After a loose round of attendance checking, the massive group of kids
took off on the forty-minute walk to the museum. Their line took up about
two whole blocks, and it was impossible to keep track of where any of the
professors were, or for the professors to really be keeping track of the
children.
Harry and Hermione walked together, holding hands. People noticed how classy they both looked, and Ron, walking a few feet behind them between his brothers, heard someone croon, "My GOD, they are so cute." Ron didn't really mind that they were off in their own little world, because as much as it would be fun to joke around with Harry he knew that Hermione would be lecturing them on every single building they walked by, and he'd rather catch up on sports (a.k.a. Quidditch) talk with Lee Jordon and his brothers.
But Harry and Hermione started to laugh and talk more at the point when Ginny ran up and fondly locked arms with Hermione. The three walked - occasionally skipped - along, dropping sarcastic remarks or making up laughable stories about their surroundings. Ron was a little annoyed with his sister, but had already gotten used to his siblings being of more amusement to his friends than him, and he reminded himself that Harry and Ron knew eachother so disturbingly well now that it was probably better for him to make some new friends. Just as he was thinking this, Harry broke off from the group because he just had to tell him this one absolutely, totally hilarious thing that Hermione had just said about her grandfather's dog in Italy who had choked on a mistletoe in 1971, which Ron had to admit was pretty funny.
When the students approached an impressive-looking building with many gargoyle sculptures on the roof and every outside wall space featuring a dragon carving of some kind, they 'ooh'ed and 'aah'ed and then asked where the bathroom was. Because Harry and Co. were closer to the front of the crowd, they had plenty of time to sit on the stone steps to rest until all the students would get there, and probably more time after that while some authority somewhere was "organizing things", because that's how field trips work.
Ron was playing rock-paper-scissors with Lee, and he looked down to see Hermione on the steps with Harry, digging into her handbag. She pulled out a case of foundation and opened it, then hurriedly caked some onto the applicator.
"Okay," she said, and a distracted Harry then turned to her and let her pull his bangs off his face and wipe the pale foundation thoroughly onto his forehead, covering up the famous scar. Other people were staring, looking confused, but Ron understood why it might be a bad idea to go into a museum looking like Harry Potter. It was weird enough that his name was in a couple of their books at school, but if he was recognized in a museum he might be treated more like an exhibit than a visitor.
"All done," Hermione told Harry cheerfully, and then she pulled out a plastic comb and corrected some tangly spots in his wind-blown hair. Still bored, she asked, "Hey, did anybody bring the petition?"
"Yeah, Ron's got it here," said Harry. "I think he got ten or so signatures at the party last night."
Hermione walked over and, without asking, tugged the smaller notepad they'd converted the petition to out of Ron's back pants pocket. "Oh, good, now *you* can hold onto it," Ron said.
Hermione walked back over to sit next to Harry. She pulled out a pencil and tapped it to every name, counting the signatures from the very top of the list. Then she closed it, yawned, "A hundred and twenty-seven," and set it on the steps in front of them.
The professors came around and split everyone into groups of about seventy-five people, and these groups were scheduled to see different areas of the museum at different times. They seemed to care a great deal more about making sure the younger students knew what group they were in and were just a step above ignoring the kids of Harry and his friends` ages. Then, after the groups were marched off to wait outside in different places, it was another five minutes of waiting before an enthusiastic tour guide called them to attention.
"Well, Hell-o-O, Hogwarts!" the guide greeted happily.
"Hello," they all replied in unexcited tones, looking up to see a thin brown-haired young woman in a pleated dress that resembled a choir robe without sleeves. Hermione gave Harry a dissapointed look that basically said she wished they weren't with a school, so they wouldn't have to deal with a person that gets hired to tour first graders.
Fred and George snuck up to them in their usual up-to-no-good manner which seemed to always be part of the way they acted even when they were doing nothing wrong, and said in Harry`s ear, "Come on, let`s pop off."
"What?" he said. "Don`t we have to stay with the scary smiling lady?"
The twins answered by pointing in the direction of about twenty other late-year students who were wandering off straight away from where the tour was headed.
"Well, I guess that`s settled. Come on, Hermione."
Hermione also was about to protest but was silenced by the sight of the mob of other students who were leaving. Ron followed with no questions.
