A silver flask sat on the table. Its cap was unusually designed: two heads back to back, their skulls joined together.
"What is this?" Pomona reached for the flask.
"Don't touch it." Severus was arranging the potion cabinet without turning around, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. "It belongs to Alastor Moody—or rather, the man we thought was him."
Pomona immediately pulled back her hand.
Now she remembered what the flask was for. Alastor Moody—Barty Crouch Jr., after drinking Polyjuice Potion—had used it to hold his Polyjuice Potion. Two years had passed, and she had nearly forgotten.
"Why are you keeping this thing?" she complained. Just then, a bubble suddenly rose in a cauldron. With a pop, green smoke billowed out from the burst bubble.
"Dumbledore asked me to make it." He turned to look at the cauldron and flicked his wand. All the potion inside vanished.
She did not really understand... but whatever.
"Are you going out again tonight?" Pomona said, leaning over the desk. "Or do you have something else to do?"
He ignored her, as though all his attention was focused on those dreadful ingredients.
"How about we have dinner together?" she asked.
"I'll give you an answer later," he said dismissively.
"All right." Having delivered the herbs, the Herbology professor left the Potions professor's office unwillingly.
Before leaving, she glanced once more at the flask on the table. She truly could not imagine how Barty Crouch Jr. had managed to put a spout like that into his mouth.
At Hogwarts, it was difficult to find books about the Witch Hunts, though textbooks did cover their history.
In seventeenth-century records of wizard trials, people believed that someone had dug up plague victims and smeared poison on door handles, spreading the epidemic.