And now....we have to celebrate a special day....because....WE HAVE REACHED OVER 100 REVIEWS! Isn't that great? We never, never thought that some people would like this story and write such nice reviews! Honestly, it's like Christmas or something like that....Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Latrisha: "Wow, that's so cool...I've never had that many reviews before!!"
Kaeera: *beams* "Yeah, don't we have cool reviewers?"
Latrisha: "Actually we wanted this chapter to be very long, as a kind of Thank You for all the reviews...well, actually Kaeera wanted to make it very long..." *glares*
Kaeera: *laughs sheepishly* "Uhm, but somehow it isn't longer than usual. Sorry!"
Latrisha: *mutters something*
Kaeera: "What?"
Latrisha: *smiles sweetly*
Kaeera: *pouts*

Notes and Answers to our fellow readers are, as usual, at the bottom.


Confusing Experiences and Hidden Feelings

by Kaeera & Latrisha

Chapter 11: The nightmare begins

RON'S POV

One week without magic. At first it didn't sound that bad. I mean, come on, one week is nothing. Seven days without magic, we would be able to do that....right?
It was Hermione who explained me that there was more than that. Our whole school is based on magic, so nothing would work. We couldn't play Quidditch. The house elves wouldn't be able to magick up our meals. We wouldn't be able to..I don't know. Strange. We would be like muggles.

I briefly wondered if all the magical creatures would disappear, too, but Hermione said No, and I believed her. When it comes to facts and knowledge, she's always right.

Everybody was talking worriedly with their neighbour, filling the Great Hall with a noise so loud that you had to scream. The food was forgotten.

"It's terrible!" wailed Hermione. "One whole week without lessons! I'll be lost...and we need the lessons for the exams!! And what will the teacher do when a muggle sees Hogwarts?"

"Waiting until it's over and then casting a memory charm on them?" I suggested, only to receive an annoyed glare.

"Oh yeah, on how many muggles? They aren't that stupid, Ron, believe me. It will be in the newspaper and on the TV, and soon the whole world will know about it!"

Harry sighed. "Why couldn't Trelawney have been wrong? Her predictions are usually *never* correct! So why this time?" He seemed deeply frustrated.

"Trelawney?" Hermione was confused. I just looked at her and started to explain sullenly what had happened earlier. "She got kinda strange, I mean, stranger than usual, and started talking strange stuff and so on, and in the end it was the *correct* prediction for the Fuming Neptune. Figures. "

"And you told Dumbledore about this?"

"Yep. Harry did."

Then I noticed how hungry I was and stared on my plate full of delicious food. I grabbed the fork and started eating. Fuming Neptune, whatever, eating nothing out of worry wouldn't help us at all. This wasn't a job for us, this was a job for the teachers. I mean, we were just students...and we had one week of holidays because of that. At least one positive thing came out of this mess.

Suddenly Harry grinned. I raised my eyebrow questioningly, and he whispered to me: "You must admit, the idea of Snape unable to cast magic is quite amusing! All the teachers are going to be helpless, and nobody can get detentions! Your brothers will surely take advantage of that!"

Now I grinned, too. Of course, Fred and George would use this rare opportunity to pull pranks on everyone. Then my face fell. "But Harry...their tricks all work with magic!"

"Oh." He seemed to be as disappointed as me.

"Honestly, you two can be impossible!" Hermione, of course - who else? She looked at me with furious eyes. "If your brothers use this opportunity to pull their pranks, it can only worsen the situation. If someone gets hurt, Madame Pomfrey won't be able to heal him or her with her wand. If muggles discover Hogwarts, all secrets of the magical world will be revealed! We won't get any food, or we have to fetch it in the kitchen, because the house-elves can't use magic! The points we gain for our houses won't be counted!"

"Yeah, I know," I interrupted her flow of speech. "But we can't do anything against it, can we? So why worry ourselves sick? Its pointless!"

She just humphed and looked away. Man, this girl could be so difficult at times, I really wondered why I liked her so much...oops. No, I didn't think that, and I certainly didn't say it out aloud...

"What did you say?" Harry looked curiously at me.

"Uhm...Nothing," I sweated. "Uhm...has anyone heard when this week will start?" I asked quickly in order to switch the topic. Fortunately, it worked.

"They just said that it will happen at some point of time during this year, but they didn't say when, didn't say a date." Harry shrugged.

"Great!" I groaned. "That means that I will wake up one morning and my magic will have vanished? Oh man, I am so NOT looking forward to this!"

Hey, come on, not knowing when something bad happens is the worst thing. You always think 'Now it has happened' - 'Now is the time', but it's never and it makes you all nervous and cranky...I can't stand waiting, I have no patience. No, not all. And the thought of going into the Great Hall one morning, just to read a sign: "Go to the kitchen and fetch your food" didn't seem very pleasant to me.

