There we go, that's much better.
Disclaimer:
Hey, guess what!
What?
I don't own it.
Don't own what?
Anything 'cept Holly, Samantha, Eloise, and generic villagers. Avienne
belongs to a friend of mine, as does Severus Jr. and I'm just borrowing
those two from her. All the other stuff is J. K. Rowling's. Oh, except
The Legend of Zelda and all it's characters, places, species, items etc
belong to Nintendo.
"...And so they linked the four just so that any-and-all-forms-of-physical- and-emotional-distr-" The inventor of the class-dismissing bell ought to have received a Nobel Prize, in the opinion of several teenagers crowded in a rather un- extraordinary room in a rather uneventful class. In fact, the class was so boring that it had gained a certain notoriety among all who were forced to study it. It was, unfortunately, History of Magic, and the students presently being subjected to it were none other than the Gryffindor sixth- years. As 3 particular sixth-years ambled along slowly to their next class, they realized it would probably be a good idea to know where they were going... "Hey 'Mione," yawned Ron, "what've we got next?" Hermione blinked, looking rather anime. "We have lunch next, Ron." "We have ::yawn:: what?" "It's. lunch. time. Ron." "Oh, all right. I could do with a bit of lunch now anyway." Hermione smacked her forehead. "Harry, would you please baby-sit Ron while I run off to the library? Harry? Harry?" Harry wasn't listening to them, though. An odd carriage pulling up at the castle entrance had seized his attention instead. It was blatantly wooden and looked rather like someone had taken a little oak tree and blown it up like a balloon. ::Very good:: It stopped, and out of it climbed two young women, neither of whom appeared much older than the three of them; however, Hermione pulled Harry's attention back to the task at hand. "So Harry, you'll baby-sit him for me, won't you?" "Huh?" "See," Ron said, "I told you he wasn't listening." "Hermione, when did you say lunch was, again?" ::thud::
Lunch that day was identifiable only as sushi. Why the kitchen staff would serve sushi was beyond everyone, but there you go. Harry looked around for the girls from the wooden carriage, hoping he could point them out to Hermione and Ron, but they were nowhere to be found. They did notice, however that Dumbledore's presence was lacking up at the staff table...
Harry, Ron and Hermione entered the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom to find it empty except for one girl Harry assumed was a Slytherin, judging by her green- and silver-accented robes, and a young woman who looked to be at least 19 or 20. The first girl-who looked quite familiar, now that Harry thought about it-snorted derisively when Harry, Ron and Hermione sat down nearby. The older girl sighed and continued reading from a fairly thick book. Slowly, other students filed in and took their seats, the Gryffindors congregating in the right-back corner of the room, the Slytherins congregating in the front-left. The Slytherin girl from before was growing steadily more resentful of the general cacophony and pulled out a book of her own, her medium brown hair falling in front of her face as her blue eyes took in every word on the pages her fair hands turned. She must have sensed Harry watching her, for she stiffened, turned around and fixed him with a murderous stare that also looked very familiar. Harry shook off an eerie feeling creeping up through his chest and looked around the room generally. Stragglers slowly managed to find themselves in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, most of them before the bell rang. Hermione looked around, assuming the professor would be entering any minute now from his or her office. There were wild rumors flying about this one. It seemed Snape himself had recommended the person, who had, at different points in time, been both an Auror and a bounty hunter. It also seemed that he had antlers and a silver horn poking out of the top of his head, in addition to being dyslexic every second Tuesday and Thursday. And those were some of the milder ones. After about 10 minutes waiting for the professor, Malfoy and company got malevolently bored. The usual round of insults was traded and the traditional banter escalated to a suitable pre-fisticuffs level before Dean Thomas shouted, "Oi! I think she's trying to take attendance." Slowly the students returned to their places and the disgruntled mumbling subsided. The Slytherin sixth-year rolled her eyes and returned to her reading. Harry looked up and was significantly surprised to see the young woman who had been reading when he first came in. She was up at the board, writing things in strange characters. Her hair was short-about shoulder- length-and feathered, and it was a shade or two darker than her skin, the color of brown sugar, only graded to a forest green-gold color at the tips. Harry found her appearance rather odd-after all, none of their other professors had multicolored, especially green, hair. Once Harry got over the strangeness of her appearance, however, he was promptly puzzled by the fact that she had just sat reading for ten minutes after the bell rang, especially with Malfoy fomenting discord the way he always did. He really hoped this professor at least knew