I've got to say…not getting any reviews for my last chapter made me very sad. However, I'm pushing through my grief and getting right back into the story. This is going to be a little diversion from all the pranks. I certainly hope you enjoy it!
Secrets of Hogwarts 2
Chapter 3: Adventures in Hogsmeade
Harry enjoyed the Quidditch match immensely: both because of the huge lead Gryffindor gained in the House Championship and Quidditch standings and the way Bobby O'Riley made a huge ass of himself by blowing a match so easily and flying straight into a post. It was, in his own words, a "Patronus-producing" experience.
The novelty soon wore off, though. He needed another adventure, and soon. Consulting his fellow mischief-makers produced nothing. Ron suggested possibly recruiting more Marauders, but Harry and Hermione argued that the three of them barely fit under the Invisibility Cloak…and besides, more Marauders wasn't going to help if they had no pranks to play.
Hermione, oddly enough, had no good ideas. "I've got plenty of crazy ideas, but those aren't what we need right now" she informed Harry and Ron. They wholeheartedly agreed after she informed them that one of her ideas was to find Voldemort and pull a prank on him. Ron went so far as to suggest that Hermione had lost her mind; she threatened to make him really lose his mind with a quick Memory Charm, and he shut up.
The Marauders were resigned to the unthinkable: no pranks at all. Having become accustomed to prank playing, it was quite a shock on their systems. Harry and Ron felt that it was torture…so many innocent first and second years walking around, just begging to be stripped of their dignity by some amazing prank…
It was at one of these moments that Ron had a pretty good idea.
"Oi, Beaky. What say we sneak into Hogsmeade and check out my brothers' new supplies?" (The Weasley twins, thanks to Harry's generosity, had finally set up Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, a small joke shop in a side street of Hogsmeade.) Harry considered for a second.
"Do you think it will help, Lionheart?"
"Well, it certainly can't hurt…" And with that, the plan was on. The next day (which was by coincidence a Saturday) the Marauders met in the common room. They waited until they were the only ones there before Harry pulled out his Invisibility Cloak. Quickly draping it over themselves, the Marauders exited the common room (the Fat Lady was rather surprised at having to open for no one) and went up to the sixth floor.
"Hey, wait a minute!" Ron protested. "We didn't decide which passage to use! There are three on this floor alone!" Hermione turned to Harry.
"He's right, Beaky…where are we going?"
"I was thinking of the passage concealed in the statue of Caldroc the Conqueror…remember, the one who created the potion for super strength? It'll bring us out right by the Three Broomsticks. That's the closest one I can think of to Fred and George's shop." The other two agreed, and the Marauders strode up to the statue confidently. Harry tapped the figure's sword lightly and whispered, "Dessicato!" The sword arm turned, seeming to cut a large hole in the wall…but it was actually the secret passage. The Marauders scrambled through the passage, finally removing the cloak and walking.
No matter how many times Harry took this passage, he was always surprised by the sudden change in location: from dark, sort of slimy tunnel to semi-bright alleyway behind the Three Broomsticks. Of course, it could have been the fact that you ended up in the alleyway by falling about two feet from the end of the passage from Hogwarts. As usual, the threesome landed awkwardly and got up, brushing themselves and muttering.
"Stupid rotten passageway" Ron grumbled to himself.
"Lionheart! Language!" Hermione admonished him. Ron just glared at her.
"Clam up, Feathers." Harry, who sensed an argument on the horizon, quickly cut in.
"Shall we go?" Ron and Hermione glared daggers at each other for a couple of seconds before agreeing. The threesome carefully left the alleyway and ducked around the corner of the Three Broomsticks, darting quickly past the front door and going around the far corner, down Moonstone Avenue, where Weasley's Wizard Wheezes stood.
Harry was always glad to see Fred and George's shop. They had had it painted in Gryffindor colors, which was a nice contrast to all the gray buildings around it. It wasn't uncommon to see smoke billowing from windows on the second floor, where the twins had set up a laboratory for creating and testing new items. And the odd explosion, just like at the Burrow, was also common. The Marauders crossed the street quickly and entered the store.
