A/N
Cloe: Oh jeez its almost 1 and I'm still doing this. Ugh. I should be packing. ::does a happy dance:: I'm going to London tomorrow! Anyway here it is Chapter Four so sorry its late, my life decided it was going to wake up and do something so here we are. Ugh so um yeah. Read and Review people. Thanks.
Disclaimer: Tis JK Rowlings idea and I'm not her. If I was, do you think I'd be posting this here?
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Guardian Angel from Hell
A Harry Potter Fanfiction
By Gryffith and Cloe
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Chapter Four: Pranks, Quidditch, and Blame all around.
The next morning in the Great Hall after breakfast had been dished out, Dean walked over to where Harry and his friends were sitting. He looked worried and kept wringing his hands.
"Do any of you guys know where Julian Bendvenuto is? He left for the prefect's bathroom before breakfast but he hasn't come for breakfast yet. And we have a match against Slytherin this afternoon!"
Harry shook his head, "I don't know where he is, but I'm sure he's fine. Geez, Dean, you've been really uptight ever since you promoted to captain of the team."
"Well, I can understand why Wood was so uptight!" he retorted, referring to Oliver Wood, their former goalkeeper who had graduated two years ago. "It's a big responsibility. But then he didn't have to deal with a newbie for a Keeper either."
"But I thought Rona Jyresh was coming along fine?" Ron asked scraching his head.
"Oh, yes, but she just started this year, and-" Hermione held up her hand to stop the captain's nervous ramblings as Professor Mcgonagall stood up and started to speak.
"There is no need for alarm, but the prefect's bathroom has been booby-trapped and Mr. Bendvenuto is in the infirmary having the effects taken care of. Don't worry, Dean, he will be ready for the match. But Draco Malfoy, I would appreciate it if you came to my office. Professor Snape is already there."
The small slim blond boy rose from the Slytherin table and followed the head of the Gryffindor House to her office. Audrey Yseulte and Natalie McDonald walked over to the four of them grouped their, both of them looking very angry.
"I bet he did this in hopes that Julian wouldn't be able to play!" Audrey ground her teeth. Rolanda Kemp, the third Chaser of the group besides Natalie and Audrey, came up next and Rona wasn't far behind her, both girls looking worried. Dean assured the girls, one of their Beaters and Chasers, and the girls that everything would be fine, and then turned to Harry.
"Sorry to put the pressure on, but get the Snitch as quickly as possible! I'm just positive that…oh well. I'll see you in the quidditch field straight after class."
Ron and Harry then continued to guess exactly what Draco had done, yet Hermione seemed strangely silent, with eyes narrowed. This went on for a few a minutes, and then the girl stood up abruptly.
"Come on, we can't be late for Transfiguration. Don't worry, after that we'll go see Julian and see for ourselves if he's all right, since you two are so worried about him." Harry agreed and Ron followed suit.
They collected their books and hurried down the halls to Professor Mcgonagall's tower room. They sat in the desks and waited for her to begin, as they did every Tuesday morning. The Professor looked unusually flustered, but for Minevra Mcgonagall, that meant that she had a stray strand of hair wafting in the air instead of being tucked tightly into the bun at the back of her head. Otherwise, her colorless face and taut pursed lips were in their normal positions.
"I know you're all worried about Julian Bendvenuto, but I expect all of you to be up to your usual standard of decorum-" The Professor began with.
But at that moment three of the spare desks were transfigured into a gitar, a pair of bongo drums, and an oboe and then all three began to play music that some of the students recognized as Arabian. Before Mcgonagall could change them back a yellow strip of silk winking silver flew in through the window and twirled around the uptight woman. What sound like a gust of wind blow in and ripped out her hair pins, letting her knot of hair cascade down in coils of brown-black to bounce slightly at the small of her back. Then the gust triggered the scarf to wrap around her head like a turban, which she immediately tore off and she when read the silver embroidered writing, the Professor had this curiously outraged expression on her face, not unlike Uncle Vernon.
But the gust wasn't done yet; next it swished around the room turning the desks into huge springy velvet cushions of pinks, reds, oranges, and gold, including Mcgonagall's into a giant couch littered with midnight blue, magenta, and gold pillows. The wind proceeded to scurry around the room, changing the walls into a burnt orange heavy fabric as it went, and sparks flew as the overhead controlled sunlight flashed and low-hanging oil lamps swung from their pivoting point on the ceiling; the tower had turned into a giant Arabian tent! All the students had their eyes trained on their teacher, trying to decipher her reaction from her stunned but barring this expressionless face.
