Disclaimer: I don't own anything, or else I wouldn't be writing a disclaimer.

Chapter 5

The Search For the Pie Thief…and killing Gnomes with Sporks!

Anyone who dare roam Hogwarts at that ungodly hour of the night may have heard a strange, eerie noise ricocheting throughout the corridors. It filled every crack, every crevasse, every solid stone gargoyle with fear and apprehension. It's tremor filled even the bravest soul's heart with dread…

It was Hermione, humming her theme song.

She and Harry flitted through the corridors, jumping behind pillars and statues at the slightest noise or flicker, all the while making gun shadow puppets on the wall with their thumbs and index fingers. It was all pretty darn fun.

Hermione was on the warpath. Whoever had eaten her wonderful pie was going to pay…she swore to find them if it was the last thing she did. Unless, of course, the last thing she did was to die. Then it might be the second-to-last thing she did. Oh, heck, it might even be the third-to-last thing she did. But either way, she swore she would get them. Hermione paused a minute to take a post-it note from somewhere deep within the crevasses of her robes and wrote it down, then stuck it on her 'to-do' list. Over the years the list had developed into a pile of post-it notes several feet long that was very difficult to fit in her bookbag.

Harry and Hermione continued along their way to wherever they were going. Hermione was busy amusing herself with a comically misshapen shrimp, while Harry was busy drooling all over her. Hermione didn't mind this, as she had become used to it, but the fact her shrimp was getting all wet and slimy irked her. She rounded on Harry and gave him a good whack upside the head.

'Stop drooling on my shrimp!' she snapped.

'I wasn't drooling on the shrimp, I was drooling on you!' Harry protested. He turned to have a moody teenage sulk, when Hermione began to shriek. He twirled around and grasped her shoulders, staring into her wild, panic-stricken eyes.

'What is it?' he asked with gentle concern. 'What?'

'My…it…oh Harry, a gnome just came up and stole my shrimp!' Hermione wailed.

'You know, crying smudges your make-up,' Harry commented. He took the opportunity to wipe a tear from her cheek, and shuddered from the intimacy of it all.

'Thank you for always being there for me Harry…you're a great friend,' Hermione smiled. She caressed his hand and gazed up to his face with glistening eyes. They stood there like that for another minute or so, and then five more minutes. Not to mention a further ten after that.

'You know,' Hermione muttered after a while, 'You can move your finger from my cheek now.'

'No, I can't,' Harry whispered huskily in her ear.

'Please, Harry,' Hermione sighed. 'I like you, I really do, but not like that'-

'No, I'm serious,' Harry said. 'I can't move my freaking hand, it's stuck in the masses of goop plastered on your face.' Hermione clenched her eyes shut and swore. Things were just going from bad to worse. She reached up and violently tugged at Harry's hand. By George, he was right! The hand was stuck fast.

'Not to worry,' Hermione said with a grin. Harry looked at her hopefully. Did this mean she liked her current situation? That she was willing to let him touch her, to date him, to be his forever, to have a family with his and children and then die and be mummified and put in a museum with him…

'Take this,' Hermione said, snapping Harry out of his fantasy. He looked sadly down at the bottle she handed him. It was her Magical Make Up Removal Kit.

'What do I do with it?' he mumbled dejectedly.

'Put it on my cheek and rub it in, then'- Hermione started, but she was cut off, as people so often are in this story. Because, at that very moment, a gnome happened to come up to her, cackling like a high squirrel, and snatch the bottle of Magical Make Up Remover. He ran off squealing, and Hermione happened to notice a cherry-colored smudge on his head. A smudge as red as the cherries in her pie…did this mean…

'After him!' she shrieked. She would get that pie-snitching twit! Hermione ran over to a random glass case nearby, dragging a still stuck Harry along with her, and smashed it open. Inside was a weapon, one of which she had never seen the likes of before. It was so deadly, so lethal…so totally awesome!

Hermione pocketed the amazing plastic spork and raced after the gnome. Considering it had legs about the size of Hermione's perfectly straight nose, it wasn't hard to catch up with the foul little creature, even having to drag Harry along by the cheek. Literally.

She stooped down and grabbed the gnome, letting it struggle helplessly as it dangled in between her fingertips.

'I'm going to enjoy this…' she said with a malicious grin. And with that, she raised the spork and-

(Censor: The following scene is inappropriate for some audiences. It contains violence, fantasy horror and brief nudity. It also contains a hilarious talking donkey, but that's beside the point.)

'Well, at least we found out who took the pie,' Hermione said with a smile at breakfast the next day. Harry grinned at her from across the table.

'And we learned that humans were not meant to have both make up and opposable thumbs at the same time,' Harry replied, nodding at his hand. It was still glued to Hermione's face, and had turned a bluish color to match her outfit today. She'd told his that pink was so passé, and cut off his circulation by wrapping one of her miniskirts around his wrist.

'So I guess this chapter sort of had a moral to it,' Hermione said thoughtfully. 'Maybe we should say something, you know, important. Or philosophical, or something.' They both thought for a minute, but neither came up with anything good. After finally stopping to think, though, they did realize Ron was still missing.

'Where is he, anyway?' Harry wondered aloud.

'I'm sure he's looking down on us from…a better place,' Hermione said, hanging her head respectfully.

'Hey, you're right!' Harry exclaimed. He pointed at a balcony above them where Ron stood, staring at them beadily. They both waved to him, but he did not wave back. Instead slipped wordlessly into the shadows.

'I wonder what he's up to…' Hermione mused. She reached over to the shrimp bowl, because all that thinking had made her famished. But alas! There were no more shrimp!

'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!' Hermione yowled, sinking to her knees. The shrimp famine had begun.