CHAPTER ELEVEN: Thursday, part II
Hermione had been a bundle of jangled nerves all day, but as seven o'clock rolled around, the very hour began to fill her with dread. She was alone in the dorm room she shared with Parvati and Lavender, fingering her DA coin with one hand and stirring her potion gently with the other. It was gradually turning clear and losing its odor, a signal that it was approaching doneness. She glanced at the mess around her. All her books and parchment were spread out on her bed, as though she were in the middle of doing homework. She, meanwhile, was sitting on the edge of her mattress, facing away from the door, watching the potion.
Ron was out and about somewhere. She knew he had his own DA coin in his pocket, but the last time she saw him was at dinner, and he'd given no indication of how he was going to get Harry's flask away from him without being made. The fact that one of the most crucial tasks tonight was up to a Hogwarts' underachiever did not bring her any comfort, but Ron was Harry's best mate. It was a better choice.
"Hi Hermione, what are you doing?" asked Parvati, from out of nowhere.
Hermione screamed. At least she hadn't been stirring. Parvati jumped, and then regarded Hermione warily as she stood up and faced the other girl, deliberately standing in front of the cauldron.
"Oh, Parvati, you scared me!" Hermione explained, putting one hand over her thumping heart.
"Sorry. I thought you heard me come in. What's that behind your back?"
"There's nothing behind my back." Hermione tossed off the lie with frightening ease. "I was just having some alone time between essays. Lost in thought."
And Parvati laughed. "Hermione Granger, lost in thought? Get out! That doesn't happen! It's obvious you haven't a brain in your head!"
Hermione looked mock offended and stuck her tongue out, which just made Parvati laugh even harder.
"I'm actually up here for Lav's coat," Parvati explained. "She said she left it on her bed, but I didn't see it."
"The purple one?" Hermione asked. "I saw her hang it up in the wardrobe." As Parvati went to get it, Hermione kept up the friendly conversation. "Why didn't she come up and get it herself?"
Parvati giggled as she grabbed Lavender's purple pea coat. "She's down in the Great Hall, talking to Zacharias Smith. The way they're going on, they'll be outside before too long, if you know what I mean, so I just thought I'd take the liberty …"
Hermione did not need to listen to another "Parvati story." She'd heard quite enough of those, living with the girl five years.
"Parvati, dear?" Hermione asked, showing all her teeth. "I'm quite busy. Would it offend you terribly if I asked you to leave?"
And Parvati smiled the smile of someone used to the dry wit of Hermione Granger.
"Not at all," she said, and with a smooth motion, she swept up Lavender's coat and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Hermione sat down on her bed again to face the potion, and let out a breath she didn't even know she'd been holding.
Snape was furious. Dumbledore had deliberately timed this, he just knew it. The charmed door had forced him to eat his breakfast immediately (which needed warming first), lie down for two hours (with one eye on his bedside clock), get up quickly, and take the world's fastest bath (something he hated hurrying through). Only then did his clothes reappear and by then it was a quarter of seven. He had ten minutes to make himself presentable, three to reach the Slytherin Common Room, and two to conjure refreshments for many, many children. There would be no time to look for the bats until after eight o'clock, at least, and something in his gut told him there was no time to waste.
The common area quickly filled up with Slytherins. And as soon as the students were all holding drinks and cookies, the comments and questions began to fly. The room was buzzing. It was cacophony.
"Professor, what happened last night?" Pansy Parkinson. Genuinely concerned. Ally.
"Sir, the whole school's talking about it! The rumors are flying!" Blaise Zabini. Friendly blabbermouth. Unhelpful, but harmless.
"So how long have you been a lush?" Theodore Nott. Oh, that twit was going to get it.
And … "So who planted that bottle on you?" Draco Malfoy. Snape wondered why he had ever doubted the boy's intellect.
For the moment, he clenched his teeth at the barrage of commentary, let out a breath through his nose, and prepared to set the record straight for a room full of (mostly) worried-looking Slytherins. The sooner he took care of this, the sooner they could finish up the rest of the house business, and then he could look for the bats and get this mystery solved. He held up a hand and the room quieted immediately.
"I am not, and have never been a 'lush,' as Mr. Nott so kindly put it," he began. "What you saw and heard, mostly second-hand I imagine, were the results of a most abysmal cover-up of an ambush."
