Chapter 18
November 1st,1990- Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Somewhere in Scotland
Operation Drive-Geoff-out-of-Hogwarts was off to a great start. They'd managed to recruit Lee and Patricia's roommates, as well as Towler and, for unknown reasons, the fourth year Ravenclaw girls. The first attack came at breakfast, when Geoff took a sip of pumpkin juice and immediately began braying like a donkey.
"This is war, you ass," one of Penelope's roommates muttered into her pumpkin juice. One of her other roommates shushed her.
Geoff was still braying during his first class. He solved the problem of not being able to speak by assigning pages to read from the textbook. He still got humiliated though. At the beginning of the fourth year double Ravenclaw/Slytherin block his skin turned purple and he had to sit at the front of the class for the entire period while everyone was snickering at him behind their textbooks.
"So, that's day one," Lee stated while the group was gathered around a table at the back of the library. "What're we going to do tomorrow?"
Fred and George looked at the fourth year girls before saying, "We recently acquired some Bubotuber pus."
"Undiluted, of course."
"We could owl it to him." Penelope looked at her friends and they all decided not to ask the twins where or how they had gotten Bubotuber pus.
The other Ravenclaw girls frowned. "What's Bubotuber pus?" Grace asked.
"It's the pus from the swellings of a Bubotuber plant," Penelope told her. "It makes your skin swell up if it's undiluted."
"Oh."
Patricia was frowning for a different reason. "We were thinking we shouldn't do anything tomorrow. We don't want to make it obvious, right?"
"Who is this 'we'?" Fred asked. Patricia pointed to herself and then to each of her roommates. "Oh."
"So, skip a day then," Lee agree. "What'll we do on Saturday?" Patricia smiled slowly.
"Well, my father was telling me about this prank he and his friends pulled…" The other New Marauders grinned.
"Wait a minute." Kenneth Towler held up his hand. "Your father?" The other second years looked at each other. Lee took a scrap of parchment, wrote "IOU two Sickles", and handed the parchment to the Weasley twins.
Patricia rolled her eyes. "I don't think that counts as losing your bet, Lee." Lee looked at her.
"Doesn't it?"
"No," Grace and Violet chimed. Lee hurried to yank the parchment back.
"Are you going to tell us what you're talking about?" Kenneth asked.
"Nope."
"So, this prank you were going to tell us about?" George prompted. Patricia smiled, and then frowned. She looked down at her watch.
"Don't you have practice now?" Fred and George had both made it onto the Gryffindor Quidditch team as beaters. Their brother, Charlie, was the captain, and he worked them hard every evening the entire team was free.
Which happened to be right then.
"What!" Fred grabbed her arm and looked at her watch, even though he was wearing one. "Bloody hell!"
"Language!" Kenneth berated. Fred paused to hit him over the head before he and George ran out of the library, with Madam Pince shaking her fist after them.
While their table was settling back down, Patricia went into her bag and took out her tarot cards. The cardstock box they had originally come in had disintegrated at the seams over the summer. She took the cards out of the aluminum tin they now resided in, shuffled them, and laid three face up on the table, thinking, "Will we get Geoff to leave Hogwarts?"
Up came the nine of swords, the Hanged Man, and the Magician. Patricia smiled. That was a good sign.
Noe shivered at both in sympathy for the terrified man on the nine of swords card and in fear at the uncommon look on her friend's face. She looked evil. "What're you smiling about?"
"Geoff will be gone by the end of the year. We just have to save our best for last."
"And what is our best?" Penelope asked. Patricia grinned.
"I have an idea…"
May 29th,1991 (Night of the full moon) - Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Somewhere in Scotland
Professor Eobard Geoff was nearing the end of his rope. Since November he'd become the butt of so many jokes that he'd lost count, and no one was paying for it. There had been whispers of the Weasley twins, but every time he tried to catch them he ended up in the middle of more slapstick than if he'd left well enough alone. He had done nothing to deserve this treatment!
