delayed onset was also just right."

Severus picked up his cup, took a sip of water, and a hint of satisfaction flashed in his dark eyes.

"The soy milk masked most of the smell," he stated casually, as if discussing the weather. "The slight lingering odor would be perfectly masked by the smell of the auditorium food."

Kevin kept his head down, his shoulders trembling suspiciously, and stuffed mashed potatoes into his mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

Aris then said seriously to Kevin, "Mr. Black's frequency of hiccups and Mr. Potter's skin symptoms look like he's accidentally touched something he shouldn't have. We'll have to be more careful in the future."

His voice wasn't quiet, and several Slytherin students around him who had been listening intently couldn't help but burst out laughing.

At the Gryffindor table, Black, half-supported and half-amused by his friends, stumbled out of the Great Hall, his hiccups still echoing in the corridor.

Potter, his face dark, scratched himself as he hurried away, his posture awkward.

"Well done." Kevin finally looked up, his eyes crinkling into slits as he gave Ian and Severus a thumbs up.

Ian shrugged and forked the last piece of pie: "Just a little appetizer, we'll get you next time..." He glanced at Severus, and the two exchanged a knowing look.

"Next time," Severus said, wiping his mouth with a napkin, his voice barely audible, "maybe we could try a modified formula that mixes bubble pods and bouncy root powder. It works faster, and the symptoms are more... noticeable."

Ian smiled, a smile that was both exceptionally bright and exceptionally dangerous. "Sounds good."

After this "minor incident," Jaime and Sirius seemed to behave themselves a bit, at least they didn't openly cause trouble anymore. Sirius was much more well-behaved, at least on the surface.

But the undercurrents within Hogwarts Castle never cease, especially within Slytherin.

The way Avery and his gang looked at Severus grew colder and more blatant each day.

A mixture of disdain and annoyance at being offended—a half-blood, a half-blood dressed in shabby clothes, gloomy and taciturn, how could he have such outstanding potion-making talent?

Why should I receive a few bland compliments from Slughorn? And why... should I dare not bow my head?

The conflict came sooner than expected, on a night less than a week after the Halloween incident.

That evening, Severus left the library a little later than usual.

He was searching for rare information about the differences in Moongrass's properties to supplement the potion paper assigned by Professor Slughorn.

There were hardly any people left in the castle corridors; only the flickering shadows of torches on the walls and the echoing footsteps between the stone walls sounded exceptionally clear.

He habitually chose the secluded route back to the cellar, a route that passed through an abandoned classroom corridor, a route rarely visited.

Just as he reached a particularly dark corner, at the door of an abandoned potion-making room ahead, three people emerged from the shadows and blocked his way.