Chapter 10-Birthday, the Aftermath and All hallows eve
After a scream of, "Happy Birthday Hermione," and Hermione regaining consciousness, all of Hermione's friends crowded around and sung her a happy birthday, before the mingling began, with gossip mainly from Lavender Brown, with Pavarti Patil and it was about the newest hot fashions in the muggle world, as Hermione just added in her corrections when ever it was needed, but it was obvious that she was not into the conversation, so with the help of her twin sister: Padma, Pavarti changed the topic to that of current affairs in the muggle world, mostly dealing with the Justice League's latest fight with the Injustice Gang of: Joker, Bane, Weather Wizard, Captain Boomerang, Venom Ivy (O.C. plant using villain to Replace Pamela's Poison Ivy, after she turned good) and Black Spider, which somewhat affected London, as Professor Sprout was bought in to help tame and contain an outgrowth of constrictor vines. It was this event that allowed Poison Ivy and Professor Sprout to meet and become friends.
A few hours later and the party move to the table set up for lunch, as the plates on the table began to fill up with food, which was prepared and cooked by: Harry Potter, with drinks sourced from the Three Broomsticks by the Weasley Twins and Percy Weasley (who was there to act as chaperone). Lunch was the same as the start, with friends talking about current affairs, though this it was magical world related news mainly from the new laws the Wizengamot voted with states: All crimes must be investigate, no matter how guilty the effected party is, making it easier to sort out the liars.
After lunch came presents, as Hermione opened the present from Harry, to reveal a blue-hued-white-gold locket, with Japanese Kanji for friendship behind a diamond, that was connected by a fine platinum chain and a pair of silver and sapphire bracelets. The sight of the present caused all the girl to squeal at the beauty of it, as Percy took the time examine the jewelry closer and said, "These are handmade, they don't resemble any designs I've seen and seen I've started dating Penelope I got an eye for what jewelers sell," (A.N. While the Weasleys are somewhat struggling to make ends meet for cash, family members like Percy, Fred and George would apply for casual time positions at places in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, mainly doing things like stacking shelves. Also Ginny will be doing the same, but right now Molly won't let her and Ron has no plan to as he is a lazy unmotivated bum).
After calming down somewhat from the awe of Harry's gift, Hermione moved onto the next gift and it was from: the Patil twins, whom had gotten her Homework dairy and a professional calligraphers quills set, made from a bald eagle. Before move to Nevilles gift that was a paid holiday to Magical Perth. Soon all the presents were open and then it was time for the Birthday cake, which was made to look like a page flipping book, it was a chocolate mudcake, with the pages made of the Hard icing you find on wedding cakes.
After cake, the party wind down to a close and Percy escorted the Weasley twins back to the Gryffindor dorms, as Harry led the House of El back theirs, where: Hermione right into her new books and was not seen for the rest of the day. Hours earlier at the start of the party, Dumbledore was found within his office pouring threw notes and reports delivered by his teachers, while going white in panic as he found, that his efforts to keep the students from gaining power that could usurp him. But that was not the biggest problem, as he discovered that Lily was in the process of sending a letter to his old 'teacher' and 'friend' discussing the blatant theft of the Philosopher Stone, by himself and hoped the Board doesn't find out about it.
Back to the present as Harry and the rest his house, joined Hermione in doing something that relax them, A.K.A. Harry went into trunks workshop and began to pound some metal to make a new Damascus billet, made from: Titanium, 1320 Spring Steel and Adamatium (A.N. Yeah I know: Marvel Comics metal, my story don't care). As others either read or play wizarding games.
The day after Hermiones birthday was a Monday, meaning that the students were now back in class, to hand in their weeks worth of written homework issued the week before by: Flitwick, McGonagall and Sprout, but not Blood, as he prefers in class assignments and test, so his assigned homework was that of the ancient and powerful artifacts/legends surrounding: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin, which are; the Sword of Bravery (Gryffindor), Cup of Healing (Hufflepuff), Diadem of Wisdom (Ravenclaw) and Chamber of Secret (Slytherin [A.N. yes I know that the chamber is a location, but this was to fill the legends surrounding a founder, since the Locket is a females locket in my story and is owned by his daughter, who bought the night after her 19th birthday]).
