Written for the Quidditch League Season 9, on the team Caerphilly Catapults.
Round 6: Link 'Em Up
Thanks to my incredible betas: CupCakeyyy, NevilleGonnaGiveYouUp
Using prompts:
Chaser 2: Marlene & Hermione (negative pairing)
Action: Tripping over something
Trait: Angry
Word: Portal
Word count: 2760
Hermione was ever so excited to get on with her homework. The library was closed, but Madam Pince had taken pity on her when she nearly burst into tears that her precious books would be taken away and said that she could take as many with her as she could carry.
Luckily, Hermione had been practicing for such an offer for years. Her schoolbag was tearing at the seams from so many books and she held in her arms another two stacks of books that towered several feet over her head. She couldn't see where she was going on the way back to the Common Room and she didn't care in the slightest; she had so many books!
Unfortunately, fate conspired against her studious goals. As she stepped blindly into the Common Room, she had the misfortune to stumble right into Fred and George Weasley as they were testing out their latest experiment. The Weasley Whirlygig was a device designed to simulate a Muggle rollercoaster without needing to move and one of its features was to send the user spinning around at super-magical speeds.
So when Hermione tripped right over the twins and crashed into their experimental device, she found herself whipping around in circles, twisting in a dizzying blur of colour. Worse, the time turner hanging around her neck was just as affected and began spinning like crazy, whirling her days, then months, years, even decades into the past.
When the effect of the Whirlygig wore off after a fair few minutes of whirling around on the spot, Hermione dropped to the floor of the common room feeling extremely worse for wear. She felt like she was going to be sick until she looked up to see that all of her library books were missing. That was the only thing she focused on, completely missing everything else different about the Common Room.
"Nooooooooo," Hermione screamed, drawing the attention of everyone in the Common Room. "My books! Where are they?!"
She began scrabbling around the area, searching on top of shelves and flipping one of the sofas that a group of fearful seventh years were thrown off of. Only one of them, a girl with a Prefect badge pinned proudly to her robes, seemed prepared to intervene before the third year girl tore the Common Room apart.
"Stop! Stop-" she said, holding a hand up in Hermione's face, drawing her attention away from her book search. Hermione flushed when she spotted the Prefect badge on the girl's uniform, mentally scolding herself for not comporting herself better in front of anyone with an ounce of authority.
Hermione began cataloguing the features of the girl, a little ashamed that she didn't recognise her (she thought that she was already very familiar with all of the Prefects in Hogwarts, especially the Gryffindor ones). The Prefect had curly red hair, freckles that had faded with her later teenage years and a severe looking face that was softened considerably by the warmness in her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Miss-?" Hermione said.
"McKinnon. Marlene McKinnon," the Prefect said, looking a bit less fearful now that Hermione had been so easily scolded into behaving. "What exactly are you doing?"
"I can't find my books, Prefect McKinnon!" Hermione exclaimed, looking around the Common Room again, quickly building herself back into a frenzy. "Fred and George just tripped me up and now- they must have stolen my books!"
"Marlene's fine," Marlene said, blushing at the Prefect title, before shaking her head. "Fred and George- Who?"
"The fifth years, stupid pranksters. Everyone knows them," Hermione said, squinting around the Common Room, taking in the complete redesign of it, the new furniture, all the components of what was obviously part of the Weasley twins' evil plan to steal her books. Maybe they were trying to throw her off by bewitching the entire Gryffindor wing of the school! She wouldn't put it past them.
They were going to pay.
"I have no idea who you're talking about. Do you mean the Marauders?" Marlene glanced back at her friends who all shrugged, clearly not having an idea who Fred and George were either. "But, I'll help you find-"
Marlene stopped short as she turned back around, expecting to see the girl, but coming up empty. She blinked. The girl had disappeared. She looked right, seeing nothing, then left, where the girl was vanishing up the stairs to the boys' dormitories.
Marlene ground her teeth and shot off, not sure quite what was going on, but ready to intervene. This girl was clearly very attached to her books which were nowhere to be seen. Come to think of it, Marlene hadn't even seen the girl before.
No matter how fast she moved, though, it seemed it wouldn't have been fast enough. Reaching the fifth year's boys' dormitory she came across the third year twirling her wand, flipping beds and summoning every item out of drawers, cupboards and trunks onto the floor in a cacophony of magic.
"I need to do my Arithmancy homework," Hermione yelled into the room, frustrated at failing to unearth her books. She glared around the room, stomped her foot, then turned around to leave. Before Marlene could even reach out to grab her, she swept out of the room and past four Gryffindor boys who were looking into their newly-wrecked dormitory.
"What the-" Sirius Black said. He looked so confused, Marlene had to bite down a laugh.
