Thanks to all reviewers: southern-reader, Zoe Anderson, Dbarr74, psychoyoshi79, sirius009, Ravenmore45, darkanomoly, HolyDragoon, god of all, rb2312, and Black Wolf 101.
Chapter 7: Pranks and Preparation
"So let me get this straight, Harry asked you for the password into our common room?" questioned a disbelieving Susan. The two Hufflepuffs were making their way to breakfast before class.
"Yup," answered Hannah in a cheery mood.
"And you didn't think to question him or doubt his reasons?"
Hannah thought for a moment. "Of course I had my doubts, but then I realized that Harry would never intentionally hurt someone. If he's planning on taking those gits down a peg or two, I am more than willing to help out."
There was a moment of silence before Susan broke it. "So," started Susan with a smug grin. "Only a few days and Harry's already defending you from the big bad housemates."
Hannah blushed slightly. "I think he only feels guilty that he's the cause for my treatment. Plus he really doesn't like Zacharias too much," she joked.
Susan only smiled and nodded as they walked through the doors of the Great Hall. She didn't even ask if they would be sitting with the Gryffindors again, it was a given. Both girls enjoyed the current company there much more.
Hannah's heart jumped when Harry gave her a small smile as she sat down next to him. She was a bit puzzled though when she realized that he actually seemed to be reading the Daily Prophet.
"Um Harry, you aren't actually reading the Prophet? Are you?" Hannah questioned suspiciously. She knew there wasn't a scandalous story about him in there. Those were the only occasions that he did.
Harry flipped a page nonchalantly and spoke, "No, not really. This is my inconspicuous look. How does it look?" He had wagged his eye brows in what was supposed to be a mysterious way.
"Like you've just stolen all of Malfoy's hair gel to tick him off," answered Hannah. At seeing Harry's contemplative look, she asked incredulously, "Would you actually do that?"
"Maybe," he joked. "At least I look less obvious than Neville."
Hannah followed his gaze to where Neville was sitting next to Susan. He had his chin down on the table with a text book propped up around him. She had to suppress a snort at the ridiculousness of the sight.
"You don't prank people often, do you Neville?" deadpanned Susan. The four friends laughed at Neville's discomfort. Harry and Neville both put down their 'reading material' and began to eat.
"So what did you guys actually do?"
Hermione answered for the boys, "They won't tell anyone. They think it will be funnier if we react like everyone else."
"That's because it will be," stated Harry, who was now brandishing a fork. "It should come together quite soon actually."
As soon as he finished talking, Hannah noticed that the suspected targets had just entered the hall. Ernie, Zacharias and Justin, as usual, sat a short distance from them.
Hannah sat there wondering when it was going to happen, but suddenly she saw Zacharias send her a glare. His normally blonde hair flared red, before settling into a dull red. At his change, Hannah's eyes bugged out in surprise. When she turned back to her friends, she could see them all holding back laughter.
Over at the Hufflepuff table, Zacharias didn't take too kindly to Ernie and Justin laughing at him, so he punched them both in their shoulders. When Justin, then Ernie yelled at him, their hair flashed yellow and blue respectively. As the colors dulled for a moment, they activated a moment flashing red, yellow , then blue. The three Hufflepuffs looked confused as all four tables started laughing at them. The teachers were already glaring at the Weasley twins, but they had their hands up (in quite possibly the first time) innocence.
After the teachers calmed down the students a bit, Susan spoke up, "So you changed their hair colors? That doesn't seem so bad. If you had a green one, you would have all the house colors."
Harry had an evil smirk. "Who says we don't," he teased. "Hannah could you do me a favor? Can you laugh like I just told a funny story?"
Hannah wore a puzzled look on her face and asked, "Why would I do that?"
"Just humor me."
She put on her best acting face and let out a very staged. "Haha." Most people seemed to look at her like she was nuts, but she noticed that Ron was looking in their direction with contempt on his face. Ron's hair then transformed bright green and dulled down. Out of the corner of her eye, Hannah noticed that all of the colorful heads flashed in series: red, yellow, blue, and green.
"And there's target four," interjected Neville. The hall was laughing collectively once they realized that it happened again, but to a Gryffindor this time.