Tempus omit to the morning of Halloween:
It was now approaching Halloween and the students were excited, because at the suggestion of Lily Potter, the school Head Students (Head Boy and Girl) was going to have a costume dinner party, were all the all were to dress up as mythical/superhuman characters, of that been said, Harry was going as his superhero identity: Super-mage, while several of the House of El were going as members to the Justice League with: Hermione as Zatanna, Padma as Artemis, Hannah Abbot going as Miss Martian and Pavarti going as Poison Ivy, with several girls as female Justice members, with the men like Neville going as Superboy, Theodore was going as Kid Flash and Blaise Zabini going as Aqualad. To that end Harry had a now adult Hedwig transport the teams spare suits to add to the realism of all hallows eve.
But the party was tonight, so with the House of El's preparations done, they than headed for their first class: Potions and endured the failed sabotage attempts from Slytherin house, as each of the volatile ingredients stop in midair and were summoned towards Lily Potter, who not only saw the ingredients fly across the room, who threw it and gave them each a months worth of detention. Aside from the failed attempts of potion sabotage, there were also the constant failings of Ronald Weasley, who of which: had not even started reading the chapter on the brewed potion and simply copied those around him, leading to a KABOOM as his fifth cauldron exploded from the heat of the fire, making it worst as this cauldron belonged to his brother Percy and Percy himself had potions in the next class.
After potions was History and it had another round of Detentions given to the lazy students that had still yet to learn that Professor Blood doesn't tolerate slackers in his class and woke the students up by saying, "Change! Change! O' form of man! Free the prince forever damned! Free the might from fleshy mire! Boil the blood in the heart for fire! Gone! Gone! O' form of man Rise the demon Etrigan!" as fire formed around him and changed his appearance to the demons form and tap them on the shoulder to wake them and get into their faces. This action usually got him complaints from the students via there Heads of House, but his standard replied was, "I am here to teach a class, not offer an extra bedroom and if they fall asleep in my class then it should be up to me on how they should woken up, if they don't like it then they should not sleep in class," from Jason Blood, while the House Heads frowned at the method, they had to let it go and tell their students concentrate in class.
Following History was Lunch which was half an hour of chatting and several more complaints; mainly from the Slytherins over still not have Snape as their Head of House or Potions Professor, since they were so used to not getting punished that they always played around. Before the dinner party that evening, there was a free period for study purposes and then there was Charms, which had gone threw changes at the request of Dumbledore, whom had setup a seating arrangement for the class, so it would make Hermione sit next to Ron, who he had given the mission to challenge Hermione's skills and then insult her for doing the job, and being the loyal prick he was Ron said, "Yes Sir," in a dopey slur.
So during charms, Harry sat with Dean Thomas and watched as the idiot called: Ronald Weasley flailing his arm around like he was trying to poke a classmates eye out, when he is stopped by Hermione and preceded to challenger her. Accepting Ron's challenge, Hermione expertly swished and flicked her wand, with the incantation of, "Wingardium Leviosa," as she levitated the issued feather.
After Hermione had passed the challenge, Ron leant forward onto his desk and put his arms under his head saying, "Fucking know-it-all nightmare," which was muffled enough to allow Hermione to hear it, but with the help of her housemates and close friends, she was able to brush aside the insult and remain listening to the teacher. Not knowing that his insult had no effect, Ron simply stayed in his position and waited for the end of class.
Three quarters of an hour had passed, and it was the end of classes for the day, which meant the girls of House of El, kidnapped each other and headed for the woman's dorm, to prepare for the costume dinner, as the boys minus Harry lounged around for a few minutes and Harry grabbed a book on alchemy he had started two days ago, resuming from where he had left off. After Harry was able to get threw 2 chapters, it was time for the boys to get changed, as the girls finished their preparations and once the guys were finished, they headed for the commonroom and waited for the girls.
5 minutes later, the girls came down from their dorms and showed themselves off to the guys, and happy with the results, the girls shared themselves between the guys and headed for the Great Hall. In the great hall, Dumbledore was in his seat – dressed as what he believed Merlin had looked like, with long flowing purple robes, a wizards hat in purple and even a sorcerers staff, which of course was a invention of his allows him to fuse his wand to the wood of his wand and still allow him to cast spells, but it was basically a jacket for a wand to change the appearance of a persons wand – as he mentally smiled to himself thinking, 'This plan will work, those mudbloods, especially the smart ones are always self conscious about their smarts and are easily sadden, all I need to do is wait for Tom current host to 'troll' the school and Harry one friend short and in his grief, I'll swoop in and regain my cont-' before he mental train slammed to a halt.