Stunned silence. Mouths ajar. Food forgotten.
"Now, you are all Slytherins. You understand the importance of cunning, and sometimes ambushing someone else to get the upper hand. However, someone has done this to your Head of House. The results were a serious concussion and a charge by the Headmaster that I am a drunkard in my off-hours, something I find offensive in the extreme. Thoughts?"
He was answered by a very angry hissing noise that filled the room. The show of support made him smile just a little.
"Thank you," he continued. "Now, unless there are any more questions, there are other issues we need to discuss."
Ron was getting impatient. It was almost 8:03 and his coin still hadn't heated up yet. Besides, he was running out of ideas. He was on the Quidditch pitch with Harry, who was looking more glum than ever, like he wanted to be anywhere than up on a broomstick.
"Hey, maybe we could … nah, it's stupid," Ron said, trying for the umpteenth time to engage Harry in a conversation.
But Harry didn't respond. It was like his best mate didn't have any facial expressions left. Right after Ron said 'it's stupid,' Harry just blinked at him. And that was when Ron saw his eyes. They weren't green anymore. They were completely, and unnaturally, gray.
Probably a bad thing, but Ron knew he couldn't let on.
Harry had been acting like a zombie all afternoon and didn't touch his dinner. And it was getting so obvious that other Gryffindors were starting to notice, so afterwards Ron had forced Harry to get outside in the fresh air and they'd been here ever since, hanging out on the Quidditch pitch. Ron had taken Harry's broom up, and Harry had just watched him circle around.
So now they were attempting to talk, painful as it was. Thankfully, Hermione's coin picked that moment to heat up in his pocket, and Ron wasted no time. He'd come up with his plan in a sudden burst of inspiration, and no one could deny it was brilliant. It would be just like him not to learn anything from that whole thing with Parvati, anyway.
He wandered out into the middle of the deserted Quidditch field, crooked a finger at Harry, and looked pleased when his mate followed him and stood about six paces away.
"Hey Harry!" he shouted. "Think fast!"
With that, he picked up a clump of mud from the field and hurled it at Harry. Splat! It got Harry right in the shirt.
Harry looked at him with his mouth hanging open and said, in a quiet voice, "Why did you do that?"
"I dunno, throwing mud is fun!" said Ron. He picked up another glob of the stuff and hurled it at his rather surprised friend, who seemed to be too shocked to move. It caught him right in the middle, and slopped down onto his trousers.
"Whee!" Ron yelled, knowing he must look like a complete idiot. But he had to keep up appearances.
"Eww," said Harry, with no enthusiasm, and then, with even less, "Ron, you prat, stop it."
Ron started laughing. "Is that the best you can do? Come on, have at me! You've been in such a funk I was starting to think you'd turned into a zombie or something!"
Harry did not smile at this jibe. Instead, he followed instructions. He gathered up a clump of mud and hurled it at Ron. It just caught his shoulder.
"Pathetic," Ron replied, and lobbed one last well-aimed ball of mud at Harry. It caught him right in the crotch, exploding all over his trousers.
Harry observed this, straightened his glasses, and crossed his arms at Ron. "I'm not having much fun. Are you finished?" he asked calmly.
"Yeah, guess so. But don't worry about your clothes, Harry, I can fix it," Ron said cheerfully, pulling out his wand and aiming it at Harry's jeans. "SCOURGIFO!"
"Ron, no," said Harry, but it was too late.
Ron's mangling of "Scourgify" had intensified the spell immensely. It not only made the enormous mud splatter disappear … it made Harry's trousers disappear, too.
Complete with hip flask.
Harry stood there, stunned, staring at his gray underpants and his bare, skinny legs, realized his flask was gone, realized all that entailed, and fell to his knees in the mud. Ron ran over.
"Oh, Harry, I'm so sorry!" he babbled, squelching any feelings of triumph. "Geez, mate, I never intended for that to happen! Quick, let's get you inside before your legs freeze off! Oh damn, I really need to work on my spell pronunciation."
Ron threw an arm around his friend's shoulders and bit his tongue against the amusing look of shock on Harry's face. It was the most comforting thing he'd seen all day.