Hermione had a hand over mouth. "Oh my," she said, trying unsuccessfully to stiffle her giggles. "So will their hair flash in that order all day?"
"No, anytime one of them activates the charm, it'll add on to the chain," clarified Harry.
"What causes it to activate?"
"Anger," answered Neville with a smirk.
Susan had a malicious glint in her eyes at his words. "This," she said pointing towards the victims, "Is going to be fun." Hannah and Harry shivered slightly at her words and what they implied for the rest of the day.
After watching various teachers try and revert the prank, there were a couple more instances of anger issues, furthering the color chain. On the way to Herbology, Susan managed to send off a few unnoticeable tripping jinxes at the boys, furthering the amusement of everyone. By the time the group reached Herbology, the pattern went red, yellow, blue, green, blue, red, red, green, blue, and yellow. It was quite mesmerizing to watch.
Professor Sprout was quite irritated with the four boys because they were disrupting her class. Hannah was having a difficult time trimming her plants because she kept dazing off, dreaming other absurd pranks that Harry would do for her. She also felt kind of guilty that he planned all of this out, wasting time he should be using on preparing for the First Task. Hannah turned towards Harry, only to find him looking over at her carefully. When she smiled in thanks, he grinned and got back to work.
The rest of the day went on similarly. Sometime around lunchtime, the four targets realized that anger was triggering the colors and they were able to halt it from continuing to grow.
After classes for the day, the five friends made their towards an abandoned classroom to help Harry learn the summoning charm for the First Task.
Neville and Susan sat off to the side to watch as Hannah and Hermione began instructing Harry. The two girls were summoning small things around the room, so Harry could get a feel for what he should try.
"Just concentrate on what you need and will it to come to you," instructed Hermione as Hannah nodded.
"Alright, here goes nothing. Accio!" The book that he was tried to summon twitched momentarily, but remained firm. He tried again instantly, but got much of the same result. After a few minutes of trying Hermione spoke up.
"Concentrate, Harry, concentrate. "
"What d'you think I'm trying to do?" said Harry angrily. "A great big dragon keeps
popping up in my head for some reason..."
"Not to mention the fact that Trelawney predicted that those born in July should be wary of dying a sudden, violent death," piped in Neville.
Hermione tsked. "Not helping Neville."
Susan hopped off a desk. "I have an idea." She winked at Hannah across the room before turning to Harry. "Let's see how well you work under pressure. Fodio!" Susan shot off a stinging hex directly at Hannah.
Harry's eyes widened in surprise before yelling out, "Accio Hannah!"
Hannah only had a moments notice before she was jerked away from the oncoming hex and colliding with Harry, knocking him over. For the second time in two days, Hannah was staring into his green eyes while she was on top of him. Knowing that they weren't alone, she jumped up and brushed herself off with an embarrassed blush on her face.
"What the hell Susan!" shrieked Hannah once she realized what had happened.
Susan's response was to grin and say, "It worked didn't it. All Harry needed was a little bit of incentive. He would never let any harm come to you." She said the last sentence with some emphasis on the word 'you'. Hannah found herself looking sown to hide her emotion. There was an awkward silence momentarily.
"Riiiight," commented Neville in the corner to break the silence.
"Are you going to finally tell us what you plan is to take on the dragon?" questioned Hannah. Hermione was nodding adamantly behind her.
Harry seemed to think about it for a moment before smiling. "Nope. I'm playing this one close to my chest. I know that if I told you guys, you would be scolding me and making me second guess myself." Seeing Hermione try to interrupt him, Harry continued, "And before you call me foolish, I DO have a plan B in case it fails. After all, I am trying to win this bloody tournament." He said the last statement without breaking eye contact with Hannah. Her heart warmed, knowing that he was trying to win knowing what she did in his name.
As they seemed to file out of the classroom, Harry called out, "I'll just be in here a bit more. Just want to perfect the charm for tomorrow."
Hannah chirped up, "I'll stay with you, we can play catch with each other." The others just nodded and continued out the door. "How about I give you some quick questions about yourself to train yourself to not lose focus while doing the charm?"