At the entrance to the hall, Harry stood there with: the Patil twins in one arm, while Daphne Greengrass and Hermione Granger were in the other arm. This sight was the cause of disbelief in Dumbledore, not knowing that and then finally realizing that: Hermione had grown out of letting insults affect her and was ready to have dinner. Throughout dinner, Dumbledore fought himself hard to keep himself calm, while also try to plan a plan b, when it came to him as he thought, 'Imperious curse,' before excusing himself and went off to hide himself under a stealth charm of his own make and then re-entered the hall, making his way to line of fire for him to shoot the curse at Hermione.
Firing his curse, Dumbledore gained control of Hermione and ordered her to take a really long bathroom break alone. So with that ordered, Hermione obeyed and left the hall. After Dumbledore used his curse, he left the hall invisibly to return to the hall legitimately and started to play the waiting game.
Dumbledore's waiting game had him wait for 30 minutes, with desert now on the way, the hall doors slammed open and in ran a loner Slytherin student, wearing his trademark hat and shouted, "Troooooll in the dungeons, troll in the dungeons," with a meek pause, before saying, "thought you ought to know." Watching on with a mental grin, Dumbledore mentally orders his slave to approach the dungeons as he addresses the students in the hall, "Alright everyone calm down," after the use of a firecracker charm, as he then gets the halls attention and continues with, "Prefects, you will escort your houses to your commonrooms and Teachers you will follow me to the Dungeons," as he hurriedly led the teachers away, before at least: Lily, could protest.
After the teachers had left, Harry however took over and said, "Slytherin house, Hufflepuff house and House of El, as our commonrooms are near or on the way to the dungeons, I suggest we all stay here where it is safe and secure," before looking at the older prefects, seeing that they agreed and one Hufflepuff prefect then said, "Good plan, either Dumbledore was panicking or he was trying to get us killed, so we stay and do a head count," as he directed his female counterpart to start.
Already counted, Harry could see that Hermione was the only one not here and went to an older student asking, "Where is the closest toilet?" the student looked at him weird and Harry explained, "My housemate Hermione went to the toilet," before adding an afterthought with, "She did look a little dazed though," when he focuses back in and bellows, "Shit! Dumbledore's trying to kill her," rocketing out of the hall.
Out in the entrance hall, Harry place use his masks x-ray function and discovered, that Hermione was on the Dungeon level, 2 yards from where the troll was and 20 yards away were the teachers from the troll. Throwing all caution away, Harry directed all of his yellow sun energized cells and flooded his body, before jumping forward and flew at mark 1 to the dungeons. Flying threw the levels of Hogwarts, Harry knew that confronting the troll would draw the teachers to the location of the troll and with that in mind Harry flew in to the dungeons, bypassing the teachers and Dumbledore, aimed for the troll.
A loud smash, caused the castle to shake at its foundations and drew the teachers, with Dumbledore cursing up a storm, as his should be minions investigated the disturbance. The first thing they came across was the splinters of a troll favorite weapon: a club fashioned from a redwood tree, between before more impact blows could be heard a little ways away and before they find what it was, the answer came to them, with a flying troll skidding pass them.
Once the troll flew pass, Harry launched pass as well, gut checking the troll and started to carry it to the ground level, leaving the teachers (bar Lily and Dumbledore [who the later has the emotional range of: anger, scheming {the emotion one would feel when scheming or planning} and fear]) dumbfounded, but didn't dwell on it as a scared Hermione stumbled in and collapse besides Lily, who asked, "Miss Granger! Why are you down here?" "I don't know professor! All I remember is backing out and feeling the really bad desire to go to the toilet, as well as use the toilet in the dungeons," before mentioning, "though I don't remember drinking that much during dinner," was Lily's answer.
Back with Harry as he made to the entrance courtyard, where he let go of all his restraints and let loose a massive, shockwave inducing, and flying uppercut and caused the troll to flip, straight for the forbidden forest.