When they were inside and away from the crowd they began to decide where exactly to go and what they were possibly actually interested in seeing (this did not count Hermione, of course, who wanted to see everything but was quiet as if in surrender, knowing that with the friends she had to stay with that was quite impossible).
"Well, we don`t know where anything is," Harry said. "Usually at museums you can at least pick up some map that`s impossible to read."
Suddenly something darted in front of them from the right. "Oy, young visitors!" said a ghost that had come from nowhere. "I am your museum guide at your service."
"Oh, no. That`s even worse," Ron said with sudden dread.
"We were just kidding," Fred said, herding everyone away. "We`re homeless people who live here in the bathrooms. We know our way around quite fine."
So they decided to wander aimlessly with no more intent in mind than a regular group of loitering teenagers. Every once in a while they would walk by a booth selling some kind of enchanted version of ice cream or coffee. Eventually they found a small cafe that was across from a gift shop, and the group stopped to separate based on whether each of them was thirsty for a mocha or wanted to buy a stupid hat shaped like a huge cauldron. After seeing that the shop`s merchandice was more in the way of fun for thick-headed tourists than education and had nothing like books about Lanceltown for sale, Hermione went across to the cafe and sat down to drink a Dragontail Chai.
Harry, however, found something worth buying in the back of the store and came out holding something behind his back.
"Catch," he said when he was in front of Hermione, twisting around and throwing something to her with the arm that was still behind his back. It was a small velvet jewelry box of dark red. Hermione looked at him in disbelief and he said, "You know, for your birthday."
She opened up the box and found a smooth and shiny silver band with intricate engravings of swirly, scrolly designs around it. On the inside of the band was an almost unnoticeable engraved heart with dove wings on each side. The designs were so detailed for their size that the ring only could have been crafted with use of some kind of magic.
"Harry!" she could only gasp.
"I know it`s not a real great idea or anything," he said modestly. "I didn`t know if I picked it out right. They had some moonstone and garnet rings I was thinking about."
"You idiot," she said. "I`ve never bought *you* anything this nice."
"And I`ve never bought you anything in my life...Fine. You don`t like it, I get the point," he said, reaching for it. Hermione snatched it back and ended up closing his finger in the box.
"Ouch!"
His expression dropped to a pleasantly surprised one, though, when she grabbed his tie and pulled him forward, kissing his cheek.
"Oh..."
Hermione had the ring on once the twins came over from the gift shop. "Honestly, what a bunch of junk," George was saying. "What kind of a numbhead would buy any of those souvenirs?"
In answer to this, Ron suddenly appeared with an exagerratedly huge pointed hat on his head with the museum logo on it, sucking on a huge lollipop in the shape of a moon.
"You`re not serious?" Harry begged.
Ron looked at the many eyes staring at him. "What? Come on. This crap is so stupid and useless you can`t resist."
The group looked around at the broomstick invention exhibit, which Harry and the twins with their sports-driven minds undoubtably expected to be more interesting, and went to a room where the wands of many famous wizards and witches were on display, and even saw some body parts and wizard portraits in the rooms and halls that all blurred together into one uneventful experience. They eventually found themselves back at another cafe, sitting around one table boredly. Fred and George wandered off when they became abnormally amused by an old lady who seemed to have fleas hopping around her head. Ron was starting to see blue blotches in his vision and was questioning the potion ingredients of his lollipop that was supposedly capable of making his eyes turn different colors like a mood ring.
"Do they look even a little different?" Ron asked, leaning in towards Harry with his eyes wide open. The sight made Hermione laugh.
"No. I don`t know," Harry said. "It`s not like I`m looking at your eye color all the time. They could be a little darker."
Ron pulled away, blinking his eyes awkwardly from keeping them open for so long.
Harry yawned. "I knew this was going to suck."
"Last night was great," Ron said. "But now I`m so tired from it and the walk here that I`m about to pass out."
"Me, too," Harry agreed. "In fact, I haven`t had much sleep lately at all."
"Yeah, what`s with that?" Ron asked. "You slept in like crazy the night before last. What were you doing that kept you up so late?"
Harry shrugged. "I can`t even remember. Probably an assignment."
"And the night before that you just *had* to sneak around into the Defense classroom to change the grades. And before that..."
His speech trailed when Harry gave him a wide-eyed look. But Hermione had heard perfectly.