what she was doing. Ron nudged Harry in the ribs. "Hey, isn't she the girl who was reading when we first came in?" "Looks like her, doesn't she..." "Quiet, class is starting," hissed Hermione. Ron grumbled a little but complied. Harry looked up at the board. There were three lines of writing; one Harry supposed must be an Asian language, another in characters made up of straight lines placed at right angles to one other, and the last in English: "Prof. Holly Ro." "My name," the woman said, pointing to what she'd written, "in Chinese, Hylian and English. I grew up in England, but my maternal grandmother was Chinese." Harry noticed for the first time her almond-shaped eyes-though they were midnight blue in color-and thought it made some sense. "So, now that you know my name, it's about time I learned yours...." Prof. Ro called the roll, which was unusually mundane, and Harry found himself hoping the curriculum would at least be a little more interesting. Once she got through calling the roll, Prof. Ro grinned and put away the binder containing the class roster. "Glad that's out of the way. Roll-call's never been my favorite part of anything. So, from what Prof. Dumbledore's told me, you're well versed in curses, Dark creatures, and all the nuances of the Gilderoy Lockhart books." A few of the guys snickered at the memories of that year. "But I take it you've never done Elements, have you?" The confused murmuring answered the question well enough. "Guess not, then." She smiled again. "So we start at the very beginning-defining an Element." Hermione's hand shot into the air. "Yes, Miss Granger?" "An element is one of the 109 types of atoms found on the periodic table," Hermione volunteered confidently. "Not that kind of 'element'. You're right, but you're talking about the wrong kind of 'element'. I'm talking about an 'El-e-ment,'" Prof. Ro replied, writing "Element" on the blackboard and underlining the capital 'E' three times for emphasis. A few people nodded, still having no idea what she was talking about. Prof. Ro sighed. "Get out your quills, you might want to copy this down..." Going to the blackboard, she drew a large circle, and inside, six smaller circles. Harry found himself slightly intrigued by this. What was she going to do, teach them about sines and cosines and the unit circle? Harry had heard Dudley complaining about it over the summer and thought sine graphs could probably confuse any Dark wizard to death, but figured Prof. Ro probably wasn't trying to teach them to confuse people to death. Harry copied the seven circles down in his notebook and looked back up at the blackboard. Prof. Ro had enchanted the circles so that they shone six different colors, from the top going clockwise-gold, scarlet, emerald, azure, honey and a vibrant fuchsia- violet. A unique symbol was in the center of each. "There are six elements-light, fire, forest, water, spirit and shadow. An Element is like a world in and of itself. There is a race of people, races of monsters and magical properties associated with each of them. I've had first hand experience with all of them, and I've met people from three of them. The Elements aren't quite so separated around here, but in Hyrule, there are distinct boundaries between most of the Elemental 'worlds'. "The most common Element is Light. The Hylians and most humanoids are associated somehow with this Element. There aren't really Light monsters, but there's a lot of Light magic-protection, healing, sealing, some farsight-and a lot of the ancient magic only ever done or heard about in legend is Light magic. Light magic tends to be very complicated, so we're not going to start the Light unit any time soon. If you want to learn about Hylians, take an anthropologically-oriented class." Most of the class looked like the only thing they'd gotten out of that oration was the question 'what the heck is anthropology?'. Harry looked around after copying all the important points down and was surprised to see Draco Malfoy raising his hand, sporting an unmistakable smirk. Prof. Ro called on him. "Yes, Mr. Malfoy?" Malfoy's smirk widened. "Professor, what about Shadow?" "What about Shadow?" "Tell us about Shadow," he said, an intrigued note in his voice. "I don't know, you've only just been introduced to Elements, I don't think you're ready for Shadow yet. I intended to start with the Forest..." Unfortunately, the sixth-years, Gryffindors and Slytherins alike, were already hooked on the idea. Finally, Prof. Ro gave in. "Alright," she said darkly, "don't say I didn't warn you." She sighed. "The Shadow world is the most enigmatic area of Hyrule, if only because few who enter it ever return alive. It's often referred to as the land of the dead, as all the monsters associated with it are undead, and the Sheikah, the Shadow People-called the shadows of the Hylians-are rumored to be the souls of dead Hylians given physical form. The Shadow Temple spoken of in the legends of Hyrule is said to be built from the blood and bones of Hyrule's evil dead. Like I said, it's not a good place to start learning about Elements." Harry could tell he was supposed to feel some shock or fear, because of the dark look in Prof. Ro's eyes. Many of the guys were on the edges of their seats, but Neville Longbottom was trembling and Hermione