"Who is that?" James Potter asked, clearly flabbergasted.
Marlene couldn't offer them much more than an abashed look and a shrug as she rushed out after the third year girl. The Marauders were far from happy with that response though, and followed her back out to the Common Room, James pulling out a piece of parchment as they went.
Scanning the room, Marlene was frustrated to see that the girl had already disappeared. She really was on the warpath to find her books.
"Anyone see where that girl went?" Marlene asked to the room at large.
"Just left," one of her friends said, pointing towards the portrait hole. They shuddered. "She looked- scary."
"Hermione Granger, I'm guessing," James said, tracing his finger across the parchment he was holding. "She's heading down the Grand Staircase now."
"How could you possibly know that?" Marlene asked, heading out the portrait hole with the four boys tailing her.
"Oh, we get up to all sorts of mischief, Marlene," Sirius quipped, cracking out a grin that she supposed he thought was charming. "No reason to reveal just how we manage it."
Peter guffawed beside him like Sirius had said something incredibly funny.
"Why am I being saddled with you lot?" Marlene asked, hoping that a bit of bluntness would drive Sirius (and the others) away.
"Oh, you wound me!" Sirius exclaimed, clutching his chest dramatically. The subjects of the paintings they passed glared at him for being such a disturbance.
"We have to meet this up and coming prankster, of course. And repay her the favour," James said, grinning wickedly.
"I don't think she's a prankster, Potter," Marlene scolded him, "she's just looking for her books."
"Aw, look, you've found a kindred spirit, Moony," Sirius said, nudging Remus.
"Yeah, kindred spirit," Peter added.
Remus snorted and shrugged off the attention. "Seems she's in the kitchens," Remus said, leaning over James's shoulder.
"What is that thing? Did you cast a tracking charm on her or something?"
"Something like that," James said, tucking the parchment away after muttering something under his breath.
They came across a painting of a bowl of fruit just as Hermione Granger stepped out from behind it, frowning.
"There you are," Marlene said, "you just ran off before I could get a word in."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Prefect McKinnon! I thought the twins might have been hiding in the kitchen, but the elves haven't seen them."
"Well, Miss- uh, Granger? Although you might be looking for your books, that doesn't mean you can just-"
"Then I said that I would help free them all when I managed to track down my books, and you should have seen their faces. They looked horrified at my books being taken, said they would track them down for me, that they didn't want me to take any actions too rash." Hermione sighed. "I hope I haven't put them out too much."
"Huh, you were actually being serious about her looking for her books," James said in disbelief.
"Marlene and Serious sounds like a good pairing to me."
"I'll hex you, Black. Be quiet."
Hermione finally noticed Marlene's tagalongs. "Oh, hey Harry, have you seen the twins?"
"Harry? Uh, I'm James."
"What are you talking about, Harry?" Hermione asked, confused. "And did you take an aging potion?"
"Miss Granger!" Marlene all but shouted, cutting through the aggravating back and forth. "As I was saying, you really shouldn't have taken this whole affair into your own hands. I'll have to take five points from Gryffindor for the mess you made in the boys' dormitory."
Hermione froze like someone had cast a spell on her, her eyes glazing over and her mouth opening in shock. She paled dramatically, her complexion shifting like a swarm of Dementors had just entered the corridor. Marlene even checked both ways for the creatures in case Hermione was particularly susceptible.
"Five points?" Hermione asked, her voice suddenly extremely small, fragile and broken, like she'd just been told her whole family had died. The glazing of her eyes turned watery and she began to tremble, Marlene and the Marauders taking a step back at how distraught the girl was.
Hermione burst into tears, hands covering her face as she ran off, fleeing down the corridor towards her sanctuary.
The five Gryffindors watched the girl go for a moment.
"Well, that was dramatic," Remus said.
"I don't think she's up for a Marauder's membership after all." Peter raised his nose a little, acting like the four of them were some special class of royalty.
"Perhaps not, Wormy! Still, it is always worth being seen engaging with our subjects," Sirius said, matching Peter's tone.
"I best go make sure she's okay," Marlene said, coming to a decision. "I didn't expect a reaction like that. Is that tracking spell still working?"
James sighed and reached into his robes to pull out the same parchment as before. Marlene started leading the group as Peter and Sirius continued their play-acting as Princes of Hogwarts while Remus and James scanned that mysterious parchment.
Honestly, Marlene could not wait to graduate and get away from some of these idiot students.
"Library," Remus said, looking up from the parchment. Marlene nodded, trusting his word far more than any of the others.
It was on their way there that they came across Professor Dumbledore wandering the corridors holding a gizmo made up of a series of orbs that seemed to spin around one another without any supports in place.
"Ah, hello Miss McKinnon. I hope you are all having a pleasant evening."