"You what?" she said to Harry in a flat, dangerous tone.
"Yeah, and the night before that I had that big essay to do for McGonnagal. Her homework really sucks," Harry went on, trying to take her attention off of it. But then a silence followed.
"I can`t believe you did that," Hermione said quietly.
Ron, uncomfortably breaking the silence, said, "Um. Hermione, he just wanted to fix things so that-"
"I need to talk to you, Harry," she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him up from his seat and away from the table. "Alone."
And then Harry was being dragged into a room, feeling it wasn`t an appropriate action to alert Hermione of the "Staff Only" sign on the door they were going into that she was too angry to notice.
As soon as they were inside the cramped room, which had no light except for what came through the small glass window on the door, Harry said, "Please, Hermione. I felt bad about what happened and I didn`t know what else to do. I refused to help you get signatures from Slytherin and you ended up getting hazed because of that. Even when I punched Malfoy`s lights out it felt like I hadn`t put anything right. It kind of seemed like if I did something to help the petition, that would sort of undo my mistake before. Dammit...But it was worth it. It made you feel better, at least."
"So what?" Hermione fumed. "You completely disregarded the fact that in essence it was a completely wrong thing to do."
"I didn`t change the actual grades, just the progress reports," Harry excused. "You`re not actually failing the class. Your grade is fine."
"I don`t care about that!" she said angrily. "You could have been caught. You could have gotten points taken from the house, or worse. We`re almost finished with magic school. Do you really want to be the famous Harry Potter who got expelled in his sixth year at Hogwarts?"
"There was nothing else I could do. I couldn`t make anybody understand our reasons, so I just changed a few things."
"You`re a total idiot! You can`t just turn people against a teacher like that because you personally don`t like them."
"You know that`s not what it`s like. Come on," Harry sighed. "I`m always worried about the school. Everything that`s happened with the other teachers who taught that subject. Most of the time it`s turned out bad. As long as I`ve been at the school trouble has kept showing up. How can I not be on my guard when every student is in a certain way always in danger all because of me?"
"You know what?" she said. "I think you`re just paranoid."
"What?"
"I think you`re totally fucked up."
Harry`s shoulders sunk and he sighed, giving up. To his surprise Hermione came forward and leaned into him, wrapping her arms tightly around his middle. "You`re blaming yourself for the fact that some Slytherin kids shoved my head down a toilet, which is their problem for being sadists and has nothing to do with you. And you think it`s your fault that some bullying evil wizards keep showing up wanting a piece of you. You take responsibility for everything."
Harry said hopelessly, "That`s what Ron was telling me, too."
"Well, try and take a hint. Get a grip. And see if you can get through the rest of your sixth year without breaking any more rules."
The door opened suddenly so that Harry and Hermione both had to shade their eyes from the light that poured in. It shut again and Ron was now there.
"Are you two quite finished? You`re going to get in trouble. There`s probably expensive stuff in here."
They looked around for the first time and noticed that they were, in fact, in a storage room for exhibit items that hadn`t been put out. There were moving paintings set against a wall and a bunch of mannequins with ancient robes of velvet and silk on them.
"Let`s get out of here," Harry said, for once agreeing with Ron`s cowardly eagerness to get as far away from danger as possible. Or, in this case, as far away from getting in trouble as possible.
But as soon as Ron opened the door and peeked out, he screeched, "Shit!" in a high-pitched whisper and slammed it back shut. "There`s a custodian! She saw me!"
He dived behind three mannequins and Hermione and Harry both scrambled around for a place to hide. But in the process Hermione stepped on Harry`s shoelace and let out a yelp as he tripped and fell right into a painting that was leaning against the wall at a deep angle, tearing a nice hole in it the size of his bottom.
Just then the door opened and a hideous witch with a cleaning apron and too much make-up on gasped at what she saw.
"You`re not supposed to be in here!" she shouted. "What have you done?!"
Hermione pathetically tried to explain. "Um. We`re sorry..."
"Which school are you with? I`m fining it. And you both will never be allowed in this museum again!"
"Oh no," Harry couldn`t help but utter sarcastically as he struggled out of the painting.
"Honestly. Children these days. You two are coming with me."
