Harry Potter and the Unveiling
By Rachelle McGaw
HEADS IN THE FIRE (Chapter 1)
"Are you sure?" Harry heard Ron's voice coming from the green flames in his fireplace.
"Just stick your head in, Ron. Nothing will go wrong. You'll get dizzy at the most, I promise," he replied.
"Well, here goes nothing." Ron's head suddenly appeared in the flames of Harry's home fireplace. His freckled face was pale and his eyes were tightly shut. He opened his eyes and laughed.
"Blimey, Harry, that's incredible! It feels weird though, doesn't it? You can feel your knees on the ground but you're spinning around and around and around and around..." Ron jumped at the sound of Hermione's laugh.
"Settle down, Ron," she said. Ron turned his head and saw Hermione's head sitting in the fire also. She was looking at him and smiling.
"Aaah! You've got no body!" he screamed.
"Well, duh! Neither do you! You obviously haven't read Floo Powder Flimsies: When it is right and how to fix it if it is wrong."
"How to fix it if it is wrong... You mean... PEOPLE CAN BE HURT BY THIS? Ron panicked.
"Of course," said Hermione in her know-it-all voice. "In fact, one man was meant to be traveling to Turrentine, England, when he choked on some ash. He unfortunately found himself bent over with his neck beside Queen Elizabeth the Second's on the guillotine. He didn't survive, and a whole city of people had to have their memories modified!"
Ron's head disappeared. "What are you doing, Ron?" Harry yelled after him.
"Floo Powder, Shoe Chowder!" Harry barely heard through the flames, "I'll keep my head, thanks!" Ron suddenly appeared beside Harry.
"RON!" squealed Hermione's head. "You shouldn't have done that! You know you're not allowed to Apparate until you past the test!" The rest of Hermione's body appeared and she propelled herself out of the fire, a murderous look on her face. "Tell him, Harry! You know how dangerous it is!" Hermione was referring to Harry's first time at practice-apparating. He planned to appear on the sidewalk in Diagon Alley, but somehow apparated into the middle of the road outside the leaky cauldron. Hermione barely managed to magic Harry out of the way before he got hit by a car. Harry suddenly thought of Ron's first apparition test, and burst out with laughter. Ron interrupted his thoughts.
"But I can do it, Hermione! I don't need a cruddy piece of parchment to tell me that!"
"But Ron..."
"Stop worrying, Hermione," chuckled Harry. "I mean, he nearly passed his test, and it's not like he lost anything important."
"HARRY, HE WAS LUCKY HE ONLY LOST HIS CLOTHES! HE COULD HAVE TURNED UP IN THE WRONG PLACE, GOTTEN SPLINCHED..."
But Harry and Ron were laughing so hard they drowned out her voice, crying and gasping for breath, clutching stitches in their sides.
"Just lost my clothes? What about my DIGNITY! I mean, Merlin's Beard! You try explaining to TEN ministry officials why you apparated BUTT-NAKED!" Harry laughed so hard his legs gave way and he fell to the floor, shattering his glasses.
"Honestly!" sighed Hermione, walking through the flames back to her home in Auckland.
"I think we might have upset her, Ron."
"I think so too, Harry." They both laughed. Harry fixed his glasses with a wave of his wand.
"Reparo." They had shattered many times before; Hermione had taught him that nifty spell.
"What did your Dad say, Ron?" Harry had been trying to find out the where-abouts of Remus Lupin, retired professor, member of the Order of the Phoenix, and part-time werewolf. He had been assigned to a top-secret mission a few days ago, but Harry desperately wanted to talk to him about something. Ron had thought about asking his father.
"If he knows anything, he wouldn't tell me. I got this whole lecture on keeping my nose in my own business, now that I'm in the real world. First year out of Hogwarts, and he's acting like my child-hood was just a story from some far-fetched book. It's a load of Codswallop! They're being totally unfair. Mum flipped when I told her I signed up for Auror training." Harry gave him a half-hearted smile.
"You'll get through to them."
"I really reckon you should become an auror too, Harry. Professor Moody said you'd be good for that sort of stuff, and you would. And not all aurors are as scarred as him!"
"Nah," said Harry. "I got stuff that needs me here."
12 Grimmauld Place is a small and run-down house on the outside, but on the inside, it's almost a palace. The building is very magical and only people who have been shown the address and inside the house can even see it. This place is the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, a group of dedicated witches and wizards who dedicated their lives to preventing the rise of Lord Voldemort, and any other madmen who come close to taking over the world. This place now belongs to Harry Potter.
Harry not only lives there, he works there, he belongs there, and he loves it. There is only one thing he's not too keen on; one person, to be exact. This one person came gliding down the hall.
Harry was surprised to see a smile on the hawk-like face of Severus Snape. He must have found something really awful to do to someone, Harry thought. "Professor," he greeted Snape, as quietly as he could, with his head bent and his eyes on his shoes.
"Don't be such a stooge, Harry. I'm not your Professor anymore! We're on the same team! Call me Severus." With that said he slid cheerfully down the hall and passed into a room at the end. Harry rapidly tip-toed in the opposite direction, and in the dining room he came across Fred and George Weasley.
"Fred. George. I should've known it was you!"
"Why? Who did you see?" asked presumably Fred.
"But we didn't touch no one," said presumably George innocently.
"What did you do to Snape?" Harry asked sternly.
The twins tried to stifle their identical giggles with their identical hands covering their identical mouths.
"We're sure he won't mind," said the first twin.
"After all, he taught it to us!" said the second twin.
"What was it?" he asked again, hoping for a straight answer this time.
"WEASLEY! WEASLEY!" Snape's angry voice came from down the corridor, cutting the Weasleys' responses short. They gave each other looks of glee before disapparating.
Harry picked up a crumpled piece of paper that he noticed lying where the twins' feet had been. He struggled to read the untidy scrawl.
Harry,
We thought Snape could do with some cheering up, so we slipped some of the Cheering potion he taught us into his Pumpkin juice. Worked like a charm. Cheery-o!
Fred & George.
P.S. LOOK AT YOUR ARMS!
He looked at his arms and screamed. They didn't look like arms anymore, in fact, they had no bones. He tried to grab his wand to fix it but his fingers wouldn't bend to grasp it, they just sort of dangled there like the fingers of a rubber glove. His right hand was turning a funny shade of blue when Snape charged into the room, wand at the ready.
"Infinite Incantatem!" he yelled, pointing his wand at Harry's limp arms. They quickly returned to normal, but Snape remained just as angry. He rushed over and grabbed Harry by the collar, pushing his face close enough to smell Snape's awful breath. "Where did they go? I want to know NOW!"
"I don't know sir, they just apparated out of here." Snape let go of Harry's collar and swung open the door.
"By the way, Potter. Forget anything that I said out there. If I hear a single mention of it, you might not wake up the next morning." He slammed the door.
Harry sat in one of the chairs beside the fireplace and lit the fire-wood with his wand. He was gently rubbing the feeling back into his arms when Hermione ran through the flames.
"Harry! You won't believe- ouch!" She jumped as she left the fire, but her robes caught alight. She quickly extinguished them with her wand. "What on earth did you light a fire there for?" she asked.
"Have you forgotten everything, Hermione? Lesson 1. Muggles light fires in their fireplaces!"
"Have you forgotten everything, Harry? Lesson 2. Wizards use a Tropicalus spell to keep warm! The fireplaces are used for transport!" She quickly brushed a thick bunch of hair out of her eyes.
"Anyway, you won't believe what I've found!