56: Animate all the food to start talking back adorably.

"Hiya!" it squeaks.

Ron stares at it. And he stares some more. And he keeps on staring until Hermione slaps him across the face and asks, concern shining through her voice, "Are you alright? It's garlic fish and chips with a BLT, hold the LT, and a tall glass of mangosuckle pop, your favourites. Are you still on what happened in Transfiguration?"

He gulps and shakes his head.

Her brows furrow in vexation. "What then?"

"Indeed! What?" it whispers spiritedly.

He lets out a shriek to rival a mature mandrake's, which is why Neville jerks his head around to find the source so suddenly that he finds himself facing and consequently stumbling face-first into Ron's face, and all the girls (and a few boys) who have the privilege of seeing that once-in-a-lifetime moment cheer loudly.

They are both a stunning shade of tomato and peeling each other off to murmurs of disappointment and a singular demand of, "Take your pants off!" which people turn to see Hermione just finish saying, and several eyebrows are cocked at her outburst because, really, does she need to yell when she's right in front of them?

But Ron straightens himself out and clears his throat, "We are never to speak about that again."

Neville gulps with an embarrassed smile and asks in beat, "About what?"

The redhead is about to remind his mate's apparently short-term memory of the fact, but a saucer of flan smiles, its eyes crinkling, and answers for him, "The kiss, you silly adolescent male of the human species! So forgetful!"

Neville's steak agrees, "Oh, yes; I can only hope that my nutrients will help their memory cortex so incidents like this are not so frequent!"

Now no-one but the foods are saying anything, not that their nonsensical yet oddly sophisticated discussions are of any value to anyone, and Neville is tortured. His eyes dart to his seedling Whimpering Willow, then to his plate of delicious medium-rare meat, back to that gorgeous specimen of magical flora that is making the most sympathy-inducing cries, and again that divine bovine with the rather unnerving grin and big, bright eyes, and he makes a sound of defeat.

"If I can't strictly be a meat-eater or a vegetarian, then what the bloody fuck am I gonna live on?" he sobs.

"I dunno, mate," Seamus Finnigan says as he sticks a fork into the flan, which only giggles and exclaims, "That tickles!" "I don't think it'd be that hard to be a strict meat-eater in this day and age."

Looks that pass through a surprisingly wide spectrum of disbelief and horror and amusement directed at him catch his attention, and Seamus asks, "What? What did I do now?"

Dean Thomas grimaces. "I can't believed I snogged that mouth."

"Well, believe it, because this mouth wants some more snogging! After this plate of flan, of course." The plate of flan continues its giggling, of course.

Draco is walking over to the usual eighth-years' spot at the Gryffindor table when he hears the cries of stupefaction and terror so harmonious that one would've thought that all the Houses had pitched in to provide an impromptu chorus of previously unknown talents to welcome their guest, the arrogant-as-ever Gilderoy Lockheart. No memory charm of such effective caliber as his could ever erase his innate narcissism and boastful tendencies, no matter how much other people unsuccessfully trialed in the efforts to rid him of his vapid qualities, as he is currently irritating Snape with the exaggerations of his trials to regain his memories and the new novel he is working on about those very same trials and caring nothing for the rambling casserole before him.

"Hullo hullo, lions," Draco greets as he slips between the Patil twins. "Lovely morning this is, yeah?"

Lavender Brown looks to his honest face, then to the windows, and back. "It's dinnertime. Lovely evening."

"Oh, and a lovely evening to you too, Brown!"

"What are you talking about, blondie? Are you in your right mind?" A hex hums under his breath and a wail escapes Lavender that turns into a strange sort of groan as her pitch descends and descends and it keeps descending until it seems like it can't descend any deeper without shifting whole cords in her voice box to get its way.

Harry drops in soon enough to take Lavender's spot, which she has vacated to run to the lavatories. "Ah, lovely morning, yeah? Sorry I was cooped up in the dorms so long. Something was brought to my attention-" Draco coughs, just the tiniest bit of red in the cheeks, "-and I got distracted."

Normally, Ron would have reacted by then, via internal breakdown and an external attempt at recreating the most iconic feature of Edward Munch's more recognised works, but he does not.

Instead, he is locked into a staring contest with his garlic fish and chips with a BLT, hold the LT, and tall glass of mangosuckle pop, his favourites. However, any stranger who, strangely, chooses to study the Gryffindor's face at that moment is likely to presume that he hates all of those dishes.

For one thing, he is pallid and wan and blanched and waxen and ashy and all those other words that sound like scientific terms for that shifty period between a short cut and longer hair in which short is neither here nor there, yet nor is long, and the whole thing is just absolutely clashing with everything. For another, his nose is twitching in what can be interpreted as either dangerous or itchy - though Harry is willing to bet ten Galleons that it is a little bit of both: dangerous because the implications of Harry and Draco coming to the Great Hall hours later from the dorms are finally reaching him, and itchy because it seems to be one of those remarkable instances in which a Weasley (in this case, Ron) is so shocked that he loses control of a body part he never even had control of in the first place.

He is still staring and staring and staring, but the thing that finally cracks him is the tiniest of the chips biting its starchy bottom lip to hide a smile before giving up completely and squealing, "Kiss again!"

Ron faints.

Hermione snaps out her wand, which stabs more than just a few bystanders in the eye, and yells, "Rennervate!"

