Harry Potter was having a very strange dream. He was standing in a
parking lot, in a stolen girl's sweater, looking for his lost car keys.
And then he was being sucked up into the sky. While that was mildly
surprising, his dream self seemed only too bored with the "sucked into the
sky" phenomena, and decided that falling would be a much better idea. So
fall he did, and he spiraled right down out of the sky into a kiddy pool
full of rampant two year olds playing with slime guns and old people. Old
people in speedos.
Needless to say, he wasn't heartbroken when he woke up, even if it was to the angry shouts of his closest female friend.
Hermione Granger's voice cut through the haze in his sleeping head as only an upset female's voice can, and promptly thwacked Harry directly on the brain, just behind the eyes. ". . . GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW . . ." He only processed the end of whatever she had said, but it was enough to have him stumbling half-blind out of bed and rummaging for his glasses. From the cursing to his right he could safely assume Ron was doing the same.
There was a long moment when Ron, confused from being woken so abruptly, attempted to step into his shirt, only to find that both his legs didn't fit through the neck hole as well as expected. They also didn't come out of that same hole, he soon realized, and promptly fell to the floor in an awe-inspiring interpretation of a large slug. Harry had groped his way over—temporarily leaving his glasses for lost—and helped his friend sort out his clothes. Ron had returned the favor by finding the missing glasses. Thus sorted out, they made their way down the boys' dormitory staircase to see what had caused their level-headed friend such distress.
First glances didn't clear up the mystery either. Hermione, wearing very rumpled pajamas and bleeding slightly from one cheek, stood at the bottom of the stairs with a beaten shoebox in her hands. She held the item as far away from her body as she could, and was busy glaring daggers at it. Crookshanks stood a few paces away from her and was hissing at the same box tail flapping violently.
"Hermione . . . ?" She shifted her eyes up towards the red-haired boy, watching as he completed the trek down the stairs. "What have you got?"
"I have got," there was a very un-Hermione-like sneer quality in her voice. "The sugar-glider."
Now that they were closer, Harry and Ron could in fact here a slight squeaking coming from the box. It sounded oddly like laughter.
". . . and . . . why is it in a box?" Harry asked carefully, watching as Hermione's face changed shades of purple and settled into a dull angry plum. She seemed too angry to speak.
Ron, being closest, suddenly found himself holding a shoebox. "What!? You can't give it to me! I don't want it!"
"What happened?" Harry, ever the voice of reason, looked from the slightly panicking boy to the clogged-with-anger girl.
"I don't want to talk about it." Each word enunciated clearly. "One of you two will have to take it."
"What?!" The redhead's eyes shifted towards Harry, and he shoved the box to him. "I'm not taking it! I've had enough bad luck with small rodent creatures! For all I know that is some Death Eater in disguise as a marsupial and it's trying to get us to take it home and feed it and give it woodchips so that it can spy on us and later invoke some master plot to KILL US ALL!" His words came out faster and louder as he went, and the last part was practically screamed.
Harry waited for the echo of his friends speech to die down, "a Death Eater in disguise? Well thanks for giving it to me then." Ron looked sheepish. "But seriously mate, how often does that happen anyways?"
They all looked wearily at the box as if they could see the animal within, and any other possible identities it might have. Of course their x- ray vision skills failed, for soon they shrugged, and decided to go back to bed. It was only 3 a.m. after all. None of them seemed to notice that Crookshanks was eyeing that shoebox exactly how she had once eyed a certain 9-fingered rat.
~~~~~~
Draco Malfoy was beginning to think that maybe being turned into something called a "sugar-glider" wasn't thing worst thing that could have happened to him. After all, once he'd gotten over the shock and gotten rescued from being tortured, he had found himself in a near-perfect situation to torture his favorite people. A certain three people. When this realization hit him he was in the middle of acting like a 'normal' sugar-glider, using what he had overheard earlier from Granger as the basis of his actions.
At first he had been a little squeamish when he decided he would have to crawl all over "That Dirty Mudblood" –as he affectionately named her. But then he had seen that this wasn't such a far cry. After all, he was Draco Malfoy, and all others should grovel beneath him. It was fitting then to be walking on Granger. He had always said that she was the dirt beneath his feet, now it was all the more literal.
