Chapter Thirty-four
The Truth about the Visions
"So what, exactly, is going on?" Oliver asked, looking around the trashed office.
"Oh, the usual," McGonagall said dryly. "Potter, Granger and Malfoy had a fistfight. Something about driving each other mad. That was just before Weasley ran in, screaming like Paul Revere."
Snape grinned as he bent over to pick up a slimy green creature. "That was absolutely priceless—'Malfoy go boom!'" he mimicked.
McGonagall laughed. "I thought it was far better when Granger leaped at Malfoy. I've never seen her just starting beating someone like that."
"I missed that part," Snape said, repairing a jar with his wand and dropping the creature inside. The jar automatically began to fill with the same slimy liquid that now coated the floors. "Must have been when somebody Stunned me."
"Terribly sorry about that, Severus," McGonagall said, trying not to laugh and failing.
Oliver shook his head, too weary to even think about sorting out this new bit of confusing information. "Minerva said you might have something for a hangover?" he asked Snape.
"Top drawer," Snape told him, pointing at the desk. "You'll find a bunch of bottles; you want the one that says 'You Knew Better than to Drink All That, Severus.'"
Oliver gave him an odd look and opened the top drawer; it was sectioned off into deep pockets, each big enough to hold about a dozen small flasks, and each section containing a different sort of potion. The bottles were all labeled with odd things like "You Know You Can't Handle Thai Food, You Idiot" and "What Would Be Better for Your Blood Pressure than an Anti-Stress Potion? Quitting Your Job." The handwriting didn't appear to be Snape's, which made the humor of the labeling seem a lot less strange.
"So you actually did use that labeling device Filius gave you for your birthday," McGonagall remarked.
"Oh, be quiet," Snape mock-growled.
McGonagall chuckled, then grinned. "So… Mr. Malfoy's having visions of Granger, is he?"
"Interesting, isn't it?" Snape said with an evil grin.
"He's having WHAT of Hermione?" Oliver demanded.
"Oh, be quiet, Wood, and drink your potion," McGonagall said, and came over to sit in an armchair in front of Snape's desk, smiling like a teenager with a juicy piece of gossip. "Why do you think he was thinking of her during the spell?"
"Probably because she was trying to stop him," Snape said thoughtfully, "but I suppose there could be… other reasons."
"Oh, Potter will have a fit!" McGonagall said gleefully.
"He was bitten by Dorwi—er, the Cheese Spirit, too. I doubt he came all the way down here for Draco's benefit. He's probably got some sort of vision of her in his head, too. Or… if he was staring at Draco, wondering what Draco was doing…"
"No WONDER he's losing his mind!" McGonagall exclaimed, clapping her hands together.
"What are you two talking about?" Oliver asked, gulping his potion down quickly and watching them suspiciously.
"Potter, Granger and Malfoy," McGonagall said. "I can't recall if we explained yesterday or not, but… you see…"
"Yesterday, in my class, Draco unleashed a nasty sort of Cheese Spirit—"
"There's such a thing as a Cheese Spirit?"
"Oh, yes. Cheese Demon, actually, but that's not the point. Anyway, this Cheese Spirit is conjured up because of a botched love potion, a complex potion that, when used properly with the right sort of incantation, can force others to fall in love with you…"
"…Draco… Malfoy? HE tried to brew a LOVE potion?"
"Yes, well, his motives had nothing to do with love, but again, not the point. As I was saying, when the spell is done properly, it will only work upon the person you visualize during the incantation—in this case, a love poem written by the castor—"
"Malfoy wrote a—"
"Yes, Wood, he did! Stop interrupting! Anyway, when it goes wrong, the Cheese Spirit is called. If and only if it bites you, you'll end up having dreams about the person you were trying to cast upon and thinking about them far too much. You'll also become mildly psychic, but that's neither here nor there."
"Malfoy is psychic?" Oliver repeated, understandably alarmed.