had gone very white with realization. It wasn't real for him though-and he couldn't fear something that wasn't real. Harry was drawn again out of his reverie by a smirk and a raised hand from Malfoy. "Mr. Malfoy?" Prof. Ro asked exasperatedly. "Professor, you've forgotten to tell us about Shadow magic." "You don't get it, do you?!" Most of the class was surprised at her outburst, quiet as it was. "We're talking about Shadow, here. Shadow is the closest Element to pure darkness. It's Hyrule's equivalent of You-Know- Who! Even the Gerudo don't spark the fear that the Shadow world does." Most of the class didn't understand. Prof. Ro just sighed. "Very well. If Shadow you wish to see, so be it. Move your desks back, clear a large space in the center of the room, then get behind your desks and stay there." The students complied. She took a deep breath and pointed her wand at the center of the space, her eyes closed in concentration. "Umbra mortis," she whispered, steely determination in her voice. For a moment, the room was completely silent. Then, the symbol from the violet circle up on the board glowed on the floor-a triangle with the tip pointing down, and three circles outside it, one at the center of each side of the triangle-and a piercing scream chilled them with terror. Harry was shocked to discover that he was paralyzed completely. He soon discovered why: a creature was writhing up out of the glowing symbol. It was sitting crouched on the symbol, its thin arms wrapped around its folded legs. The stench emanating from it was horrible, the unmistakable aroma of something that has been dead for quite some time. The thing must have sensed that the blood that pumped swiftly within them, because it unfolded itself, shrieking again, so that they could see it in its full grotesqueness. It began dragging its rotten body toward them, laboriously, as if walking through a viscous gel, or half solidified amber. Thick, round gold earrings clinked against its purple-blue head, drawing Harry's attention to its face-if it could still be called a face. There was a gaping hole in the lower half of the front surface of its head, and long teeth tipping about in its gums gave it a macabre sort of smile, and its dully-glowing red eyes glared at them hungrily. It dragged itself over to the Slytherin girl who had been in the room just before he, Ron and Hermione had entered. She was glaring at it defiantly as if she knew exactly what it was and exactly what was keeping it from attacking her. Prof. Ro gasped and managed to croak out 'Finite... Incantatem...'. The creature vanished and Prof. Ro collapsed in her chair, breathing heavily. The bell came not a moment too soon. The students filed quietly out of the classroom, all shaken by the experience of the Shadow monster. Harry told Ron and Hermione to go ahead, then made his way up to Prof. Ro's desk. She was sitting up, but she still looked a little drained. She blinked and shook her head, as if shaking away some unseen demons, then looked up at him. "Can I help you, Mr. Potter?" she asked calmly. Harry mentally kicked himself for bothering her after what had just happened. "Professor, I was wondering, why did you wait ten minutes before trying to call the roll?" Prof. Ro smiled. "I wanted to observe your behavior, group dynamics when you didn't know a teacher was watching. Actually, I'm surprised no one suspected me before that." "Oh." Harry didn't know quite what else to say. It was a little embarrassing. "Oh well. Run along, Mr. Potter. I'm sure Snape'll be thrilled to have you waltz in ten minutes late." Harry rather agreed with her.
The rest of the day was about as normal as Hogwarts gets. The Sixth-year Slytherins and Gryffindors had Double Potions, Neville Longbottom blew up another cauldron, Malfoy and Minions clashed with Potter and Associates, and Snape was generally bad-tempered. Yes, quite normal indeed. Saturday came quite normally as well. It was the little after-breakfast walk that was the problem. Harry--for no good reason at all, save to be somewhere besides the Gryffindor common room or the Library-had decided to take a walk after breakfast. It was a lovely walk, springtime being what it was, and the flowers were all anxious to affect his judgement with their intoxicating fragrances. Meandering off to the Quidditch field in the interest of seeing the experimental Snitch everyone was talking about, Harry tried hard to ignore the histrionic blooms. While pleased to have arrived at the Quidditch pitch, he was not so pleased to have literally bumped into the broom shed. He sighed moved toward the shed, intending to enter it.. Unfortunately, he was unable to do this, as he was suddenly ambushed by a mad Quaffle and the aforementioned, experimental Snitch. Harry was confused. Since when did the snitch and the Quaffle attack people? 'Probably since Snape or Malfoy got to it,' Harry thought darkly. Severus Snape Jr. was the Potions Master's son, and the attitude towards Gryffindors seemed to be hereditary. He was the mastermind behind most of the Slytherin pranks, and he and Harry had rubbed each other the wrong way ever since he transferred the year before. Harry didn't intend to take this lying down. Mounting his broom, Harry pursued the Snitch, hopefully to learn who had released it...
