Potter47
Four
The British Cover, or:
The Good, the Bad, and the Sparkly
Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna and (last but not least) Severus Snape determinedly strode out of the Room of Requirement, and then, after a bit of walking back and forth outside the door, determinedly strode right back inside.
This time, the room was decked out decidedly differently: instead of the dark, drab, dank, dreary, dull, dilapidated, dingy, dowdy, decrepit display of Grimmauld Place, it bore the bright, burnished, benign, and brilliant look of a bank. More specifically, a great, gargantuan, golden bank vault filled to the brim with gold galleons, silver sickles and... bronze knuts.
"I do love a little alliteration," said Luna Lovegood lovingly.
"What on earth does that have to do with anything?" said Hermione. "We're here to destroy another of the Horcruxes, not to manipulate the English language to amuse ourselves!"
"Hermione's right," said Ron. "We do need to find the Horcruxes."
"Weasley's right," said Snape. "Granger is right. We do need to find the Horcruxes. We'd best be on with it, don't you think?"
"Snape's right," said Harry. "Ron is right about Hermione being right--"
"Oh shut up!" said Hermione, which brought a sudden silence upon the room.
Then:
"She's right, you know," murmured Ron. "We should shut up."
"QUIET!"
"That's what I said!" said Ron.
"Gah!" said Hermione, shaking her head. "I give up!"
"Don't give up, we haven't even started looking--"
"Not on the Horcruxes, on--never mind!" she shouted, and stormed off in a bit of a huff, apparently deciding that the best place to start looking for whatever they were looking for was wherever the rest of them were not.
"Let's look," said Luna.
"OK," said Harry, and they began to look.
They looked, and looked, and looked, but they really had no idea what to look for. The room was full of gold and silver and all sorts of other things, so that it was really rather hard to concentrate. After all, they were shiny. And it was difficult to ascertain which of the shiny things were just plain old ordinary shiny, and which of them might have been soul-holding-ly shiny. As they looked through the heaps of gold coins and rubies and suits of armor, nothing really stood out as particularly interesting.
"Hmm... this seems particularly interesting," said Snape, indirectly calling me a liar. He held up a small glass ball that was, if possible, even shinier than everything else in the room. As Harry looked at it closer, he saw that it held what looked like a snake, coiled tightly around itself. Part of the snake seemed to blend in with the rest of the ball--it shone with an icy cool blue-ish-ness--while the head was a deep golden brown, as though it had just emerged from the oven after being baked.
"I'm hungry," said Ron. "Anybody got any food?"
"Will you stop thinking about your stomach for five seconds...?!" exclaimed Hermione, who had returned to the group. "This snake thing looks fascinating! This must be the Horcrux..."
Ron harrumphed to himself, then made a fist, raising another finger after each second. Then:
"There, five seconds. Now, has anybody got any food? I'm starved."
"Quiet, Weasley," said Snape, and he held the Snake up to his eye, to get a closer look. Then he blinked. "You've got to be kidding me," he murmured to himself. Then he held the ball out to Ron.
"What? I don't want that--I want something to eat..."
"Exactly, Weasley. That's not the Horcrux--it's just a gummy worm."
"Oooh," said Luna excitedly, "could we split it, Ronald?"
"Drat," said Hermione, "it looked so real..."
"Well, unless the Dark Lord coats his soul in copious amounts of sugar, I don't believe that that is what we're looking for."
Ron cracked the ball open like an egg, and pulled the gummy snake from within, hungrily--he tore it in two, handed one half to Luna, and munched away like a madman. Luna nibbled the teensiest bite, and put the rest away for later.
They continued to look, and look, and look, and they could not find anything. It was becoming very annoying.
"I can't find anything!" said Harry, annoyed.
"If only something exciting would happen," said Luna, and just at that moment, a great, circular window appeared in the stone wall.
"Window?" said Hermione, quirking her head to the side. Then a great wind seemed to come from the opposite direction.
"Wind?" said Ron. The wind picked up speed and forcefulness, and before they knew it, it was pulling Harry, Ron, and Hermione towards the window, along with a great deal of the treasure.
"Oh," said Harry, as they were sucked through the window.
The last thing they saw was Luna waving a silent goodbye, taking another nibble from her gummy snake, and Snape looking rather surprised-ly at Ginny, as though he, like this author, had just remembered she was there.