But then, several hours into her sleep, he had experienced genius. He was sitting restlessly on her bed, unable to sleep because of his recent habit of being unconscious for long periods of time and unable to get down because the three feet to the floor now seemed suicidal. Also, the girl's cat had been prowling the floor giving him piercing looks. That was when he realized somewhat dejectedly that he really, seriously had to go to the bathroom. A longing look was cast to the floor, but he somehow knew that was too far a fall for him. The cat watched him.
No, he couldn't get to the floor, if the fall didn't kill him that cat would. He would have to come up with something else. 'Think Draco, where do animals go to the bathroom?' His reply to himself was the slightly sarcastic 'anywhere.' Sarcastic because when he thought it he didn't think that knowledge would help him in anyway. That was when the genius hit, and a sly grin stretched the corners of his mouth as he turned back to the girl on the bed. Cautiously, he crept forward.
When he reached the end of the bed Draco looked into Hermione's sleeping face, enjoying the possibilities of the moment. His eyes shifted to the cat on the floor, to find two luminous eyes watching him. That cat made him nervous, but this chance was simply too good to ignore so he crawled as gently as he could onto the girl's face. His mind replayed countless moments when this girl had outdone him in class or told him off or sneered at him. The memory of her slapping him was the one he grabbed hold of, deciding this would payback that abdominal act.
Positioning himself for maximum effectiveness, he let loose his bowels.
Almost immediately, Crookshanks pounced. Hermione was a different matter, she scrunched her nose and twitched an eye, but her waking was slowly enough for Draco to jump into the covers to avoid the cat, who then landed on her mistress' besoiled face. Crookshanks had tried to detract her claws when she realized what was about to happen, but there hadn't been enough time. Hermione awoke from the pain of having her cheek sliced open, only to find herself covered in feces. It wasn't her best morning.
The cat quickly jumped under the covers too, and Hermione was very, very tempted to just let her eat the damn sugar-glider. As it was her sense of right and wrong—damn that—kicked in, and she did stop the feeding. But only after she had finished spelling the waste off her face. The cut could wait till later.
~~~~~~
Professor Severus Snape had searched the whole castle, spoken to key portraits, and informed the headmaster that a student was missing. No clues had turned up since the discovery of Mr. Malfoy's disgarded clothing, and he had a sinking feeling that his favorite student had been turned into a quill.
Dumbledore hadn't seemed terribly worried about the whole situation, but then again, Snape seethed, the old man never was. He probably knew exactly wear Mr. Malfoy was, and just wasn't telling because that's how he got his kicks. The idea that the headmaster seemed to know what was going on would possibly have allayed some of the potion master's misgivings, except that it was his job, as Head of Slytherin, to inform Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy that he had lost their only son.
Stalking toward his office, he sneered more violently than usual at all the students filtering through the entrance hall, luggage in hand and ready for the summer break. This whole incident was completely ruining his favorite day of the year—when the students all left—and that was making it all the worse. He rather wanted to strangle someone. Looking around, he saw that Potter must have already gone. Too bad. He grabbed the nearest student and decided that a little low-level torture would be just the thing to calm his nerves before facing the elder Malfoys.
~~~~~~
Harry had kept the sugar-glider securely shut into the box the rest of the night. He wasn't sure what exactly had caused Hermione's foul mood, but he was quite sure he didn't want to find out on his own by letting the thing loose. As it was, the rest of the night passed too quickly and without incident, and soon he found himself dressing in the clothes he'd left out of his trunk and packing up the few things left. There was nowhere to put the shoebox, and with a slightly unsettled feeling, he took it out and put it in a robe pocket.
He and Ron took their trunks down to the common room to wait for Hermione, who appeared much more collected now than the last time she had seen them. She still refused to explain what had happened the night before, but at least that purple color had left her face. It had reminded Harry far too much of Uncle Vernon.
The three made it downstairs easily, too tired to really pay attention to much or have conversation. Harry was vaguely aware of the snoozing animal in his pocket, and he did his best to not squish it as he navigated his trunk and Headwig's cage through the flow of students.
"Hey," Ron said at one point, "check out Snape."
Harry refused to let his mind run with the double meanings of that statement, and turned instead to see what the boy meant. They were right at the door, Hermione just outside, and so when Harry finally followed Ron's finger to see Snape storming down a staircase, robes billowing out ominously, he quickly pulled his trunk outside and assisted Ron in doing so quickly as well. The last thing he needed was a run-in with Snape as his last memory of Hogwarts for the year.