The inside of the store was pretty quiet, considering the circumstances. The fake wands the twins had started on in their sixth year were arranged on the far wall. In front of the counter where the cash register was, assorted flavors of trick candies were placed. Some of the items that Zonko's sold were there (Dungbombs, Stink Pellets, Nose-Biting Teacups), but the twins had filled up the rest with their own creations: Trick Galleons (guaranteed to look like Galleons until used in a shop; they turned to dust soon after), Coloring Quills (they turned the user's hand random colors), Uglifying Cream (applying it to someone's face was guaranteed to produce warts and pimples galore, and on rare occasions cause the nose and ears to swell up), and other items that the entire population of Hogwarts had become well acquainted with over the past two years, thanks to the Marauders. Of course, they looked at it as promoting the store's inventory. George, who was running the register, looked up as they entered.
"Well, if it isn't our best customers!" he said smiling. "Shouldn't you be in school?"
"Yeah, we should" Ron retorted. "What's your point?" George nodded.
"Ok, young mischief makers…what can the esteemed Weasley twins do for you?"
"We just came by to see if you have anything new" Harry said. George frowned; a rarity for him.
"Nothing in a while, Harry. All our experiments and tests have gone wrong lately. Fred suspects Zonko's, but I'm not so paranoid…" He trailed off. "Do you guys hear that?"
The Marauders listened closely. There was a loud screeching sound from far off, accompanied by what sounded like very heavy footsteps (which were beginning to rattle the shop's items). They could also hear people running outside, and-
CRASH! The Marauders and George instinctively ducked at the sound.
"What was that?" Harry yelled over the bedlam that ensued from outside.
"Let's go look!" Ron screamed. The four of them ran out the front door of the shop and almost froze in horror.
There were dragons in the sky. At least ten of them: two Norwegian Ridgebacks, two Swedish Short-Snouts, a Hungarian Horntail, a Chinese Fireball, a Common Welsh Green, and three that Harry couldn't identify. He asked Hermione what they were.
"The two blue ones are Transylvanian Blood-Sucking Blues…and the other one's an American type! A Rhode Island Rockcrusher! How did it get all the way here?" she mused.
"Who cares, Feathers! They're destroying the place!" Ron screamed and pointed. The dragons were flying low over the village, burning all the buildings with their large jets of fire. And the villagers weren't working very hard to stop them, because of the other threats.
"Goblins and ogres?" George asked. "I wouldn't have thought their kinds would work together, and neither of them are friends with dragons."
"Who is?" Harry quipped. "Good point" George said. "I'm going back to the shop to protect it. You three get back to Hogwarts!" He dashed into his shop. The Marauders ran into the back alley behind the Three Broomsticks.
"Are we agreed that we're going to stay and fight?" Harry asked. Ron and Hermione nodded.
"Ok, good. Feathers, transform and fly to Hogwarts. Get to Dumbledore and tell him what's going on. Lionheart and I will stay here and fight." Hermione nodded and became an owl in an instant. She flew off as Ron and Harry started planning.
"Ok Lionheart. What we have to do first is take on the ogres. If we can beat them, we can get all of them…weight for weight, an ogre is more powerful than a dragon. We'll need to be a little more powerful, of course…" In the blink of an eye, the alley seemed to shrink as a griffin and manticore replaced Harry and Ron.
"How glad are you that Hermione found that Telepathy Charm just after we perfected our Animagi forms?" Ron asked. "Very" Harry replied. "Now let's go protect the village!" He shot into the sky as Ron ran out of the alley and around the corner to Main Street, facing the ground threat head on.
Harry dipped and dodged, swerving and turning as the dragons centered on him instead of Hogsmeade. "Lionheart, I may need some help here" he sent to Ron. "Griffins are just as tough as dragons and ogres, but that's weight for weight…not weight for weight of ten opponents!"
"What about the ogres?" Ron replied, launching himself straight up in the air as roughly twenty goblins charged him; subsequently, they ran into each other and knocked themselves out cold.