Hermione looked equally sour. "Couldn't Trelawney have given us at least a *few* more details?"

"Well, we have to be glad that she said something at all...something correct, I mean," Harry smiled a little bit. "According to Dumbledore this is her third correct prediction. Her third!"

"What, she has managed three correct ones?" Hermione asked astonished. "I didn't expect that..."

"You're being sarcastic." I told her.

"Gee, you're quick, aren't you?" She glared at me, her long, bushy hair falling down smoothly on her shoulders. It reminded me of the Yule Ball, when she had...Ron, what are you thinking?

"Stop it!", Harry interrupted, obviously distressed by our constant bickering. "There is no point to discuss this, ok? I suggest that we just visit Hagrid after dinner - after all, we haven't seen him since the schoolyear started, *and* he's a teacher, so he might know some more details."

I nodded and glanced sideways at Hermione. She sighed a 'Yes' and played with the food on her plate.

(Normal POV)

After they had finished dinner, the three friends went out of the school and walked to the small cottage Hagrid was living in. It had become common for them to go there after dinner, because then they had an excuse and didn't need to eat some of Hagrid's cookies. Ron knocked on the small door. After a few seconds of silence barking could be heard ('Fluffy' groaned Ron), and then footsteps came nearer. The door opened and the hairy face of their friend looked outside. He smiled when he recognized the trio.

"H'ya Harry! Long time, no see, huh? Come in, Come in!" He guided them into the small space they knew so well. "S'everything okay?"

"Well...I think it is," replied the boy-who-lived and took a chair to sit down.

"Actually we wanted to ask you something," started Ron, like always being impatient and coming straight to the point. "Do you know any details about the Week of the Fuming Neptune?"

"Oh, that. Big problem, that is," Hagrid's face became worried.

"Well, we *know* already that it's a problem," Hermione pointed out. "We would just like to know when it happens, and what the teacher will do about it. It's not fair that they leave us so clueless!"

"They didn't tell us that much, honestly; Dumbledore just said that it will happen this school year and that we should be prepared - there'll be a few conferences about actions and rules this week - but he couldn't tell us any exact point of time. We have to be prepared, he said."

"Sounds like a boy scout to me," muttered Hermione.

"What's a boy scout?"

"Oh, Never mind."

Harry tried to imagine the scene of the conferences - all the teachers sitting in a room and discussing about how they should survive a week without magic and control the students. He had to grin at the thought of a Snape who was unable to punish his pupils, because he was unable to do magic. It would be like in a muggle school, he thought, with no magic at all.

"And what's with the pictures?", he suddenly asked, referring to the living (and noisy) paintings hanging in every room, every corridor.

Hagrid grinned. "Ahh, at least one positive point, they will be silent all week."

"Cool!", Ron snickered. "A week without the annoying Sir Cardogan! It *can't* be that bad!"

"Ronald Weasley, this is serious!", Hermione glared at him, but the red-haired boy just shrugged.

"If ya take everything serious, life would be boring, wouldn't it? I mean, there's no way that we get around this week, so we might as well look at it optimistically. We'll certainly survive it!"

"You're being impossible!"

"I'm not impossible, you are!"

Harry groaned when the bickering started again. With a defeated sigh he looked to Hagrid and whispered: "You should have seen them during the holidays!"

The half-giant chuckled deeply. "They make a cute couple, don't you think?"

Harry nodded eagerly. "I just wish that they would realize it and stop this charade. The whole Gryffindor tower knows about the two of them, there are even bets on when they will hook up!"

The two quickly glanced at the fighting couple. Fortunately they hadn't heard anything, and they continued their talk. "Bets? Really?", Hagrid asked, with a frown on his face. "Now that's weird."

"Well, not that weird. Everybody knows that since the Yule Ball that they are crazy about each other, and it has become the daily soap-opera of Gryffindor to watch them both. Even Neville realized that something must be going on, and he's really not the brightest crayon in the box!"

Hagrid scratched his beard. "Hmm...maybe the two could need a little help?"

Harry just shook his head. "Nope. They tried it, believe me...I think Parvati and Lavender thought of something, but it didn't work. They are both too stubborn. I guess something really extreme has to happen that they finally see the facts. They *were* coming closer during the holidays, but it was always....nah, not the *right* thing, if ya understand what I mean."

"Well, love is not always an easy thing. Your parents hated each other when they were in fifth year! They were always fighting, like these two, and nobody believed that they would ever come together. I guess we have to wait and to see what the future brings.", the huge man yawned and then stared curiously at Harry. "By the way, how's your love life? Met anyone interesting?"

Harry's face reddened. "No...no, not at all." The only girl I met was an annoying, rude skatergirl with baggy jeans and a big mouth. I guess that doesn't count as 'interesting acquaintances during holidays'! I mean, she was splashing me with water, and she was insulting me!