In the dim corner, Ron was blending in and looking like another mannequin. As the two caught criminals were being pulled out of the room, Harry looked back at Ron and whispered with a convincingly threatening look in his eyes, "I`m going to break your neck."
Harry and Hermione walked together, holding hands. People noticed how classy they both looked, and Ron, walking a few feet behind them between his brothers, heard someone croon, "My GOD, they are so cute." Ron didn't really mind that they were off in their own little world, because as much as it would be fun to joke around with Harry he knew that Hermione would be lecturing them on every single building they walked by, and he'd rather catch up on sports (a.k.a. Quidditch) talk with Lee Jordon and his brothers.
But Harry and Hermione started to laugh and talk more at the point when Ginny ran up and fondly locked arms with Hermione. The three walked - occasionally skipped - along, dropping sarcastic remarks or making up laughable stories about their surroundings. Ron was a little annoyed with his sister, but had already gotten used to his siblings being of more amusement to his friends than him, and he reminded himself that Harry and Ron knew eachother so disturbingly well now that it was probably better for him to make some new friends. Just as he was thinking this, Harry broke off from the group because he just had to tell him this one absolutely, totally hilarious thing that Hermione had just said about her grandfather's dog in Italy who had choked on a mistletoe in 1971, which Ron had to admit was pretty funny.
When the students approached an impressive-looking building with many gargoyle sculptures on the roof and every outside wall space featuring a dragon carving of some kind, they 'ooh'ed and 'aah'ed and then asked where the bathroom was. Because Harry and Co. were closer to the front of the crowd, they had plenty of time to sit on the stone steps to rest until all the students would get there, and probably more time after that while some authority somewhere was "organizing things", because that's how field trips work.
Ron was playing rock-paper-scissors with Lee, and he looked down to see Hermione on the steps with Harry, digging into her handbag. She pulled out a case of foundation and opened it, then hurriedly caked some onto the applicator.
"Okay," she said, and a distracted Harry then turned to her and let her pull his bangs off his face and wipe the pale foundation thoroughly onto his forehead, covering up the famous scar. Other people were staring, looking confused, but Ron understood why it might be a bad idea to go into a museum looking like Harry Potter. It was weird enough that his name was in a couple of their books at school, but if he was recognized in a museum he might be treated more like an exhibit than a visitor.
"All done," Hermione told Harry cheerfully, and then she pulled out a plastic comb and corrected some tangly spots in his wind-blown hair. Still bored, she asked, "Hey, did anybody bring the petition?"
"Yeah, Ron's got it here," said Harry. "I think he got ten or so signatures at the party last night."
Hermione walked over and, without asking, tugged the smaller notepad they'd converted the petition to out of Ron's back pants pocket. "Oh, good, now *you* can hold onto it," Ron said.
Hermione walked back over to sit next to Harry. She pulled out a pencil and tapped it to every name, counting the signatures from the very top of the list. Then she closed it, yawned, "A hundred and twenty-seven," and set it on the steps in front of them.
The professors came around and split everyone into groups of about seventy-five people, and these groups were scheduled to see different areas of the museum at different times. They seemed to care a great deal more about making sure the younger students knew what group they were in and were just a step above ignoring the kids of Harry and his friends` ages. Then, after the groups were marched off to wait outside in different places, it was another five minutes of waiting before an enthusiastic tour guide called them to attention.
"Well, Hell-o-O, Hogwarts!" the guide greeted happily.
"Hello," they all replied in unexcited tones, looking up to see a thin brown-haired young woman in a pleated dress that resembled a choir robe without sleeves. Hermione gave Harry a dissapointed look that basically said she wished they weren't with a school, so they wouldn't have to deal with a person that gets hired to tour first graders.
Fred and George snuck up to them in their usual up-to-no-good manner which seemed to always be part of the way they acted even when they were doing nothing wrong, and said in Harry`s ear, "Come on, let`s pop off."
"What?" he said. "Don`t we have to stay with the scary smiling lady?"
The twins answered by pointing in the direction of about twenty other late-year students who were wandering off straight away from where the tour was headed.
"Well, I guess that`s settled. Come on, Hermione."
Hermione also was about to protest but was silenced by the sight of the mob of other students who were leaving. Ron followed with no questions.
When they were inside and away from the crowd they began to decide where exactly to go and what they were possibly actually interested in seeing (this did not count Hermione, of course, who wanted to see everything but was quiet as if in surrender, knowing that with the friends she had to stay with that was quite impossible).