"Well, not really. Most of the times, the visions center almost exclusively around the person you were thinking of, and while the visions are accurate, they don't really make enough sense for you to understand them until they come true."
"…And what does this have to do with Hermione?" Oliver asked.
"Well, Draco said he wasn't visualizing anyone during the potion… but now he can't get Granger out of his head. So either he was thinking about her at the time because she was sitting next to him or trying to stop him—"
"Or he fancies Granger," McGonagall interrupted with a wicked grin.
"—and the same goes for Potter. He was probably thinking about Granger at the time, also… and possibly thinking about Granger AND Draco. So Potter would be having dreams about being in love with Granger, Draco or whoever, and having visions about their future—"
"—and dear little Malfoy can't stop thinking about Granger," McGonagall finished.
"It's sort of like karma. You try and infringe upon someone's free will, you messed with magic you weren't prepared to wield, and the Cheese Spirit turns it back upon your head," Snape explained. "The effects only last for about a week, but one would guess that's enough time to teach someone a lesson."
"Why a Cheese Spirit?" Oliver asked, frowning.
"Probably because whatever higher being came up with it had a twisted sense of humor," Snape said with a shrug.
"What caused this potion to go wrong, anyway?" McGonagall asked.
"Oddly enough, Muggle root beer."
"…Severus, you got this whole thing out of a book, no?" she said thoughtfully.
"Yes."
"How would the witch or wizard who wrote this book know about the ill effects of root beer on a love potion?"
"Actually, it's not about the root beer. It's the added herbs. Root beer has a lot of common potions ingredients in it. Certain herbs aren't meant to mix in certain cases, and this is one of them. The Cheese Spirit Phenomenon happens when too many herbs used in love magic go into the potion and negatively affect the rose petals. It was discovered almost twelve hundred years ago by the potions' creator's younger sister, who was attempting to help assure his success and added a few too many herbs. They're also the ones who came up with the banishing spell for the Cheese Spirit… of course, it took them five years of research and some sort of quest that led them to Thailand…"
"What on earth made you research all of this?" Oliver asked.
"Er… morbid curiosity," Snape said innocently, and went back to cleaning up his office.
"So," Oliver said a few minutes later, "when are you planning on telling Harry and Hermione the truth about the visions?"
"What do you mean?" Snape asked, looking surprised.
"When are you going to clue them in? Harry and Malfoy don't know what's really going on, right? They don't know that their dreams are false and that their thoughts are being influenced and that their visions…" Oliver trailed off and looked at McGonagall, hoping that if Snape wouldn't tell them, she would.
McGonagall and Snape grinned at each other in a purely mischievous way. "Oh, they'll figure it out," Snape said casually. "They're smart kids."
Harry, Hermione and Draco completed their walk to Flitwick's classroom in silence. Smiling, he ushered them in; Ron was already there, sitting in the far corner and writing furiously. He looked up when they entered… and surprisingly, he didn't glare. Neither Harry nor Hermione could read his expression at all before he went back to his writing. Harry and Hermione looked at each other curiously before accepting their exams from Flitwick and getting started.
All three of them did very well on the test; with the prank war going on, Charms was currently the most-studied subject in Hogwarts. (Draco wrote twice the required length on repeated phrase jinxes.) Ron finished only a few moments before them and left without a backwards glance. However, the moment they stepped outside the classroom, they found Ron waiting for them; he turned to Hermione with a nervous but hopeful look on his face.
"I'm sorry," he told her. "I really am. I… I didn't mean…"
Hermione, whose anger with Ron had been steadily replaced by sadness, smiled in relief and threw her arms around him; Draco yelped as he was jerked sideways. "It's okay," she said. "Don't worry about it."
Ron grinned, his relief matching Hermione's as he held her close. He looked up at Harry hesitantly. "Are we okay?" he asked uncertainly.
Harry grinned. "Of course we are."
"Good," Ron said, hugging Hermione tighter.