"Yes, sir," Marlene said.
"She's actually going by Prefect McKinnon these days," Sirius said.
"Be quiet," Marlene snapped. That hex is still very much in play.
"It's important to enjoy your titles," Professor Dumbledore nodded like Sirius was bestowing great wisdom. "Whether they are granted to us or we take them for ourselves," he continued looking over the four Marauders like it carried extra meaning for them.
They did each shift uncomfortably, which Marlene counted as a point in Professor Dumbledore's favour.
"Now, you will have to excuse me. I am investigating a temporal anomaly which has appeared to bring a little adventure to the day." He indicated his collection of magically orbiting orbs.
"We were just going to the library, sir," Marlene said, getting the attention of the Marauders and beginning to head in that direction.
Professor Dumbledore checked his spinning orbs, his eyebrows knitting together briefly. "It seems I shall be joining you."
With Professor Dumbledore beside them, the students had to quicken their steps to match his stride. It wasn't long before they reached the library.
And what a sight they saw.
Hermione was sitting atop a tower of books that reached higher than the tallest bookshelves, constructs of walls, fortifications and barriers made up of even more books surrounding her. As they took in the entire fort of books, house-elves continued to pop in and panickedly place more books down around Hermione, who was frantically checking every book that passed remotely near her.
It seemed that the elves had taken Hermione's offer of freedom as a serious threat and were desperately trying to convince her not to free them by bringing her every book in the castle.
Professor Dumbledore's device began to spin like crazy and it drew Hermione's attention. She stood up, looking across all of them. She pointed down at them accusingly, seemingly over her emotional outburst a few minutes earlier (although her frizzy hair blew around her chaotically as more books popped into existence around her).
"You! Prefect McKinnon, if that badge is even real!" Hermione shouted down at them, quickly building herself into another frenzy. She seemed far less happy to see Marlene than previously. "I should have known that you were in on the book stealing prank, but it all came together when you tried to take points off me. Me?! Point deductions?! Ridiculous!" She laughed maniacally, unhinged.
"I don't- what?" Marlene didn't have a clue what was going on.
"You will pay for interfering with my books!"
With that, Hermione cast a spell, one she'd learned from a book (of all things). It caught Marlene before she could dive out of the way and her hair began to grow and move with a mind of its own, wrapping around her arms, her waist and legs, quickly knotting through itself and holding her in place.
"Hermione, stop!" Marlene yelled, wriggling against her hair. The Marauders and Professor Dumbledore stood next to her, too shocked by the turn of events to act.
"Where are my books?" Hermione was screaming now.
"I don't know," Marlene cried. She didn't know how a third year could be so terrifying.
"I'll do anything to find them. Anything," Hermione promised as she began to walk down a staircase the elves quickly constructed beneath her out of books.
Marlene battled against her hair which just seemed to curl tighter around her limbs the more she fought. Her mind was racing. She had to tell the girl something- maybe where those mysterious twins were, the "famous" pranksters. Not that Marlene had a clue who those two were. Hermione had got James Potter confused with someone else, and Potter and his gang had to be the most infamous pranksters in school!
How could Hermione know two pranksters like Fred and George but be oblivious to the Marauders?
Things clicked abruptly, the unfamiliar Hermione, Dumbledore's gadget, the missing books.
"Professor!" Marlene yelled, just managing to extend her arm towards Hermione as she tilted her head in the Professor's direction. "Your anomaly."
Realisation dawned on Professor Dumbledore's face and he pulled out his wand, waving it in an intricate pattern as he muttered a complex spell. From the corner of her eye Marlene saw a circle of gleaming green open up on the floor at the bottom of Hermione's book-staircase, a few tomes tumbling through it and vanishing.
Hermione took one last step and found a lack of floor beneath her foot. Her eyes widened.
"Oh," she said.
Then she dropped through the portal on the floor and disappeared.
Marlene fell to the floor as her hair immediately began to release her, the portal quickly closing up before she could even get to her feet again.
"Well, that should send the girl back to when she came from. Very quick thinking, Prefect McKinnon!" Professor Dumbledore complimented her.
Marlene huffed, not remotely pleased by the lack of help the Marauders had provided. She glared at them and they looked back at her like deer in the headlights for a moment, before Sirius nudged Remus beside him.
"Looks like you're not the only one with a furry little problem, Moony."
Marlene's eye twitched, her wand found her hand instinctively and she blasted Sirius Black with an overpowered tickling hex.
He hit the ground howling with laughter. The others didn't move to help him.
"Sorry, Professor," Marlene ground out. "I think I'm going to bed."
With that she left the Marauders and the Professor behind to deal with the book fort and the fallout of a Hermione Granger deprived of her books.