"...And so they linked the four just so that any-and-all-forms-of-physical- and-emotional-distr-" The inventor of the class-dismissing bell ought to have received a Nobel Prize, in the opinion of several teenagers crowded in a rather un- extraordinary room in a rather uneventful class. In fact, the class was so boring that it had gained a certain notoriety among all who were forced to study it. It was, unfortunately, History of Magic, and the students presently being subjected to it were none other than the Gryffindor sixth- years. As 3 particular sixth-years ambled along slowly to their next class, they realized it would probably be a good idea to know where they were going... "Hey 'Mione," yawned Ron, "what've we got next?" Hermione blinked, looking rather anime. "We have lunch next, Ron." "We have ::yawn:: what?" "It's. lunch. time. Ron." "Oh, all right. I could do with a bit of lunch now anyway." Hermione smacked her forehead. "Harry, would you please baby-sit Ron while I run off to the library? Harry? Harry?" Harry wasn't listening to them, though. An odd carriage pulling up at the castle entrance had seized his attention instead. It was blatantly wooden and looked rather like someone had taken a little oak tree and blown it up like a balloon. ::Very good:: It stopped, and out of it climbed two young women, neither of whom appeared much older than the three of them; however, Hermione pulled Harry's attention back to the task at hand. "So Harry, you'll baby-sit him for me, won't you?" "Huh?" "See," Ron said, "I told you he wasn't listening." "Hermione, when did you say lunch was, again?" ::thud::
Lunch that day was identifiable only as sushi. Why the kitchen staff would serve sushi was beyond everyone, but there you go. Harry looked around for the girls from the wooden carriage, hoping he could point them out to Hermione and Ron, but they were nowhere to be found. They did notice, however that Dumbledore's presence was lacking up at the staff table...
Harry, Ron and Hermione entered the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom to find it empty except for one girl Harry assumed was a Slytherin, judging by her green- and silver-accented robes, and a young woman who looked to be at least 19 or 20. The first girl-who looked quite familiar, now that Harry thought about it-snorted derisively when Harry, Ron and Hermione sat down nearby. The older girl sighed and continued reading from a fairly thick book. Slowly, other students filed in and took their seats, the Gryffindors congregating in the right-back corner of the room, the Slytherins congregating in the front-left. The Slytherin girl from before was growing steadily more resentful of the general cacophony and pulled out a book of her own, her medium brown hair falling in front of her face as her blue eyes took in every word on the pages her fair hands turned. She must have sensed Harry watching her, for she stiffened, turned around and fixed him with a murderous stare that also looked very familiar. Harry shook off an eerie feeling creeping up through his chest and looked around the room generally. Stragglers slowly managed to find themselves in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, most of them before the bell rang. Hermione looked around, assuming the professor would be entering any minute now from his or her office. There were wild rumors flying about this one. It seemed Snape himself had recommended the person, who had, at different points in time, been both an Auror and a bounty hunter. It also seemed that he had antlers and a silver horn poking out of the top of his head, in addition to being dyslexic every second Tuesday and Thursday. And those were some of the milder ones. After about 10 minutes waiting for the professor, Malfoy and company got malevolently bored. The usual round of insults was traded and the traditional banter escalated to a suitable pre-fisticuffs level before Dean Thomas shouted, "Oi! I think she's trying to take attendance." Slowly the students returned to their places and the disgruntled mumbling subsided. The Slytherin sixth-year rolled her eyes and returned to her reading. Harry looked up and was significantly surprised to see the young woman who had been reading when he first came in. She was up at the board, writing things in strange characters. Her hair was short-about shoulder- length-and feathered, and it was a shade or two darker than her skin, the color of brown sugar, only graded to a forest green-gold color at the tips. Harry found her appearance rather odd-after all, none of their other professors had multicolored, especially green, hair. Once Harry got over the strangeness of her appearance, however, he was promptly puzzled by the fact that she had just sat reading for ten minutes after the bell rang, especially with Malfoy fomenting discord the way he always did. He really hoped this professor at least knew what she was doing. Ron nudged Harry in the ribs. "Hey, isn't she the girl who was reading when we first came in?" "Looks like her, doesn't she..." "Quiet, class is starting," hissed Hermione. Ron grumbled a little but complied. Harry looked up at the board. There were