Search the cupboards

Once the light is off in Madam Pomfrey’s quarters, you slide out of your bed. You’re only wearing a flimsy hospital gown, but you ignore it. You’re not feeling too cold and no one can see you here, anyway.

You decide that the first place to look is in one of the cupboards Madam Pomfrey looked through earlier. You tiptoe quietly over to them, using moonlight as your only light source. Luckily, the light from the moon illuminates the cupboards, so you won’t have to light your wand.

As you expected, the cupboards are filled with a range of potions – from general healing potions, such as Sleeping Draughts and Healing Potions, to potions for more specific ailments. You smile when you see a small vial of Boil Reduction Unguent.

When you pick up a large blue jar, your heart skips a beat. The label clearly identifies it as containing Murtlap Essence. If you can find Madam Pomfrey’s store of potion ingredients, you could be lucky to find Murtlap tentacles. You look around the room, but nothing in the patient side of the Hospital Wing looks like a likely candidate. There’s one last place to look – in Madam Pomfrey’s quarters.

You breathe in deeply to steady your nerves, then step through the door. The first room you step into is clearly a workroom. A large logbook sits on a desk and a bookshelf filled with Healing texts takes up one wall. On a bench beside you sits a well-used cauldron and beyond it a small cupboard.

Slowly, you walk across the room and open the cupboard door. You smile when you see a range of potion ingredients that are used in healing potions. To your relief, Madam Pomfrey has placed the ingredients in alphabetical order, making it easy to find the box containing Murtlap tentacles.

You carefully take the box out of the cupboard and place it on the bench. Inside sit a pile of dried tentacles. You pull out half a dozen and wrap them in a scrap of fabric on the workbench, then return the box to the cupboard. Madam Pomfrey won’t even notice that these are missing. You return to your bed, happy at your success.