Chapter 8: Discoveries
"Extra cheese for me," Harry said, remembering stolen slices from Dudley's pizza parties, "and I think Hermione likes ham and mushrooms. But I don't know about Ron and Ginny. I'm not even sure they've ever had pizza."
"High time, then, don't you think?" Lupin flicked on the light in the basement kitchen with his wand.
Harry suddenly realized part of what felt different about the house. He sat down, leaned back in his chair, and tried to sound casual. "So, where's Kreacher?"
Lupin looked grim, and Harry knew his attempt to seem offhand hadn't worked. "Hogwarts. Tonks gave him the sock after she got out of St. Mungo's. Dumbledore's having the other house-elves keep an eye on him, and one of the free house-elves there has been coming back and forth to give us a hand here. Talks a lot about you, as a matter of fact."
Me? Oh no... "Let me guess. Dobby."
Lupin snapped his fingers. "So close..."
Not Dobby? What other free house-elves do I know? "Oh. What's her face – Winky. She used to be the Crouches' elf. Right?"
"That's the one. She's due this afternoon, as a matter of fact, so hide anything you don't want ruthlessly cleaned. Now, back to lunch. There's five of us, four teenagers and a hungry werewolf, so I think we'll likely need three. What do you think of one regular, one extra-cheese, and one with half pepperoni, half ham and mushroom?"
Harry nodded. "Sounds good. Better give Ron and Ginny a chance to get used to it before we throw too many toppings at them. How are we going to get it?"
"I'll go out and order it. The shop's just around the corner from here. It shouldn't take too long – 20 minutes or so, I'd guess. I'll wait there and bring it back when it's done."
"Won't you get bored?"
"No, I have a book I'm rather interested in at the moment. I'll take it along. Perhaps you could do me a favor, Harry, and wake the others. I've seen Ron around food, and I'd rather have him alert so he doesn't try eating anything else."
Harry grinned. "He did once try to eat his plate at breakfast. But we'd been up all night studying for Potions, and I wasn't much better."
Lupin chuckled. "You didn't by any chance get a picture?"
"I only wish."
"When was this?"
"Last year sometime." Something triggered in Harry's mind. "One of Ron's letters said something about Umbridge. She left her job?"
"Yes, she's on leave of absence from the Ministry. The official story is that she was traumatized by an unfortunate incident with centaurs and needs time off to recuperate. Percy Weasley's been promoted in her place. He, by the way, still refuses to communicate with his parents."
Harry looked at the floor. He didn't know if Lupin knew what he, Harry, had seen the previous night. "Thanks. For telling me, I mean."
"You're quite welcome. Now let me see..." Lupin opened the pantry door. "I know we have Muggle money around here somewhere... ah, here it is. This ought to be enough."
Harry followed him up the stairs again to the music room, where Lupin dug through his bag, coming up with a thick red paperback. "I'll see you in about half an hour, Harry. I'd appreciate if you'd watch for me, it's tricky business opening a door when you're carrying large boxes. And you know this already, but don't leave the house. It's not safe."
"Yes, sir!" Harry mock-saluted, earning a smile from Lupin.
Harry saw the older man off, Lupin shutting the front door quietly to avoid setting off the portraits in the hallway. Then he hurried upstairs. He, too, was planning to pass the time until Lupin returned with a book. But first he had to wake the others. Including the girls.
An interesting prospect, to be sure.
Yeah, right.
Interesting in the same way a Blast-Ended Skrewt was interesting. From a safe distance. And in this case, that meant hearing about it while someone else actually did it.
Come on, Harry. You're a Gryffindor. Prove it. Be a man.
Harry swallowed hard and knocked lightly on the door.
"Hermione? Ginny?"
No answer.
They must still be asleep.
Harry knocked again.
Still no answer.
Give me a break! said the side of Harry's mind that sometimes seemed to have Ron's voice attached to it. They're just girls. What is the big deal about going in and waking them up?
Harry didn't have a good answer. So he did something that he knew was stupid.
He opened the door.
Ginny was in the bed nearer to him. She was lying on her side, slightly curled up, with her hair spread out behind her. Harry was struck by how vulnerable, and how dangerous, she looked, all at once. And how sweet and appealing.
I think I may, just possibly, fancy her. But I'm not sure.
And I don't know if she likes me at all, other than as a friend.
Have to be careful about this.
The other bed appeared to have been attacked by a brown-haired monster during the night. Hermione was tangled in her bedsheets with one hand at her –
I did NOT just see that.
Harry hastily (and quietly) shut the door.