And then the bank vault was gone.
Po Turforti-Seén marched up the front lawn of Hogwarts. He was going to find his son at last--dear Severus was just inside the Room of Requirement, in the school, and soon he would find him and everything would be OK. But just then, he paused, just as he reached the front door.
"You know," he said to himself rather thoughtfully, "I don't think I have anything very funny to say or do for this chapter. So I think I'll just stay here until the next one."
And so he sat down upon the front steps of Hogwarts, looked up at the sky, and began to wait.
"Where are we?" said Ron, looking around. They were standing on a great pile of gold, which had come along with them through the window, but they and the gold were now situated on the grounds of a great, sparkling castle, beneath the shadow of a wicked-looking tree.
"I dunno," said Harry. "Hermione?"
"Present," said Hermione although her voice echoed in a strange way.
"What?" said Ron and Harry.
"What?" said Hermione. "Weren't you taking attendance?"
"No," said Harry. He blinked, because blinking is commonly used to illustrate confusion, despite it being something that everybody does once every two to ten seconds. Then he looked around him. "Hermione where are you?"
"I'm under here," she said, and by "here" it seemed quite clear she meant "the gold and silver and jewels and such." Harry and Ron jumped off of said gold and silver and jewels and such, and began tossing it aside, trying to find Hermione beneath the pile...
At last they found a foot, and attached to the foot was a leg, and the hip bone was connected to the... LEG bone, and then the rest of Hermione was connected to that. However, there seemed something a bit peculiar about her head, which looked rather more like a golden loving cup than, in fact, a head.
"Hermione, you have a golden loving cup on your head," said Ron frankly.
"Do I, Professor?" said Hermione. "Do you think I could make it up after class?"
Harry and Ron both blinked, again to illustrate confusion rather than merely to remove irritants from the surface of the cornea and conjunctiva.
"I reckon she bumped her head pretty hard, when it got stuck in there," whispered Ron to Harry.
"Well, let's get it off," said Harry.
"Right," said Ron, and then he went up to Hermione and said "Scuse me, Hermione... if you'd just lean over a bit..." He leaned her over, and began to pull.
"What are you doing, Professor? Shouldn't you get back to your lecture on Deflating Draughts?"
"Blimey, Harry, she thinks I'm Snape!" said Ron, struggling awkwardly to pull the cup off of her head. "Come on and help me."
Harry went around and attempted to hold Hermione by the waste, while Ron tugged the cup from her head, but it was to no avail.
"I reckon it's stuck," said Harry.
"Yeah..." said Ron. He quirked his head to the side, as though deep in thought.
He pulled his wand from his pocket, aimed it at the cup, and shouted, "Engorgio!"
The cup swelled up greatly, to about three times the size of a head--unfortunately, however, so did its contents, and Hermione promptly fell over from top-heaviness.
Ron muttered the counter-spell, and Hermione's head returned to its normal size. Ron shook his head hopelessly.
"I don't have a clue what to do," he said.
Suddenly, Hermione's hand shot into the air.
"Erm..." said Ron, and then: "Miss... Granger...?"
"You should add the puffer-fish eyes, of course, and stir carefully," she said. "And then you should see if you can find any Horcruxes."
Ron blinked.
"Maybe she's coming round?" said Harry.
"Maybe..." said Ron. "But I suppose she's right, we should get back to looking for the Horcruxes."
Hermione beamed, having supplied the correct answer, but they couldn't see it because, of course, there was a loving cup upon her head.
Ron pulled Hermione to her feet, and began to lead her by the arm.
"That's funny," he said, looking up at the great sparkling castle. "So now we're on the grounds of Hogwarts while inside Hogwarts, in the Room of Requirement?"
"Erm, I don't think this is Hogwarts," said Harry. "Does Hogwarts usually sparkle?"
"Well, I dunno, some people seem to think it's in a little kids' book, don't they? And the stuff in those books tend to... sparkle..."
"Nah, this isn't Hogwarts," said Harry. "Look at that tree."
Ron looked at the wicked-looking tree, its branches twisting and turning around each other in some sort of strange, many-limbed hug. There was a great mass of clouds billowing around behind the tree.
Dun dun DUN...!
"What was that?" said Ron.
Hermione's hand shot into the air.
"...Miss Granger?" said Ron again.