"Oh." Hagrid's face fell. "But I'm sure that you will find the right girl!"

"Eh...thanks." Hearing love consultations from a half-giant who calls dragons 'my little baby' wasn't very encouraging.

"HEY!", he then shouted, drawing the attention of Hermione and Ron to himself. "I'm heading back to the castle - you coming?"

The two just nodded and stood up abruptly, still glaring at each other. Harry rolled his eyes. Sometimes...sometimes he just felt like hitting them both and throwing them into the lake, never mind what loyal friends they were.

Later this evening the three found themselves in the Gryffindor Common room, studiously doing their school work (or, in Ron's case, more under duress). The red-head and Harry were sitting in front of their divination homework. Like always they had to do predictions for themselves, regarding the constellation of the planets and the stars. Trelawney's latest idea was to use tea-leafs as well, that's why two big mugs of tea were standing beside the two boys on the table.
Ron glared into his cup, admiring the green, slimy leafs on the bottom. "Well....I see dark for my future," he gloomily told his friend.

"Why?"

"Don't you see it? This leafs tell me...they tell me clearly that I will slip on a wet ground in autumn. Maybe I will hurt my back," he grinned. "I'll write that down. She likes dramatic things."

"Too bad that I can't predict my death - she has predicted it often enough," Harry sadly sighed an scribbled a few more sentences of his prediction on the paper. And during the week of the Fuming Neptune I will have some serious problem, because...

Well, what to write now? It was logical that he would have problems in this week, because basically *every* magical person would have them, but he couldn't write that. Trelawney didn't like logic.

...because my tea-leafs resemble the form of the half-moon in the night-sky, which is a well-known constellation for serious trouble and physical pain.

"Hey, then I can predict *my* death!", Ron shouted and flipped through the sites of his book. "Wait, I have seen something like that in these pages..."

"Naah...I wouldn't make it a total death, a half-death with a miraculous survival would be enough. After all, you still have to complete the school year."

"Hmm...okay...Neptune says that I'll have some serious injuries in upcoming months."

"I wonder why Trelawney isn't suspicious of our homework - I mean, according to it, I should have broken my leg, won a big bet and nearly died last year."

Ron shrugged. "Well, you faced you-know-who, isn't that something?" He noticed the gloomy look on the face of his friend, which appeared every time when somebody mentioned the events of last year. Cedric's death was still a great trouble of Harry's mind. "I'm sorry," Ron said sheepishly and quickly looked on his homework again.

"It's okay," came the soft reply.

They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes until Hermione walked towards them and plopped herself down on a chair. In her hands she was holding a huge book - Arithmancy for the interested student. "Still doing your homework? I've already finished mine."

"Oh yeah, thanks for telling us," Ron murmured gloomily and stared down on his paper. He certainly didn't want to hear anything of that right now.

Hermione smirked, which Ron chose to ignore. Right then Fred and George entered the room, like always drawing attention to them. They walked towards the trio, big grins plastered on their faces. "Hey Ronnie", they greeted their brother.

"Hmm." was the reply.

"He's doing his homework," Hermione informed the twins.

Fred looked over the shoulder of his younger sibling and stared on the paper. "Oh man, it will be a bad week for you, won't it? Huh...wow....that will hurt...where did you get that from, Ronnie-boy?"

"Made it up."

"Oh, I see."

The twins took two chairs and sat down at the table. Harry looked up from his parchment. Every time when they looked like that, the two had something on their mind. And it usually wasn't good.

"What are you two up to?" He asked cautiously.

"Oh, he knows us, doesn't he?" George grinned and tried to look innocently.

"What a pity, he knows us *too* well!" Fred admitted, mirroring the same look. It looked utterly stupid.

"Well?" Harry raised an eyebrow while Ron gnawed on his writing feather. Hermione tilted her head, curiously.

"Aww....we thought of something....ya know, when Dumbledore told us about the Week of the Fuming Neptune, we immediately realised that it was our chance," George's eyes glinted with excitement. "The chance for the ultimate prank."

"The best prank ever."

"It will go into the history of Hogwarts! There will be a chapter only for us! Everybody will talk about it!!" Fred raised his arms and beamed at them.

"Yeah, and nobody can take points from our house", George added grinning.

"And why are you telling it to us?" Hermione wanted to know. She sensed serious trouble; usually the twins never told anyone about their jokes and pranks.

"Well....", Fred's face fell, "We realised that we have a small problem...and maybe you could help us..."

Ron looked up from his paper. The twins needed help? Well, that sounded interesting. He put down his quill and started listening. Fred and George looked at each other and sighed. "Well, the problem is that we can't use magic.", they admitted sheepishly.