I did not see that.
I will never tell anyone that I saw that.
He knocked loudly on the door.
"Ginny! Hermione! Time to get up!" he called.
"Is not," Ginny mumbled. Or words to that effect.
"Professor Lupin went out to get pizza and if you don't get up, Ron and I get to eat it all!"
"Pizza?" That was Hermione. "I'm up. Come on, Ginny, pizza."
"What's pizza?"
Harry went to wake Ron. His mind was still spinning over what he had seen.
Hermione Granger, brain extraordinaire, sucks her thumb.
-----
Ron took some time to rouse, and more time to convince that flat bread, spread with tomato sauce and cheese, was really a type of food and not one of Fred and George's pranks. Lupin had been gone for almost 15 minutes when a dressed Harry, Insane Dorm Hall in his hand, came quietly down the stairs again and went into the front room. There was a window seat, and he established himself in it.
Now, where was I?
He found his place and began reading. Yes, a Rodgers and Hammerstein 2 AM singing session, I remember wondering about that...
Rodgers and Hammerstein turned out to be a lyricist and composer team who had written some very successful musical comedies. Harry found he knew a few of the songs that were mentioned, and even caught himself humming "Do-Re-Mi". Erica, Lanie, and Rose had been singing lustily to Rose's keyboard accompaniment when Fran knocked on the door and reminded them (in the politest way possible) that it was 2 o'clock in the morning and people were trying to sleep.
Oops. Harry smirked. Too bad for them.
Hogwarts would be perfect for a late-night singing session. Just Silencio the walls and no one would ever know.
He thought of Lupin. And the floor and ceiling, of course. I can just imagine us, singing away, when in pops Filch because we forgot to charm the floor...
The idea of Argus Filch, Hogwarts' unpopular caretaker, discovering a musical group in the middle of the night was quite funny. As long as Harry didn't put himself among the members of that group. He had been very close to being disciplined by Filch once, but Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost, had convinced Peeves the Poltergeist to make some trouble to draw Filch away (never difficult, as Peeves loved annoying Filch), and Harry had gotten off.
Peeves loved annoying Umbridge, too.
The thought was unwanted, but once it arrived, it refused to go away. Dolores Jane Umbridge, former Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic, last year's Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and one of the people Harry disliked most in the world, was firmly ensconced in his thoughts.
He looked at the back of his right hand. The words "I must not tell lies" were traced across the back in thin white scar lines. The handwriting was his own.
Umbridge had given him detention several times over the course of the year. His punishment had always been the same – writing those five words with a magical quill, which carved the words into his skin as he wrote them on the paper. He had never told anyone about it except Ron and Hermione.
Wait a minute. Harry had just remembered something odd. Fred and George had left Hogwarts very dramatically, flying off into the sunset, after causing Umbridge a boatload of trouble. But they wouldn't have left if they hadn't been ready to start their shop.
And they weren't ready until they got the Fever Fudge right. They used essence of murtlap in it... Lee Jordan told them about that... And I told him about it, after Hermione gave it to me to soak my hand in, after detention with Umbridge...
I wonder what Umbridge would say if she knew she had helped Fred and George? In a very odd and roundabout kind of way, of course, but still...
The thought of Umbridge's toady face if she had found out that she had assisted the official Hogwarts troublemakers in starting their joke shop amused Harry greatly.
Suddenly remembering why he was in the window seat, he looked at his watch. Lupin should be back any minute.
He looked out the window. The weather seemed undecided, not completely overcast but not sunny either. There were a few people on the street; none of them were Remus Lupin.
But one of them was Dolores Jane Umbridge.
Harry stared. This is impossible.
Impossible or not, there she was, wide and ugly face just as he remembered it, blue bow in her hair, wearing a rather incongruous Muggle blouse and slacks. She was walking along, frowning at the houses as she passed them.
I have to find out what she's up to.
Maybe, with the Invisibility Cloak... but I have to hurry. She won't stick around long.
He vaulted off the seat and raced upstairs as quietly as he could. Ron was in the bathroom, luckily, so there was no one around to ask embarrassing questions. He pulled the Cloak out of his trunk, fastened it on, and hurried back down the stairs and into the room.
She was still on the street. He couldn't believe his luck.
She'll never know I'm behind her. I can follow her and listen in on anything she says... I can get her back for everything she did to me... She'll come to heel for me... I'll really make her pay...
His hand was on the doorknob when another voice echoed in his head. Lupin's.
You will never accept things at face value again. You will always probe, always suspect a trap...
Don't leave the house. It's not safe...