"I would gladly be fighting the ogres, if I could get to them! The dragons are a little bit more of a threat than you'd think from the ground. I've got an idea, Lionheart. Tell the villagers that we'll take care of the dragons, as long as they fight the goblins and ogres. It shouldn't be too hard for them…ogres and goblins are easier to take down with magic." Ron nodded his triple-jawed human head and started broadcasting his thoughts to the entire village. Harry resumed his dipping and dodging, occasionally scoring a hit with his eagle's claws. Ron joined the fray, whipping at dragons with his large scorpion's tail.
Harry risked a glance down and saw the villagers fighting, freezing or Transfiguring the goblins and ogres. He saw with pride that the fight on the ground was slowly being won. We could use that kind of help up here, he thought to himself as he dodged two jets of fire and sank his claws into the Common Welsh Green's eyes. The Green screamed as well as a dragon can and plummeted, coincidentally crashing into Zonko's Joke Shop.
Ron wasn't having much better luck, but he was holding his own. He had already managed to cause the Transylvanian Blood-Sucking Blues to crash into each other (over the forest, luckily) and had scored several lucky hits to the unprotected section of the Chinese Fireball's stomach. He had left it to fly around in pain as he turned to face his next victim…and found four of the remaining dragons behind him. Harry, who was in a rather nasty fight with the Hungarian Horntail and Rhode Island Rockcrusher, couldn't reach Ron in time to help as the Norwegian Ridgebacks and Swedish Short-Snouts fired four distinct jets of flame at him. Two of them missed entirely; one other scorched his lion's mane; the last one scored directly on his right wing. Ron fell screaming (in his head) to the ground.
"RON!" Harry screamed (also in his head), turning his attention at exactly the wrong time and being hit by a glancing blow from the Horntail's tail. He screamed some more (in pain) and wheeled around, clawing at anything within reach. The Horntail, surprised that Harry was still aloft, didn't even attack as Harry's eagle claws found a small, unprotected spot on its neck. It reeled in pain and sank like a stone. Harry turned as Ron had before and found the five remaining dragons facing him, each of them working up a blast of fire. He could dodge it, true…but then what? Even a griffin with human intelligence couldn't fight off five dragons…
"STUPEFY!" Harry heard twenty or thirty voices yelling as the Rhode Island Rockcrusher hit the ground. He saw the villagers, standing there with their wands raised. Quickly scanning the ground below him, he could see various objects on the ground: Transfigured goblins and ogres, he knew. The rest of them were frozen in place; one ogre was even bent over slightly with his giant fist roughly a foot away from the roof of the post office. He saw the villagers raise their wands again.
"STUPEFY!" And the Norwegian Ridgebacks fell; the villagers had obviously decided amongst themselves which dragons to hit. Only the two Swedish Short-Snouts remained: Harry charged one, swiping at it before it could even react, while the villagers blasted the other. The dragon reeled slightly from Harry's attack before starting one of his own, lashing his tail at Harry almost too fast for him to dodge. Harry dropped down slightly, letting the tail pass over him, then flew up and ripped at the dragon's underbelly with his eagle's beak. It screamed as a long gash formed and managed to fly almost to the Shrieking Shack before it crashed in the mud.
A loud cheer went up from the village as Harry flew down to where Ron had landed; crashed, really. Some villagers were there, mending his burnt wing and other bruises.
"Are you ok, Lionheart?" Harry asked nervously as a young woman he didn't know healed the wound the Horntail had given him.
"I'll be fine, Beaky…I'm just glad I wasn't in so much pain that I transformed back." Ron replied weakly. Harry smiled (although his eagle's head didn't really show it) and flew up again, surveying the damage. Honeydukes and the Three Broomsticks had suffered some serious damage. Zonko's was completely destroyed. The post office had survived, thanks to whoever froze the ogre where he was. Random houses and smaller shops were smoking; they had been on fire, but had since been put out. Harry turned to go back to Ron when he heard something. It was like the sound he had heard when the ogres were coming, but even heavier.
"Now what could that be?" he wondered to himself…
(A/N: Ah, my first cliffhanger! I'd say you're going to be very surprised at what happens next…hell, so will I. I'm not sure where I'm going from here! Anyways, read and review!)