Luna paused for a moment and looked like she was thinking furiously - "In fact," she said, "that point of yours of him depending on an untested ward for your protection. No, but, I might be taking this a bit too far... but think about this - If Dumbledore truly believed that you were the only one that can defeat Voldemort then how could he possibly have relied on an untested piece of magic? And yet the only way to test a blood ward would be to arrange for the murder of a parent... No... I could believe it of any master of the Death Stick but it's still Dumbledore. No, I refuse to believe he could have gone so far."
"Yeah, that is kind of pushing the envelope of Dumbledore bashing," said Harry. "You want to know what I think - he knew Voldemort was defeated for the time being and he probably figured on having some kind of warning before Voldemort made any moves. In the mean time - what did it matter how I was protected? After all, the prophecy clearly states that one must die at the hand of the other right. So as long as Voldemort wasn't around he probably figured I was absolutely safe."
"Will you forget about that piece of crap bloody prophecy," screamed Luna. "It's absolutely rubbish and... and... We are going to bloody well ignore it."
Harry stared at Luna, she was looking far too upset for his liking and he desperately wanted to make her feel better. Well, he knew of one sure-fire way of doing just that and it always made him feel better as well so win-win. "You do make a lot of sense. I think you're absolutely right. Oedipus not Spider-man and everything else. Yes, we're better off just ignoring the prophecy. In fact, I'd like to start forgetting it right away - Did I mention earlier how sexy I find it when you go all Ravenclaw on me? What do you say about us forgetting about all this and slipping into something a little more comfortable?"
Luna gave Harry another one of those looks. "Unfortunately, while I would love to do something like that with Jim Dobbins, I hardly know Harry Potter. It's going to take a while before I feel comfortable about getting 'comfortable' with him."
Harry's mouth dropped open in astonishment. "Oh come on," he cried. "That... that... that is so bloody unfair," he pouted. "You're kidding right... right? Luna? Luna? Get back here."
.....
There is a certain fascination and pleasure that comes from watching someone who is truly talented in their field as they ply their craft. Certainly, the interns working under Hermione Granger felt that way. Watching Ms Granger brew a potion could be compared to watching Babe Ruth play baseball or Nureyev dance. There was a rare beauty and grace in her actions as she carefully added ingredients to the large glass round-bottomed flask in front of her. Her assistants scurried around her preparing ingredients meticulously before presenting them to her. She on the other hand was the very picture of serenity with not a single wasted motion as she simultaneously brewed and yet managed to keep up a running commentary of her actions for the edification of her interns.
"... and finally," she said as she neared the end of her demonstration, "we need to add precisely 10 cubic centimetres of a twenty percent solution of murtlap essence, reduce the flame on your Bunsen burner and stir vigorously with a silver stirrer. Stir clockwise when you're in the Southern Hemisphere and anticlockwise in the Northern. At this point if you've made the potion correctly, you should see it turn the shade of blue marked as No. 106 in the standard potion colour charts. The potion now needs to simmer until it has reduced by exactly 13 percent of its volume at which point the flask should be immediately removed from the flame and then passed through a coil condenser repeatedly until the potion reaches a temperature of exactly 15 degrees Celsius."
She turned around to look at her interns who broke into applause a second later as the potion turned exactly the shade of blue it was supposed to. Hermione sometimes wished they would stop doing that as she found it just a tiny bit embarrassing.
"Edna, could you take over here, you'll need to keep a close eye on the temperature as it cools," she said to an eager looking young woman who immediately leapt to obey her.
Hermione looked over her potion with a practised eye. It looked absolutely perfect and she had finished brewing right in time for the first batch of patients it was due to be tested on. She looked at her wristwatch. Perfect timing really, the patients were due for their doses in just about an hour which gave her plenty of time for the potion to cool and the dosages to be measured out for each patient. She could hardly wait. More than a year of research and development, and now... It was almost unbearably exciting.
She sat down at her desk and sank bank into her chair with a sigh of relief. Since there was really nothing to do right then but keep an eye on the potion as it cooled, she could afford to take a few moments to relax. From her seat, she had a perfect view of her potions laboratory and the numerous interns who were still eagerly watching and discussing the potion.
At times like these, she could not help smirking to herself a bit. 'Take a look at me now,' she thought, 'I certainly showed the Melbourne Institute of Magic and their bloody remedial lessons. Ha!'
Her phone rang at that moment; she picked it up to discover that it was the receptionist calling from the lobby of her office building. It seemed that someone had shown up to see her without an appointment. She would have instructed the receptionist to send them on their way and make an appointment for another day but the name of the person threw her for quite a loop. It was absolutely the last person she had ever expected to see. She sat back in her chair and wondered why on earth the man had come to see her. What could he possibly want from her?
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