Harry looked down at his hand on the doorknob as if it belonged to someone else. The thin lines across the back of it suddenly flared with pain, and he felt a sharp stab of exasperation.
Very slowly, Harry took his hand off the doorknob. This is not normal.
He had felt pain and emotion coupled like that before, but never in his hand – the pain had always been in his forehead, in his lightning-bolt scar...
When I was connected to Voldemort, connected by the curse and the blood he took from me...
Blood. That quill of Umbridge's drew blood. She has all those sheets of lines I wrote in my own blood. And I have the scars from that quill.
He did not like the direction of his thoughts at all.
In her office that night, when my scar hurt and my stomach felt odd... what if she was trying to establish some kind of link between us? What if she can get into my head now?
Harry shuddered. He wanted Umbridge in his mind less than he wanted Voldemort, if such a thing were possible.
I wonder if this is what happened to Ginny. She said she had no idea why she followed Percy. And they have a blood connection. Maybe he cast a spell like this on her, and she had no defenses...
A scuffling noise from the other side of the door caught Harry's attention, and he remembered why he had been in the front room in the first place. He pulled the door open.
Lupin entered, carrying three pizza boxes carefully in his arms. He frowned at the place where Harry apparently wasn't.
"Oops," Harry said, recalling the Cloak. "Sorry." He pulled it off.
Lupin raised his eyebrows with an I'm-sure-there's-a-perfectly-good-explanation-for-this look.
"In the kitchen?" Harry asked quietly, pointing at the velvet curtains. Lupin nodded, and Harry led the way, opening the doors so Lupin could get through with his load and deposit it on the kitchen table.
"Something very scary just happened," Harry said, and recounted first exactly what had occurred, as nearly as he could recall it, and then what he surmised. He had to backtrack a bit, as he had never told Lupin, or indeed, any adult, about Umbridge's detentions. Lupin sank into a chair with an astounded look on his face when Harry described the quill. By the time he had seen Harry's hand, the look had changed to anger.
"So do you think I might be right?"
"Unfortunately, yes. It seems very likely."
"Bloody great," Harry said heavily. "Just what I needed. Another sadistic maniac who wants to invade my mind."
"Forewarned is forearmed, Harry. This makes it imperative. You must start Occlumency lessons again as soon as possible."
"With who?"
"Probably Severus again. I know, I know – " Lupin held up his hand as Harry started to protest. "You don't like him. I don't like him either. And he ejected you from his office and told you never to come back. What was it he threw at you? A jar of maggots?"
"Cockroaches."
"You can understand why he was angry. You had seen the one thing he most wanted you not to see."
"Yeah, well, he doesn't know everything," Harry said angrily. "He should have shown that to me right off. That memory of his, that did in five minutes what he didn't manage in five years. It showed me the truth about my dad. He was an arrogant bullying little sod just like my damn cousin..."
He trailed off, not wanting to say the rest.
"And you saw Snape in the position you know far too well. The victim, the prey of the bully." Lupin sighed. "Harry, I want you to write down just what you've told me here. Without the profanity, and in a little more detail. And I want you to send it to Professor Snape. I think he needs to know this."
"No," Harry said flatly.
"We can discuss it later," Lupin said mildly as a series of thumping noises on the stairs heralded the arrival of Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, looking hungry.
Ron fell in love with pizza from his first bite, but as Hermione said, "Ron, you've never met a food you didn't like."
"So true," Ginny said absently, holding her slice of pizza in one hand and her book – Erica Gorelli and the Costume of Doom – in the other. Erica was on the cover as usual, this time in the company of several other young women, all wearing pink or purple concoctions that looked like something out of the Arabian Nights. Their hair was in cornrows, and they had elaborate and colorful eye makeup that swirled onto their cheeks. The whole effect was either amusing or disturbing, Harry couldn't decide which.
He looked down at Insane Dorm Hall, open in his lap. Erica was discovering that an entire semester with nothing but classes in her major could be a drawback when all her professors set papers that came due at the same time. Harry sympathized. He, too, had often thought that his professors held secret meetings to synchronize their homework loads.
Hermione, too, was eating with one hand. She was reading – no surprise – and her book looked similar to Lupin's. Both were fat paperbacks, though Lupin's was larger. Hermione's was bound in gray, Lupin's in red, but the pattern was the same, and the polite letters on the covers looked much the same, though Harry couldn't read them from across the table.
Ron, like Harry, was eating with one hand in his lap and staring persistently downwards. Harry suspected he had Indecipherable Seminar under there.