The next three days were some of the best Harry, Ron and Hermione had had since the start of the prank war. The three of them joked and laughed and studied together as though nothing had happened, and it almost seemed as if Draco wasn't there. The twins left Hogwarts, claiming that they'd left Lee in charge of the joke shop for far too long, though they forgave Harry and Hermione completely and promised to return on Friday to hang out. Ginny calmed down rather quickly, especially after learning that Ron and Hermione were no longer fighting and after Oliver went up to her and explained that whatever he'd said about lemon drops was just crazy talk and that Dumbledore was as nice as ever. Ginny now spent most of her time with Harry, Ron and Hermione; they studied together in the evenings and researched both the visions and the chain, although by Thursday they were less disturbed by the visions. After a long discussion, they'd all concluded that the visions were false after all (though Harry still remained somewhat skeptical), and since Snape had said it was temporary, they concentrated more on the chain and their end-of-term exams.
The amount of fighting seemed to suddenly plummet once Ron became their friend again; the Gryffindors found it far easier to ignore Draco. The only major fight was on Tuesday, regarding the beds; Hermione refused to push them apart, and Draco refused to sleep in the same bed as anyone else. In the end, Draco started sleeping on the couch, which they moved over right next to the bed. Ron now slept in Hermione's bed, though they both behaved themselves. Harry didn't mind this change in the least (which is an understatement; when he returned to his own dormitory, he threw himself on his four-poster and refused to get out of it for hours, despite the fact it was mid-evening).
By Thursday night, there had been thirteen more visions between Harry and Draco. Draco's visions were often harder to explain, as most of his centered around Hermione and sometimes Hermione appeared to be doing Muggle things. Between Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Draco, they'd only managed to vaguely comprehend two of his visions—one was of Hermione crying and rambling that they were hopelessly lost, and one was of her and Draco lying together in what looked like a snowy ditch. Oddly enough, Harry had also had a vision of them lying in a ditch together, and, when comparing the two, both Draco and Hermione had been wearing the same clothes. It was the only vision they'd had that was similar, however. Harry's visions, which were less frequent than Draco's, usually had some sort of fight between Harry, Hermione and Draco.
While Harry was much happier now that Ron was his friend again and he didn't feel obligated to stay with Hermione, he was still disturbed by the visions and jumpy about the prank war. Everyone appeared to have written off the psychic moments as cheese-induced delusions, but he wasn't so sure. For one thing, the visions of him and Hermione fighting with Draco often took place in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place (which he had neglected to tell Hermione); for another, he didn't think delusions were as detailed or realistic. Then, too, something about Ron seemed off; he was cheerful but also somewhat distant, and Harry could have sworn that he'd seen Ron glaring at Harry or Hermione when he thought neither of them was looking. Harry wrote this off as paranoia, but he still found it disturbing. Worst of all were his dreams, which were often something horrifying involving Hermione and Draco; his Occlumency skills helped, but not enough to shut out the dreams completely. He was rather glad that he, along with the other Gryffindor prefects, had patrol on Wednesday and Thursday, which meant he got to miss a few hours of sleep and wander around the halls; being tired was better than dreams of your best friend and enemy. Strange thoughts began to seep into his waking moments; Harry did his best to ignore them, though, writing them off as the by-products of interrupted sleep and the Cheese Spirit. Still, he was generally pretty happy; the only person who wasn't was Draco.
Draco steadily became more and more miserable by the hour. Harry, Ron and Hermione—and Ginny, when she joined them—refused to respond whenever he tried to insult them; they only spoke to him when necessary, which was rare. It seemed they had finally learned how to ignore him, and that drove him absolutely insane. He was a natural attention-seeker; he hated to be ignored more than almost anything else. He was also having a rough time of it with the visions; sometimes, they involved grotesque things like his first vision about kissing Hermione, while other visions meant ages of trying to explain what they were about to the four Gryffindors. The dreams had also increased until he had several a night—far more than Harry, which they presumed was because of Occlumency and the fact that Draco, not Harry, had called the Cheese Spirit. He was soon jolting awake several times a night, and Ron's snoring made it twice as difficult for him to fall back asleep. His thoughts were starting to revolve around Hermione, also, which he attempted to blame on the Cheese Spirit bite; he found that most of his intrapersonal communication was ranting about her, and he was finding it harder and harder to avoid noticing that she was in fact good-looking. Rage and depression became his two main emotions; he couldn't seem to enjoy anything. Even the thought of the approaching holidays couldn't cheer him; every teacher he asked about the chain said no one was any closer to a solution, and the last thing Draco wanted was to spend his Christmas with Hermione.
