Chapter Fourteen: Sir Luggage and the Holy Vendetta

Though Hermione didn't rank herself highest on the luggage's list of favourite people, luggage did.  No kitten (and Lisa was far from any ordinary kitten, as far as it was concerned!) could outplace its Mistress.

Hermione would have been touched, if she had known of this sentiment.

But sentient suitcases, no matter how intelligent, have no words to express their feelings.  They have only actions. 

Thus the luggage chose to prove its devotion to the Mistress by defending her honour. 

Like any medieval knight, any gallant defender of a lady's chastity, her cherished person, Luggage abhorred the idea of a lady being pushed into a match that didn't suit her.  And that wicked furry creature, that cruel attacker of suitcases, the woman called McGonagall, did so scheme to see the Mistress shackled to the creature called Ron.  So had the Mistress admitted to it, in a moment of deep despair. 

Luggage had no idea what a Ron was, except that the Mistress had said she wasn't interested in him, and he didn't like cats.  This seemed to show an intent to harm Lisa (though hardly chauvinistic, chivalry was embedded deep within its woodwork).  Its reasoning was sound; the Ron-creature, in collusion with the vicious McGonagall, strove to steal away the innocence of one of its favourite ladies and hurt the other.  And Luggage was nothing if not fiercely protective of those it cared about.

Thus to slay the dragon, our wooden knight sought the aid of a damsel in distress and the stage was set.

And the Mistress, to whom this entire operation came back to, still knew nothing of the brewing storm.

Severus Snape had once remarked that the only major fault the kitten Mona Lisa possessed was a tendency to trust where she should not.  By this he meant the luggage (though Hermione did wonder if he were not indulging in a bout of self-recrimination, and watched him carefully to see he was alright).  But he meant nothing more than what he said.

And he was more right than she'd thought.

Lisa would follow the trunk anywhere.  No words of encouragement were needed; the luggage, unable to supply these, settled on looking pleading and nudging the door of Snape's living-room in a promise of adventure. 

The kitten, who had her paws around a discarded quill, looked disgruntled at the thought of perusing the corridors at a time when all decent kittens – and suitcases – are far away in the land of milk and catnip, but the luggage would not be dissuaded.  Eventually, she left her feathered toy and the comfort of her bed and followed, padding silently along. 

Curiosity might not kill the cat, but still it could get her into all kinds of trouble.  But luggage was safe.  Following luggage was alright.  No one could hurt her when luggage was around.

Ron Weasley wasn't much happier about the hour.  He had just finished a detention with Snape for being very late to class, perhaps the only professor who wouldn't listen to the reason why he was 'unavoidably detained'. 

"Perhaps trying to discover a way with which you can cheat on today's test, Mr Weasley," the Potions Master had sneered.  "Thirty points from Gryffindor and detention.  See me after class."  He was in a particularly nasty frame of mind as someone had broken into his storeroom the previous night and damaged all the ingredients on the bottom shelves.  Possibly it was Potter and Weasley trying to steal something, he reasoned, their natural clumsiness destroying his precious components in the process.

He hadn't done anything! thought Ron in aggravation as he sat down at his desk.  Though with Snape, there didn't have to have been a crime committed before the non-Slytherin student was picked on, so maybe he was just in a (normally) bad mood.

With similar grouchy grace he had received news of, and completed, his detention.  It consisted of trying to recover and sort out everything that had been damaged.  Snape had watched him closely the entire time, sneering broadly, as though he blamed him personally for the incident.  Ron only wished that he had done it.

If Snape had been thinking, instead of blindingly furious about the loss of stock, he would have seen faint footprints in some of the spilled ingredients.  Barefoot footprints.  And marks on the shelves, where something very solid and heavy had run into them about a foot from the ground.

That something very solid and heavy had also managed to make Ron late for class by snapping at him in the hallway, blocking the way to the dungeons.  He'd been running late already, as he had to come from a divination class, unlike Hermione and Harry, who both had arithmancy nearby instead.

Then the suitcase that he wasn't sure he hadn't imagined outside his room backed him into a corner and wagged its lid at him until Snape would be extremely ticked about his lateness to class, then sauntered off in the opposite direction.

Ron's thoughts were on avoiding the suitcase when he set off to return to Gryffindor tower.  He entertained dark thoughts of setting it on fire with his wand (maybe he could get Hermione to teach him the spell?), or floating it at arms length all the way out of Hogwarts.