"Okay," replied Harry. He quickly transfigured a quill into a small ball and began waiting for Hannah. What he didn't know, was that Hannah viewed this as a great opportunity to learn more trivial things about him.
She quickly summoned the ball and asked the first question, "What's your favorite color?"
"Blue, like the sky." He summoned it successfully before she charmed it back.
"Favorite teacher?"
"Professor Lupin." Another successful summon and vice versa.
"Night owl or early bird?"
"Night owl for sure." He got it the third time in a row. Now she was going to try and shake his concentration.
"Boxers or briefs?" At her question, the ball dropped out of the air and rolled towards Harry's shocked face.
Hannah only chuckled before attempting to summon the ball back to her. However, during mid-flight, Harry answered with a straight face, "Thong" and she completely lost her concentration and let the ball bounced off her head. They both stared at each other for a moment, before breaking down and laughing until their sides hurt.
"You know Hannah, you should really work on your concentration. If you're so willing to fluster someone, you should be even more aware of retaliation," joked Harry as he walked up to her.
"I'll keep that in mind," laughed a cheerful Hannah. They walked out of the classroom with huge grins on their faces. That was enough practice for the day.
By the time dinner came around, the five friends were chatting and watching Ernie, Justin, Zac, and Ron's hair flashing their respective colors. Since they seemed to have ceased all form of anger for the time being, their hair just flashed in a very long and complicated pattern over and over. From Hannah's count, their hair changed sixty-one times before repeating the sequence.
Susan had to satisfy her curiosity from before, "You couldn't have charmed the boys directly. The teachers would have been able to revert them. What did you charm?"
Harry grinned, then replied, "The 'Support Cedric' badges for the Hufflepuffs and Ron's 'lucky' socks. That was his excuse to never clean them." Hannah actually vomited a bit in her mouth at the statement.
"When will their hair revert back to normal?" inquired Hermione.
"Whenever someone is up for the challenge," answered Harry ominously. The girls only raised their eyebrows in response. Thankfully, they didn't have to wait long for the answer.
As dinner came to a close, the five friends watched as Luna Lovegood walked between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables silently. She stopped right next to Ron, Ernie, Zacharias, and Justin and began tapping their heads. Hannah was confused at first by what she was doing. She seemed to be tapping their heads in a specific order and as she did, their hair would turn bright for a second before dulling down again. Hannah let out an "Oh" when she realized that she tapped them exactly how the chain of brightness would occur. The boys were too shocked by her actions that they didn't even object to her absurd tapping. After about thirty seconds of silence, the four boys' heads reverted back to their natural color.
Luna seemed to be waiting for something as the boy's began celebrating their return to form. Out of nowhere a voice yelled out, "DING, DING, DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!" Luna merely smiled and began walking away towards the doors. All attention was brought back to the reverted boys, when their clothes began to disappear. Leaving them only in their boxer shorts as the hall watched them run towards the door. Ron's boxers had Viktor Krum's name on them, which caused Krum to groan in disgust.
The silence was broken by Susan's monotone voice, "That was the creepiest prize I have ever seen."
After a moment or two, the Hall exploded into laughter. Some people were banging their fists on the table from laughing at the embarrassed four. Harry was doing his best to contain his smile, but he caught Hannah's eye and sent her his trademark lopsided grin.
Hermione was the first of the friends to say something. She was almost in shocked silence. "Do you mean to tell me that you just turned them into a human game of Simon Says? Oh and then proceeded to remove their clothing?"
Before Harry or Neville could respond, Fred and George jumped onto the Gryffindor table and began bowing in reverence randomly into the crowds. "We are not worthy! Please join us!"
Hannah looked up towards Professor Dumbledore to see if he would punish the Weasley's for creating an additional spectacle. Dumbledore's eyes were twinkling merrily as he watched the entertainment with an amused expression. She did, however, start choking down her laughter when she saw Professor McGonnagal banging her head lightly against the table in exasperation.
Hope you liked the chapter! It definitely had a lighter tone that was fun to think up. Please continue to review the story. As some of you may noticed, I was able to incorporate some of your ideas. Don't get me wrong, I have the plot lined out, but I find it fun taking in suggestions. REVIEW!
-BB