Hermione, meanwhile, was holding up a large vial of clear liquid, firmly corked. She'd just signaled Ron to do his deed, and this stuff was perfect, if she did say so herself. The antidote was completely odorless and colorless, exactly as it should be. She hid the vial under her bed, put out the fire under her cauldron and tucked that away as well, then slipped down the stairs into the common area. Neville was sitting by the fire, reading some huge Herbology text. He gave her a wave as she walked by, which she returned, and walked up the stairs into boys' dormitory to do her part: clearing out their room.
"Where are you going?" Neville asked behind her. Hermione scrunched her eyes shut for a moment and turned around.
"Oh, Ron said I could borrow his Quidditch book for a Muggle Studies report," she said, "You know, differences between Quidditch and football. Rather inane, but there you are."
"Oh, you don't have to tell me twice how stupid that course is. What's football, again?" Neville asked.
Hermione laughed and continued on up the stairs. But just then, the portrait opened. She turned around, not really expecting a problem. That, naturally, was a mistake, since problems generally appear when you least expect them. Ron came stumbling in, one arm around Harry. Harry wasn't wearing any trousers, but Hermione glossed over that fact for a moment because oh crap, they were way too early.
"Ron?" she asked, and much to her dismay, caught Harry's attention too.
"Hermione?" Ron asked back, looking utterly clueless, which was very bad. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going into your room," she answered. "Remember that Quidditch book you said you lend me but you never did? Well, I'm going into your room to get it!" she finished peevishly, and finally Ron seemed to figure it out, because his eyes got huge.
"Where are Harry's trousers?" Neville suddenly interrupted.
"Ron cleaned them clear off me," Harry said gloomily, gathering his robes tightly around himself. "He got mud on me and went overboard with the Scourgify. Just like with Parvati."
"Only you won't dump him, I bet!" Neville joked.
Hermione and Ron laughed, but Harry did not. He just blinked. It was as though he hadn't heard the comment. Ron exchanged a frantic glance with Hermione. She motioned toward the portrait hole, hoping against hope Ron would understand what that meant.
"Er, why don't we go to the kitchens, Harry?" Ron suggested.
It took everything in Hermione to keep from rolling her eyes. Of all the stupid things he could have said!
"Ron, what the eff is the matter with you? I'm not going to traipse through Hogwarts with no trousers on," Harry complained, but without any emotion.
"Laundry," Ron blurted out. "I meant the laundry. I think that was your last pair of jeans, mate. What say we just go down and see if a house-elf can rustle you up a clean?"
"Well, if you think so – oh!" said Harry as Ron shoved him back through the portrait hole.
Neville, who had watched all of this in mystified silence, turned to Hermione thoughtfully.
"Is it my imagination, or is something weird going on with Harry lately? He seemed downright glum at dinner last night, and tonight he was just spooky."
Hermione fought down her rising panic as she looked at Neville. "He's probably just feeling a bit blue. Everyone gets like that sometimes. I'm sure he'll be back to normal soon enough."
"Yeah, you're right, these things have a way of working themselves out," said Neville sagely, and went back to his book.
The instant his head went down, Hermione darted up the stairs, out of sight of the common room, and into the dormitory where Harry slept. She closed the door, cast Silencio on it, pushed up her sleeves, whipped out her wand and went to work, since she had no idea how much time Ron had bought her. If he got Harry all the way to the laundry and back, it was ten minutes. If Harry argued his way back to the tower on the premise that Ron knew nothing about the state of his laundry (which he didn't) … maybe two.
"Accio!"
She yelled it repeatedly, sitting on Harry's bed and drawing an alarming amount of illegal and expensive substances into a huge pile before her. She yelled until the tiniest traces had made their way onto the bed, until nothing came at all, until she was hoarse, until she was staring at a towering heap of glass bottles of Firewhisky, big bags of Opal sugar, and at least a case of dried crushed Billywig.
She took a moment to marvel at the amount of rubbish in front of her. Then, drawing her power to her, and terrified by the approach of footsteps on the stairs, she concentrated with everything she had and produced a powerful Evanesco. With a whoosh, everything on the bed vanished, leaving only Hermione and a few specks of dust. Not a second too soon.
The door opened and Harry walked in, his voice quiet, arguing with Ron all the way to his chest of drawers about just wanting to put on pajamas and crawl into bed. He didn't even notice Hermione, and she took the opportunity to give Ron a thumbs-up before loudly complaining …
"Ron, this place is a pigsty! I've looked everywhere and I can't find that damn book you promised me! Where is it?"