On Thursday evening, Dumbledore approached them in the Great Hall. (They'd taken to eating in the Great Hall after their run-in with Filch outside the kitchens, knowing it would be too risky to go back for a while; they did keep their wands out most of the time, but whenever someone had asked Ginny about a rumor, she had said that Ron had told her to hex anyone who bothered her, which kept people away from Ginny, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Draco.) The headmaster had told them that the outlook on removing the chain was far too bleak, and that they'd have to go on Christmas holidays together after all. Knowing better than to hold a major fight in front of the headmaster, Draco and Hermione settled the matter with minimal arguing; they'd ride the train to King's Cross with the rest of the students on Monday and stay at Draco's home until Christmas morning. Dumbledore was hoping to secure a Ministry car to get them to Hermione's parents' home on Christmas Day, and her parents had already agreed to drive Hermione and Draco to the gathering at Hermione's grandparents' home and then to Grimmauld Place for the rest of the holidays. Neither was too happy with this arrangement, but both grudgingly accepted it.
Ron woke up on Friday morning with an almost overwhelming sense of determination. Today was the day. Today was the day he would make Hermione wish she'd never messed with him.
It had been exhausting, pretending that everything was okay, that he was no longer angry when all he wanted to do was scream in her face and beat the snot out of Draco. If anything, he'd become even more upset during the past three days, and even more eager to get revenge. He was now convinced that Hermione had been messing around on him. Every time they'd passed Snape in the hallway or seen him in the Great Hall, Snape had waved and smiled or called out a hello. The look on Oliver's face when Ron and Hermione had walked into Defense Against the Dark Arts holding hands and smiling… he'd been disappointed, and annoyed; Ron was sure of it. Oliver had looked like he was going to say something to them when they'd first walked in, but once he'd spotted Ron he'd clammed up; Oliver had been avoiding them ever since. And Ron didn't think for a second that the visions were false. Delusions didn't just come and go like the visions did; a delusional person didn't just have a one moment where they saw something strange and then went about their day. Delusional people who hallucinated believed in the hallucinations and didn't have a sense of rationality like Harry and Draco still did. Harry and Draco hadn't been driven insane by the Cheese Spirit, and Ron didn't think that Snape had been lying about the visions. After all, he hadn't been lying about the potion or the banishing ritual. Ron knew there had to be some sort of truth to the visions—and the common factor in all of them, the one everyone seemed to have missed, was that Ron wasn't in any of them. He wasn't in the visions about Harry and Hermione arguing with Draco, and he wasn't in the visions Draco had either. Ron was also absent from the dreams, though neither Harry nor Draco would say much about them—which could only mean that soon, Ron would be out of Harry and Hermione's life.
Good riddance, he thought, though he still felt a twinge of sadness. He'd really cared about Hermione and Harry; they were his greatest friends, and some part of him would always see them as such. Still, that didn't excuse their behavior. That didn't give them the right to do what they'd done.
The twins had planned the whole prank perfectly. Every angle was covered, from the best way to get the drop on Hermione to alibis to getting an audience. They would pull it off, and they wouldn't get caught. Not even Hermione would know who had done it, which would leave her open in the future.
Ron looked over at Hermione, who was sleeping peacefully two feet away. Beyond her side of the bed, he could see the back of the couch. Draco was muttering unhappily in his sleep. Ron grinned.
Everything would go according to plan.