Disclaimer: I may want them, but Jo has them.
A/n: Just a short little oneshot I wrote almost two years ago. Thought I'd post it and see what people thought.
Ron sat up with a jolt. The horrible nightmare he had experienced just moments ago still controlled his mind. The frightful images were blurry, yet he had the strong impression that it had involved an explosion, blood, and Snape. The high pitched screeching wouldn't stop echoing through his head. It sounded like Hermione's voice, screaming his name over and over again in panic…
But when Ron peeled open his sleepy eyes, he found that Hermione wasn't there. Shaking his long, red hair and rubbing his bright blue eyes, he stumbled and tripped his way towards the bathroom – or at least where the bathroom was suppose to be… he thought.
But why was there so much laughing in the bat-
Ron stood stiff in his old, maroon and yellow striped pajamas that only went down to cover half of his calves, barefoot, and with messy hair, shocked to find himself at the entrance to the Great Hall. Everyone was pointing at him and laughing their heads off. His tired eyes were shot open with surprise with what they saw. It was impossible.
For starters, he was standing in the Great Hall when mere seconds ago he was lying on his four poster bed in the Gryffindor boys' dormitory on the seventh floor. And this didn't even look like the Great Hall: there was no staff table, no Gryffindor table, no Hufflepuff table, no Ravenclaw table, and no Slytherin table. The students were all intermixed, with the staff members found here and there and everywhere. Everyone was sitting on the floor cross-legged, unless they were strewn across on their backs, sides, or stomachs.
Even without the tables, some people still had plates in front of them, or (as was more often the case) on their laps. But the plates and cups and bowls were… empty. Yet the people, who had returned to what they had been doing before he had stumbled in, were grabbing at them and then proceeding to shove their hands towards their faces as if they were actually transferring some substance.
Still, the groupings of the people were what shocked Ron even more than the horrific absence of food.
In the back corner, Ron thought he saw his parents, snogging like they were teenagers and there was no future at all, much less a moment in time when they would need to breath normally. The sight made him want to find the nearest bathroom and release his stomach. Multiple times. But he couldn't have seen that, because right next to them stood a group of four people – some of whom he knew for fact were no longer among the living; there was no possible way that Sirius, Lupin, and Harry's parents could be in this room.
Yet the confusion didn't end there. In the back left-hand corner, Ron saw (he really wasn't trusting his eyes now), dare he say it? A group of students from every house, sitting in a circle, laughing and playing a juvenile game of Duck, Duck, Goose. Ron simply stared as Neville Longbottom stuck his leg out to trip a quickly running Cho Chang as she chased a fleeing Zacharias Smith. As she fell on her face, the whole circle burst into cries of hysterical laughter. His twin brothers doubled over and collapsed on the ground before reaching Cho, who they had been attempting to help back up along with Blaise Zabini.
In the front right-hand corner, Ron was amazed to find another circle of students – including Hannah Abbot, Luna Lovegood, Pansy Parkinson, his sister (he was sooo telling Mum bout this one) and Lavender Brown – as they simultaneously raised and slammed back on the floor what looked like shot glasses. Shoots and whoops were heard as each participant asked the Patil twins to fill their glasses with the invisible liquid they held pitchers of. Every member of the circle and its spectators were swaying and falling and speaking much too loud. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what that invisible liquid was.
The front left corner was filled with miscellaneous objects that students were charming to do all sorts of things: explode into a billion pieces, pour water on a friend's head, soar across the room and hit some stranger in the face, bounce off the walls, some were even flipping people upside down and spinning them in circles. Ron could have sworn he saw one student charm a bucket of pumpkin juice to spill its contents over a soaking wet Professor McGonagall as she cackled with laughter and jumped up from a circle of students and teachers to retaliate by casting a storm of bright purple feathers. The group she had just abandoned laughed hysterically before returning to their – was that a game of strip poker?
Trying his hardest to scrub away the sight of half-dressed Crabbe, Madam Houch, Colin Creevey, and Tracey Davis – among others – Ron diverted his attention to the center of the Hall.