It is perhaps indicative of Ron's character that he didn't immediately consider going to a teacher about the curious trunk that he kept seeing.  Many others would have, but even becoming Head Boy hadn't given Ron enough faith in his own judgement to run to a professor with a story about a metal bound wooden suitcase on lots of little feet that bared its teeth at him.

But when he saw the kitten sitting in the entranceway to a disused passage, looking helplessly around it, he couldn't walk on by.  Perhaps Hermione would know what to do with it?  The luggage had been right, Ron wasn't particularly fond of cats, but he didn't want to catch this one and consume it for a midnight snack.  However, the differences between his and the luggage's reasoning were irrelevant, for when the kitten turned and scampered down the thin corridor, he still followed.

And that was all that was required.

Hermione, for her part, was attempting to infuse some order into her notes about the Photo-Quills.  Snape had hinted that if they could refine the invention (and that included a more aesthetically pleasing structure than the one it presently possessed), and she wrote up a cohesive, detailed report describing the process, she could patent it.  And possibly make a fortune, the implication went unsaid.

Diligently, she bent over her notes.  The quill they had come up with bore little resemblance to the dicto-quill upon which it had been based.  Its most curious feature was that it could draw both ends.  One was a tapered bamboo nib, the other a raven feather, the two bits being joined in the middle by judicious transfiguration.  They were yet to test it on the mirror (which had once again been moved into an empty room as Madam Pince had complained about the noise), but it had already produced several beautiful portraits of random subjects.  Looking at the one of herself, Hermione suspected a certain trend to eloquence and hoped it wouldn't affect their historical work.  Snape, though, swore that it was a perfect likeness, and only smirked a little when he said it. 

Sometimes she didn't quite know what to do about him.

Best to put off the whole problem until she had the time to worry about it.  But she found herself strangely pleased that she could call him friend; the idea of a friend she could discuss academic things with without sending them to sleep held its own peculiar thrill.  Then, of course, there was the luggage, like a dark secret they kept between them.  She still hadn't gotten around to telling the other Gryffindors about her suitcase. 

While Hermione worked, Harry was valiantly trying, once again, to decipher the Dialogues of Gregory the Great with Neville Longbottom.  A medieval pontiff who had had the added benefit of being a wizard, he had in the late 6th and early 7th century reformed the Christian Church and defended Rome from the Lombards.  Now he, and his writings on the true nature of so-called demonic possessions, were the topic of their first History of Magic essay for the year.  Hermione, of course, had already finished hers; she was thinking of doing an extended research project on medieval magic if Professor Binns would allow it.  (That, or the healing work of Abbè Kuenzle – though explaining how she had a rare source text that wasn't in the Hogwarts library would take a bit of work!)  The borders between the magical and muggle communities in medieval times had been almost non-existent, and many powerful figures such as Gregory and Clovis had gotten away with using magic and ascribing it to divine intervention.

Her lips tugged upwards in a smile.  Hearing Harry and Neville so deeply involved in their work was worth the promise she had made herself not to intervene or admonish them for having left the assignment too late. 

"We could probably mention the servant girl story," suggested the latter, looking nervous. 

"The what?"

"Um, you know, the one about the girl who swallowed a demon, on the cabbage leaves."
"Lettuce leaves," Hermione corrected automatically, then suppressed a sigh.  So much for promises.

Harry rolled his eyes.  "Why don't you tell us, 'Mione?"
"Well, it goes that there was this servant girl who swallowed a devil, since she'd eaten some lettuce leaves from the convent garden and then suddenly felt that there was a demon inside her.  An exorcist was called, who exhorted the demon to be gone, but the 'unwelcome guest' excused himself, saying that he'd been quietly sitting on the lettuce when the girl came and swallowed him.  He was duly expelled."
"Ah," said Harry intelligently.