To their utter amazement, she laughed, "Look at this place! This is some of the best transfiguration of non-living objects that I have seen in a long time! And on such a large scale! Now which of you did it? Hold out your wands…none of you. Oh well, notice how the velvet is soft and flexible instead of hard like our wooden desks…" the voice excitedly went on to examine the other features of the spells used, inviting them to appreciate it, but it essentially summoned friendly chatter and then chaos. Hermione was muttering about someone knowing their Muggle Studies, but Ron had his mouth close to Harry's ear and his fuchsia pillow in hand.
Slowly he drew away and called to a Ravenclaw across the room, "See if you can duck this, Rand!" and hurled his pillow at the other boy.
"Oh yeah?" Rand grabbed his pillow and heaved it at Ron, but the redhead ducked and it smashed into Dean Thomas.
Dean stood up, asked, "Do you want a piece of me?" and pitched his pillow into the general Ravenclaw area and this time hitting one of the girls.
By then everyone had stood up clutching a pillow and anybody who had been sitting in the no-man's-land between the two houses scrambled to their feet and out of the line of fire, taking all the pillows they could grab with them. McGonagall started to stop the fray but a pillow brained her in the conk from the direction of the window, which just happened to be by the Ravenclaws. So the Professor picked up one of the many pillows adorning her couch and joined the fight. Pretty soon all of them were yelling and squealing for the sheer joy of it and the boy's war calls crowded the room.
"I'll get you for that one!"
"You wanna try it?"
"To the Gryffindors!"
"In the name of the Ravenclaws!"
"For all the people without access to pillows everywhere!"
Five minutes before the bell the Professor stopped the hubbub and ordered all of them to start restoring the room to its former impeccable dignity. They did nothing of the sort, instead letting the desks be carelessly changed into blues, reds, and yellows, and the walls, though changed back to their stone texture were left as a battleground between red and blue paint, as both Ravenclaw and Gryffindor girls were involved.
The trio was quite cheerful when they left and they enthusiastically trooped to the infirmary. But the place was in an uproar as well; apparently all the infirmary tools and utensils, down to the last bedpan, had suddenly grown arms and legs and were dancing around the room. One of the thermometers had found a mini trumpet and was playing the mamba for a chain of pill and potion bottles around the room. Another thermometer had found a cello and was playing the tango on one of the beds for chunks of chocolate.
The older patients-including Julian-were chasing the hot water bottle that had stolen Madam Pomfrey's wand while the younger patients watched two unoccupied paper gowns battle out a sword fight with a pair of yardsticks. Madam Pomrey, helpless without her wand, was nonetheless scolding a stethoscope for tottering dangerously on the pole that held up the curtains. As they stared, the rest of the Gryffindor team bumped into the trio from behind.
"What the?" the two female Quidditch players and best friends gawked and the others echoed their sentiments.
Then all eight of them joined the battle against the medicines. The two, speeding as if on brooms, zipped around the room crashing into furniture in full blast after the bedpan. Audrey and Dean stood on one of the beds reaching for the latex gloves swinging from the chandelier up above while Rona grappled with a paper gown for control of a scale. Ron and Harry dived after the potion bottles, which had the effect of either missing them completely or knocking them over and spraying vile smelling liquid all over. Hermione, however, went straight for a broom that wore a yellow scarf around its middle and seemed to conduct the room like it would an orchestra. The girl silenced the broom and the entire room died down. Before long the only voices left were the first and second years complaining about the show being over.
Hermione now held the yellow cloth and she read the silver thread:
"Cheer up, Poppy! The world's not going to end if you have fun. C.M.M."
Wordlessly she passed it on to Madam Pomfrey, who skimmed it over and left, shaking her head and clucking her tongue, probably to get a glass of sherry. All of the students gawked aghast at the mess left behind by the prank; there wasn't anything in that whole room left intact. Then Hermione rolled up the sleeves of her robe and began to wave her wand around, muttering charms, and the various pieces of the mess began to put themselves together. The rest of the older students joined while the younger students, who hadn't learned the charms yet, watched.
It took a fairly long time, but in the end it turned out to be a game when Rona announced, "Whoever pieces together the last bottle wins a bag of toffees!"
There was a mad rush for the bottles, which had been the worse off after the prank. Natalie won the toffees, and everyone went doggedly back to the rest of the work. Hermione checked that everything was folded and neatly put back into place, and then she had the Gryffindor quidditch team help all the patients back into their beds.
Julian was the last one in bed and they stayed the longest around her, examining the prank that had been pulled on him. There were still red feathers coming out of his arms, and his nose was still the upper part of a beak, but for the most part he looked okay.
"What happened, Julian?" Audrey asked, stroking the feathers.
