A/N: Thank you for the reviews! Again!
Fairymargarita, Chickens-of-Doom (whose username we love) j-star, greeneyes, ohjuotaku, Akalei, Maddie, R.K.R and BuckNC, we really appreciate it.
Chickens-of-Doom, we didn't know what genres to put it under. It isn't a complete parody, but it isn't wholly serious either. See Hermione's many nicknames.
R.K.R, we know, she pretty much carries the almost non-existent plot. We just wanted to try this kind of story out. We hope you keep reading anyway.
BuckNC – we were only joking! We really do appreciate your reviews. Like we said, they make us think. As for Neville, maybe it's an effect of his having to work with Snape… We never perceived him as a cold and distant person, but we suppose that he does give away that impression here. He doesn't get much screen time, and there aren't many scenes where he is in a good mood, so he seems to come off as cold. We acknowledge it, and we're sorry about it. Won't happen again!
FFF
21. – Feeding the Spiders
Snape stormed up the stairs to the headmaster's office.
"Things are unravelling," he muttered to himself.
Not only had that moronic Weasley completely bungled the entire confrontation; he hadn't even had the sense to stall long enough for Snape to be able to make his way onto the pitch and rescue them. By the time he'd managed to force his way down from the stands, through hordes of confused and angry students, Kya had led her hostages into the forest, away from sight.
Obviously, his best bet was to find the Headmaster and make him aware of the dangerous turn of events.
Which he would have been aware of earlier, had he even once stepped out of his office.
The one time Snape had been to visit him before, the Headmaster had seemed stressed and tired. He had told him to keep a lookout, and said he had had too much work to do at present. Snape had informed him about Luna Lovegood and his suspicions regarding Kya Morris. Dumbledore had seemed troubled by the news, and had told him to keep looking into the matter as discreetly as possible. He couldn't remember much about what the rest of the conversation had been about, but as he'd closed the door, he had felt convinced there was no need to bother the headmaster again. That had been two weeks ago.
Then he had not suspected things would turn this ugly. In retrospect, he had no idea of how he could have not suspected it, but now he was determined to drag Dumbledore out of his self-imposed exile.
However, when he tried to open the door, he encountered a problem. It was stuck.
And why did the doorknob feel so oily?
Snape tugged at it again, but without putting much effort into it. He ran a hand through his hair, making it even greasier, as it was the hand he had tugged at the doorknob with.
He glowered at the door, and tried it again, pulling the knob carefully. Then he turned his heel and began to walk away from it.
Suddenly he stopped. What was he doing? Why was he walking away from the door when he needed to get in?
It wasn't so much that he couldn't open the door, he thought. It was more that a strange reluctance to do so overcame him when he tried, causing him to not try very hard. His experience with mind-affecting potions had taught him to recognise the signs.
He ran a hand through his hair again, and bent down to examine the doorknob more closely.
"Yes," he whispered softly. There was something smeared on it. Something with a faintly purplish tinge.
He sniffed. It smelled of kerosene…
He knew exactly what this was. It happened to be quite a favourite with his former colleagues, although rare and hard to come by. So subtle, except for its scent, but kerosene was common enough. If you didn't immediately have reason to connect the smell with that potion, you could have no way of detecting it before it affected you and messed with your mind. The person who was trapped in the room would be breathing in the poisoned air, and feel unwilling to leave the room in which he was imprisoned. Why hadn't he noticed it before?
Because it had affected him as well, he realized.
That was not a pleasant thought, so he chose not to dwell on it for very long. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his robes, and pulled out a small glass bottle, which he only used under very special circumstances. Covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve, so as not to inhale anything, he threw the bottle at the door. The bottle shattered, spraying a poisonous green powder all over the door, which immediately disintegrated.
He cautiously stepped over the pile of dust that had been the door, and into the office.
"Headmaster?" he said.
"You want to be careful with that," said Neville. "Just use a small amount of it. Thankfully it's only the Quidditch teams we have to use it on."
"Why?" Ginny asked, nervously. "What does it do?"
"Remember Harry and Hermione?" said Neville, while unscrewing the cork of his vial containing the potion. "It wasn't Kya's birthday present that had done that to their faces."
Ginny went pale. She held her vial as far away from her own face as was possible, as if it could explode at any moment. Then she approached the statue-like Katie Bell.
Soon, screams of pain reverberated across the grounds.
In the forest, things were indeed unravelling very quickly.
The Acromantulas that had been attracted by the shouting and the burst of green light, now had Harry, Ron, Hermione and Draco Malfoy surrounded.
They stood in a tight cluster beside Kya's body, from which they had retrieved their wands. The spiders were advancing. At first, Harry tried to plead parley.
"Please let us talk to Aragog," he begged. "We know him! We're friends of Hagrid's!"
Ron stared at Harry incredulously. After all, Aragog had hardly helped them the last time they'd met. Then he caught on.
