Chapter Three

Freedom of Choice

The low, sinister honking faded away as whatever-it-was clomped its way down the hall. It seemed to travel rather slowly on its large clumsy feet. Silence. A bit more silence. A whopping great chunk of silence. Then much larger feet marched purposely up to the Fat Lady's portrait. Suddenly the portrait door swung open and Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor house, made a rather undignified entrance through the hole in the wall. She squirmed through the hole headfirst and landed on the floor with a plop, her boots pedaling the air, and showing her long, red wooly knickers. 'I'll curse whoever the useless pillock was who designed these dratted doorways...' she muttered angrily to herself as she stood up and straightened her robes. Everyone in the room looked expectantly at her, since she never came through that door without horrifically bad news, usually involving deaths and/or canceling Quidditch matches.

'I'm sure you have heard the rumor that there has been a small incident involving a Hufflepuff student, a Miss Ensign Jones. She is to be sent home immediately. There is nothing more to worry about as it's nearly dinner time.' At that she turned on her heel and crawled back through the portrait hole and slammed the door. Everyone stared at the shut door, confused. No-one had heard any rumors. No-one could even remember what Ensign Jones looked like, nor any of the other Hufflepuffs for that matter. At least they weren't canceling Quidditch. Relieved, the common room returned to its previous level of noise.

Hermione looked at Harry. 'See, Professor McGonagall said Ensign Jones was all right and she would never lie to us. Maybe you mistook something else for a severed head. Some of those hallways are pretty dark. I've read how rolling rats can easily look like a severed heads,' she said reasonably. She started packing her essay into a mobile wooden filing cabinet while Ron looked confused and tried to figure out how a rolling rat could possibly look like a severed head.

Harry thought for a second and frowned. 'No, that can't be right. The student I saw being decapitated wasn't a girl and he wasn't a Hufflepuff. His head certainly wasn't a rolling rat. Something horrible really is out there and they're not telling us what it is.' He frowned again. 'Maybe we should stay in the common room tonight.' There was Glazed Toad and Harry remembered some candy left in the bottom of a Honeydukes bag in his dormitory. There were Toffee Slugs ('As slimy as a real slug!'), Pus Pops ('Pop a pimple into your mouth!'), and Choco-Logs ('Real turds lovingly coated in rich, luxurious Swiss chocolate!'). He groaned and wondered why he often let Ron talk him into buying this inedible rubbish.

'What kind of git would name their daughter "Ensign"?' fumed Ron, losing patience. All this talk was interrupting some prime toad-grilling. He had thankfully forgotten about Daleks for the evening.

'Maybe her parents were hippies,' said Hermione, thinking aloud as she packed 'vol. 4, E-H' into the second drawer of her cabinet. Her homework had lately outgrown her schoolbag so she had taken to dragging a little wheeled filing cabinet about with her like a U-Haul trailer. 'Didn't you say you once had some neighbors who bought some dodgy toadstools from Muggles and then started naming their children after rubbish they found on the lawn? I can't believe they called that poor girl "Sundial Dogsmess".' She looked at Ron. Ron looked at Harry. Harry looked at Hermione. Hermione looked at Trevor, or more correctly at the place where Trevor once was roasting nicely over open flames.

'Ron! Trevor's gone!' shrieked Hermione, pointing at the fire. Now they had to go to the Great Hall.

Ron ran to the fireplace. 'It's that Sirius Black again! He's nicked my toad!' He kicked his chair a couple of times. 'I know he's your godfather and everything Harry but,' he kicked the chair again, harder. 'That's the third time this week. Toast, marshmallows, sausages, he's nicked them all! Knickers!' Ron did an angry little dance, but only on one foot since he kicked the chair a bit too hard the second time. 'When we saw him in Hogsmead on Tuesday I thought I saw marshmallow in his fur!' He sat down and grumped, rubbing his sore foot. The loss of a succulent grilled toad was a severe blow.

Harry had also been looking forward to at least a taste of Trevor. Ron had probably used Mrs Weasley's excellent toad glaze recipe as well. 'Well, let's go down to dinner,' he said resignedly. 'Maybe they'll tell us something while we're all there. We should be safe in the Great Hall with all the teachers around, but wands out in the halls, OK?' He snickered, but low enough so that neither Ron nor Hermione heard. He'd always thought the phrase 'wands out' sounded a bit rude, apparently only to adolescent Muggle males, but then saying 'I'd like two pints and a packet of crisps, please' to a wizard of any age usually got you a punch on the nose. He thought he'd never get the hang of all this wizarding nonsense.

They made their way cautiously to the Great Hall, starting at every sound. Ron accidentally zapped an unsuspecting house-elf to bits with his wand when they turned a corner. Before they could brush elf from their robes Peeves the poltergeist shot out of a doorway and spun around in front of them, blocking their path. He made a couple of rude gestures, a loud wet raspberry, showed them his bottom, twirled the tassels on his nipples, and then disappeared with a pop. At least he wasn't behaving like a feces-flinging zoo monkey—he saved that for special occasions.

'He must have run out of Small Smelly Clouds,' whispered Hermione thankfully. She'd had it with Peeves's arseing about since she had been the butt of his latest round of juvenile pranks. Small Smelly Clouds were the result of Harry's defeating one of the Large Smelly Clouds which he had inadvertently released when he tipped over the Bucket of Doom (Book NineHarry Potter and the Bucket of Doom). The thing had been trapped there since the days of Fosgood the Flatulent. The true purpose of Large Smelly Clouds was lost in the (ahem) mists of time but Fosgood had always claimed they were a force for good not evil. 'Better out than in!' was his motto, whatever that meant. No one ever got close enough to find out. Harry had blasted this particular cloud to bits of smaller, less-lethal smelly clouds when it insisted on hanging about the Gryffindor common room and everyone got tired of hiding in their dormitories with their robes pulled up over their noses. It was also feared that when the fires were lit the whole place would go up like an atom bomb. The Small Smelly Clouds were less of a nuisance since they tended to drift harmlessly through the halls and when anyone encountered them they could easily be blamed on a cat, owl, or toad. Peeves took to swatting these clouds at horrified first-years as though they were some foul spectral bludgers and then pointing and shouting 'Farty!' When the fun from that wore off he dug up a cue stick and potted the clouds into the pockets of unsuspecting passers-by, where they would linger, slowly releasing a carnival of smells until laundry day. Since there was no avoiding Peeves in the hallways Hermione was shaking several of them from her robes every evening until she finally magicked the pockets off altogether. Still, it was better than when Peeves behaved like a feces-flinging zoo monkey. Anything was better than that.