Title: That Weird Bubbling Noise
Prompt: Snowed in
Character: Luna
LOC: Easy
Words: 1,569
Summary: Half a year after the battle of Hogwarts and everyone is still jumping at the slightest sound, expecting death eaters to crash through the walls at any moment. So, naturally, Hermione decides they all need some rest and relaxation over the Christmas Holidays and finds a cabin to rent. By the end of the vacation she has no idea how she'll explain to the owners how the damage occurred.
A/N - So super short note here, the actual one is at the bottom. This was written for simplypotterheads's endurance challenge, prompt and etc can be seen above. I had decided to upload all of them in one go after the whole challenge was over but that's stupid & I'm not gonna do that, so two others are on the way.
"What was that?" Ginny asked sharply.
"What was what?" Harry replied.
"Didn't hear anything," Ron added.
Ginny scowled, "I heard something, I swear. It was a weird bubbling noise…"
"Oh that," came the dreamy voice of Luna Lovegood, drifting in from the other room. "Probably just a thetring. It won't attack unless you whistle. They're usually very docile."
Hermione sighed, "You're just hearing things, Gin. It's because of the war, you'll get used to the quiet eventually. I'm sure it's normal." Ginny frowned but that was the end of the discussion.
It had been Hermione's idea for the six of them to go somewhere quiet and magic free for Christmas, so she wrote her parents to get the information of the cabin they had rented a couple winters ago and made arrangements for some much needed vacation time. Everyone was still tense and she thought it might help them relax a little. Mrs. Weasley had been absolutely against it; something about not knowing whether any of them were alive last Christmas. Ginny assured her that they would drop in for Christmas dinner with the family and she was eventually placated.
They arrived to the perfect, picturesque log cabin surrounded by blinding white snow sitting in piles and floating down from the sky. Hermione had taken it upon herself to schedule activities to break up the (pleasantly quiet) days. Neville, opting out of the skiing lessons Hermione was trying to run, spent the first couple days searching around the area for plants and had managed to dig up and repot several of them, placing them just outside the door for safekeeping until they left.
Ron had quickly tired of falling on his face because of those "two mental little twigs the muggles strap to their feet" and was spending his vacation trying to lure the others into a game of wizards chess. Ginny of course had instantly become a pro-skier and sped down the hill doing laps around the others. That left Harry being looked after by Hermione, who tried to make sure he didn't fall on his face too much. Occasionally they were joined by Luna when she came back from staring off dazedly at the tops of the trees.
The first couple days had been nice, and then there was the blizzard… The next morning they opened the door to find a solid mound of snow frozen right up to the top of the frame. The windows too were blocked, preventing any natural light from entering the building.
"The galanthus nivalis!" cried Neville, trying to dig out the flowers he had repotted and placed next to the door. "We needed them for our endurance draught!"
"The muggles will probably dig us out," Hermione sighed, "everyone else around the mountain must've been snowed in as well. Let's just wait it out."
Neville spent the day futilely trying to tunnel over to his flowers and was creating a small tunnel. It should have been quiet, the others had divided into groups to play exploding snap and gobstones; Ron finally had his choice of wizard chess opponents.
Ron's queen had just moved forward to destroy Ginny's rook when it suddenly floated into the air. The chess piece looked around wildly trying to see what was lifting it only to see empty airspace. "Unhand me, I'm the Queen!" it shouted.
"What's happening…?"
"It's probably never seen a moving chess piece before," Luna said, "he's harmless."
"What's harmless!?" asked Ron.
"The thetring. They don't usually live in very populated areas," she informed them, matter of factly. Ron reached his hand toward the chess piece slowly. "They don't like people touching them," Luna warned.
Sure enough, as soon as Ron got close to the chess piece it went flying across the room and embedded itself in the wall.
"Oh, you startled it!"
"What the hell!" Ginny said, jumping up from her seat.
"Ok, who did that?" Hermione asked.
Luna smiled to herself but didn't say anything.
Without a word Ginny walked out of the room and into the kitchen. She came back with a large bag of flour in her arms that she had heaved out of a cupboard. Walking into the room she reached into the bag, taking handfuls of flour and tossing it into the air.
"What are you doing, Gin?" Neville had seen Ginny taking the bag from his spot by the door in the kitchen.
"We're gonna find this thing," she said. "It just threw a chess piece into the wall."
Neville blinked but went back to his tunnel, where he had almost gotten over to his potted plants.
"You might irritate its eyes with that."