The boy shrugged, "I went in for a nice soak, but the moment I was submerged under the water I turned into a giant cardinal bird. Why don't you guys leave? I don't want you late for class."
Harry and Ron turn pale, "But…lunch-"
Alicia frowned at Harry, "You didn't have lunch? Are you going to be able to perform all right at the quidditch match?"
Hermione nodded for him, "Yeah, I'll make sure that he eats something after class. Come on, Harry. We shouldn't keep Professor Binns waiting."
"You only want enough time to get your Arithmacy homework done," Ron grumbled, but he followed anyway.
Nobody in the ghost's class brought anything to class anymore except a doodling pad or a pillow, but a few of the more diligent students brought the textbook for that class and another class's homework.
They said that Professor Binn's had died in his sleep but that he was so devoted to his job that when he died he merely left his body behind and went to work as usual. The boys immediately dropped their heads on their desks, but they're empty stomachs rumbled menacingly. Ron's abdomen ached abominably and he just seemed to itch all over, but the class just never seemed to…and he felt like this only ten minutes in.
Then, a warm, comfortable aroma floated by his nostrils that made his mouth water and his stomach whine with hunger. He lifted his head to see what was cooking…and there, three feet from the droning Professor was a small coal black oven and it emitted a smell infuriatingly like cherry pie. All pairs of eyes excepting the teacher's were focused on the oven by now, and so they were quick to pick up the actions of a rogue piece of chalk on the big blackboard. It was picked up by an invisible hand and it seemed to be hefted for a second, and then it swooped up to the upper left-hand corner, all the while the smell getting irresistibly stronger. In arched, spidery writing, the chalk began to talk.
"There once was a teacher whose name was Binns.
His voice was tired, weary, dreary, and boring
And his mind was dim.
He was so boring, no student has ever stayed awake for his whole class.
He was so dumb, he never noticed."
The girls giggled behind their hands while the boys snickered.
"He was so boring, the headmaster was never able to critique his class;
The headmaster always fell asleep halfway through.
He was so boring, all the teachers were prepared at board meetings;
They brought coffee or tea loaded with caffeine.
He was so dull, he bored himself to death.
And then, his ghost was so dumb,
That it didn't even realize that it had died.
And now, he is so stupid
He still hasn't figured out why all the names on his tests were made up
He is so dumb that he doesn't even know your names.
He is so blind he doesn't see that half of you
Are working on your lists for divination class.
He is so blind, he doesn't hear that all of you
Are either laughing or snoring right now."
With this Dean Thomas elbowed Seamus in the ribs to wake him up and the giggling, if anything, turned into a series of snorts when the kids tried to muffle their reaction to this poem. As the volume increased, the Professor ceased his recital of the textbook and opened his eyes.
All the students stared right back at him, either having mastered the art of switching from laughter to sobriety, or, as the honest students had to do, covered their smiles with their hands. The Professor cynically rolled his eyes and the closed them to finish his concert. The students' attention returned to the board, but the chalk was resting once again in its slot. Instead, the oven door flew open and imperceptible hands took out small pies, about 6" in diameter, and tossed them into the air where a charm spell like a chair lift took hold of the pies and dropped one over each head. By the time all the pies were out of the oven, there were several burnt fingers and tongues, and the chalkboard eraser was hovering in the air this time, rubbing out all the words written so far.
Then the eraser dropped, merely to be replaced by the chalk and the white stick wrote:
"Try to pay attention in class, Aion. C.M.M"
Everyone, except Binns, stared at the advice for a while before either discussing who C.M.M was or returning to his/her pie. A few minutes passed and the bell rang, cutting the Professor's sentence in half. He turned around to double-check the clock and then caught his first sight of the prank, but before he could turn around to demand which student had done it, all the students were laughing uproariously in the hall. After class Harry decreed that the pie had been both tasty and filling and that he would go to his room to change into his quidditch uniform. Hermione and Ron nodded and followed at a slower pace to drop off their books.
As they were leaving, Ginny, bumped into them, "Hey, Harry was looking pretty red. Do guys know what happened to him?"
Ron chortled, "He's probably trying to keep from laughing." Hermione then briefed the confused fourth year until understanding dawned in her eyes. Ginny wondered aloud who the guilty party was, but Ron was lost for words.
"I don't know anyone with the initials C.M.M," he admitted. Ginny asked Hermione, if she had any idea, but the older girl merely frowned and didn't answer.
Harry sat in the locker room watching Rolanda and Audrey lean on each other laughing; he had just told them what had happened in Professor Binn's class. Dean came in followed by the rest of the team and so Harry told the joke again.
