Polyjuice Potion and the Heir (III)

Friday's Potions class in the dungeon was even more unbearable than usual.

The smell—sulfur, spoiled entrails, burnt hair—was like someone had hidden a pair of unwashed socks in the corner and left them there for three months. It was so strong that even Severus Snape slightly wrinkled his nose when he entered the classroom. The gesture lasted less than half a second, but several students in the front row caught it.

They exchanged looks that said, "Even he can't stand it."

But today, the stench had a clear source—a puddle of thick liquid in the corner, giving off pungent yellow smoke and still hissing. The liquid lay where a cauldron had once been. Now there was no cauldron there, only a paste slowly corroding the stone floor, its color somewhere between swamp sludge and rotten seaweed.

Ron's face was as red as his hair.

He stood there with the stirring rod still raised in his hand, though it had warped from the heat. His expression was a carefully blended mixture of shock, regret, and innocent confusion that said, "I have no idea how this happened." He looked down at the smoking sludge, then at the stirring rod bent into an S shape in his hand. His lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, he only let out an indistinct gurgle that seemed to roll around in his throat.

The cauldron was completely ruined.

A fist-sized hole had melted through its bottom. What remained of it lay crookedly in the middle of the sludge like the last wreckage of a sunken ship. The brass that had once gleamed on its sides had turned a bizarre gray-black, covered in acid-eaten pits. It no longer looked like a cauldron, but some antique dredged up from the ocean