"Well, we don`t know where anything is," Harry said. "Usually at museums you can at least pick up some map that`s impossible to read."
Suddenly something darted in front of them from the right. "Oy, young visitors!" said a ghost that had come from nowhere. "I am your museum guide at your service."
"Oh, no. That`s even worse," Ron said with sudden dread.
"We were just kidding," Fred said, herding everyone away. "We`re homeless people who live here in the bathrooms. We know our way around quite fine."
So they decided to wander aimlessly with no more intent in mind than a regular group of loitering teenagers. Every once in a while they would walk by a booth selling some kind of enchanted version of ice cream or coffee. Eventually they found a small cafe that was across from a gift shop, and the group stopped to separate based on whether each of them was thirsty for a mocha or wanted to buy a stupid hat shaped like a huge cauldron. After seeing that the shop`s merchandice was more in the way of fun for thick-headed tourists than education and had nothing like books about Lanceltown for sale, Hermione went across to the cafe and sat down to drink a Dragontail Chai.
Harry, however, found something worth buying in the back of the store and came out holding something behind his back.
"Catch," he said when he was in front of Hermione, twisting around and throwing something to her with the arm that was still behind his back. It was a small velvet jewelry box of dark red. Hermione looked at him in disbelief and he said, "You know, for your birthday."
She opened up the box and found a smooth and shiny silver band with intricate engravings of swirly, scrolly designs around it. On the inside of the band was an almost unnoticeable engraved heart with dove wings on each side. The designs were so detailed for their size that the ring only could have been crafted with use of some kind of magic.
"Harry!" she could only gasp.
"I know it`s not a real great idea or anything," he said modestly. "I didn`t know if I picked it out right. They had some moonstone and garnet rings I was thinking about."
"You idiot," she said. "I`ve never bought *you* anything this nice."
"And I`ve never bought you anything in my life...Fine. You don`t like it, I get the point," he said, reaching for it. Hermione snatched it back and ended up closing his finger in the box.
"Ouch!"
His expression dropped to a pleasantly surprised one, though, when she grabbed his tie and pulled him forward, kissing his cheek.
"Oh..."
Hermione had the ring on once the twins came over from the gift shop. "Honestly, what a bunch of junk," George was saying. "What kind of a numbhead would buy any of those souvenirs?"
In answer to this, Ron suddenly appeared with an exagerratedly huge pointed hat on his head with the museum logo on it, sucking on a huge lollipop in the shape of a moon.
"You`re not serious?" Harry begged.
Ron looked at the many eyes staring at him. "What? Come on. This crap is so stupid and useless you can`t resist."
The group looked around at the broomstick invention exhibit, which Harry and the twins with their sports-driven minds undoubtably expected to be more interesting, and went to a room where the wands of many famous wizards and witches were on display, and even saw some body parts and wizard portraits in the rooms and halls that all blurred together into one uneventful experience. They eventually found themselves back at another cafe, sitting around one table boredly. Fred and George wandered off when they became abnormally amused by an old lady who seemed to have fleas hopping around her head. Ron was starting to see blue blotches in his vision and was questioning the potion ingredients of his lollipop that was supposedly capable of making his eyes turn different colors like a mood ring.
"Do they look even a little different?" Ron asked, leaning in towards Harry with his eyes wide open. The sight made Hermione laugh.
"No. I don`t know," Harry said. "It`s not like I`m looking at your eye color all the time. They could be a little darker."
Ron pulled away, blinking his eyes awkwardly from keeping them open for so long.
Harry yawned. "I knew this was going to suck."
"Last night was great," Ron said. "But now I`m so tired from it and the walk here that I`m about to pass out."
"Me, too," Harry agreed. "In fact, I haven`t had much sleep lately at all."
"Yeah, what`s with that?" Ron asked. "You slept in like crazy the night before last. What were you doing that kept you up so late?"
Harry shrugged. "I can`t even remember. Probably an assignment."
"And the night before that you just *had* to sneak around into the Defense classroom to change the grades. And before that..."
His speech trailed when Harry gave him a wide-eyed look. But Hermione had heard perfectly.
"You what?" she said to Harry in a flat, dangerous tone.