At the end of the tale Audrey wheezed, "Oh, man, I really wish I could meet this prankster!" They all finished changing and preparing for the match and marched onto the field.
As the two teams strode out to face each other, Dean grabbed Harry's arm, "I'm not sure how long Rona's gonna hold out. We need the snitch early!"
The boy nodded and Dean went up to shake hands with Arron Sarcyn, one of the Slytherin beaters. They eyed each other warily and shook hands tensely, as though they expected the other to have a knife hidden somewhere. On the other side of the line, Draco Malfoy smirked at Harry, grinning in a knowing, infuriating way that made the black-haired boy feel sick; the blond Slytherin boy never grinned like that unless he was prepared to do something nasty.
Madam Hooch, satisfied, dropped her hand and blew the whistle, signaling fourteen teenagers to shoot up in the air. Harry pushed off his legs and soared extremely high, trying to catch the glitter of the golden snitch, but instead the only glitter came from Draco's gold watch, which was unusually only five feet away.
"What are you doing, Potter?" Draco sneered. Harry blinked his eyes and focused them on the ground below.
"Trying to ignore you," he muttered. The blond boy's cold grey eyes glinted as he pulled a wand out of his sleeve.
"Stop trying to see the snitch, because you're not going to be able to see anything."
Harry glanced up at his adversary this time and stared at the wand, "But you can't do that!"
Draco shrugged, "You can't train a house elf without cracking the whip. And anyway, we're too high for Madame Hooch to see me or to hear you scream. Quellius!"
Harry immediately felt as though a veil had been draped over his eyes and his jaws glued together. His hands automatically clutched his broom and brought his body down to it, but a cold sweat seemed to make the slick wood even slicker and slippery. He heard Draco laugh and swoop down to look for the snitch. He heard Seamus Finagan's commentary, announcing that the Slytherins scored again and again, and the score being 150 to 30, the Slytherin's lead.
He heard Seamus mutter time and time again "what the hell is Potter doing up there?" But Harry couldn't do a thing while he was blind; what if he crashed into something? Just then he heard a rush of air and a slim, not overly strong hand on his elbow.
A female voice-Circe's-followed, "What did my-what did Draco do to you?!" Harry tried to open his mouth, but his lips were clamped together by the spell, so he shook his head madly. Circe, probably in the invisibility cloak, squeezed his arm gently.
"A curse. Sorry, but I can't perform an anti-curse if I don't know the original curse. Damn that idiot! Listen, do you trust me? I can get you to the snitch, but you need to trust me."
Harry froze; did he trust her? Seamus's voice rang out, "And Slytherin scores another goal, making the score 190 to 30! Gryffindor will need a miracle to catch up if Potter doesn't start acting soon!"
The boy winced at the content of the sentence, and then grabbed Circe's hand fiercely, jerking his head up and down as he did so. The hand struggled wildly for a moment, but then it stilled, even though it still trembled tensely. Yet Harry had no time to ponder this for the next moment his hand was yanked out of its socket as the young woman saw the snitch and dived at it. Harry knew that they were practically plunging downward faster than he could fall and was glad he couldn't see the ground leap up at him. Then the two of them stopped and Harry felt fingers thrust the snitch into his palm and the hand that had led him leave quickly. There were cheers all around and Seamus's sarcastic voice roll down from the announcer's booth saying that while the Gryffindors couldn't win with that score, they were not far behind.
Circe left the blind and helpless Harry filled with a zealous, almost fanatic hatred for her father eating at her mind unbearably; he just always had to cheat, to get what he wanted in a nasty way. She threaded her way through the Slytherin crowd to the lone seeker, who wasn't getting any recognition because he had let Harry get the snitch. Draco looked at the newcomer, seeing a violet-eyed girl with her silver blonde hair up in a big ponytail who he had never seen before. The young woman held out her hand, supposedly to congratulate him on his win, so he took it.
In a flash he felt as though his arm had been yanked out of his socket and then a white burning flash concentrated at his genitals flashed through his body. Circe took her knee away from his privates with a grim satisfaction, muttering, "That's for being a cheater and a lying jackass."
Draco groaned louder and louder as she left and finally the other Slytherins turned to see what was the matter and saw him clutching himself.
Euclid snarled, "Now's not the time or the place!"
Draco wheezed, "I'm not! That- that girl kneed me!"
"What girl?"
"That-that short blonde!"
"What blonde? Where? I don't see anything."
Beneath one of the refreshment tables Circe grinned and clutched the invisibility cloak tighter around her as she watched all the different feet of Slytherins search for that short blonde girl who went up in a wisp of smoke.