"Now," Hermione continued, warming to her topic, "the girl was, of course, a muggle, and the reaction of many muggle historians has been to dramatise such instances to the point where 'possessions' were commonplace and all of assuredly evil intent.  Pope Gregory refutes that with cases like this one, and goes on to point out that many of these supposed demons were merely ghosts who had been attracted by the aesthetic monastic life, and became acquainted with certain muggles under, ah, less than desirable circumstances.  There's several other similar cases in his works.  It's believed that these occurrences, such examples of concentrated, pig-headed muggle superstition, frustrated him to such a degree that he decided to revise the Church in order to create an edifice in which all beings, living and non-living, could study and pursue their beliefs free from persecution.  In doing so he consolidated the power of the Church and it was to Gregory that the task fell of defending Rome against barbarian invasions.  When the emperor, who was, by the way, a muggle, and so couldn't understand the basic reasoning of some of Gregory's policies and tactics, nor how he managed to implement them, implied that he himself was using the power of the devil, Gregory replied that-" she hunted through her own History notebook for the reference "'My pious lord may think all the evil he wants of me, provided that, for the sake of the usefulness of the Republic and for the cause of Italy's deliverance, he will not listen to every one who comes along, but will deign to believe facts rather than words.'  But anyway, that was all in Professor Binns' lecture, and there's a good textbook by Batiffol in the library.  You can read the rest yourself."

Hermione put down her notebook and finally realised that the entire force of seventh years (and some of the sixth years) present were taking notes.  She blushed slightly and picked up her quill-work.

"Thanks, Hermione," said Dean cheerfully, signing his name on top of the notes he'd just written.  "I don't know how I'd pass without you!"  Others nodded assent.

Feeling a little grumpy that the others couldn't be bothered doing their own work (and more than a little disappointed that no-one else shared her passion for medieval history), Hermione resumed her own work.  Harry shot her an understanding look for which she was grateful.  Deliberately he started copying quotations out of the textbook, and Neville, after another quick glance at his new notes, followed suit.

"Thanks, Hermione," he said shyly, and met her eyes.  A reluctant grin tugged on her mouth.  "That's okay," she said.  "I know you're actually doing your own work, anyway.  I'm happy to help."

"No, really?" asked Harry, mock-surprisedly.  "I thought you hated doing research?"
"Oh, shut up, Harry."

"Alright, alright.  Can you pass the ink?  Mine's run out on me."

The portrait hole slammed open.  Flying red hair and tangled black robes stumbled through in their haste.  The sixth-year student they comprised looked around frantically.

"Harry!  Hermione!  Hurry, oh, it's dreadful!" Ginny wailed.  She threw herself down beside the table.  "It's Ron!  He's in the hospital wing and it's really, really, bad!"

Disclaimers/Author's Notes:

Gregory the Great (c. 540-604 AD) was indeed a real person, and pontiff of Rome from 590-604 AD.  His most famous works include the Dialogues and the Pastoral Rule, and he was responsible for defending Rome against barbarian invasion, 'saving' the Church, and the spread of Benedictine monasticism to England. 

The story of the demonic possession is drawn from the Dialogues, though I'm sure it's quite obvious what fictional elements I have incorporated!  Gregory's response to the emperor was actually part of a letter written when the Emperor blamed him for pursuing the 'simplistic policy' of entering into negotiations with the Lombard Duke of Spoleto, which was the only way he was able to save Rome from being sacked. 

As might have been obvious, medieval history is an interest of mine and I encountered Gregory in the course of study.  He wasn't actually going to turn up in this story but it seems that he, like the luggage, has a mind of his own.

The references I have used for information on Gregory and his medieval activities (those ones I didn't make up), in case anyone is interested, are as follows:

Batiffol, English Ed., pp. 244-5, quoted in Davis (Hermione has read far more of this text than I have!)

Davis, R.H.C., A History of Medieval Europe from Constantine to St. Louis, 2nd Ed. London, Longman, 1988; Chapter Four: "The Church and the Papacy"

Seligmann, Kurt, The History of Magic, New York, Pantheon Books Inc., 1948.

And, of course, the Dialogues of Gregory himself, quoted in both Davis and Seligmann.

Apart from that… the luggage is Terry Pratchett's; Hogwarts and all its characters belong to J.K. Rowling. 

I can't think of anything else I need to say.  Thank you to everything who is reading this and I hope you enjoy it!  Look out for the Luggage's first adventure in the Potterverse, Wizards and Worldgates, (yes, a shameless plug!) ch. 1 of which is already up.  I'll update soon.  Most importantly, I haven't filed it under a character section, as there's no category for luggage!  (Damn!)  Should I put it under Hermione/Severus as it's a prequel to a HG/SS fic, or just leave it as it is???

Please let me know!