Closed Holmes and Poirot

[Blake Lodge]

Blake arrived at the library, she had invited Harper but she wasn't there yet. They had to start investigating who set them up last year and clean their reputations and their names, hopefully it would be easier that cleaning the sticky thing that exploded and got all over the girls' hair.
Blake was wearing a light brown trench coat, with some high heeled black boot. Her hair in a careful bun with a hat covering it and to top it all off, some balck sunglasses that almost covered her whole face. She walked towards a table in the darkest corner of the library, coincidentally it also allowed her to see almost the whole library but even better she could see the door so she would know when Harper would arrive and know if there were any followers behind her.
The girl took a small paper from her coat pocket, the paper, that she carefully took the stick substance of, was now perfectly clean and it clearly showed potion instructions but she had no idea what potion that was. That would be the motive of this meeting, to investigate what potion that was and what went wrong with the potion that exploded.

 

[Harper Alston]

Where on earth was Blake? Harper paced back and forth, rounding a study table as she tried to figure out where her friend was. Had she gotten the time wrong? No, she was pretty sure they were supposed to meet now. She was about to return back to the entrance when she spotted a cloaked figure looming in the darkest corner of the room, half-hidden by the shadows from a nearby bookcase. Harper did a double-take. Yup, that had to be Blake.

Harper tried to stifle a giggle as she took a seat opposite her roommate and fellow wrongfully accused. "That's certainly a look you have going on there," she said, smiling in spite of herself. Now she felt lame for just coming in her normal outfit of a t-shirt and jeans. She should've at least brought a cap and sunglasses to hide her face. Harper straightened up, putting on her most serious expression. "I got your note. Don't worry, I burned it." She really had; she'd tossed it into the common room fireplace. "Someone tried to follow me, but I took care of them." She tried to look as grim as possible. That claim was also true, but only technically. It had just been a lost firstie looking for the Student Lounge, and she'd sent them off with directions. But Blake didn't need to know that.

Harper eyed the piece of paper in front of Blake. She had a pretty good idea of what it was, but she'd let the other girl take the lead. "Where should we start?" She was definitely keen to figure out who had set them up for that exploding glitter potion last year. First, because it had been a nightmare trying to get it out of her hair and clothes. Second, because it had definitely not been her fault, no matter what that clueless professor had thought. Harper had gotten in trouble before, so it wasn't the punishment that had bothered her. It was having to take the fall for a situation where she was clearly the victim that left her feeling more than a little irked.

 

[Blake Lodge]

Blake nodded, she wasn't sure what Harper meant by took care of him but she knew better than to ask questions about it. She gave the other girl the paper she was reading so she could read too.

Ingredients:
-6 cups of water
-2 sliced hellebore twigs
-1 powdered blue moonstone
-2 dried billywig stingers
-1/2 of powdered root of asphodel
Directions:

Bring water to a boil in cauldron on a medium flame. While you wait for water to boil, slice the hellebore twigs. By the time you finish, the water should be boiling. Next, add the hellebore, billywig stingers, and asphodel. Stir for five minutes. Take cauldron off heat. Drop the moonstone into cauldron and turn flame on to low heat. Put cauldron back onto flame and cover. Allow to simmer for ten minutes, then remove from burner. Allow to cool for two minutes, then bottle.

"First I think we should figure out what potion that is" she said to the other girl in a hushed tone so no could hear her. Maybe Harper knew what it was but she doubted that, first year potions wasn't very informative. "I remember seeing glitter in the mix that covered us and there's no glitter references there so maybe that's what went wrong" she stated. Maybe a lot of other things went wrong but the glitter was the most obvious thing and Blake didn't remember, her brain decided to block such a traumatic event.
"I suggest we go through all the potion books and figure out which one this is" she said to the other girl. Maybe if they found the potion they could reach the reason why the potion was being brewed in the first place. She didn't have any suspects yet so it was better to start by thinking that everyone was a suspect.

 

[Harper Alston]

Harper took the paper, skimming it. Whoever had copied down the instructions had very helpfully decided to leave out the name of the potion. It was like they were purposefully trying to make the two Gryffindor girls' lives harder. "Makes sense," she said as Blake suggested that they identify the potion first. Unfortunately, Harper didn't even recognize half the ingredients, much less the actual instructions. First year Potions really had been useless.