Having yawned their way the rest of the way to the train, the three friends found a compartment and promptly slouched across the seats. Too tired to hear the whispered gossip running through the rest of the students about the mysterious disappearance of Draco Malfoy.
Needless to say, he wasn't heartbroken when he woke up, even if it was to the angry shouts of his closest female friend.
Hermione Granger's voice cut through the haze in his sleeping head as only an upset female's voice can, and promptly thwacked Harry directly on the brain, just behind the eyes. ". . . GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW . . ." He only processed the end of whatever she had said, but it was enough to have him stumbling half-blind out of bed and rummaging for his glasses. From the cursing to his right he could safely assume Ron was doing the same.
There was a long moment when Ron, confused from being woken so abruptly, attempted to step into his shirt, only to find that both his legs didn't fit through the neck hole as well as expected. They also didn't come out of that same hole, he soon realized, and promptly fell to the floor in an awe-inspiring interpretation of a large slug. Harry had groped his way over—temporarily leaving his glasses for lost—and helped his friend sort out his clothes. Ron had returned the favor by finding the missing glasses. Thus sorted out, they made their way down the boys' dormitory staircase to see what had caused their level-headed friend such distress.
First glances didn't clear up the mystery either. Hermione, wearing very rumpled pajamas and bleeding slightly from one cheek, stood at the bottom of the stairs with a beaten shoebox in her hands. She held the item as far away from her body as she could, and was busy glaring daggers at it. Crookshanks stood a few paces away from her and was hissing at the same box tail flapping violently.
"Hermione . . . ?" She shifted her eyes up towards the red-haired boy, watching as he completed the trek down the stairs. "What have you got?"
"I have got," there was a very un-Hermione-like sneer quality in her voice. "The sugar-glider."
Now that they were closer, Harry and Ron could in fact here a slight squeaking coming from the box. It sounded oddly like laughter.
". . . and . . . why is it in a box?" Harry asked carefully, watching as Hermione's face changed shades of purple and settled into a dull angry plum. She seemed too angry to speak.
Ron, being closest, suddenly found himself holding a shoebox. "What!? You can't give it to me! I don't want it!"
"What happened?" Harry, ever the voice of reason, looked from the slightly panicking boy to the clogged-with-anger girl.
"I don't want to talk about it." Each word enunciated clearly. "One of you two will have to take it."
"What?!" The redhead's eyes shifted towards Harry, and he shoved the box to him. "I'm not taking it! I've had enough bad luck with small rodent creatures! For all I know that is some Death Eater in disguise as a marsupial and it's trying to get us to take it home and feed it and give it woodchips so that it can spy on us and later invoke some master plot to KILL US ALL!" His words came out faster and louder as he went, and the last part was practically screamed.
Harry waited for the echo of his friends speech to die down, "a Death Eater in disguise? Well thanks for giving it to me then." Ron looked sheepish. "But seriously mate, how often does that happen anyways?"
They all looked wearily at the box as if they could see the animal within, and any other possible identities it might have. Of course their x- ray vision skills failed, for soon they shrugged, and decided to go back to bed. It was only 3 a.m. after all. None of them seemed to notice that Crookshanks was eyeing that shoebox exactly how she had once eyed a certain 9-fingered rat.
~~~~~~
Draco Malfoy was beginning to think that maybe being turned into something called a "sugar-glider" wasn't thing worst thing that could have happened to him. After all, once he'd gotten over the shock and gotten rescued from being tortured, he had found himself in a near-perfect situation to torture his favorite people. A certain three people. When this realization hit him he was in the middle of acting like a 'normal' sugar-glider, using what he had overheard earlier from Granger as the basis of his actions.
At first he had been a little squeamish when he decided he would have to crawl all over "That Dirty Mudblood" –as he affectionately named her. But then he had seen that this wasn't such a far cry. After all, he was Draco Malfoy, and all others should grovel beneath him. It was fitting then to be walking on Granger. He had always said that she was the dirt beneath his feet, now it was all the more literal.
But then, several hours into her sleep, he had experienced genius. He was sitting restlessly on her bed, unable to sleep because of his recent habit of being unconscious for long periods of time and unable to get down because the three feet to the floor now seemed suicidal. Also, the girl's cat had been prowling the floor giving him piercing looks. That was when he realized somewhat dejectedly that he really, seriously had to go to the bathroom. A longing look was cast to the floor, but he somehow knew that was too far a fall for him. The cat watched him.