"Don't get your knickers in a twist, I'll get it!" he said, with his usual annoyance, and casually pulled Flying with the Cannons from underneath a heap of dirty laundry. "There you are, my lady," he finished snidely, giving her a little bow and handing it over.
Hermione made sure to wrinkle her nose when he handed it to her. And Ron gave her a warm smile and wink that Harry couldn't see.
"Would you two please get out of here? I want to get changed," said Harry. He had pulled some pajamas from his chest of drawers.
"Sure, sorry, Harry," said Ron.
Hermione followed him out and closed the door behind him. They were up the stairs enough that they were out of sight of the common area, so it was safe to whisper.
"Did you get it all?" Ron hissed in her ear.
She nodded. "Did you get his flask?"
"It was in his trousers," Ron whispered back, and Hermione stifled a nervous laugh. As precarious as things were, they seemed to be coming along. The only question was, had they gotten to him in time? She brushed that thought aside.
"Good on you," she said.
"Good on us," Ron corrected.
Finally alone, Harry sighed, pulling off his muddy jumper carefully and putting it in the laundry. He slipped into pajamas and sat down on the bed.
Stupid Ron.
Stupid EFFING Ron. That lout had no idea what he'd done, but now Harry would have to start a new batch, and quick. Never mind his certain lack of privacy in a few minutes. All he needed were some of his main ingredients.
Rather than call out "Accio," which was sure to attract suspicion, he went around hunting up his stuff the Muggle way, poking around behind bookcases and at the back of his wardrobe. His first hint that something was wrong was the lack of the Opal sugar in its usual place. He ran and dove under his bed, looking for some Firewhisky. Nothing. He poked around the bottom of his closet, feeling for the small box of Billywig.
The leisurely "poking around" quickly turned into a frenzy of activity. Harry started to rip the room apart looking for his ingredients, finally saying "Accio!" once or twice, but nothing happened. Whereas this morning he'd had enough ingredients to make Fizz for all of Gryffindor tower, now he had none at all.
But the scariest part was right after he realized he wouldn't be able to make any more of his elixir. Instead of feeling angry and confused, he just felt … nothing at all. Unable to tell if that was a good thing or not, unable, in fact, to remember what good meant, he sat down on his bed and stared off into space, his eyes empty and gray.
Hermione turned to Ron outside the door. They'd both winced as they heard Harry tearing through his things looking for ingredients that weren't there, but the noises had stopped.
"We'll start treating him tomorrow," she said firmly. "Just barge in there right now. He'll be suspicious if you don't. And remember, you're terribly sorry about the accident."
Ron nodded. "Hey, 'Mione? That stuff you cooked up, it'll cure him, right?"
"If he can be cured," Hermione mumbled. After a few days of watching their friend go from bad to worse, she had to ask Ron the obvious question. "Did you see his eyes?"
"Yeah," Ron replied heavily. "I saw his eyes."
TBC
Reviewers! Infall, thanks for the comments. They're always appreciated. EAV: Aw man, that review was the light of MY day. Thank you! I'm glad you liked the whack-a-prof remark. I had fun writing it. Stahchild, if I screwed up Dumbledore, don't be afraid to say so. LOL There's more Dumbledore in chapter 10, and he's surprisingly adept, so maybe I made up for that last chapter. Hee hee Let me know what you think of him. Thanks for all your support. Shiba, I'm so glad you liked the scene with Hermione and Myrtle, and that you're enjoying. Yay! Sorry that it was later than the 21st, but hey, at least it's here! Enjoy. Freja! Thanks for reviewing. It's always nice to hear from you. Weeeell, I thought I'd publish the 21st, but it ended up being … what is this? The 29th. Ah, well. Ain't life always that way? Cheers! Angel, that's an awesome idea, but alas, there will be no Snape song, because I can't figure out how one would go. If you want to write one, I will include it, have Parvati Patil sing it, and give you credit. I'm serious. :D Kiwi: I'm so glad the memory thing worked. Actually, I think you're the only reviewer who commented on it, and I was kind of worried about it, to be honest. I didn't know if it was "too Muggle," but if it worked, then that's great. :D Thanks for answering my other question. IAmAPoet: Thanks for your review:)