three lines of writing; one Harry supposed must be an Asian language, another in characters made up of straight lines placed at right angles to one other, and the last in English: "Prof. Holly Ro." "My name," the woman said, pointing to what she'd written, "in Chinese, Hylian and English. I grew up in England, but my maternal grandmother was Chinese." Harry noticed for the first time her almond-shaped eyes-though they were midnight blue in color-and thought it made some sense. "So, now that you know my name, it's about time I learned yours...." Prof. Ro called the roll, which was unusually mundane, and Harry found himself hoping the curriculum would at least be a little more interesting. Once she got through calling the roll, Prof. Ro grinned and put away the binder containing the class roster. "Glad that's out of the way. Roll-call's never been my favorite part of anything. So, from what Prof. Dumbledore's told me, you're well versed in curses, Dark creatures, and all the nuances of the Gilderoy Lockhart books." A few of the guys snickered at the memories of that year. "But I take it you've never done Elements, have you?" The confused murmuring answered the question well enough. "Guess not, then." She smiled again. "So we start at the very beginning-defining an Element." Hermione's hand shot into the air. "Yes, Miss Granger?" "An element is one of the 109 types of atoms found on the periodic table," Hermione volunteered confidently. "Not that kind of 'element'. You're right, but you're talking about the wrong kind of 'element'. I'm talking about an 'El-e-ment,'" Prof. Ro replied, writing "Element" on the blackboard and underlining the capital 'E' three times for emphasis. A few people nodded, still having no idea what she was talking about. Prof. Ro sighed. "Get out your quills, you might want to copy this down..." Going to the blackboard, she drew a large circle, and inside, six smaller circles. Harry found himself slightly intrigued by this. What was she going to do, teach them about sines and cosines and the unit circle? Harry had heard Dudley complaining about it over the summer and thought sine graphs could probably confuse any Dark wizard to death, but figured Prof. Ro probably wasn't trying to teach them to confuse people to death. Harry copied the seven circles down in his notebook and looked back up at the blackboard. Prof. Ro had enchanted the circles so that they shone six different colors, from the top going clockwise-gold, scarlet, emerald, azure, honey and a vibrant fuchsia- violet. A unique symbol was in the center of each. "There are six elements-light, fire, forest, water, spirit and shadow. An Element is like a world in and of itself. There is a race of people, races of monsters and magical properties associated with each of them. I've had first hand experience with all of them, and I've met people from three of them. The Elements aren't quite so separated around here, but in Hyrule, there are distinct boundaries between most of the Elemental 'worlds'. "The most common Element is Light. The Hylians and most humanoids are associated somehow with this Element. There aren't really Light monsters, but there's a lot of Light magic-protection, healing, sealing, some farsight-and a lot of the ancient magic only ever done or heard about in legend is Light magic. Light magic tends to be very complicated, so we're not going to start the Light unit any time soon. If you want to learn about Hylians, take an anthropologically-oriented class." Most of the class looked like the only thing they'd gotten out of that oration was the question 'what the heck is anthropology?'. Harry looked around after copying all the important points down and was surprised to see Draco Malfoy raising his hand, sporting an unmistakable smirk. Prof. Ro called on him. "Yes, Mr. Malfoy?" Malfoy's smirk widened. "Professor, what about Shadow?" "What about Shadow?" "Tell us about Shadow," he said, an intrigued note in his voice. "I don't know, you've only just been introduced to Elements, I don't think you're ready for Shadow yet. I intended to start with the Forest..." Unfortunately, the sixth-years, Gryffindors and Slytherins alike, were already hooked on the idea. Finally, Prof. Ro gave in. "Alright," she said darkly, "don't say I didn't warn you." She sighed. "The Shadow world is the most enigmatic area of Hyrule, if only because few who enter it ever return alive. It's often referred to as the land of the dead, as all the monsters associated with it are undead, and the Sheikah, the Shadow People-called the shadows of the Hylians-are rumored to be the souls of dead Hylians given physical form. The Shadow Temple spoken of in the legends of Hyrule is said to be built from the blood and bones of Hyrule's evil dead. Like I said, it's not a good place to start learning about Elements." Harry could tell he was supposed to feel some shock or fear, because of the dark look in Prof. Ro's eyes. Many of the guys were on the edges of their seats, but Neville Longbottom was trembling and Hermione had gone very white with realization. It wasn't real for him though-and he couldn't fear something that wasn't real. Harry was drawn