All was calm and quiet in the Gryffindor common room. The twins had retired and taken their laughter and boisterousness up with them, leaving the rest of their house to talk in quiet groups in corners, gossiping about the tasks in the tournament and shooting The Boy Who Lived curious glances. With a resigned sigh, Harry turned over another page in his Transfiguration textbook before realising that he hadn't understood a word of the previous page and turning back with an even more resigned sigh.
The almost silence was broken by a loud bang as Ron leapt through the portrait door and sprinted over to where Harry sat. Grabbing his best friend by the arm he hissed, "Come with me!" and rushed Harry up to their dorm before Harry could so much as squeak in protest.
Shutting the door and glancing around to ensure that none of their dorm mates had come up yet; Ron shoved something small and white into Harry's hands with a strangled, "Look at this!"
"This had better be good," Harry warned him. "My head may forgive you but my ankle is less genteel."
"Oh, it's anything but good!" exclaimed Ron, pacing back and forth and biting his nails. "It's worst kind of bad!"
"Better and better," Harry muttered sarcastically, unrolling the scrap of paper Ron had handed him and reading it.
Meet me in the old Transfiguration room on the first floor. It's nice and warm there.
PC
Harry frowned at the message, done in a clear, bold but obviously feminine hand. Finally, after staring until his eyes hurt, he said, "I get the feeling I'm supposed to be horrified beyond belief by this but … I'm not."
"Don't you see?" exclaimed Ron, becoming more agitated by the second. "PC!"
"A laptop?" Harry asked, growing more and more confused by the second.
Ron paused in his pacing and stared at Harry as though he'd just used the proper name for You-Know-Who. "Is that some kind of horrible Muggle euphemism for … for …?" he asked, going redder than his hair.
After blinking at Ron for a minute he eventually said, "Tell you what, you tell me what PC means to you and then we'll see if I'm shocked. That sound good?"
"It's someone's initials!" Ron almost shouted. "Penelope Clearwater!"
"Percy's girlfriend!" Harry realised, glad to have finally understood something.
"And I found it on the table Percy used to do his homework!" Ron moaned.
"And he left five minutes after doing it," Harry finished, finally taking in the severity of the situation. "How long ago was that?"
Ron checked his watch, before cursing (relatively) quietly and saying, "About ten minutes ago. I found the paper and then went out to see if I could catch him. I saw him going into the room!"
"And?" Harry asked, eyes wide and mind whirling.
"I ran!" Ron exclaimed, gesturing wildly with his arms.
"Well that was stupid," said Harry. "If you want to stop someone … doing … that … don't you usually want to stop them at the beginning?"
"YOU'RE TELLING ME TO STOP MY BROTHER HAVING SEX?! WHAT KIND OF TYRANT ARE YOU?" bellowed Ron, so loudly that Harry was sure that everyone from Professor Sinistra cleaning her telescopes up in the Astronomy Tower down to Snape cooking up some sort of death brew down in the dungeons had heard it.
"Well what do you suggest we do?" Harry asked. He would have laid a comforting hand on Ron's arm, but his survival instinct gave him various good reasons not to so he refrained.
"I don't know!" Ron groaned, running his hands through his carrot-red hair. "D'you think we could just leave them?"
"D'you think they know how to not get pregnant?" Harry asked, before realising that was the wrong thing to say if he was trying to calm things down and bit his tongue sharply.
"Bloody HELL!" Ron looked as though he was somewhere between exploding and passing out. "I'm too young to be an uncle! And Ginny only got the talk last year! And Mom would kill them! Percy may not be my favourite brother but that doesn't mean I want him to be torn to shreds in front of my eyes!"
"Then we've got to stop them," said Harry, in as calm and diplomatic a tone as he could manage.
"I'm not going to walk in on my brother … canoodling," said Ron, with firmness that Professor McGonagall would have been proud of. "Not. In. A. Thousand. Infinities."
"You can't have multiple infinties," Harry pointed out. "Infintiy is essentially 'forever'."