~~~~~~
Post A/N:
Reviewing would be nice, I'll give you a cookie and a mention if you do. : )
Cloe: Oh jeez its almost 1 and I'm still doing this. Ugh. I should be packing. ::does a happy dance:: I'm going to London tomorrow! Anyway here it is Chapter Four so sorry its late, my life decided it was going to wake up and do something so here we are. Ugh so um yeah. Read and Review people. Thanks.
Disclaimer: Tis JK Rowlings idea and I'm not her. If I was, do you think I'd be posting this here?
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Guardian Angel from Hell
A Harry Potter Fanfiction
By Gryffith and Cloe
********************
Chapter Four: Pranks, Quidditch, and Blame all around.
The next morning in the Great Hall after breakfast had been dished out, Dean walked over to where Harry and his friends were sitting. He looked worried and kept wringing his hands.
"Do any of you guys know where Julian Bendvenuto is? He left for the prefect's bathroom before breakfast but he hasn't come for breakfast yet. And we have a match against Slytherin this afternoon!"
Harry shook his head, "I don't know where he is, but I'm sure he's fine. Geez, Dean, you've been really uptight ever since you promoted to captain of the team."
"Well, I can understand why Wood was so uptight!" he retorted, referring to Oliver Wood, their former goalkeeper who had graduated two years ago. "It's a big responsibility. But then he didn't have to deal with a newbie for a Keeper either."
"But I thought Rona Jyresh was coming along fine?" Ron asked scraching his head.
"Oh, yes, but she just started this year, and-" Hermione held up her hand to stop the captain's nervous ramblings as Professor Mcgonagall stood up and started to speak.
"There is no need for alarm, but the prefect's bathroom has been booby-trapped and Mr. Bendvenuto is in the infirmary having the effects taken care of. Don't worry, Dean, he will be ready for the match. But Draco Malfoy, I would appreciate it if you came to my office. Professor Snape is already there."
The small slim blond boy rose from the Slytherin table and followed the head of the Gryffindor House to her office. Audrey Yseulte and Natalie McDonald walked over to the four of them grouped their, both of them looking very angry.
"I bet he did this in hopes that Julian wouldn't be able to play!" Audrey ground her teeth. Rolanda Kemp, the third Chaser of the group besides Natalie and Audrey, came up next and Rona wasn't far behind her, both girls looking worried. Dean assured the girls, one of their Beaters and Chasers, and the girls that everything would be fine, and then turned to Harry.
"Sorry to put the pressure on, but get the Snitch as quickly as possible! I'm just positive that…oh well. I'll see you in the quidditch field straight after class."
Ron and Harry then continued to guess exactly what Draco had done, yet Hermione seemed strangely silent, with eyes narrowed. This went on for a few a minutes, and then the girl stood up abruptly.
"Come on, we can't be late for Transfiguration. Don't worry, after that we'll go see Julian and see for ourselves if he's all right, since you two are so worried about him." Harry agreed and Ron followed suit.
They collected their books and hurried down the halls to Professor Mcgonagall's tower room. They sat in the desks and waited for her to begin, as they did every Tuesday morning. The Professor looked unusually flustered, but for Minevra Mcgonagall, that meant that she had a stray strand of hair wafting in the air instead of being tucked tightly into the bun at the back of her head. Otherwise, her colorless face and taut pursed lips were in their normal positions.
"I know you're all worried about Julian Bendvenuto, but I expect all of you to be up to your usual standard of decorum-" The Professor began with.
But at that moment three of the spare desks were transfigured into a gitar, a pair of bongo drums, and an oboe and then all three began to play music that some of the students recognized as Arabian. Before Mcgonagall could change them back a yellow strip of silk winking silver flew in through the window and twirled around the uptight woman. What sound like a gust of wind blow in and ripped out her hair pins, letting her knot of hair cascade down in coils of brown-black to bounce slightly at the small of her back. Then the gust triggered the scarf to wrap around her head like a turban, which she immediately tore off and she when read the silver embroidered writing, the Professor had this curiously outraged expression on her face, not unlike Uncle Vernon.
But the gust wasn't done yet; next it swished around the room turning the desks into huge springy velvet cushions of pinks, reds, oranges, and gold, including Mcgonagall's into a giant couch littered with midnight blue, magenta, and gold pillows. The wind proceeded to scurry around the room, changing the walls into a burnt orange heavy fabric as it went, and sparks flew as the overhead controlled sunlight flashed and low-hanging oil lamps swung from their pivoting point on the ceiling; the tower had turned into a giant Arabian tent! All the students had their eyes trained on their teacher, trying to decipher her reaction from her stunned but barring this expressionless face.
