Aconitum: Part 2
Lysander had no real reason to be at Hogsmeade that day. In fact, he rarely had any reason to be anywhere at all, apart from school. Apart from studying, his schedule was free, and that was the way he liked it. He enjoyed wandering around and exploring, satisfied with his own company. It gave him time to think things over and clear his head. These days he spent an excessive amount of time stressing over what he was going to do after graduation from Hogwarts - a question he had yet to find an answer to. So he chose to occupy himself with aimless wanderings, and had thus found himself in Hogsmeade.
He spent a while glancing briefly in windows and reading over posters and flyers that were tacked on the walls. He treated himself to a drink, then resumed shuffling through the snow.
When he turned the corner to face a fairly large group of third year students being given a tour of Hogsmeade, he ducked into a nearby store to avoid them.
He shut the door, thankful to get away from the brisk air, then turned to see where he had ended up.
It was a bookshop, old by the looks of it, though most of these places were. He glanced around briefly before a familiar head of dark brown curls caught his attention. It was Valeria, the girl he had bumped into before in the courtyard. Or he thought it was. She was following the shop owner across the store and he hadn’t seen her face very well, so he didn’t call her name.
He gravitated towards the bookshelves to browse, not wanting to exit the store so soon and draw attention to himself by ringing the bell above the door. Then again, he didn’t want the shop owner to ask if he needed any help as Lysander hadn’t meant to enter the building in the first place. So he picked up an old book off the shelf and pretended to flip through it for a moment.
Surrounded by ancient titles and worn-out covers, Valeria thoroughly scans through the bookshelves in search for a spine labelled Hairy Snout, Human Heart - a recount of a wizard’s experience against lycanthropy. She is, however, not looking for this book specifically, but the one carefully placed to its right. One would generally look past it as a tattered text wrapped in brown, though Valeria knows it is more than that, as she had put it there herself. Removing it from its location and blowing off the dust, she delicately opens the book. In place of the pages is a sunken hole, cut out to serve as a place for storage. A tiny vial filled with a faint blue smoke is hidden inside, a tag attached, reading Aconitum. Rather than infamously calling it Wolfsbane, or even Monkshood, the bright witch had chosen to use a lesser known name, in the event that someone would find this tricky potion. She didn’t dare leave it inside the castle, should her cover be blown.
Suddenly, Valeria’s ears pick up on Mr. Woodcroft’s husky voice from behind the closed door. He is not speaking to her; somebody has come into the shop, which means it is time for her to go. Stuffing the potion into her bag and pushing the “book” back onto the shelf, she shuffles behind another shelf. Whipping out her wand, muttering an incantation, and tapping some spines, the shelf swivels open to reveal a passage that will lead her straight to Scrivenshaft’s. Nobody besides herself knows of this passage, except for Mr. Woodcroft. And her older brother. Taking one more look back at the shop, Valeria hurries into the dark passage, the shelf closing behind her as if the witch had never been there.