"It looks like a legit potion, so I guess it wasn't a prank." It made Harper feel slightly better knowing that whoever did this likely hadn't purposefully targeted her and Blake. She was still a bit annoyed that the culprit had decided to just abandon a bubbling cauldron, leaving other people to deal with the consequences. At Blake's glitter comment, she nodded thoughtfully. "But do you think some of the other ingredients could have created the glitter?" She wasn't completely sure how potion-making worked.

Harper dug through her backpack and placed her potions textbook on the table. "I brought this. I'll go get some more." She got up and headed towards the potions section, pulling textbooks and other anthologies that looked promising. Within seconds, she had a very heavy pile. Harper brought her armful of books over to the table and set them down with a loud thud. "Too bad we can't use the internet," she said, eyeing the pile. This could take forever.

 

[Blake Lodge]

Blake nodded and started thinking how to eliminate suspects while the other girl gathered books. When she arrived she had brought with her a huge pile of books and Blake said "Well I reached a conclusion. No professor would do that and the Ravenclaws in class with us couldn't have done it either" she said forcing a smile, not a lot of suspects eliminated but at least they were less than before.
"Ok so you take the fifth year books and above and I take the fourth year books and under. We just need to look for this potion in the books and we would be able to at least eliminate the people who would be able to properly brew one" she told Harper. Blake was really hopeful to find this potion in the early years books and eliminate a lot of suspects but something about that potion seemed too advanced and deep down she knew that they would be lucky if they even found it in the books.
After a few hours reading books Blake finally closed the last book that she was supposed to check and looked up at Harper "No luck in these books. Please tell me you found something" she said in a bit of a desperate tone, this mission seemed easier in theory than what it actually was.

 

[Harper Alston]

Harper nodded as Blake divided the stack of books. "Got it." Even divided between the two of them, there was still a considerable amount of reading to be done. At first, she tried checking the indexes for the ingredients listed on the parchment. But all of the ingredients in the glitter potion were quite common, something she discovered after finding 49 references to hellebore in one book alone. So she'd taken to just quickly skimming through pages, trying to find something that resembled the handwritten instructions they had.

The sound of Blake's voice hours later startled Harper, and she looked up briefly before sighing. "No," she said, still skim-reading. The words were starting to blur together. "I know what it's not though. It's not the Fire Protection Potion." She flipped a page. "Or the Dreamless Sleep Potion." She flipped another page. "Or the Hiccuping Solution." Another page. "Or the Draught of- HEY!" Ignoring the glares she was receiving, Harper reread the page she was on, barely believing her eyes. Yes, there were all the right ingredients. "Blake!" she whispered. "It's the Draught of Peace." She practically shoved the book into Blake's face, craning her neck as she did so in order to continue reading. "Looks like it's fifth year potion."

Harper sat back, frowning slightly. "So does that mean it was someone who hasn't reached fifth year yet? Or does that mean it had to have been a fifth year because how else would they have heard about it?" This was all so confusing, and her head hurt from all the reading she'd just done. "Maybe it's someone who gets anxious easily and needs a calming potion?" She found it deeply ironic that a draught of peace was responsible for all their trouble.

 

[Blake Lodge]

Blake was alarmed when suddenly Harper almost shouted, this was not her idea of going unnoticed but she felt glad that the shout meant Harper had found something. She looked at the potion ingredients and instructions and they indeed matched with ones in the paper they had.
Blake listened as Harper suggested theories and started thinking to herself about what was the most likely possibility "Those are two pretty good theories" she said chuckling at what Harper had just said lastly but ignoring that as a possibility "My guess would that it would be someone who hadn't reached the fifth year. I suppose that every fifth year would know how to brew it correctly." she stated "Besides, you don't need to be a fifth year to have heard of the potion. When we studied Hellebore Professor Mowry told us that it was used for the Draught of Peace, I have that in my notes" Blake added. She thought a little more before adding a bit more of information "This happened last year so we are looking for second, third, fourth and fifth years. Those are our suspects and that's a huge window of suspects" she told Harper. As much as she didn't want to admit the instructions were no longer useful and there was no way they could make their suspect list smaller without any more clues, they were at a dead end. "My suggestion..." she said adding a dramatic pause "We go back to the crime scene. Even after cleaned it may contain some clues, I don't know" she said shrugging. In the movies this was so much easier.