"Well, that's exactly the problem with the week of the Fuming Neptune," Hermione snorted. "Which some of us don't want to realise!", she glared at Ron, who feigned innocence.

"Without magic we can't pull a normal prank", George nodded, "That's why we need your help, Hermione!"

"My help?", the girl shrieked. "Why *my* help?"

"Because you're a muggle. And you surely know where to get muggle prank stuff, ya know...I have read about it, they have quite interesting things, although not as good as our inventions, but still worth to try out."

Hermione was shocked. "You seriously want *me* to organize the things you need for driving the whole school nuts?"

The twins grinned and nodded.

Hermione slammed her books on the table, stood up and formed one single word with her mouth: "No." Then she left and hurried out of the room, leaving two very dumbfounded Weasley's sitting. Harry had to suppress a snicker and Ron tried to hide his grin behind his parchment.

"Why was she that angry?" Fred wanted to know, confused.

"Fred. Think," Harry leaned forwards. "Hermione is one of the best students. She lives for learning. She wants to be perfect in every subject. And then you ask her to help you with pranks which could probably expel her from school?"

"Well, she just had to organize it..."

"She won't do it. Just forget it." Harry shook his head. "And besides I think that there are far more dangerous things during the week of the Fuming Neptune than some stupid pranks. I guess we'll have some trouble."

The twins shrugged in sync. "We'll find another way." And they left the table. Harry watched them leave and sighed. He could already sense trouble. Oh, and how he could sense them. With his luck to delve into dangerous adventures, it was nearly certain that something would happen during those seven days. The question was just what.

He looked on his essay.

....And during the week of the Fuming Neptune I will have some serious problem, because my tea-leafs resemble the form of the half-moon in the night-sky, which is a well-known constellation for serious trouble and physical pain....

Harry groaned.



"I don't want to!", she cried, storming through the room and glaring at her mother.

"But we have no other chance, dear," the older woman replied, looking sadly at her daughter. Her short black hair was falling into her eyes, which were now piercing at her mother. She sighed. "Nat, we have to go on this business trip and we can't take you with us..."

"No", Nat held up her hand. "I. Won't. Go. To. Aunt. Kate." She threw her hands in the air. "It's boring with her! She lives in a small village in the middle of nowhere!

There are maybe fifteen houses! There's not one single person my age! What am I supposed to do? There's not even a proper street where I can practice!" She pointed towards her skateboard.

"It's only for two weeks."

"Yeah, the two weeks that we have holidays! I wanted to do things with my friends! I wanted to go out, I wanted to...to...skate..." Nat was furious. No. She was far beyond that.

Her mother just shrugged and ignored her ranting. "Well, there's no other possibility. You will go there. Maybe that will help your studying a bit - your grades haven't improved recently!" With these words the tall woman left the room.

Nat stood there and sneered. Then she tugged her hands in the pockets of her large, darkblue skater trousers. The idea of spending two weeks in a small house on the countryside didn't appeal her very well. The girl crossed her arms and stared with lightblue eyes out of the window.

"I won't take one single school book with me!", she promised herself and plopped down on the bed. On the ceiling she could see the wallpapers of her favourite bands, snowboarders and skateboarders. Nat let out a deep sigh. The next 2 weeks with Aunt Kate would be two very long and very boring weeks. Nothing to look forward to.

No.

Nothing at all.


To be continued...

And, do you still remember Nat? *g* She will appear more often in the future...but we won't tell more! Here are the answers to your reviews:

Caylen Rider - Oh yes, Hermione is cute...and Ron as well! Hehe. But slowly it's getting annoying how they always deny their feelings...hmm...but we have planned something. *g*
Latrisha: "We have planned something?"
Kaeera: *hisses* "Yes, we have!"
Latrisha: "Oh."
Kaeera: "Yes."
Latrisha: "What?"
Kaeera: "......help me...."

sanguinans - So you liked the Voldemort-scene? Glad you did, because we absolutely fell in love with the part where the little flag appears...Everytime when we talk about it, we burst out in laughter and are lying on the ground. It's really....amusing...

Angie - You're happy to have a good German teacher...We have an English teacher at our school who's absolutely terrible...the whole school is afraid of her. It's horrible to sit in her classes, it's like military...everybody is silent...well...but you learn everything in her classes. *sighs* It's just no fun.

Adnap Nottap - We guess that answers your question if Nat is coming back, huh? You seemed to be the only one who remembered^^ She's quite an interesting character, although not much of her appeared until now.

meskup - You still have to wait, the week of the Fuming Neptune will be in some of the later chapters...but we have quite a few ideas! Including the twins...

Katie Bell - Well, it didn't quite work with the two weeks, but we are both so lazy and uncreative that it's no surprise. Hope you aren't angry that you had to wait so long!