No, he couldn't get to the floor, if the fall didn't kill him that cat would. He would have to come up with something else. 'Think Draco, where do animals go to the bathroom?' His reply to himself was the slightly sarcastic 'anywhere.' Sarcastic because when he thought it he didn't think that knowledge would help him in anyway. That was when the genius hit, and a sly grin stretched the corners of his mouth as he turned back to the girl on the bed. Cautiously, he crept forward.
When he reached the end of the bed Draco looked into Hermione's sleeping face, enjoying the possibilities of the moment. His eyes shifted to the cat on the floor, to find two luminous eyes watching him. That cat made him nervous, but this chance was simply too good to ignore so he crawled as gently as he could onto the girl's face. His mind replayed countless moments when this girl had outdone him in class or told him off or sneered at him. The memory of her slapping him was the one he grabbed hold of, deciding this would payback that abdominal act.
Positioning himself for maximum effectiveness, he let loose his bowels.
Almost immediately, Crookshanks pounced. Hermione was a different matter, she scrunched her nose and twitched an eye, but her waking was slowly enough for Draco to jump into the covers to avoid the cat, who then landed on her mistress' besoiled face. Crookshanks had tried to detract her claws when she realized what was about to happen, but there hadn't been enough time. Hermione awoke from the pain of having her cheek sliced open, only to find herself covered in feces. It wasn't her best morning.
The cat quickly jumped under the covers too, and Hermione was very, very tempted to just let her eat the damn sugar-glider. As it was her sense of right and wrong—damn that—kicked in, and she did stop the feeding. But only after she had finished spelling the waste off her face. The cut could wait till later.
~~~~~~
Professor Severus Snape had searched the whole castle, spoken to key portraits, and informed the headmaster that a student was missing. No clues had turned up since the discovery of Mr. Malfoy's disgarded clothing, and he had a sinking feeling that his favorite student had been turned into a quill.
Dumbledore hadn't seemed terribly worried about the whole situation, but then again, Snape seethed, the old man never was. He probably knew exactly wear Mr. Malfoy was, and just wasn't telling because that's how he got his kicks. The idea that the headmaster seemed to know what was going on would possibly have allayed some of the potion master's misgivings, except that it was his job, as Head of Slytherin, to inform Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy that he had lost their only son.
Stalking toward his office, he sneered more violently than usual at all the students filtering through the entrance hall, luggage in hand and ready for the summer break. This whole incident was completely ruining his favorite day of the year—when the students all left—and that was making it all the worse. He rather wanted to strangle someone. Looking around, he saw that Potter must have already gone. Too bad. He grabbed the nearest student and decided that a little low-level torture would be just the thing to calm his nerves before facing the elder Malfoys.
~~~~~~
Harry had kept the sugar-glider securely shut into the box the rest of the night. He wasn't sure what exactly had caused Hermione's foul mood, but he was quite sure he didn't want to find out on his own by letting the thing loose. As it was, the rest of the night passed too quickly and without incident, and soon he found himself dressing in the clothes he'd left out of his trunk and packing up the few things left. There was nowhere to put the shoebox, and with a slightly unsettled feeling, he took it out and put it in a robe pocket.
He and Ron took their trunks down to the common room to wait for Hermione, who appeared much more collected now than the last time she had seen them. She still refused to explain what had happened the night before, but at least that purple color had left her face. It had reminded Harry far too much of Uncle Vernon.
The three made it downstairs easily, too tired to really pay attention to much or have conversation. Harry was vaguely aware of the snoozing animal in his pocket, and he did his best to not squish it as he navigated his trunk and Headwig's cage through the flow of students.
"Hey," Ron said at one point, "check out Snape."
Harry refused to let his mind run with the double meanings of that statement, and turned instead to see what the boy meant. They were right at the door, Hermione just outside, and so when Harry finally followed Ron's finger to see Snape storming down a staircase, robes billowing out ominously, he quickly pulled his trunk outside and assisted Ron in doing so quickly as well. The last thing he needed was a run-in with Snape as his last memory of Hogwarts for the year.
Having yawned their way the rest of the way to the train, the three friends found a compartment and promptly slouched across the seats. Too tired to hear the whispered gossip running through the rest of the students about the mysterious disappearance of Draco Malfoy.