"Yeah, and the night before that I had that big essay to do for McGonnagal. Her homework really sucks," Harry went on, trying to take her attention off of it. But then a silence followed.
"I can`t believe you did that," Hermione said quietly.
Ron, uncomfortably breaking the silence, said, "Um. Hermione, he just wanted to fix things so that-"
"I need to talk to you, Harry," she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him up from his seat and away from the table. "Alone."
And then Harry was being dragged into a room, feeling it wasn`t an appropriate action to alert Hermione of the "Staff Only" sign on the door they were going into that she was too angry to notice.
As soon as they were inside the cramped room, which had no light except for what came through the small glass window on the door, Harry said, "Please, Hermione. I felt bad about what happened and I didn`t know what else to do. I refused to help you get signatures from Slytherin and you ended up getting hazed because of that. Even when I punched Malfoy`s lights out it felt like I hadn`t put anything right. It kind of seemed like if I did something to help the petition, that would sort of undo my mistake before. Dammit...But it was worth it. It made you feel better, at least."
"So what?" Hermione fumed. "You completely disregarded the fact that in essence it was a completely wrong thing to do."
"I didn`t change the actual grades, just the progress reports," Harry excused. "You`re not actually failing the class. Your grade is fine."
"I don`t care about that!" she said angrily. "You could have been caught. You could have gotten points taken from the house, or worse. We`re almost finished with magic school. Do you really want to be the famous Harry Potter who got expelled in his sixth year at Hogwarts?"
"There was nothing else I could do. I couldn`t make anybody understand our reasons, so I just changed a few things."
"You`re a total idiot! You can`t just turn people against a teacher like that because you personally don`t like them."
"You know that`s not what it`s like. Come on," Harry sighed. "I`m always worried about the school. Everything that`s happened with the other teachers who taught that subject. Most of the time it`s turned out bad. As long as I`ve been at the school trouble has kept showing up. How can I not be on my guard when every student is in a certain way always in danger all because of me?"
"You know what?" she said. "I think you`re just paranoid."
"What?"
"I think you`re totally fucked up."
Harry`s shoulders sunk and he sighed, giving up. To his surprise Hermione came forward and leaned into him, wrapping her arms tightly around his middle. "You`re blaming yourself for the fact that some Slytherin kids shoved my head down a toilet, which is their problem for being sadists and has nothing to do with you. And you think it`s your fault that some bullying evil wizards keep showing up wanting a piece of you. You take responsibility for everything."
Harry said hopelessly, "That`s what Ron was telling me, too."
"Well, try and take a hint. Get a grip. And see if you can get through the rest of your sixth year without breaking any more rules."
The door opened suddenly so that Harry and Hermione both had to shade their eyes from the light that poured in. It shut again and Ron was now there.
"Are you two quite finished? You`re going to get in trouble. There`s probably expensive stuff in here."
They looked around for the first time and noticed that they were, in fact, in a storage room for exhibit items that hadn`t been put out. There were moving paintings set against a wall and a bunch of mannequins with ancient robes of velvet and silk on them.
"Let`s get out of here," Harry said, for once agreeing with Ron`s cowardly eagerness to get as far away from danger as possible. Or, in this case, as far away from getting in trouble as possible.
But as soon as Ron opened the door and peeked out, he screeched, "Shit!" in a high-pitched whisper and slammed it back shut. "There`s a custodian! She saw me!"
He dived behind three mannequins and Hermione and Harry both scrambled around for a place to hide. But in the process Hermione stepped on Harry`s shoelace and let out a yelp as he tripped and fell right into a painting that was leaning against the wall at a deep angle, tearing a nice hole in it the size of his bottom.
Just then the door opened and a hideous witch with a cleaning apron and too much make-up on gasped at what she saw.
"You`re not supposed to be in here!" she shouted. "What have you done?!"
Hermione pathetically tried to explain. "Um. We`re sorry..."
"Which school are you with? I`m fining it. And you both will never be allowed in this museum again!"
"Oh no," Harry couldn`t help but utter sarcastically as he struggled out of the painting.
"Honestly. Children these days. You two are coming with me."
In the dim corner, Ron was blending in and looking like another mannequin. As the two caught criminals were being pulled out of the room, Harry looked back at Ron and whispered with a convincingly threatening look in his eyes, "I`m going to break your neck."