Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
It's been a long time since I last updated, thanks for all the reviews on last chapter!
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The First Step is Fatal
Chapter 9: Haunted
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The castle was alit with festive floating pumpkins glowing with mischievous grins, in the place of the normal candelabras. Halloween was Thursday and anticipation shot through the students as the day came closer. Many of the denizens of the castle seemed excited as well, decorations rose as if lifted by invisible strings to hang on the walls and ceiling near the charms classroom. Ghosts tore through packs of school children who laughed at their antics. Odd luminous globes floated in the lake produced by the merpeople. At night the lake glowed green. Professor Binns taught an exciting class on the history of the upcoming holiday.
In Herbology, they helped carve pumpkins for the professor. Dean's was the most popular amongst the muggleborns students for being the face of a popular muggle villain. Behind Professor Sprout's back, he held the carved pumpkin in front of his face, and told some other students in a breathy voice that he was their father. Seamus' pumpkin gained a nasty cut when his wand jerked in his hand as he laughed to the point of almost crying. Neville did not understand why it was funny and neither did Ron from the confused look he was giving the other students. Oddly enough, Hermione did not seem to find it funny either.
Transfiguration utilized pumpkins as well and Neville was proud to say he was one of the first to complete it. Professor Quirrell was suspiciously out with a cold, admist the students cheering for an early free period, Neville shivered at the thought of the professor preparing some dastardly plan.
Everyone waited for Friday, as it would be the part of the first three day weekend for students taking potions. It would be a Snape free day for many students, barring Slytherin, and Neville was certain many Gryffindors would spend their time hosting a celebration in the common room. He would have enjoyed his week as well, if the practical class had not been moved to Wednesday.
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"Longbottom, you fool! Can you not see that this portion calls for five sprigs of juniper?"
"I only added five Professor! I promise!"
"Five points from Gryffindor for lying to my face. You cannot fool a Potions Master, boy."
"I'm not lying. I counted out five and checked it and checked!" He wasn't lying and he knew it. Ron made a shushing movement with his hands in an obvious attempt to get him to shut up. But it was the truth, Neville had only counted out five.
"Then you are a moronic buffoon. Most children less than half your age can count to five."
"But I…" Dean stepped on his foot.
"Another point from Gryffindor." The other side of the room snickered. "Your potion is dark grey, indicating that the plant components are overbalanced; it has killed the reaction of the trundelbug eyes and gilled antelope fur." Snape leaned down toward the cauldron, nostrils flaring. "It reeks of juniper. You've added more than five sprigs. A zero for the day, and if you wish to repeat that you did not add more than five, you will be polishing the floor in detention instead of being at the Halloween feast." Snape gave him a look; Neville kept his mouth buttoned shut.
Harry nudged Neville slightly from his spot on the bench, before taking command of the Gryffindor's left arm, and flexing Neville's fingers one at a time. Snape's thin lips dipped even further into a black scowl as Ron smirked.
Snape glared harshly at the Gryffindors. "The next person to interrupt will find themselves missing something normally attached to your wrists," Snape said, looking into the eyes of each Gryffindor student.
A murmur went up from the Slytherins that surprisingly, was not snickering.
Above the slight 'plips' of bubbles popping from simmering potion assignments, Pansy said to Goyle in a loud stage whisper, "He means your fingers you oaf!"
Hermione's face looked like she had swallowed a toad. "Hands," she muttered to herself.
One of Snape's eyes twitched slightly and his arm spasmed before he whipped about toward the front of the room, aura of menace following.
A yellow glow appeared above Neville's cauldron and grew steadily larger, growing twisted flames that formed a sphere. He exchanged a look of horror with his tablemates, Hermione was already backing away, thick history book held out in front of her. Directly across the table Ron whimpered and backed up. Neville heard a steady hum coming from the light before he dove under table, quickly joined by Dean and Ron. From another lab table Seamus bravely tossed a bucket full of water in their direction, before yanking Lavender away. The few drops that landed sizzled to steam. Saturated with water, Neville hunkered down next to Dean, prepared for the inevitable explosion.
An explosive boom rocked the space above Neville's cauldron and the room flashed white. The professor cursed, and came to a stop right in front of Neville's cauldron once more. Neville turned his head and watched Ron peak over the desk before gasping and trying to get out as fast as possible. Neville's bag wiggled when Ron accidently kicked it in his attempt to get up; Harry popped out when Neville undid the flask. Murmurs of appreciation went up around the room as whatever had appeared in the flash of light began to trill and sing. Harry's ears perked up and he scurried out in front of Neville before the boy could move into Ron's vacated space.
"Meddlesome man. It is not working, try something else." Neville heard Snape mutter as he maneuvered himself onto Ron's bench. The glowing light wasn't one of accidents after all. He found himself face to face with what could only be a phoenix. With feathers aflame, the bird looked about the room and blinked its beady black eyes. Students from other lab tables walked over when they realized that the bird was not a harbinger to one of Neville's usual cauldron eruptions.