There stood Hogwarts' very own Headmaster Dumbledore in blue and white checkered pajamas (with a matching cap) while attempting to sing along with the invisible choir and orchestra he was manically leading with his flapping arms. Strangely enough, Ron almost thought he heard some type of crazy music behind all the noise that already filled the hall. Next to the mad Dumbledore stood Harry, Professor Snape, and Professor Flitwick. The three stood with their arms over one another's shoulders – Snape and Harry raising tiny Flitwick a good meter from the ground – as they swung their bodies to the strange music. From here, Ron could hear their loud singing – though it seemed a lot like drunken people trying to chant.
Yet all this nonsense and crazed madness wasn't what shocked Ron the most. Oh, no. Right in front of his face was the most disgusting, vile, impossible, mind-boggling sight he was positive he would ever see.
In front of him stood one of his best friends – smart, rule-following, know-it-all, goodie-two-shoes Hermione Granger – snogging the living daylights out of one of their worst enemies: that arrogant, vain, slimy ferret Malfoy. Their hands were all over each other, bodies pressed closer than Ron thought possible. Unfortunately for Ron's sanity, it was easy to tell that they had been doing this for quite a while, and, disturbingly, did not seem to plan on stopping any time soon.
It was right then that Ron Weasley blacked out on the floor. Not that anybody noticed – they just continued what they were doing.
"Ron, Ron!"
"Wake up, mate!"
"Bloody hell, Weasley really screwed it up this time!"
Voices mixed and merged in Ron's head as they spun around him, sounding softer and louder every millisecond as if someone was scrolling one of those volume buttons on those noise-making machines Harry has showed him up and down over and over again.
Struggling to sit up – since for some odd reason he had been lying on the ground, Ron felt a hand roughly insist he lay back down on his left as another arm tried to help him up on his right.
"He should be lying down, Harry!" he heard Hermione scold. Immediately the arm on the right vanished, even though the raven-haired boy responded that he should be getting to the Hospital Wing.
"Hermione!" Ron yelled loudly as he shot upright, surprising all the students in the room whose attention he had already earned five minutes ago.
"What?" she replied, shocked at his sudden outburst.
"What the bloody hell were you thinking?" he demanded, previously pale face quickly turning red.
"Me?" she yelled back. "You were the on that added the lacewings after I explicitly told you not to!"
"I'm not talking about that," he dismissed, waving his hand. "I was referring to you snogging Malfoy!"
Suddenly the classroom – which had been overwhelmingly loud ever since the explosion – reached a state of absolute silence. The majority of the students either had their mouths hanging wide open or their eyes as large as saucer plates, or both. Harry and Hermione were both staring at their redheaded best friend as if he had gone stark raving mad.
"What?" another voice from across the room that happened to belong to Draco Malfoy demanded.
Spinning around as he stood up to face him, Ron spat, "I saw it! The two of you all…" The boy found no words to describe exactly what it was, so he gestured wildly. "It was repulsive! And Ginny! She was drinking! And, and, Harry! You and Snape and Flitwick were singing some bloody awful crap. And McGonagall! They were playing strip poker! I've been scarred for life, I tell you!"
With every word the teen uttered, the classroom of students got louder and louder with the sounds of laughter, the slapping of knees and backs, and multiple people falling out of chairs.
"He's barmy!"
"Oh, Merlin! Can you imagine such a thing?"
"Oh, oh, right, yeah. Oh man, what I would give…"
"SILENCE!"
Everyone shut their mouths and turned to the front of the classroom, where an assumedly angry (although he still maintained a cold, emotionless expression) Snape stood.
"Finnegan, wipe that grin off your face. Thomas, ten points from Gryffindor for damaging that stool. Weasley." Snape's voice stopped, eyes piercing the boy's until Ron was squirming in discomfort, gaze busy avoiding that of the professor.
"Ten points from Gryffindor for not listening to directions. Twenty more for causing a disruption with that explosion. Another twenty for continuing to distract my students with your tall tales. Now, get back to work."
"But," Ron started to protest.
"Now," Snape commanded.
"What in the name of Merlin's holey briefs was that potion?" Ron whispered to Hermione as he sat down.
"A Distortion Draught, you dolt," she replied, the slightest tinge of pink still coloring her cheeks. Of course, this pink turned bright red again when her eyes met those of Draco Malfoy and he swaggled his eyebrows suggestively.