This one was pretty much written by just me, except for the bits I borrowed from the book/movie. We don't own. Enjoy.


The Not So 'Itsy Bitsy' Spiders

May 8th -24th, 1993

Fourth Year

The fourth attack came out of nowhere. The previous attack had happened 6 months earlier, on December 18th. After a month with no attacks, people began to relax, two months, they stopped looking over their shoulders, after six months, life was almost normal at the school… almost. And then Hermione Granger and Penelope Clearwater were found petrified in the hallway near the library.

The school was thrown into instant chaos, those who had relaxed were on their guard again and those who had never truly stopped looking over their shoulders were more frightened than ever. Both Jo and Leilani were wary, as neither were pure blood. Leili's parents kept threatening to yank their daughters out of school and the only reason Jo was still in school was because she had kept the attacks out of her letters home and her mom didn't receive any of the wizarding newspapers. The Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff match was cancelled; Dumbledore was removed as headmaster and Hagrid taken to Azkaban

Two weeks later, Jo and Leilani were following Ron and Harry through the halls-without the benefit of Lucky Potion as Leili had received a letter from her mother that morning saying it had gone wrong again, much to the girls' dismay-when they heard the boys discover a trail of quickly fleeing spiders, "Follow the spiders, why couldn't it be follow the butterflies?" Ron moaned as he and Harry snuck out.

"I'm with Ron on this one, I hate spiders," Jo said venomously.

Leili shuddered, "I can handle one small one but not a whole colony of the things. Eugh!" She rubbed her arms vigorously to rid them of the rapidly appearing goosebumps. "Do we follow them?" she asked, though she had a hunch she already knew the answer.

"I don't see that we have a lot of choice, you know what kind of pets Hagrid keeps, we have no idea what they're going to find in that forest, or that they'll come out alive."

"Whatever it is, it won't be pretty." Leili drew her wand and with a smart rap on Jo's head cast a Disillusionment charm, thus turning her into a human chameleon. She twirled her wand around herself, casting the same spell. It was nothing like an invisibility cloak and wouldn't hold up under intense scrutiny (unless you were a cat), but hopefully it would keep them unnoticed. She sighed, "Sneaking after them could be so much easier if we had animagus forms or liquid luck."

"What's up with that potion, anyway?" Jo asked as they followed the boys following the spiders into the forbidden forest.

"I can't get the ingredients."

"Why not?"

"The ones that are sold legally are so expensive it would cost me a year's allowance to buy them once. Illegally, it's about a hundred times worse."

"Yikes." Eventually they stopped in a hollow in the forest, where an elephant-sized spider stepped into the light. This was Hagrid's former pet Acromantula, named Aragog. Just looking at the thing gave the girls the heebie jeebies and the effect on Ron was about 10 times worse.

"If you're not the monster, then what killed that girl 50 years ago?" Fang started growling a warning but was ignored.

"We do not speak its name! It is an ancient beast we spiders fear above all others," Aragog snapped. Ron was tugging impatiently on Harry's sleeve,

"Harry…" he said, in a half whisper, half whine. Harry shushed him.

"Have you seen it?"

"I never saw any part of the castle except for the box Hagrid kept me in." Jo sarcastically and silently wondered what exactly Hagrid would have done with the now elephant-sized spider when it got too big for the box. "The girl was found in a bathroom and when I was accused, Hagrid brought me here, where I have made my home."

"Harry…!" Ron said, obviously greatly distressed and, honestly, who could blame him? Large spiders, presumably Aragog's children, were descending from the trees on ropes of spider silk.

"What?" Ron pointed up and Harry looked and then looked back at Aragog taking a few hurried steps back, "Well, thank you, this has been helpful. We'll just be going now."

"Oh, I think not. My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid, on my command, but I can't deny them fresh meat when it wanders so willingly into our domain. Goodbye, friends of Hagrid." Harry and Ron began back pedaling even faster now, but they were on two legs on unfamiliar terrain, no match for the colony of spiders on eight legs who knew every inch of the forest floor. Before anyone had a chance to utter a spell, bright headlights came roaring around the corner.

The Flying Ford Anglia the boys had taken to school at the beginning of the year came to the rescue. The horn honked angrily, the tires spun wildly and the engine growled menacingly. It rammed itself into the attacking spiders and flung its doors and trunk open to allow the duo that was really a quartet and Fang to jump inside, before hitting reverse and escaping the spiders through a path the car obviously knew quite well. 10 minutes later the car stopped so abruptly that the front seat passengers were nearly thrown through the windshield and the passengers in the trunk were slammed into the back of the back seat and into each other. The girls heard Fang-if the sound of toenails on glass were any indication-try to scrabble out through the window.

They heard the doors open and saw the trunk lid pop. Very carefully the girls slid out of the trunk through the barest of openings and slinked out of the way trying to make as little sound as possible. Harry gave the car a grateful pat on the hood and when Ron regained the use of his legs the four of them, minus Fang who had run off home with his tail tucked firmly between his legs, made their way out of the last few feet of forest.

"Follow the spiders, follow the spiders, I'm never going to forgive Hagrid, what the bloody hell was he thinking?"

"That Aragog would be useful, and I bet he never thought Aragog would hurt friends of his."

"What was the point in sending us in there? What have we learned? I'd like to know!"

"We learned that Hagrid never opened the Chamber of Secrets, he's innocent." Ron gave a loud snort. Evidently, hatching Aragog out of a cupboard wasn't his idea of innocence. The girls saw the boys safely inside the castle before seeking out their own beds.

"The next opportunity I have to squish a spider with my shoe, I'm taking it!" Leilani said once the boys were out of earshot.

"Why waste a perfectly good shoe on a spider? I'm opting for a sledge hammer!"