To their utter amazement, she laughed, "Look at this place! This is some of the best transfiguration of non-living objects that I have seen in a long time! And on such a large scale! Now which of you did it? Hold out your wands…none of you. Oh well, notice how the velvet is soft and flexible instead of hard like our wooden desks…" the voice excitedly went on to examine the other features of the spells used, inviting them to appreciate it, but it essentially summoned friendly chatter and then chaos. Hermione was muttering about someone knowing their Muggle Studies, but Ron had his mouth close to Harry's ear and his fuchsia pillow in hand.
Slowly he drew away and called to a Ravenclaw across the room, "See if you can duck this, Rand!" and hurled his pillow at the other boy.
"Oh yeah?" Rand grabbed his pillow and heaved it at Ron, but the redhead ducked and it smashed into Dean Thomas.
Dean stood up, asked, "Do you want a piece of me?" and pitched his pillow into the general Ravenclaw area and this time hitting one of the girls.
By then everyone had stood up clutching a pillow and anybody who had been sitting in the no-man's-land between the two houses scrambled to their feet and out of the line of fire, taking all the pillows they could grab with them. McGonagall started to stop the fray but a pillow brained her in the conk from the direction of the window, which just happened to be by the Ravenclaws. So the Professor picked up one of the many pillows adorning her couch and joined the fight. Pretty soon all of them were yelling and squealing for the sheer joy of it and the boy's war calls crowded the room.
"I'll get you for that one!"
"You wanna try it?"
"To the Gryffindors!"
"In the name of the Ravenclaws!"
"For all the people without access to pillows everywhere!"
Five minutes before the bell the Professor stopped the hubbub and ordered all of them to start restoring the room to its former impeccable dignity. They did nothing of the sort, instead letting the desks be carelessly changed into blues, reds, and yellows, and the walls, though changed back to their stone texture were left as a battleground between red and blue paint, as both Ravenclaw and Gryffindor girls were involved.
The trio was quite cheerful when they left and they enthusiastically trooped to the infirmary. But the place was in an uproar as well; apparently all the infirmary tools and utensils, down to the last bedpan, had suddenly grown arms and legs and were dancing around the room. One of the thermometers had found a mini trumpet and was playing the mamba for a chain of pill and potion bottles around the room. Another thermometer had found a cello and was playing the tango on one of the beds for chunks of chocolate.
The older patients-including Julian-were chasing the hot water bottle that had stolen Madam Pomfrey's wand while the younger patients watched two unoccupied paper gowns battle out a sword fight with a pair of yardsticks. Madam Pomrey, helpless without her wand, was nonetheless scolding a stethoscope for tottering dangerously on the pole that held up the curtains. As they stared, the rest of the Gryffindor team bumped into the trio from behind.
"What the?" the two female Quidditch players and best friends gawked and the others echoed their sentiments.
Then all eight of them joined the battle against the medicines. The two, speeding as if on brooms, zipped around the room crashing into furniture in full blast after the bedpan. Audrey and Dean stood on one of the beds reaching for the latex gloves swinging from the chandelier up above while Rona grappled with a paper gown for control of a scale. Ron and Harry dived after the potion bottles, which had the effect of either missing them completely or knocking them over and spraying vile smelling liquid all over. Hermione, however, went straight for a broom that wore a yellow scarf around its middle and seemed to conduct the room like it would an orchestra. The girl silenced the broom and the entire room died down. Before long the only voices left were the first and second years complaining about the show being over.
Hermione now held the yellow cloth and she read the silver thread:
"Cheer up, Poppy! The world's not going to end if you have fun. C.M.M."
Wordlessly she passed it on to Madam Pomfrey, who skimmed it over and left, shaking her head and clucking her tongue, probably to get a glass of sherry. All of the students gawked aghast at the mess left behind by the prank; there wasn't anything in that whole room left intact. Then Hermione rolled up the sleeves of her robe and began to wave her wand around, muttering charms, and the various pieces of the mess began to put themselves together. The rest of the older students joined while the younger students, who hadn't learned the charms yet, watched.
It took a fairly long time, but in the end it turned out to be a game when Rona announced, "Whoever pieces together the last bottle wins a bag of toffees!"
There was a mad rush for the bottles, which had been the worse off after the prank. Natalie won the toffees, and everyone went doggedly back to the rest of the work. Hermione checked that everything was folded and neatly put back into place, and then she had the Gryffindor quidditch team help all the patients back into their beds.
Julian was the last one in bed and they stayed the longest around her, examining the prank that had been pulled on him. There were still red feathers coming out of his arms, and his nose was still the upper part of a beak, but for the most part he looked okay.
"What happened, Julian?" Audrey asked, stroking the feathers.