It is only when she is already halfway through the spell that Dean, pressing a palm (which was, incidentally, not his own) to his sore left eye, exclaims, "Hermione, your wand's backwards!"

By the time she grasps the significance of his warning, however, she has already finished, and a red bolt shoots out of her wand, latching onto and making Hermione splutter as if she is in the middle of being electrocuted, then fall face first onto a singing bowl of gazpacho. Her movements tip over Neville's Willow, which starts sobbing like a Whomping Willow probably does within the safety of its callous, but simply disillusioned heart of bark (they usually become so after realising that they've no opportunities because all people see are mindless, lashing hunks of magical wood, so then they pass through periods of depression, resignation, and, ultimately, a constant rage that ironically fulfills their image), and the crowd turns to its owner.

He says nothing, however, which makes sense, seeing as how he's completely out.

"Great, now we have three dead-"

"Unconscious, Draco. Just unconscious."

"I wish it weren't so, but fine. Three unconscious Gryffindors and a wailing tree testing my patience. Who knows how to perform the Rennervate charm properly?" No hands fling themselves up. "Then I say nay on being the one to carry them back to the den!"

Harry catches on and shouts, "Nay!" and there is a cacophony of that same response within seconds. Heads turn towards the direction of the wave of sound until every Gryffindor, save the three unconscious ones (for whom Seamus has the courtesy to turns their heads with), has declared it. All but for the tiny first year who bares a striking resemblance to Celestina Warbeck. The illusion is ruined as he opens his mouth and Hagrid's voice comes out - richer and just the tiniest more refined, but deep and scratchy all the same. "Nay?"

Harry saunters up to him, claps the boy on the back (who is still too shocked for the patented oh, my stars, Harry bloody Potter is touching me! effect to come about), and says, "Nope. Sorry, mate, but you've got corpse duty!"

His periwinkle eyes widen to the size of the kumquats giggling on the table, and he squeaks, "Corpse?"

"Hm? Oh, no, no! Not actual corpses, kid!"

The boy sighs a breath of relief.

"It'll just feel like it."

The boy's mouth contorts into an upside-down likening of the letter "U", which, incidentally, is not the letter of the day in the North American airing of Sesame Street, but would have been two years ago.

"And don't forget the stupid, drooling stick over here!" yells Draco.

"Oh, yeah, and the tree too, if you'd be kind enough to."

"I mean Weasel, not the willow," Draco yells again.

Harry gives an amused chuckle in response before ruffling the boy's hair. "We're counting on you to get them back to the dorms safely. You can do that, yeah?"

He is still more than a little reluctant but he eventually nods timidly, and the table (and foods) whoop.

There is a mumble of, "Must be a Thursday. Never could get the hang of Thursdays," then he leaps out of his seat to collect the bodies. They are balancing precariously on his back within the next three minutes, the tree clutched in his hands, and he struggles out of the Great Hall to Professor McGonagall's dumbfound expression.

Draco looks up from his fidgety slice of apple pie when Harry sits back down. "He didn't think of levitating charms, then?"

There is a crash right outside of the door, and a resounding swear. Harry winces in sympathy. "I don't think it even passed his mind. I do hope he knows some healing spells for the bruises they're sure to get."

Green then meets grey, and they laugh wildly.

"Yeah, right," Draco scoffs. He finishes his slice ravenously, mentally blaming it on their day long dueling marathon - which involved both the vertical and horizontal types - and finds Harry staring at him, not at all shameless, when he reaches for another. Under average circumstances, Draco would be preening and basking in his gaze. But it is different because this stare is curiously disconcerting, and he finds himself wondering why.

"What?"

Green darts to the simpering pie tin.

The blonde is, for all intents and purposes, terrified. "Oh, Merlin. No. No. What else did you do to the food?"

"Honest, I didn't think you would end up eating it too! I thought it would only be Lockheart and Seamus or something!"

Grey narrows. "What. Did. You. Do."

Harry's lips tighten into a straight line of pale pink, one edge flickering up in very conspicuous entertainment, and he says with finality, "Guess you'll just find out tomorrow. Keep spare robes with you at all times."

He winks lasciviously at the Slytherin before gathering his robes and dashing out of the Great Hall to the screamed threats of, "Come back here, you arse! Come back here and give me the antidote this instant! I will hunt you down if need be! I will eviscerate you with great joy and feed your entrails to your dear, precious Hedwig! Come back here, Potter!"

He does not.

Instead, the untouched pie in front of Draco suggests, as sweet as a gigantic bunch of sugar cane jammed into a pink teddy bear's mouth with rainbows and unicorns entangling in the background, "Maybe you should take an anger management class."

There is a crack of wood, splatters of crust and tangy filling all over the Gryffindor table, an livid, heaving Draco, and Snape says, just to add a little injury to insult: "Five points from Slytherin for slaughtering that adorable, innocent pastry." He then slaps a bony hand to his face.

Draco cannot hide his confused outrage. Then his eyes spot that unfinished roast beef Snape was eating a sliver of with disdain just seconds earlier, and his shoulders sag.

"Fuck."

"Five points from Slytherin for that unnecessary profan - damn it!"

Author's Note: Another H2G2 reference in there. I just cannot help it. Also: my letter of the day ("U") has been brought to you by the several cups of coffee and green tea that litter my kitchen counter and the four reviews for the first chapter and my new laptop! Hoorah!