"A phoenix!" Hermione said in amazement. Dean was ferociously scribbling on a muggle pad of paper, the bird, outlined in deft strokes of black.
The bird gave a confused warble from the edge of Neville's cauldron as it searched about the room. Snape reached over and grabbed the letter from the phoenix who gave disgruntled toot before vaporizing into a condensed ball of flame. Snape's long yellowed fingers flipped the note around before he stated annoyed, "Is anyone by the name of Harry Potter in this room?"
No one answered, a few shook their heads.
Harry jumped up to the table and purred, black tail wrapping around his paws.
"No?" Snape asked in a dark tone, "Then get back to work!" The envelope to address to Harry Potter ignited between his fingers, cinders drifting to the floor.
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"Hey Harry, look! You've made it into the Prophet once more." Neville whispered two days later on a cheerful Wednesday morning, as he slid the newspaper off the table.
Harry snorted at the article accidently sending the cricket into letting out a chirp.
Completely unbeknownst to him, he was part of the relief effort provided by the IWC to the wizard community near Mount Pinatubo. 'Well. at least I'm seeing the world,' he thought, words dripping with sarcasm,. A group of wizards were fighting against a humanoid monster built of stone and lava in the supplied image. A boy ran in front of the group, face obscured by black hair. Harry sighed. That must be him.
"It's the Prophet," Neville said in a sympathetic voice. "Sometimes they make up their own sources, when nothing interesting is going on."
'Annoying,' Harry answered in Morse code.
Neville and Harry had decided to use the cricket only in times where it would look strange if Neville was seen switching his quill from hand to hand. And even in cases like this, Harry had to use short words; it was too hard for either of them if he attempted to compose longer messages without a sheet of paper and decoder nearby. They had had to make up their own alphabet after all, and even a month later they were still having accidents.
Accidents translated into Neville receiving some pretty odd looks from his classmates. But then again, he did have what looked like a bug stuck in his hair.
For once, the library had actually been useful. While they were still coming up with a blank on how to find a way for Harry to create a body or reinvigorate his old one – Neville was completely against making an inferi out of it – some students had pointed out a book with a basic silencer spell. It took a while to get the hang of it, but Neville had been able to silence the cricket so that he was the only one to hear it. The spell wasn't perfect; if anyone got within a foot of the device they would be able to hear it as well.
And wouldn't that be amusing?
A quick sticking charm applied to the stone end and Harry had an ugly new collar bauble.
Harry snickered at the cricket dangling just above Neville's ear. All attempts the boy had made to hide it from view failed. One of the Gryffindor boy's spell attempts had caused the bug to move frantically every once in a while.
When Neville had visited the Weasley twins for help they, quickly told him to stop. From what Harry could understand, the magic device was very finicky. Too much magic angled at doing different things caused the spells to merge in new and unpredictable ways.
As it was, Neville's new hair accessory attracted a lot of attention. Harry's friend already had a reputation for being odd in all four houses among the younger students. Fred and George just thought it was a riot.
The black haired blur moved back into the photograph just as the lava monster barfed up magma at a wizard spelling water around it. Harry painstakingly chirped 'stupid newspaper' at his place on the bench, in the hope that Neville would be able to translate it out correctly.
"Well, of course it is. Gran always says it's just a propaganda machine for the Ministry. I'm a bit surprised they haven't mentioned you as a correspondent of Fudge." Neville buttered a toast point.
Harry meowed just as Neville raised the toast to his mouth. The cricked buzzed with static and writhed in its stuck spot. The boy dropped his toast and slapped a hand over the mechanical insect.
"Ah- hey!" The boy shouted when Harry stole the piece of bread.
They still had some bugs to work out, but Harry planned on using his advantage for as long as possible.
The Hufflepuffs, as one, arrived to the breakfast table. It was an oddity of that house that the others ignored or just accepted as common place; Hufflepuffs being the house of hard work and friendship after all. But to Harry it all seemed rather strange as it happened on schedule, everyday. For the most part, the other three houses trickled down to breakfast in small groups. It was rarely seen by the majority of Gryffindor, who tended to come down in the last twenty minutes. Neville himself had always been an early riser and was loath to stay in the dorms or common room early in the morning. Being the boy's 'pet', Harry came down at the same earlier time. The other two houses seemed to have the same sort of showing as Gryffindor; though Harry suspected the Ravenclaw common room was not filled with a large group of students furiously working on homework due later that day.
Harry was intrigued. With anything odd really, but this was just one of those things he vowed to find out at some point. The hat was right in that he had a unique perspective– especially when combined with his curiosity.With that, he poked Neville in the side and darted to the arriving Hufflepuffs.
Interesting or not, they all seemed to be in order by year and gender, girls on one side and boys on the other. It was also good practice for him and Neville to work on their form of Morse code. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Neville pull out his Herbology text and a sheet of parchment.