The boy shrugged, "I went in for a nice soak, but the moment I was submerged under the water I turned into a giant cardinal bird. Why don't you guys leave? I don't want you late for class."
Harry and Ron turn pale, "But…lunch-"
Alicia frowned at Harry, "You didn't have lunch? Are you going to be able to perform all right at the quidditch match?"
Hermione nodded for him, "Yeah, I'll make sure that he eats something after class. Come on, Harry. We shouldn't keep Professor Binns waiting."
"You only want enough time to get your Arithmacy homework done," Ron grumbled, but he followed anyway.
Nobody in the ghost's class brought anything to class anymore except a doodling pad or a pillow, but a few of the more diligent students brought the textbook for that class and another class's homework.
They said that Professor Binn's had died in his sleep but that he was so devoted to his job that when he died he merely left his body behind and went to work as usual. The boys immediately dropped their heads on their desks, but they're empty stomachs rumbled menacingly. Ron's abdomen ached abominably and he just seemed to itch all over, but the class just never seemed to…and he felt like this only ten minutes in.
Then, a warm, comfortable aroma floated by his nostrils that made his mouth water and his stomach whine with hunger. He lifted his head to see what was cooking…and there, three feet from the droning Professor was a small coal black oven and it emitted a smell infuriatingly like cherry pie. All pairs of eyes excepting the teacher's were focused on the oven by now, and so they were quick to pick up the actions of a rogue piece of chalk on the big blackboard. It was picked up by an invisible hand and it seemed to be hefted for a second, and then it swooped up to the upper left-hand corner, all the while the smell getting irresistibly stronger. In arched, spidery writing, the chalk began to talk.
"There once was a teacher whose name was Binns.
His voice was tired, weary, dreary, and boring
And his mind was dim.
He was so boring, no student has ever stayed awake for his whole class.
He was so dumb, he never noticed."
The girls giggled behind their hands while the boys snickered.
"He was so boring, the headmaster was never able to critique his class;
The headmaster always fell asleep halfway through.
He was so boring, all the teachers were prepared at board meetings;
They brought coffee or tea loaded with caffeine.
He was so dull, he bored himself to death.
And then, his ghost was so dumb,
That it didn't even realize that it had died.
And now, he is so stupid
He still hasn't figured out why all the names on his tests were made up
He is so dumb that he doesn't even know your names.
He is so blind he doesn't see that half of you
Are working on your lists for divination class.
He is so blind, he doesn't hear that all of you
Are either laughing or snoring right now."
With this Dean Thomas elbowed Seamus in the ribs to wake him up and the giggling, if anything, turned into a series of snorts when the kids tried to muffle their reaction to this poem. As the volume increased, the Professor ceased his recital of the textbook and opened his eyes.
All the students stared right back at him, either having mastered the art of switching from laughter to sobriety, or, as the honest students had to do, covered their smiles with their hands. The Professor cynically rolled his eyes and the closed them to finish his concert. The students' attention returned to the board, but the chalk was resting once again in its slot. Instead, the oven door flew open and imperceptible hands took out small pies, about 6" in diameter, and tossed them into the air where a charm spell like a chair lift took hold of the pies and dropped one over each head. By the time all the pies were out of the oven, there were several burnt fingers and tongues, and the chalkboard eraser was hovering in the air this time, rubbing out all the words written so far.
Then the eraser dropped, merely to be replaced by the chalk and the white stick wrote:
"Try to pay attention in class, Aion. C.M.M"
Everyone, except Binns, stared at the advice for a while before either discussing who C.M.M was or returning to his/her pie. A few minutes passed and the bell rang, cutting the Professor's sentence in half. He turned around to double-check the clock and then caught his first sight of the prank, but before he could turn around to demand which student had done it, all the students were laughing uproariously in the hall. After class Harry decreed that the pie had been both tasty and filling and that he would go to his room to change into his quidditch uniform. Hermione and Ron nodded and followed at a slower pace to drop off their books.
As they were leaving, Ginny, bumped into them, "Hey, Harry was looking pretty red. Do guys know what happened to him?"
Ron chortled, "He's probably trying to keep from laughing." Hermione then briefed the confused fourth year until understanding dawned in her eyes. Ginny wondered aloud who the guilty party was, but Ron was lost for words.
"I don't know anyone with the initials C.M.M," he admitted. Ginny asked Hermione, if she had any idea, but the older girl merely frowned and didn't answer.
Harry sat in the locker room watching Rolanda and Audrey lean on each other laughing; he had just told them what had happened in Professor Binn's class. Dean came in followed by the rest of the team and so Harry told the joke again.
