Hogwarts a History – A tale of two stalkers
Chapter 09 – Not as easy as you think
…
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
"Aaaaaah, Ginny! Where are we going?"
"Aaaaaaaah, who cares!"
Frightened by the half-spider apparition and paying no mind to the distress they'd caused Rubeus Hagrid, the two body swapped children ran screaming through the night.
The Gryffindor Quidditch team shambling out for an impromptu practice heard them scream by, but couldn't be bothered to even grunt in acknowledgment, ignoring the screaming shadows in the darkness who kept screaming all the way to the lake where they ran out of air.
Gasping and panting they collapsed to the moist earth, heaving in great gulps of lake quality oxygen and waiting for their brains to catch up with their hearts and tell them the race was over.
"What… the hell… was that?" Colin panted.
Ginny shook her head, which was Colin's, "No idea… Never… seen any… thing like it."
There was a reason for this, as the state of this particular entity is one most strange, relating to events from the previous year, some known, most not, and all a mystery to Colin and Ginny.
… Oh, you wanted to know what they were? Well, worry not, I shall elucidate… eventually.
"Please… tell me… you still… have it."
Ginny raised Colin's hand, revealing the mess of herbs firmly in grasp.
"Oh good."
"Yeah. Now we… just need the… toads."
With an anguished groan, Ginny fought her boyish body into a sitting position and surveyed her surroundings. Pleasantly surprised she found she was exactly where she wanted to be if the chorus of croaking were anything to go by.
"Alright, that's enough rest," she said, crawling to her feet, "we've got toads to catch."
"And, how exactly does one catch a toad?"
Judging by the following performance, not very well.
"There it goes! Get it, get it!"
"Where'd it go? I can't see it."
"Ribbit."
"There it is!"
"I gah, ah, come ere you, got it! No! Yes! Ah! Stop squirming!"
And that was just the first one.
"He's coming right at you."
"Got it. Got it!... Don't got it."
"Where'd it go?"
"Pant leg! Pant leg! Ew! It's going up my pant leg."
And of course.
"I got it!"
"No, I got it!"
*Wham*
"Watch where you're going."
"You watch where I'm going."
But somehow, despite it all, they managed to catch the toads they needed, plus one spare, just in case. Their prizes squirming around in Colin's pocket, the duo made for the castle and the haunted girl's room to get started.
They were half-way there when the worst happened.
"Meow!"
"Oh no!"
"Not now!"
The scruffy looking Mrs. Norris eyed the two delinquents like a pair of plump mice.
"Mrs. Norris," the call echoed down the hall.
Panicking, they backed into an alcove behind a suit of armor. Mrs. Norris followed calmly.
"Go away!" Colin hissed.
Mrs. Norris gave him an incredulous look, an expression most cats have mastered before they're half grown but which Mrs. Norris in particular had perfected to a level that was almost uncanny.
"What do we do? What do we do?"
While the two Gryffindor's awaited their inevitable demise, one of their toads took the opportunity to escape. Instincts stronger than years of training saw the much-maligned menace abandon her quarry in favor of something more interesting.
"Mrs. Norris!" Without so much as glancing in their direction, Argus Filch tromped past their hiding place after his cat.
"What's that you're after my love. Zat a toad. What's that doing in here."
Waiting till they were sure he was long gone they raced to the bathroom and frantically went to work. Fire lit and cauldron heating they went about preparing their ingredients. It was while doing so they discovered something very interesting.
"Ew. Ew. Ew!"
"Wicked!"
Ginny, having been raised in the country with a pack of wild brothers, lacked the usual feminine squeamishness associated with, let's say, cutting up a live toad and removing its eyes. Whereas Colin, being the suburban city slicker, had never even seen a toad let alone its insides, and showed the reaction one would expect from the body he was in.
"Don't be such a sissy."
Hours passed as the potion slowly came together. Hunger gnawed at them, but they dared not leave, not till things were put to rights.
Finally, after the longest six hours in history, it was finished. Taking half the potion each, they'd barely gotten it down when they hit the floor and went on a psychedelic trip so bizarre it couldn't be detailed in this fic.
For reference, see Pink elephants from Dumbo after drinking a third of bad scotch.
Awakening an indeterminate amount of time later, they stared at the person next to them and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Ginny?" asked Colin, in Colin's body.
Ginny nodded, with Ginny's head, "Yeah."
Candor rose from the great sense of relief they felt, "So, we should probably talk about this, feud, we've got going on."
"Yeah, guess we should." Given what she'd almost done, how could she say no.
"Hey Ginny, how long were we out?"
Ginny shrugged, "Why?"
"I just thought, aren't people going to wonder where we've been all day?"
…, "Well bugger me!"