Geoff grumbled as he made his way to his rooms at the end of another long day. He shoes squished with every step. He'd stepped out of his classroom into the middle of a puddle of Swelling Solution that turned the soles of his shoes the size of small boats. He planned to douse them with Deflating Draught, have a stiff drink, and then go to bed and dream about what he'd do when he finally caught the little demons responsible.
The only problem was that he tripped every other step. Concentrating on walking without falling flat on his face meant that he didn't notice the three, colourless spells hitting him in the back just before he reached the painting that led to his sitting room. "Giant Nevermore."
"Have a good evening, sir," the painted squire said as his frame swung aside. Geoff just scowled.
After pouring himself a drink and whipping up some Deflating Draught for his shoes, because he thought the only way to get something done right was to do it himself, Geoff sat barefoot in front of the fireplace and stared listlessly into the low flames. He should have been marking essays for one of his classes, he couldn't be bothered to remember which one, but instead he sat in front of the fire until he fell asleep.
He dreamed.
He was in Romania, in a village that had been swarmed by vampires. He and his team were making their way through, killing any that were left and looking for any survivors. He came to a scratched up house with a closed door, a good sign that there were living humans still inside, and looked back at his partner before knocking.
During the real mission the door had been opened by a frightened Muggle mother with five children and their grandmother sharing the house with her. They had been the only survivors out of the small village of two hundred Muggles and fifty wizards. The wizards had all gone to fight the vampires or been turned to dust when the massive concentration of vampire auras killed the Floo system. The Muggles had opened their doors to the creatures and their screams had drawn the wizards to their deaths. The children and two women had only survived because the grandmother had scattered garlic throughout the house and lain branches of wild rose and hawthorn at every window.
In the dream Geoff was pulled into the house by a pale hand and the door slammed shut behind him, locking out his partner. Standing in front of him were not the woman and her children but a group of Hogwarts age girls with pale skin and sharp fangs. The head girl wore the face of a fourth year Ravenclaw girl named Audrey Blackthorn.
Geoff gulped. Audrey smiled. "How lovely of you to join us, isn't it girls?"
"Very lovely," another one of the vampire girls agreed. "I was getting hungry."
"Is there enough for all of us?" a vampire at the back of the room asked.
Normally Geoff would have said something like "There's always enough Eobard Geoff to go around" before letting loose with fire spells. But all on his own, in a house full of vampire girls, Geoff did something he wasn't proud of, and would never be mentioning to anyone.
He screamed for help.
Audrey's smile grew. The vampires moved to surround Geoff on all sides.
"Dinner time."
May 30th, 1991- The Great Hall, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Somewhere in Scotland
"Does Professor Geoff look tired to you?" Penelope asked her roommates at breakfast.
"Exhausted." Audrey smiled for the first time in weeks. "I think a formal letter of thanks to the Black family is in order." The spell that they had used, the Nightmare Curse, had come from a book in the Black library that had been uncovered by Patricia Stimpson-Black during the Easter holidays. The recently-revealed-to-be-adopted girl had shared the incantation with the fourth year Ravenclaw girls, and then all they had to do was pick three of them to cast it and wait for a full moon.
Jasmine sipped her tea. Their fourth and final roommate, the Muggleborn Emily, looked up from her copy of The Quibbler. "Are you feeling alright? The three of you were out like lights before we got you halfway up the stairs."
"I'm fine."
"Couldn't be better."
Casting the Curse had taken a lot out of them, which was why it had been them casting it and not the second year girls. There were easier ways to scare Geoff away, but they were all illegal.
"Should we let the boys place bets?" The "for when he'll be gone" was left unsaid.
Penelope looked at Audrey disapprovingly. "They're thirteen."
"So? They bet about when everyone would find out about Lord Black adopting Patricia." Lee ended up winning that bet. He said it would keep until Christmas.
"I don't approve."
Emily rolled her eyes. "Of curse you don't." Penelope blushed. "There are only four weeks left. We really should be worrying about exams." The Defense exam was going to be awful. Along with being a horrible excuse for a human being, Geoff was a terrible teacher. Ranting wasn't teaching.