"Oy!" said Ron, giving him a shove. "Now's not the time to turn into Hermione Flipping Granger! We have a potential baby on our hands! Golly I'm only supposed to be saying that when I'm twenty-five – what is wrong with my life?"
"Well how else are we going to stop it without marching over there and embarrassing them to the point where they won't do it again?" Harry asked. It was not a prospect that he relished, but he saw no other way around it.
"That didn't work with my parents," said Ron grimly.
"What do you … oooooh." Harry's question died away and he hastily decided to change the subject. "Well, what can we do?"
"Think," said Ron, beginning pacing up and down the room again. "And fast!"
oo0oo
"What do you mean a fire alarm?" Ron asked as he sprinted down another set of stairs, trying to catch up with his friend.
"It's a Muggle thing," Harry explained, ears pricked for Snape as he rounded another corner.
What if Snape caught Percy and Penelope? Snape had been in good humour lately (maybe due to the fact that Death was practically banging on Harry's door at every turn he took) but Harry knew for a fact that Snape would not take kindly to students taking such liberties on school grounds. What he would do ...
The very idea made him run faster, causing Ron to hiss in protest. "It senses when there's a fire and sets of a loud blaring sound that warns people. Oh, drat! Where is it?"
"I don't know!" exclaimed Ron, glancing around the darkened corridor with the air of someone who has no clue what on earth they're looking for. "I only found out the bloody thing existed two minutes ago."
"I heard Dumbledore talking to McGonagall about it a couple of days back," Harry told Ron, fumbling to find the Marauders Map in the hope that it had the object on it.
"He's batty I tell you," Ron muttered.
"Mmm," said Harry, pulling out his spell to cast the Lumos charm so that he could actually see. "McGonagall said the same."
"Really?" asked Ron. "I don't see prim and proper Professor McGonagall saying that."
"Oh she didn't say it quite like that," said Harry. "Lumos. She did say, 'If I didn't know you were such an old fool already I'd have rushed you to Poppy. This is the Wizarding World, Albus, not an antique fair for your amusement.'"
"Well, she used his first name," observed Ron. "That's rather personal for McGonagall."
"Oh, you've seen them," said Harry, having found the alarm on the map and beginning to move towards it, "their essentially married to each other but without the rings and … well … let's go find this alarm shall we?!"
They eventually found it, a small red box with the words 'In the event of an emergency, cast the bombarda spell. In the event of you being a nitwit or having the surname 'Longbottom' smash the glass. (And no, we did not install a hammer – use your hands you big numpty)'. "Pleasant isn't it," said Ron drily. "Methinks the wizard who installed this was having a bit of a bad day … or was Snape."
"Well, firstly," said Harry, "'Methinks'? You accuse me of being Hermione! Secondly, give old Snape a break. I've noticed he's been in a much better mood lately."
"What do you mean by lately?" Ron asked, as Harry drew out his wand.
Harry paused to think. Now that he thought about it, Snape had been growing ever so slightly more pleasant since third year. There was no mistaking that he was still snarky, sarcastic and demanded the highest of performances but he had seemed in better humour lately. Maybe it was due to the fact that he had struck up a friendship with Professor Gondolin, the Care of Magical Creatures Teacher who had taken over from Professor Kettleburn in Harry's second year and was by far one of the nicest teachers that Harry had been taught by.
"We can debate the reason for Snape's good humour at some other time," Harry told Ron, handing him the Marauders Map. "Now, let's smash something."
"Bombarda!" hissed Harry, at the same time that Ron screamed, "Harry, I command you, do not cast that spell ... oh damn it!"
"What?" asked Harry, turning to face Ron as the alarm wailed throughout the school.
"Look!" Ron exclaimed, shoving the Map under Harry's nose.
"Oh ..." No words that Harry could think of quite covered this situation.
"Practically married without the wedding rings eh?" said Ron drily.
"Now we know why Snape's been in such a good mood lately," Harry groaned, head in hands. Ron looked as though he was about to vomit.
"Bloody hell, Harry, you haven't seen the worst yet!"
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me! What is wrong with this place?"
And on that cheerful note I'll leave you.
What on earth is going on? Let me know what you think! ;)