again out of his reverie by a smirk and a raised hand from Malfoy. "Mr. Malfoy?" Prof. Ro asked exasperatedly. "Professor, you've forgotten to tell us about Shadow magic." "You don't get it, do you?!" Most of the class was surprised at her outburst, quiet as it was. "We're talking about Shadow, here. Shadow is the closest Element to pure darkness. It's Hyrule's equivalent of You-Know- Who! Even the Gerudo don't spark the fear that the Shadow world does." Most of the class didn't understand. Prof. Ro just sighed. "Very well. If Shadow you wish to see, so be it. Move your desks back, clear a large space in the center of the room, then get behind your desks and stay there." The students complied. She took a deep breath and pointed her wand at the center of the space, her eyes closed in concentration. "Umbra mortis," she whispered, steely determination in her voice. For a moment, the room was completely silent. Then, the symbol from the violet circle up on the board glowed on the floor-a triangle with the tip pointing down, and three circles outside it, one at the center of each side of the triangle-and a piercing scream chilled them with terror. Harry was shocked to discover that he was paralyzed completely. He soon discovered why: a creature was writhing up out of the glowing symbol. It was sitting crouched on the symbol, its thin arms wrapped around its folded legs. The stench emanating from it was horrible, the unmistakable aroma of something that has been dead for quite some time. The thing must have sensed that the blood that pumped swiftly within them, because it unfolded itself, shrieking again, so that they could see it in its full grotesqueness. It began dragging its rotten body toward them, laboriously, as if walking through a viscous gel, or half solidified amber. Thick, round gold earrings clinked against its purple-blue head, drawing Harry's attention to its face-if it could still be called a face. There was a gaping hole in the lower half of the front surface of its head, and long teeth tipping about in its gums gave it a macabre sort of smile, and its dully-glowing red eyes glared at them hungrily. It dragged itself over to the Slytherin girl who had been in the room just before he, Ron and Hermione had entered. She was glaring at it defiantly as if she knew exactly what it was and exactly what was keeping it from attacking her. Prof. Ro gasped and managed to croak out 'Finite... Incantatem...'. The creature vanished and Prof. Ro collapsed in her chair, breathing heavily. The bell came not a moment too soon. The students filed quietly out of the classroom, all shaken by the experience of the Shadow monster. Harry told Ron and Hermione to go ahead, then made his way up to Prof. Ro's desk. She was sitting up, but she still looked a little drained. She blinked and shook her head, as if shaking away some unseen demons, then looked up at him. "Can I help you, Mr. Potter?" she asked calmly. Harry mentally kicked himself for bothering her after what had just happened. "Professor, I was wondering, why did you wait ten minutes before trying to call the roll?" Prof. Ro smiled. "I wanted to observe your behavior, group dynamics when you didn't know a teacher was watching. Actually, I'm surprised no one suspected me before that." "Oh." Harry didn't know quite what else to say. It was a little embarrassing. "Oh well. Run along, Mr. Potter. I'm sure Snape'll be thrilled to have you waltz in ten minutes late." Harry rather agreed with her.
The rest of the day was about as normal as Hogwarts gets. The Sixth-year Slytherins and Gryffindors had Double Potions, Neville Longbottom blew up another cauldron, Malfoy and Minions clashed with Potter and Associates, and Snape was generally bad-tempered. Yes, quite normal indeed. Saturday came quite normally as well. It was the little after-breakfast walk that was the problem. Harry--for no good reason at all, save to be somewhere besides the Gryffindor common room or the Library-had decided to take a walk after breakfast. It was a lovely walk, springtime being what it was, and the flowers were all anxious to affect his judgement with their intoxicating fragrances. Meandering off to the Quidditch field in the interest of seeing the experimental Snitch everyone was talking about, Harry tried hard to ignore the histrionic blooms. While pleased to have arrived at the Quidditch pitch, he was not so pleased to have literally bumped into the broom shed. He sighed moved toward the shed, intending to enter it.. Unfortunately, he was unable to do this, as he was suddenly ambushed by a mad Quaffle and the aforementioned, experimental Snitch. Harry was confused. Since when did the snitch and the Quaffle attack people? 'Probably since Snape or Malfoy got to it,' Harry thought darkly. Severus Snape Jr. was the Potions Master's son, and the attitude towards Gryffindors seemed to be hereditary. He was the mastermind behind most of the Slytherin pranks, and he and Harry had rubbed each other the wrong way ever since he transferred the year before. Harry didn't intend to take this lying down. Mounting his broom, Harry pursued the Snitch, hopefully to learn who had released it...