At the end of the tale Audrey wheezed, "Oh, man, I really wish I could meet this prankster!" They all finished changing and preparing for the match and marched onto the field.
As the two teams strode out to face each other, Dean grabbed Harry's arm, "I'm not sure how long Rona's gonna hold out. We need the snitch early!"
The boy nodded and Dean went up to shake hands with Arron Sarcyn, one of the Slytherin beaters. They eyed each other warily and shook hands tensely, as though they expected the other to have a knife hidden somewhere. On the other side of the line, Draco Malfoy smirked at Harry, grinning in a knowing, infuriating way that made the black-haired boy feel sick; the blond Slytherin boy never grinned like that unless he was prepared to do something nasty.
Madam Hooch, satisfied, dropped her hand and blew the whistle, signaling fourteen teenagers to shoot up in the air. Harry pushed off his legs and soared extremely high, trying to catch the glitter of the golden snitch, but instead the only glitter came from Draco's gold watch, which was unusually only five feet away.
"What are you doing, Potter?" Draco sneered. Harry blinked his eyes and focused them on the ground below.
"Trying to ignore you," he muttered. The blond boy's cold grey eyes glinted as he pulled a wand out of his sleeve.
"Stop trying to see the snitch, because you're not going to be able to see anything."
Harry glanced up at his adversary this time and stared at the wand, "But you can't do that!"
Draco shrugged, "You can't train a house elf without cracking the whip. And anyway, we're too high for Madame Hooch to see me or to hear you scream. Quellius!"
Harry immediately felt as though a veil had been draped over his eyes and his jaws glued together. His hands automatically clutched his broom and brought his body down to it, but a cold sweat seemed to make the slick wood even slicker and slippery. He heard Draco laugh and swoop down to look for the snitch. He heard Seamus Finagan's commentary, announcing that the Slytherins scored again and again, and the score being 150 to 30, the Slytherin's lead.
He heard Seamus mutter time and time again "what the hell is Potter doing up there?" But Harry couldn't do a thing while he was blind; what if he crashed into something? Just then he heard a rush of air and a slim, not overly strong hand on his elbow.
A female voice-Circe's-followed, "What did my-what did Draco do to you?!" Harry tried to open his mouth, but his lips were clamped together by the spell, so he shook his head madly. Circe, probably in the invisibility cloak, squeezed his arm gently.
"A curse. Sorry, but I can't perform an anti-curse if I don't know the original curse. Damn that idiot! Listen, do you trust me? I can get you to the snitch, but you need to trust me."
Harry froze; did he trust her? Seamus's voice rang out, "And Slytherin scores another goal, making the score 190 to 30! Gryffindor will need a miracle to catch up if Potter doesn't start acting soon!"
The boy winced at the content of the sentence, and then grabbed Circe's hand fiercely, jerking his head up and down as he did so. The hand struggled wildly for a moment, but then it stilled, even though it still trembled tensely. Yet Harry had no time to ponder this for the next moment his hand was yanked out of its socket as the young woman saw the snitch and dived at it. Harry knew that they were practically plunging downward faster than he could fall and was glad he couldn't see the ground leap up at him. Then the two of them stopped and Harry felt fingers thrust the snitch into his palm and the hand that had led him leave quickly. There were cheers all around and Seamus's sarcastic voice roll down from the announcer's booth saying that while the Gryffindors couldn't win with that score, they were not far behind.
Circe left the blind and helpless Harry filled with a zealous, almost fanatic hatred for her father eating at her mind unbearably; he just always had to cheat, to get what he wanted in a nasty way. She threaded her way through the Slytherin crowd to the lone seeker, who wasn't getting any recognition because he had let Harry get the snitch. Draco looked at the newcomer, seeing a violet-eyed girl with her silver blonde hair up in a big ponytail who he had never seen before. The young woman held out her hand, supposedly to congratulate him on his win, so he took it.
In a flash he felt as though his arm had been yanked out of his socket and then a white burning flash concentrated at his genitals flashed through his body. Circe took her knee away from his privates with a grim satisfaction, muttering, "That's for being a cheater and a lying jackass."
Draco groaned louder and louder as she left and finally the other Slytherins turned to see what was the matter and saw him clutching himself.
Euclid snarled, "Now's not the time or the place!"
Draco wheezed, "I'm not! That- that girl kneed me!"
"What girl?"
"That-that short blonde!"
"What blonde? Where? I don't see anything."
Beneath one of the refreshment tables Circe grinned and clutched the invisibility cloak tighter around her as she watched all the different feet of Slytherins search for that short blonde girl who went up in a wisp of smoke.
~~~~~~
Post A/N:
Reviewing would be nice, I'll give you a cookie and a mention if you do. : )