 

[Harper Alston]

Harper realized she barely even remembered studying hellebore in class. She would need to do a bit of reviewing before Potions next semester. "We shouldn't completely eliminate the fifth years as suspects. Just because they went over it in class doesn't mean they actually learned how to do it." She thought of the people who always fell asleep in class and scraped by with barely passing grades. Heck, she had paid attention during Potions last year, but she knew there were definitely things she'd forgotten over the break.

So that left the current second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth years. That was most of the school. This would be a lot harder than she had initially thought. So when Blake announced she had a plan, Harper looked up hopefully. That hope soon faded. "I don't know if we'll find anything." After all, it had been months since the incident. She didn't know what the staff did with the castle over the winter, but she was pretty sure that anything left in the abandoned classroom before the break would be gone by now. "But yeah, sure, why not," she said with a shrug.

Harper slid the piece of paper towards her and reread the instructions. "Is there some magical equivalent to DNA analysis? Or dusting for fingerprints?" She was just throwing out ideas from TV shows and movies at this point. But there was one Hollywood detective technique that didn't seem completely pointless. "Maybe we could do some kind of handwriting analysis." She tried to think of places where they'd get handwriting samples. "We could start with the Gryffindor bulletin board." People were always putting up notices there. "If we don't find anything there, we can steal Potions essays from Mowry and Warrick," she joked, smirking slightly.

 

[Blake Lodge]

Blake had to admit that Harper could be right, not everyone payed attention to class or cared about that so it wasn't something she could take as granted, that only made their window of suspects bigger.
When Harper suggested the handwriting analysis Blake felt like she was building up to something "Yeah that will obviously be more useful that visiting the crime scene" she said. The thing was that examining the Gryffindor bulletin board only possibly excluded all the Gryffindors from their suspect list which should make their suspects list decrease on 25%, that was actually a good amount of people that they could eliminate from the suspects and if they were lucky they would even maybe find the one that framed them.
Suddenly Blake remembered that the Gryffindor bulletin board wasn't the only she had access to "Well, while you check the Gryffindor Bulletin Board I can check the Heta Omega's. The Heta Omega probably has like 50% of all the girls at school." then it hit her, she suddenly got up "That's it Harper! The clubs! The club fair! How do people sign up for clubs?!" she said taking her sunglasses out of her face for the first time since she arrived at the library so the other girl could see her expectant look in her face.

 

[Harper Alston]

Harper nodded as Blake said she would check out Heta Omega's bulletin board. Now, if only there was a way to get to the Brotherhood or one of the other houses. The idea of breaking in was tempting though not very realistic. Maybe she could ask Hunter or Lillith to check the Hufflepuff board? Harper was now starting to regret not trying to make more friends outside of Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. But maybe Blake had friends in the other houses?

Thankfully, they didn't need to come up with break-in plans. Harper's eyes widened at Blake's suggestion, and she grinned. "Blake, you're a genius!" Yes, the club fair would be perfect for their purposes. They would find the culprit in no time. "We can split the clubs up." Harper took out a pen and a scrap of paper. "Okay, you take Heta, the Monthly, and SDA. I'll check out the Brotherhood, Accio!, and Wild Patch," she said, writing as she spoke. Three clubs each, that would be very doable. "We'll have to go near the end, once most people are done signing up."

Harper passed over the piece of paper with Blake's assigned clubs. After thinking for a second, she took the parchment with the instructions and carefully tore it in half before giving Blake the top half. "There, now we both have something to compare the signatures to." It would have been better to photocopy the sheet, but Harper was pretty sure Hogwarts didn't have any of those lying around. "We might look kind of suspicious snooping around the sign-up sheets," she said with a slight smile. "Should we come up with a cover story?" It was not strictly necessary. After all, they weren't doing anything wrong. If anything, they were doing something right. But a cover story would definitely be fun.

 

[Blake Lodge]

Blake nodded when Harper divided the clubs between them, as a last resource she could always ask Tilly to check the Hufflepuff board and Cassiah to check the Ravenclaw's. It wasn't until then that Blake saw than she didn't have any Slytherin friends, she needed to change that as soon as possible, she would need someone inside each house in case something like this happened again.
When Harper came up with the idea of a cover story Blake felt a little reluctant "Well...I do know the president of Heta so it will be easy enough to check it without any suspicions. I've heard the monthly is directed by a girl who also happens to like girls so...I guess I would just flirt my way in even though I never did that with a girl? You think it works the same?" she asked Harper with a little bit of doubts. Girls had different interests than boys and their brain was usually wired in different ways so maybe it wouldn't be as easy. "I just don't know bout the SDA but...I can always sign in." she told Harper. Maybe a cover story wasn't so bad."What cover story were you thinking about?" she asked the other girl who probably wouldn't have any plans on how to approach the other club presidents.

