Harry knocked on Cho's door. "Hey, can I come in?"
"No. Come Friday," she said in exasperated tones, "I've got a headache."
"Well, how about some tea, then?" Harry asked through the door. Inside, he could hear Cho mull it over to herself. Finally, she undid the locks, and Harry stepped inside.
Cho kissed Harry passionlessly and wrapped her arms around his neck. They had always been a half-assed charade of a couple, but lately Harry had really started to feel it.
"Can you make it?" Cho asked. "I don't have the energy." She collapsed onto the couch.
Harry smiled an empty smile and walked over to the kitchen. He put some water to a boil and began to search around for some tea bags.
"Oh, by the way, I've run out of tea bags. Do you have any?" Cho said.
Harry went quiet. He didn't have any tea bags on him. Who the hell just kept tea bags about their person? But Severus had said to put the stuff in her tea. Maybe he could try something besides tea? No, he didn't want to tempt fate. Magic was unpredictable, and for all he knew unless this stuff was mixed in with some kind of tea it would kill her. Harry felt around his pockets. He had a penknife, an orange, a comic strip he'd cut out of that day's paper, a single piano key… Then he found it. It wasn't a tea bag, but if he put a bit in the hot water and squeezed some orange juice out of the orange… Well, he'd have something, that's for sure. Then he could mix in the stuff in the vial.
Moments later, Harry emerged with possibly the foulest smelling tea imaginable. Steam of many colors was emanating from it. In addition to a skunky scent that he was all-too familiar with, Harry was getting a full blast in the face of the aroma of the stuff Severus had given him. Just inhaling the steam from this tea made Harry get a bit light-headed.
Cho recoiled when Harry set the tea tray down, but out of politeness drank some of the tea.
She gagged. "Holy Hastur, Harry! What the hell is that?"
Harry shrugged, still coughing from the strange steam that had blasted him in the face. "Ah, it's green tea."
"Very funny. But you're meant to use the leaves, not the bud for that." She took another, cautious sip, and stared disappointedly down at the soggy marijuana bud that lay in her cup. "I mean, fuck, Harry… That's just a waste."
Harry started to feel a bit woozy. "Look, I needed something to make the tea, didn't I? How else was I gonna get it in you?" He suddenly became struck by the notion that the table-lamp next to Cho was in some way trying to threaten him.
Cho's eyes widened, frightened by Harry's carelessly-assembled words. "Wh-what?" She looked into the teacup. "Have you roofied the tea?"
"I wouldn't- I've just slipped you a contraceptive. It- it needed to be added to tea. So I stuck a bud in some hot water."
Cho withdrew, seeing that Harry's body now extended far backwards into a centipede-like structure. "Contraceptives? I didn't ask for that!" She watched as Harry's fingers periodically extended into bristled pillars. "And this doesn't feel like a contraceptive."
"Hey, don't you think I noticed that? I've been inhaling the vapors from this thing."
Cho watched as Harry's scar transformed into a large, perspiring, pustulating orifice. Harry, now overcome with a strange inexplicable fear, watched as the room seemed to breathe and undulate.
Cho tried to regain balance as her surroundings began to shake. "What the hell was in the contraceptive?"
"A few things… maybe some of them were psychoactive, I don't know..."
Cho ignored the small electric rabbit climbing up her thigh and willed together enough composure in the face of the mounting hallucinations to start pushing Harry in the direction of the door.
"Come on, Cho, baby… Let's talk about this." Harry said. Normally Cho wouldn't be able to push Harry like this, but the steam from the contraceptive-psychoactive tea had done a number on him.
"No talking. We're through, Harry." Cho said, and shoved him into the hallway outside her room and locked the door.
Harry got up and began to stumble through the hallway, the surroundings seeming to melt and shift around him. He would have to handle this trip alone.
Tom Riddle stood at a podium atop a large stage. Behind him sat his most ardent and loyal followers. In front of him lay the rest of them, a force hundreds strong. Medusas, Mugwumps, Melniboneans, Monsters, Men, Women, Werewolves, Wights, Wendigos, Veelas, Valkyries, Vanaras, Vampires… His army was indeed a diverse one, in species if not in pigment. Indeed, his followers were all white, some to an especially disquieting extent.
They had all gathered in a rather large clearing which lay some distance into the Forbidden Forest. Many students at Hogwarts knew of and visited such clearings, of which there were many. Just about every clique and firm and secret society congregated in such a clearing, including some of the faculty. In fact, nowhere in any of the school's multitudinous and extensive charters was the forest area explicitly outlined as being forbidden. Yet despite this and the frequency with which it was visited, the name had not been changed, nor ever really thought about that much.
Riddle stared out at the sea of followers. He puffed out his chest and began to speak.
"Friends! These are indeed dark times. Great times. Momentous times! Times of action, times for the doing-of-things! These are not times to be floundering and lazing about. We, the proud, the few, in particular must stay ever vigilant and ever erect."
Suddenly, a tall and gangly Melnibonean pushed forward a large wheeled viewscreen which was showing a large map of Europe.
Riddle pointed towards the map with a swagger stick. "This, my brothers and sisters, is our Earth of Europe. It is ours, and slowly through the efforts of many, it is at last being returned to us. Returned! Returned from the Communists and the subversives and the Chinkies and Freemasons and… and certain other insidious groups who I have carefully eliminated from our own ranks." Upon hearing him say this, the crowd made several knowing coughing sounds.
"Footprints are being made, brothers and sisters. Footprints of blood. There is history being etched across the face of Europe in jagged scars, legends writ in thunder."
His hordes of followers jumped and cheered, tossing their school-mandated cricket caps in the air.
"Are we, O truest and bluest students of Hogwarts to miss out? Are we to be denied our place in history? Are we to deny the world the change and betterment which we and we alone may bring about? Are we to sit idly by as all we love is spunked upon by subversives?"
The crowd were now frothing at their mouths. "No!" they shouted in unison.
Riddle had them right where he wanted them. He gestured to the Melnibonean, who nodded knowingly and flipped a switch on the viewscreen. The image changed from the map of Europe to a black screen which prominently featured the word 'Happiness' in big white letters. Then, the music began.
"I'd like you all to watch a special film which I have prepared," Riddle said, "I am sure it will prove most enthralling."
Riddle, the Melnibonean, and everybody else on stage watched as the crowd became transfixed by the glow of the viewscreen and its flickering images… soon they would all be his.