Under The Weather - part 2. See part 1 for disclaimer.
Thanks to those who have already reviewed. I do appreciate it.
When he arrived at the classroom he found most of the other students already waiting for Snape to let them in. The Slytherins started sniggering as soon as they caught sight of him.
"Hey Potter, decided to take a shower with your clothes on?" Pansy jeered. "Can't stand to look at yourself can you?"
"Potter, if you were trying to drown yourself, you failed," Malfoy smirked at him. "Try harder next time, will you."
Crabbe and Goyle gurgled trollishly at Malfoy's side.
"Oh, enough with the wit already," Harry muttered to himself as he sloshed by and rolled his eyes. He sought out Ron and Hermione, his sneakers squishing embarrassingly with every step.
"Harry!" Hermione exclaimed upon seeing him. "Whatever happened to you?"
"Quidditch practice," Harry offered, wringing out a sleeve, causing water to splash on Ron's shoe.
Ron jumped backwards, shaking his foot. "Raining, is it?" he asked dryly.
"You could say that."
"Well, you can't get in class looking like that!" Hermione berated him, staring disdainfully at his bedraggled state. "You're all wet!"
"Well, what do you suppose to do about it, Hermione?" Harry asked her exasperatedly. "There wasn't any time to change. It's either this or skive class. Which do you prefer?"
"Oh, honestly," Hermione sighed, pulling out her wand. "Exaresco!" she said, pointing her wand at Harry.
Instantly, the water soaking Harry evaporated in a hissing cloud of damp, leaving his robes feeling coarse and creased and his sneakers still caked with dry mud, but otherwise completely dry.
"Thanks," he sighed to Hermione in relief, frowning when he caught sight of Ron's face, which was reddening with suppressed mirth, little choking sounds erupting from the back of his throat. "What?" Harry asked, wondering if his friend's head was going to implode.
Ron just pointed at Harry's head, using his other hand to bite in and control himself. Harry turned at Hermione who was studiously examining the cracks in the floor, evading Harry's look and bringing up a hand to cover up the twitching of her lips.
Harry brought up a hand to feel at his hair, expecting the worst.
His hair felt… poofy to the touch, like a big pile of fur, standing on end as if a great big blow-dryer had just detonated in the middle.
"Hermione!" Harry gasped, bringing both hands up to his head and pulling his hair flat, only to have it spring right back to its former fluffy position. He jumped behind Ron to hide himself from the rest of his classmates, keeping both his hands clamped on his hair. "What did you do?"
"Oops?" Hermione said, grinning openly now.
Ron tried to stop his laughing by stuffing his fist in his mouth, sounding as if he had a bad case of the hiccups.
"It's not funny!" Harry hissed, trying desperately to flatten his hair. "Hermione, fix this!"
"What do you expect me to do?" she asked, getting her giggles under control and slowly realising the situation she'd put her friend in. Though he was no longer soaking, he looked like he had an angry cat the size of Crookshanks on his head, and Snape and the Slytherins were bound to give him hell for it.
"I don't know!" Harry said agitatedly. "You're the one with the bright ideas. Just reverse the spell or something. I'd rather be wet than look like this! And will you stop that!" he directed at Ron, who was slowly turning purple.
"Oh, I know," Hermione brightened. "Minima Pluvius," she said, and a dribble of water started pouring from her wand. She held it over Harry's head and wet his hair, forcing it to lie flat in straight wet strands. "There, it should just be normal again after it dries naturally. Well, as normal as it usually gets, that is."
Harry ignored that last comment and felt his hair with his hands to make sure the fluffiness was gone. With a sigh he relaxed against the wall. It didn't seem as if anyone had noticed what Hermione had done or why he'd been hiding behind Ron.
"Go on, Ron, breathe," Hermione urged the hyperventilating redhead worriedly. "You can do it."
"Oh, honestly," Harry rolled his eyes, and smacked Ron on the back of his head.
"Oy!" Ron gasped. He then started laughing in a somewhat more normal fashion. "Whether you like it or not, Harry, that was bloody hilarious."
"Yeah, I'm sure," Harry smirked, then couldn't help but grin at Ron's obvious amusement now that his sticky situation had been reversed.
"Ten points from Gryffindor for being too cheerful this early in the morning," Snape bellowed as he swooped down the hallway to the potions classroom, his cloak billowing behind him like a shadow of darkness.
"That's completely unfair!" Hermione piped up at the injustice of this, her voice rising over the exclamations of the other Gryffindors. "There's no rule against laughing in the hallway!"
"Make it ten for being disagreeable to a teacher, then, Granger," Snape lashed, making them all cower under his gaze. "And that will be another ten if you dare to open your mouth, Potter!"
Harry closed his mouth with a snap and swallowed the words he'd been about to say. It probably wouldn't have been a good idea to utter them anyway, so he settled for glaring at Snape with as much distaste as he could. Next to him, Ron was lamenting the fact that they always had potions first thing in the morning when Snape's mood was at its foulest in frustrated whispers, interspersed liberally with a few choice words which he definitely hadn't picked up from his parents.
Obviously the potions master cared not a fig about the Gryffindors' silent death glares, for he opened the room and stalked to his desk, ordering the class to make haste and pull out their textbooks. After briskly showing them how to make a hair-care potion - "if he can make it, then why doesn't he bloody use it?" Ron whispered to Harry - he set them to work, each at their own cauldron.
After his frustration at the cantankerous teacher had settled down to a manageable level, Harry found himself rather losing his energy too. Though his little trial with the fluffy hair had momentarily woken him up, now that he was sitting down and working on something incredibly precise and boring, he rather wished he could go back to bed and sleep the day away. Not only was his hair not exactly drying in the dank dungeon, but it was also very cold down here, making him hunch over his desk to try and keep warm and occasionally blow warm breath on his freezing hands - it was hard chopping up roots when your fingers were too numb to hold your knife. How the Slytherins managed to actually live in a dungeon was beyond him, though he thought it might account for their foul moods and icy dispositions.
"You'd think with all the cauldrons on fires there'd be a bit more warmth around here," Hermione whispered on his right, rubbing her hands together. Harry nodded, suddenly feeling miserable as shivers stole down his spine. He decided that first thing after classes, he was going to kill Wood, then luxuriate in bed all weekend long.
He was carefully adding three droplets of Belladonna extract to his potion when he accidentally sneezed and dropped his full flask in the bubbling concoction. Immediately the potion turned a violent purple and with a 'poof' exhumed a cloud of smoke in the shape of a mushroom. Bubbles rose increasingly violent to the rim of the cauldron. Eyes widening, he turned to look directly in Hermione's horrified face.
"Duck!" she squealed, diving under her desk.
Knowing Hermione was not one to mess around, he dove after her, as did those Gryffindors who heard her warning call. The last thing Harry saw before disappearing under his desk was the Slytherins' surprised faces and Snape turning around and bellowing what was going on.
KLABAM! The cauldron exploded. Harry closed his eyes in horror, hearing it rain on his desk, waiting for what was no doubt to come.
"POTTER!"
TBC