He jumped down from the table, lightly landing on stone floor and scurried forward along the side of the Gryffindor table.
A clustered group of Hufflepuff students, no older than third years, whispered animatedly to themselves a few in their group would turn to look at an older boy with glazed admiration. From the floor, Harry could hear their voices raise excitedly.
"Did you see Cedric last night? That was amazing. I can't believe he was able to do that. He'll totally get the position! McConkey must have been lax this summer. Poor bloke, beaten out by his reserve."
"He's been gunning for the position since second year."
"Is he any good? I fell asleep."
"Diggory's the best seeker on the field right now. As one of our reserves, he's practically an unknown."
"Expect the cup this year, boys."
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Neville wrote out each letter Harry spelled out using a key that they had come up with in the front of his herbology book. As it was his favorite class, and he liked looking through the book, it seemed a handy way to keep their code nearby.
"Where have you been all our lives, you little laugh generator?"
"Wha-?"
"Really Fred, we should tie some fireworks to this kid that shoot out when he says the most awesome things."
"You two seem to be down early; got something planned?" Neville looked at the two boys as they attempted to demonstrate innocence refined.
"Ron isn't up yet, so we figured that now would be the best time to break our fasts before he comes down and inhales it all."
"The house elves would just put out more you know." Neville replied with a scrunched up brow. The ones that belonged to the Longbottom family were quick to replace Uncle Algie's after dinner bowl of kelpie scales and chocolate.
"Never change little firstie, never change." George laughed.
"Well, change enough so that you will actually use these fireworks, we know you weren't too into pranking Percy. So as a concession, we want you to be one of the first to try these out."
"Did that emergency fire in your dorm have anything to do with the creation of them?" Neville tentatively questioned as held the package aloof by one corner.
"Got it in one!"
"Poor Lee, it accidently lit his dreads on fire. Some hair growing potion we swiped from our cauldron in potions a week before that had him right as rain!"
"Wait you guys stole a potion from Professor Snape? Are you mad?" Neville whispered nervously, fingers curling around the edge of the table, as if the professor was nearby.
"Not mad, just awesome. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if we weren't the only ones to swipe something from 'ole Snapey the Snakey. You just got to have good timing."
Neville shifted in his seat. "I think I'll keep my skin thanks. I have detention often enough."
"Still?" Fred's eyebrow raised. "You haven't figured out how to fly under the radar then?"
"Last week I followed the steps exactly, and it still erupted. It's gotten to the point where my table partner is the last Gryffindor to class." Neville fell forward and rested his head on the table.
"Well, buck up. You'll get it soon."
George slid a small parchment wrapped pouch across the table. "Here, we're planning on setting a few off on Halloween, see how it goes."
Neville poked the package lightly with one finger.
"Wait. You haven't tested these yet?"
A huzzah went up over a portion of the Hufflepuff table.
"Wonder what they're happy about?"
"Their new seeker is supposed to be pretty good."
"What new seeker?"
"Um. Cedric. Cedric Diggory." Neville said, looking at the scribbles in his note pad.
"Why those little sneaks! Figuring that they could wait until their first match to put out that information, hm?"
"Won't do them any good."
"We've seen some of his moves." Fred rubbed his chin. "Life saver you are– with this Wood will keep off our backs."
Percy tutted.
"Can I see this?"
"Oh, yeah. Here."
"What a surprise. I had wondered where the headmaster has been." Percy pointed at the background of the picture on the front page.
"But that article is about Harry Potter."
Percy tapped one of the wizards in the photograph of the imposter Harry Potter and pushed it over to Neville.
"As part of the international board and one of the strongest wizards of this age, its no wonder they sent him there." Percy frowned. "He's neglecting his duties here and to the minister. He ought to step down and stay in England."
"Ah." Neville politely affirmed.
Percy gave him a look, eyebrows raised a fraction. "You would do best to stay away from Fred and George, I won't over look your antics if you get involved with them." Harry, who arrivied back at the table in time to hear Percy's statement, sniffed in disapproval.
"I won't!" Neville said to the other boy.
Percy's eyebrow raised in disbelief.
Neville, not wanting to start any trouble, nodded weakly to the other boy and ran off to his first class.
Twenty minutes early.
A/N: A very long time since the last update and it is a bit shorter. I've had it done for a while but haven't posted because I was hoping to do some major editing on the early chapters; fat lot of good that did as I really hate editing huge chunks of text it feels like work. And I already do work when spending hours at a time making daggers in Skyrim. :P
Honestly, I'm going to stop making promises with chapter updates as every time I do something new happens – RL job, second job, games, lack of wanting to write, etc.
Chapters from now on will be shorter so I can manage them easier – that's one I won't break for sure.
As a side note- If you have not heard anything about SOPA an act that could be voted into a new law, educate yourself. It will majorly screw up free speech on the internet if it passes.
R/R please.