Ginny paused for a moment but continued to throw the flour into the air. Sure enough it revealed an oval shape momentarily before it zoomed across the room and bounced into the wall which was splattered with some kind of neon green fluid. It bounced off and hit the ceiling, the next splatter was bright pink and then it zoomed into the kitchen.
"It's panicking," said Luna, somberly.
"I'm… sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this…" Hermione claimed, but she didn't look so sure anymore.
A moment later Neville walked in from the kitchen splattered in some kind of orange goo, clutching a potted plant. "It's crushed the galanthus nivalis…"
Looking around the room, flour was scattered across the floor, an end table was knocked over, goo on the walls… and of course the chess piece was still struggling to pull itself out of the wall. "Why don't we give it a rest for the day…" Harry suggested.
Later when everyone went to bed there was a weird tension in the house. "God, I can hear that stupid bubbling again!" Ginny growled.
"I think I can too!" said Neville.
"Mass hallucinations, it's got to be!" said Hermione.
Not three hours later Hermione jolted awake from the scream next to her ear. "Ron? Ron what is it?" she jumped out of bed and felt along the wall for the light switch. The lights flickered on in time to reveal Ron pulling his wand out of the nightstand and aiming it up at the ceiling.
"There was a… thing."
"… A thing?" Hermione repeated slowly.
"Yes! Just floating there on the ceiling!" he sounded almost hysterical.
"I don't see anything…"
"Ron?" someone called from the next room.
Hermione sighed and walked over; Ron flung the covers across the bed and followed her out.
"Ron thought he saw something," Hermione explained as everyone trickled out of their bedrooms.
"I didn't think I saw something, it was there! Why does nobody ever believe me?! It's Sirius in the common room all over again!"
"Because what would be hanging from the ceiling, Ron?" Hermione replied, exasperated.
"Thetrings often hang upside down to increase blood flow to their heads when they use telepathy," came the singsong voice of Luna Lovegood from where she sat in her nightdress on a large armchair next to the television that Harry had taken to fiddling with.
"Oh, great," Ron said weakly, sitting down as well.
"They like to eavesdrop on people's dreams," she continued. "Was it dark blue with a yellow stripe around the middle and long pointed ears?"
"Luna-"
"Yeah," Ron said with a distinct tone of surprise in his voice, "it was."
"What?"
"So, uh, how do we get rid of it then?" Harry asked uncomfortably.
"It's probably snowed in here with us," Luna answered matter-of-factly. "It will leave as soon as the snow is gone."
"So we're stuck in here with it?" Ron asked.
"For god's sake, we're not stuck in here with it, there's no such thing as a…" Hermione tried to grasp the word.
"Thetring," Luna supplied.
"Right. A Thetring. They don't exist."
"I'm telling you," Ron said standing up again and gesturing emphatically towards Luna, "It looks exactly like what she said!"
"Then why hasn't anyone seen one before? Why haven't we ever heard of them?"
"Thetrings are mostly seen by children. Most reported sights of them are believed to sprout from their imagination, but Daddy interviewed Rolf Scamander this summer for the Quibbler and he said he's been compiling information on thetring sightings."
"Oh, honestly," Hermione sighed. Thinking back to their conversation the other day, she decided there was only one way that she was going to prove to everyone that there was no such thing as a thetring. Taking a deep breath, she straightened up, and whistled as loudly as she could, startling everybody. Immediately afterwards they heard the sound of an implosion from Ron and Hermione's bedroom.
Hermione looked towards the closed door, then to Ron, then back to the door. Walking over she reached for the handle and pulled open the door that Ron had swung closed behind him. The tiny creak of the opening door was accompanied by a large gust of cold air and specks of snow. There was suddenly a very large hole in the ceiling of their room. Splintered wooden planks leaned out into the night and snow drifted peacefully onto the abandoned bed, above which the explosion seemed to have originated if the missing mattress chunks were any indication.
"Oh, now you've scared it away," Luna commented.
"At least we know it's not watching us sleep anymore," Harry murmured. "And hey, now we have an exit!"
Ron, eyes wide and mouth hanging open in shock, just nodded vacantly.
A/N - So my idea for this was the group of them snowed in with some weird being that no one but Luna believes is real. Really I probably could've picked Luna or Hermione as the character this was based on but the concept has more to do with Luna so I picked her.
Info on the galanthus nivalis: . #page=5
What I got from that was basically a flower that grows in the snow and is super tough, so I figured endurance potion.
The name ended up being a bit of a "mysterious ticking noise" allusion.
After writing the summary I decided I needed to write more mayhem and added the scene with the chess piece, so I'm a little worried that Hermione seems way too stubborn in not believing in the thetring, whereas before she was perfectly justified, but I'm still happy with it.