"It sounded like dramatic music, likely indicating that there are great, menacing clouds swirling around behind that tree you mentioned, and that there's going to be a dramatic lightning strike right about now."
A great flash of lightning flashed across the sky, behind the tree.
"Blimey, she's a know-it-all even when she can't see."
Inside the loving cup, Hermione was beaming again, because he hadn't called her "insufferable" and she felt that was an improvement.
"Maybe we shouldn't go near that tree?" said Harry. "I mean, with all the dramatic things going on behind it, maybe it's dangerous or something."
"Good point," said Ron. "Let's go in the sparkly castle instead, and see if they have any ponies--er... I mean, see if there are any Horcruxes inside."
"Yeah," said Harry, and they marched towards the shiny, sparkly castle. When they reached the door, there was a nice, sparkly, very safe looking knocker in the shape of a unicorn. They knocked three times.
The door opened from the inside to reveal Lord Voldemort, cackling madly.
"Aha!" he said, cackling madly. "I knew that this plan was brilliant...! All my Death Eaters said, 'No, Master, build yourself a menacing fortress!' But I knew better, didn't I? I knew that I should build myself a sparkly palace, and then nobody would ever suspect that the darkest wizard who ever lived, Lord Voldemort, lived within...! Bwahaha..."
Ron blinked. Harry blinked. Hermione blinked, too, but they couldn't see it.
Harry thought fast. He hid his hands behind his back, and waved his wand stealthily.
"Erm," he said. "Did you order a... large cheese pizza with extra cheese, a medium meat-lover's, and a small Hawaiian... with pepperoni on the side?" Harry pulled a large pile of pizza boxes out from behind his back, which he had just stealthily conjured.
Voldemort blinked, which was rather different than when everyone else did, because his eyes were slits so he blinked the other way, and it was rather disturbing.
"Well, it TOOK you long enough," he said. He took a step back, and called to someone deep inside the castle. "PIZZA'S HERE!"
"Woohoo!" woohooed someone deep within the castle that sounded distinctly like Lucius Malfoy, if Lucius Malfoy were ever to "woohoo."
Lord Voldemort snatched the pizza boxes from Harry's hands, and slammed the door in their faces, cackling madly because he had gotten away without paying for them.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione all stood, dumbstruck, on the doorstep, and Hermione shook her loving-cupped head futilely.
"People these days," she said.
"Let's go," said Ron.
"Wait," said Harry. He leaned down and looked more closely at the sparkly, unicorn door knocker.
"I think this is a Horcrux," he said, in wonder.
"What?" said Ron. "The unicorn?"
Harry nodded.
"What makes you think that?" said Hermione.
"It says here, in little letters on the horn: 'I am Lord Voldemort's Horcrux, but you'll never know because you would never guess that the darkest wizard who ever lived would put a piece of his soul in a sparkly unicorn door knocker.' Wait, there's more: 'I am cackling madly at you, by the way.'"
"Wow," said Ron. "He's right, I never would've guessed."
"Well, destroy it, Harry!" said Hermione, urgently.
Ron and Harry both looked at Hermione, noticing for the first time that she seemed to have fully realized that they were not, in fact, Professor Snape.
Then Harry looked back at the door knocker.
"Reducto!" he said, and the unicorn was smashed into a million little pieces. Unfortunately, Harry had been given lessons by Ginny on improving his Reductor Curse, so he also left a rather large hole in the entire castle wall.
Inside, they could see, Voldemort and his Death Eaters were sitting around in their pajamas, eating the pizza, watching movies, and seemingly enjoying their sleep-over far too much to have noticed the lack of wall.
"We'd better go," murmured Ron.
"Yeah, I suspect so," said Harry, and the three of them ran for it.
"Where do we go now?" said Ron.
"I reckon we don't have any other choice, except... the tree!"
Dun dun DUN...!
"Oh, shut up," said Hermione, and they ran towards the wicked-looking tree, which it turned out had only been a menacing distraction intended by Voldemort to lead people into the safe-looking sparkly castle, and just behind the tree stood the door to the Room of Requirement.
"That was convenient," said Harry, as they stepped into the corridor, opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. Snape, Luna, and Ginny were already waiting in hall.
Snape blinked. Ginny blinked. Luna blinked, although that may have been entirely unrelated.
"What on earth does Miss Granger have upon her head?"
Beneath the loving cup, Hermione smiled, and her hand shot into the air.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.