Hogwarts a History – In the dark of the night
Chapter 07 – Can I eat him?
…
"I must say Harry, you do get a girl into the most interesting places."
"I suppose next you're going to ask how I plan to get her out of those interesting places."
"That was my next question, yes."
"Working on that." Slowly.
He was still marveling at the spiders strange behavior, snatched like prey yet neither poisoned or cocooned like his Quidditch mates. The spiders were just moving them along the trail, half guiding, half guarding, as though they'd been expected.
"This is all frightfully interesting," Luna chattered, "I had no idea spiders congregated like this."
"I'm pretty sure normal spiders don't," but acromantula were not normal, not by any stretch of the definition.
"Do you think their bringing us to their monarch?"
"Probably," almost certainly.
"Oh poo, I'm hardly dressed for meeting royalty."
He couldn't resist a small smile at the girl fussing with her cloths. Leave it to Luna to be concerned about her appearance when meeting a giant spider.
"Do you think the others will be along soon?" she wondered as she pulled a small hat from her bag and pinned it into her hair.
"Well, I don't see them anywhere, so I have to assume their doing better than us," he said as they mounted a rise, and the king of the spider colony came into view.
His assumption, while well founded upon his own circumstances, was not entirely correct.
"You know, this is not how I expected to be spending my night," said Su Li.
"I was asleep till a little while ago," said the spider girl.
"Spu spu spu… spider!"
The two females sighed as Fang sniffed the incoherent ginger, wondering in his little doggy brain the question that often plagued his kind, do I lick it or piddle on it.
"Merlin! What are we supposed to do with this?"
"I could eat him."
Poor old Ron Weasley. He'd tried to be brave, he really had. He'd tried to see the girl instead of the spider, but the spider kept sticking its big fat butt in the way. It also didn't help the girl kept looking at him like she was wondering on the flavor of spicy ginger.
Things were really not going to plan.
Yes! He had a plan.
It wasn't much of a plan, sure, but it had served him well in the past. It was the same plan he usually had. Follow Harry, jump in where needed, argue with Hermione.
Nice and simple and easily fluid. Hadn't failed him yet… till now. With Harry nowhere in sight and Hermione in no condition to argue with him, the two main tentpoles of his plan were gone, leaving him hiding under an oversized canvas with one pole that was completely useless without the other two.
So, not to plan.
"Are we close?"
"We should be seeing the outer sentries soon. Actually," she thudded around on six heavy legs, looking up at the trees, "I'm surprised we haven't run into any yet. We're right on the edge of father's territory."
"Yet! What!" Ron squeaked, his over panicked brain only catching snippets of the conversation.
"Sentries," the spider girl repeated. "To watch the borders and catch anything that gets close enough."
"Like us you mean," said Su Li.
"Or anything else that looks edible," the spider girl added.
"Edible!" This was too much for Ron Weasley.
The wood around them was eerily silent but Ron could hear, oh yes, he could hear. Every scritch scratch of eight long legs across brittle grass and frozen leaves. Their hoarse, hissing breath brushing their twitching mandibles, he could hear it, he could feel it.
He could feel their beady black eyes all over him, watching him, measuring him, sizing him up for the spit they planned to roast him over.
They were coming, closer—closer. They were everywhere. He could practically see their long hairy legs.
"Come on. We need to get going." Su Li, tiny thing that she was, reached out a pale, delicate hand.
Contact was made and the brain of Ron Weasley went *ping*. Over the past few seconds all circuits had been rerouted to one pair of channels henceforth referred to as 'SPIDER' and 'not spider'.
The adrenaline pumps were running at full with the gates thrown fully open which was completely contrary to procedure, but the one synapse that had pointed this out, from the commonsense department, had been bound, gagged, and put in the corner with the pointy hat that said NERD, the nerd.
So, when the input of hand on shoulder came in, everyone went tripping all over themselves in an adrenaline-fueled panic. They were so distracted they almost forgot to throw over the 'SPIDER' switch.
Almost.
The two females leapt back; back, and up, an impressive feat in both cases, when Ron opened his mouth and let out a scream that was equal parts banshee, dying old lady, and five-year-old girl.
"Sweet Merlin!"
"Make it stop. Make it stop!"
But they couldn't make it stop. Only Ron could make it stop. Ron running out of oxygen.
"Crimeney!" Su Li exclaimed, standing halfway up a tree. "If that didn't get their attention, nothing will."
It did.
As though summoned by her words, or the laziness of the author, two massive spiders appeared on either side of Ron Weasley, hissing arachnid menace.
Unfortunately for them, he'd had just enough time to take in air.
"Oh no, not again!" the spider girl wailed, covering her ears while six legs clung to a massive trunk some thirty feet up from the ground.
"At least this time he has a good reason," shouted Su Li from ten feet down and one tree over.
He had much more than reason. He had legs, two of them, that worked. Also, just enough presence of mind to use them.
So while the new spiders flinched and skittered about unable to cover their own hearing holes, Ron stood, turned, and ran like his ass was on fire (yeah, just like that).
"There he goes," mused Su Li darkly. "Spose we have to go after him now."
"He should be easy to follow," the spider girl offered weakly. The sound of his scream could still easily be heard even as he continued to widen the distance.
"Yeah, great," the poorly painted ninja girl grumbled. "But what about—uh, them?"
The them in question were stumbling around drunkenly, half their limbs refusing to move while the others tried to make up by moving twice as fast. It was the oddest sort of jig ever conceived. Easy to do when most such dances are choreographed for people with two legs, three at most.
"That's interesting," said the spider girl.
"Yeah," Su Li agreed. "I might need to have him teach me that pitch. But first we need to catch him before something else does."