Hermione tried to turn a page without using her greasy hand and dropped her book. It fell under the table.
"I'll get it," Harry volunteered.
He slid under the table, ignoring Hermione's panicked "No, it's all right, Harry, I can do it..."
As Harry had suspected, the small letters on the cover of the book spelled out Erica Gorelli and the Hyperactive Actor.
"So have you found out who the Hyperactive Actor is yet?" he asked as he emerged.
Hermione scowled at him. "No, I haven't. I only got it yesterday. So don't tell me..." She trailed off as she realized what she was saying. "How do you know who the Hyperactive Actor is?"
Harry grinned and held up his copy of Dorm Hall. "Early birthday present from a friend. I'm really enjoying them. How do you like them?"
Hermione smiled back, looking relieved. "I think they're great."
"You know my opinion," Ginny said, stroking the spine of her book affectionately.
"Me too," Ron said, turning pink at Ginny's look. "I'm borrowing Harry's, Gin, I swear I haven't touched yours!"
"Since this seems to be a moment of discoveries..." Lupin said, sliding his book into the center of the table. Everyone leaned in to look at it.
The small, neat words Erica Gorelli and the Costume of Doom looked back at them.
Ginny looked thrilled. "Oh, have you gotten to the part where Erica has to try it on yet?"
"Yes, I'm just past that."
"Isn't it great?"
"Highly amusing." Lupin smiled as if recalling a favorite joke. "Adult bindings, Hermione?"
Hermione ducked her head slightly. "Well, I didn't want everyone to see," she said in a small voice.
"Adult bindings, Professor?" Ron asked, looking confused.
"There are some adult wizards and witches who want to read books like these – children's books – without being embarrassed. Flourish and Blotts can enchant the binding of the book to make it look more, shall we say, respectable. The friend who bought me these had that enchantment put on them. Now, for today's lesson."
"Lesson?" asked Harry.
"Ron has stated that I'm your Professor, therefore I'm allowed to set lessons. And today's lesson is a very special word. You might even call it magical. Repeat after me: Ree."
"Ree," everyone repeated.
"Muss."
"Muss."
"Now say both parts together."
"Ree, Muss," Harry said. "Ree –"
He slapped himself on the forehead as Lupin cracked up at the looks on their faces.
"You want us to call you by your first name?" Ginny looked a little awestruck.
"If you can't manage that, you can always use Moony. Harry's already done it once. It shouldn't be too hard for a talented group like yourselves." Lupin – no, Remus – gazed around at them. His expression was calm, but Harry had a feeling that Moony the Marauder wasn't very far below that bland exterior.
His instinct was confirmed when Remus added, "And just to make sure, the next time one of you calls me sir or Professor, I plan to hex whoever it is. Either Twitchy-Ears or Jelly-Legs, I haven't decided yet."
"Ruddy he..." Ron broke off at the look on Hermione's face. "You mean that, ah, Remus?"
"Try me and see," Remus said, idly twiddling his wand between his fingers.
Ron swallowed and returned to his pizza.
The rest of the meal was marked by nothing more exciting than Hermione trying to guess who the Hyperactive Actor was, while the rest of the group, who had finished the second book, pestered her with clues. She finally got it (the six-year-old son of Erica's acting teacher) around the time the last of the pizza disappeared in Ron's vicinity.
"I'll clean up," said Remus. "Evanesco!" The pizza boxes disappeared.
"Crikey, must be nice to be legal," Ron said enviously.
"It has its advantages," Remus agreed. "Harry, are you free now? To have that chat we discussed earlier?"
"Yeah, I guess," Harry said, again trying to sound casual and failing. He was tense and on edge from not knowing what Lupin – Remus – wanted, and he had come to a conclusion at some point during lunch.
If he was going to have to answer questions, he was bloody well going to ask a few of his own.
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(A/N: "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms..." I'm not quite to that point yet, but what's up with the not-reviewing thing? Has everyone suddenly stopped reading this?
In case you haven't, here's a long chapter to make up for not updating on time... my sister was visiting and I was busy with keeping her happy.
As far as I know, adult bindings are available for Harry Potter books in Britain, for exactly the reason given by Remus.
Oh, and if anyone wants to see the cover picture from Erica Gorelli and the Costume of Doom, it happens to be online. Copy this link into your browser, put the double slash after the http: and get rid of the spaces. Erica is the one in the bottom right corner.
http: webpub. allegheny. edu/ employee/ b/bwatkins /images /mNightingale1 .jpg
Hope to hear from everyone soon... ::sigh::)