"Yeah, that's right," he said, quickly. "You wouldn't hurt friends of Hagrid's, would you?"
The thing they needed to do was to buy time, so that Hermione could think up a plan.
"My father has friends in high places-" Malfoy began, in his normal high-pitched voice which made Harry, Hermione and Ron start because they hadn't heard it in ages. But then he stopped, seeming to reconsider.
"If you eat us, Dumbledore will be angry, and he won't let you live in the forest anymore," Ron said, lamely.
It was no use. The spiders were getting closer every second. At first they had all stopped in their tracks, apparently surprised at Harry's and Ron's attempt at diplomacy, but now they were drawing nearer again, clicking their mandibles madly. They did not seem to be of the bargaining persuasion.
Harry, Ron, Hermione and Malfoy all looked around frantically for something – anything – which might delay their impending doom. At once they all had the same idea.
Kya lay there, on the ground, her hair fanned out around her head, white as new fallen snow. She looked slightly astonished, her amethyst eyes wide and uncomprehending. The sun broke through the clouds and shone over her, as she lay there, finally at rest. Never in Hogwarts' long history had there ever been such a poetic image of death.
They lifted up the body and threw it at the spiders.
"Take her first! She's fresh!" shouted Hermione, earning stares from everybody.
All spiders forgot about them and crowded around the corpse, but before devouring it they stopped for a moment, almost as if in a mark of respect for one who had been so like them in character. Then the grisly feast began.
The group quickly turned away from the sight, and started to run through the forest, in what they hoped was the right direction. However, they knew that the spiders were most likely going to finish off Kya quickly, and were just as quickly going to catch up with them.
"Any ideas yet?" Ron yelled to Hermione.
"Keep running!" Hermione yelled back.
Soon afterwards, she decided to ignore her own advice and stopped. A look of confusion clouded her face. The others stumbled to a halt as well. They could hear that the spiders were gaining on them.
"Hermione, what-" Ron said, and then he saw what she had already spotted.
In the air above them, weaving through the treetops, were small figures on broomsticks. They stood out in stark contrast to the grey sky, because they were dressed in scarlet and bright green robes. The beleaguered ones could not have been more happy to see their fellow team members! (Hermione was happy to see them too, of course).
Could it be that they were going to be saved?
Or were they to suffer death at the mandibles of their arachnid pursuers after all?
The outcome was soon to be decided. Right then, a number of preposterously large spiders dropped out of the trees around them. Click, click went the mandibles.
The trio and Malfoy drew uncomfortably close together, as they were once more surrounded. Now there's nothing for it, Ron thought.
"Impedimenta!" he shouted. A spider froze stiff, but it was only for a few seconds.
The others followed suit and hurled as many spells and hexes at the monsters, as they could. However, the Acromantulas were very powerful creatures, and such spells couldn't hinder them for long.
The Quidditch teams were drawing nearer, but there seemed to be a lot of branches and foliage in their way. Ron turned around and looked for them, to see if they were making any progress already, only to find himself facing a lot of shiny black eyes and too many hairy legs.
And he panicked.
"Aim for the eyes!" Harry shouted. Ron tried, but as he was hanging at a rather precarious angle, it was not the easiest thing to do. The spider had gripped his leg and was carrying him away from the others. Hermione was being dragged up a tree, and Malfoy was running away in a random direction in order to avoid such a fate. He couldn't keep it up for very long, and soon one spider had him by the legs, and another one had hold of his arms. Harry was nowhere in sight.
So this is they way we go, said Ron to himself. And to think, I never saw it coming. If I'm going to be gruesomely killed, I hope I pass out first. Not very dignified perhaps, but a lot less painful. And who cares about dignity at a time like this? Where are the others? Are they dead already? I hope they pass out first. Maybe not Malfoy, but the others… I can't hear their voices. Perhaps they have already died.
Ron paused in his inner monologue, as something occurred to him. Why wasn't he dead yet? And why had his monstrous abductor stopped in its tracks?
Come on, he thought. Don't drag this out.
All of a sudden there was a flash of blinding white light, and he and the spider were flung high up in the air. The spider released him from its clutches, but instead of falling heavily to the ground, Ron felt strong hands pull him onto a broomstick.
"You okay?" he heard a familiar voice ask him.
At last, he opened his eyes. There was Ginny, unruly red hair whipping about her freckled face. She was smiling at him.
"Yes, I'm fine," said Ron, smiling back at the person who had just become his favourite sibling at that moment. A thought struck him.
"Are the others alright?" he asked, and looked around, trying to spot them with the other Quidditch players.
"Ron, stop it, or you'll fall off," said Ginny. "They're already ahead of us. Look!"
When Ron looked in the direction she was pointing he saw several figures, flying in the direction of the castle. They were anonymous to him in the distance, but he could see a black-robed person sitting behind one of the Gryffindor players. The person hadn't yet removed the charm she had used to dye her hair green.
A/N: Yes, this one was very strange. And now, only one more chapter to go!
