Aftermath of the Polyjuice Potion

by Roger

As far as my limited knowledge allows me to know, I do’n’t recall reading any story or theory in an editorial concerning if Malfoy knows that Harry and Ron spied on him or not, and what the consequences could be.

Because, well, we got to admit, Harry and Ron did a pretty bad job concealing themselves as Crabbe and Goyle. If it weren’’t for the real Crabbe and Goyle’’s general stupidity, they would have been caught obviously.

Okay, so after Draco Malfoy unknowingly invites Ron and Harry into the Slytherin common room, he makes several comments about the fact “Crabbe and Goyle” are acting slower than usually. But fine, everyone can have a slow day. However, whenever they can make fun of “Saint Potter” and his friends, they are pretty fast in giggling and chortling about Potty and Weasel’’s misfortunes. This time, however, with the newspaper article, they are painfully slow.

Hope is far from lost yet, but the worst is yet to come. First, Ron and Harry discover that some of their body marks, red hair and the lightning bolt scar, are slowly appearing, and they make a run for it out of the common room and shouting they got a stomachache.

If your two buddies suddenly groan of pain and run out of the room, you usually take a look, even if you were occupied with something at the moment, so I’’m pretty sure Malfoy took a confused look at his two running companions. How big is the chance he saw a bit of red hair coming out of one of their haircuts? Rather big, I would say. Malfoy probably discarded it as “hmm, must have been the sun’’s reflection” or “hmm… I guess I’’m tired.”

When Ron and Harry run towards the girls’’ bathroom, they hear the real Crabbe and Goyle pounding on the closet door which they are locked behind. They escape in the end (either with or without help from someone) and go back to Malfoy. We don’’t know how much time is passed after they escaped, if it was shortly, Malfoy might wonder why they returned so quickly after running to sickbay. If not, he might ask how it all went in sickbay. In both occasions, Crabbe and Goyle don’’t know what he is talking about. There is a slight chance that IF Crabbe and Goyle were rescued from the closet by a teacher, he or she asked them to check up at sickbay just in case before going back to their common room. Then after Malfoy asked how it went, they tell him they hadn’’t received any injuries from getting locked up in a closet.

In all scenarios, Crabbe and Goyle will be confused when Malfoy continues to talk about the newspaper article, and there is a big chance Crabbe and Goyle will tell Malfoy they were locked up in a closet, alarming Malfoy that something fishy is going on.

By now Malfoy would have collected many pieces of the puzzle. When Malfoy saw Potter’’s head floating in Hogsmeade, he immediately took a run to warn professor Snape. So guess where he is going after discovering so many strange things about Crabbe and Goyle AND presumably saw one of them getting a bit of red hair when they took a run for the sickbay. Meanwhile, Snape is probably still looking for proof that Potter stole secret ingredients from his class. Then Malfoy tells him what happened. How long would it take Snape to discover that the stolen ingredients can be used to make Polyjuice Potion?

But now the big question: what are the consequences? Still, after all that happened, neither Malfoy nor Snape have solid proof Potter is the culprit; they still only have very strong suspicions, nothing more. And neither Dumbledore nor McGonagall would punish Potter with only these assumptions. In other words, Snape can’’t do anything, except look angrier and be stricter in potions class, if that’’s possible. What about Malfoy though?…

Before I continue, I have to explain something else. Once upon a time, I read in a videogame magazine that JK Rowling gave Electronic Arts some extra pages of Harry Potter story for which they could use in their games. Of course I’’ve been looking for clues, but usually the extra storylines in the games are pathetic: teachers, Hagrid, or Hermione sending Harry into a random volcano where some bloody idiot left a spell book, or Neville who gets trapped in a room, or Ginny losing her quills or whatever.

However, in The Prisoner of Azkaban game, the Playstation 2/Xbox/Gamecube version, one extra storyline was curiously more complicated than usual, where Ron suddenly tricks Harry to go to the dungeons, then pushes him into a trap hole, and then reveals he was Malfoy all along, using Polyjuice Potion to revenge Harry for using the same trick a year before.

In the end, that was all that was to it, ending this whole exciting “aftermath of the Polyjuice Potion chapter” with just Harry escaping the dungeons with Ron and Hermione, and going back to bed like nothing happened. I suspect that this story was written in one of the books, but removed, for the obvious reason that it didn’t fit in any storyline, nor fulfilled any purpose (perhaps Harry discovered something about the main storyline while trying to escape, I don’t know).

So yeah, this whole theory ends with just a little prank of Malfoy, but probably explains why we never hear anything about Arthur checking out the secret space in the Malfoy’s mansion, something Ron overheard from Draco while being transformed as Crabbe and most likely passed on to his dad. Because if Draco knew Harry and Ron were “eavesdropping,” he probably warned his father as well. Well, that’’s the end of the Polyjuice business, as a bonus, might any of you be interested in more suspicious extra info about the games, this is what I collected:

• In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’’s Stone computer game, Nearly Headless Nick tells Potter that ghosts can see through invisibility cloaks. If Snape knew that, I’’m sure he would have had a ghost or two helping him snooping about when he is trying to catch Harry next time…
• In Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets, Harry needs to give a flower to Moaning Myrtle to calm her down. Hagrid tells Harry that ghosts love lilies, because it has something to do with death. Then he tells Harry that professor McGonagall also likes lilies and adds something along the lines of “coincidence is it?”, thus implying McGonagall seems to have some connection with death, either she is a ghost (which I doubt) or has some obsession or something with it (losses during the war?).
• That’’s pretty much all I found out, except that a lot of the games (all made by different studios) seem to contain a grumpy pet store owner, who hates to have children around. I don’’t recall seeing him in the books.