 

[Harper Alston]

Blake being friends with the Heta Omega president would definitely help. Harper was a bit less sure about the whole flirting plan. Wouldn't the leader of the Monthly be an older student and completely uninterested? "Um, maybe?" she asked in reply to Blake's question. Harper had never flirted with anyone before, much less a girl. Anytime she'd ever had a crush in the past, she'd mostly just ignored her feelings until they went away.

"I'm not sure..." Harper said when Blake asked about her own cover story. Sure, she could pretend she was interested in Accio! or Wild Patch, but that wouldn't give her much time to examine the sign-up lists. The club leaders would expect her to just put down her name and go. And she couldn't really pretend to be interested in joining the Brotherhood. "Maybe I'll say I'm looking for a friend and trying to see if they made it to the club fair by seeing whether they've already signed up for some clubs?" She winced. Even now, it sounded a bit too far-fetched. Her story would need some work. "Maybe we're going about this the wrong way. Maybe one of us should distract the club leader while the other examines the sign-up sheet."

 

[Blake Lodge]

Blake couldn't help but laugh at Harper's uncertainty, even Blake had to admit that her approach wasn't the best. Blake obviously didn't laugh too loud, after all they were still in the library, the nerds deserved some respect and silence to do their nerdy things.
Blake had to agree, the whole distract while the other one snoops around seemed the best plan and suddenly Blake knew exactly who should do what "Well...Lysander last year said that I am a hard person to go unnoticed so I think I provide an excellent distraction " she said proudly, not really sure what her plan of distraction should be considering that she probably went unnoticed because of her fancy clothes and ten inches heels. All the clubs were extremely easy to pretend to be interested in except the brotherhood, how was she supposed to pretend to be interested in a guy's club...unless she disguised herself as a guy. That idea left her brain as soon as it appeared, she was too pretty to ever pass as a dude. But then she remembered that there was a potion for that...they could give it a try and if it went wrong...well at least this time they would take the blame for something the had actually done.

 

[Harper Alston]

Harper laughed lightly at Blake's statement. "What are you going to do? Just stand there and look pretty?" she teased. But if Blake wanted to be the distraction, Harper was happy to let her. It'd be more fun sneaking around, rifling through documents sign-up sheets as she tried to find a handwriting match. It would be like something straight out of her spy novels. "Okay, it's settled. You'll distract them. I'll examine the sheets. If we run out of time, we can go back to the original plan and investigate our assigned clubs."

Harper started to re-stack the books they'd pulled from the shelves. She decided to keep the one on the Draught of Peace out, however, so she could check it out of the library and maybe learn more about the potion in her free time. Even though Blake had dismissed the idea, Harper still thought that it might be worth trying to figure out why someone had tried to create the potion. "Let's meet at the Courtyard ten minutes after the start of the fair," she said. Hopefully by then it'd be nice and busy and she would be able to more easily sneak around.

 

[Blake Lodge]

That was exactly Blake's plan, she was good at stand and look pretty! It got her almost everywhere she wanted, getting free food, getting into exclusive placeswithout being in the list, don't wait in lines, you name it. "Awwww you think I'm pretty! That's so sweet of you" she said as Harper had told them she would just 'look pretty', that had to mean that Harper thought that Balke was indeed pretty.

Blake nodded in agreement and got up from the table putting her sunglasses on again. She stood beside Harper's chair but not looking directly at her "Gimme a five minutes head start, we can't be seen hanging out together" she said to Harper in a serious tone. "And for official purposes, this conversation never happened" she told her roommate leaving her, with only the sound of her heels echoing through the library.

 

[Harper Alston]

Harper rolled her eyes but smiled. As if Blake, the girl who always made sure her hair and makeup looked perfect, didn't know she was pretty. Still, Harper hoped her friend had a plan beyond just standing there. She didn't see how that could serve as a distraction for any substantial amount of time.

Harper put on her most serious expression, continuing to keep her gaze straight ahead. "What conversation? Who are you?" After Blake had left, she walked to the circulation desk to check out the potions book before heading out. They were so close to figuring out who the culprit was. The club fair couldn't come soon enough.