Disclaimer: Tomorrow, tomorrow I love Ya tomorrow your always a day away.
Chapter 7
Sunlight crept softly into the girls' dormitory, awakening Hermione in the process. She stretched, yawned, and then grimaced, today was her day to look after Harry. She made her way downstairs and found a seat at the Gryffindor table, and was joined several minutes later by Harry who had been deposited rather quickly by an irate Professor McGonagall. Hermione began what was becoming her usual morning routine of taking any and all objects away from Harry as soon as they came into his no doubt amusing, yet dangerous grasp. Unfortunately, about half way through breakfast Hermione began to stare off into space and became completely oblivious to everything around her. Several seconds later she was jerked back into reality with alarming speed by what sounded like a gerbil getting its tail cut off. Her head swiveled around and it became clear that it was The-Boy-That-Never-Failed-To-Cause-Chaos-In-An-Interesting-Manner that was creating the noise. Apparently, he had tried to pour coffee with his feet, and had succeeded in spilling the scalding beverage all over himself. Thinking quickly, Hermione pulled out her wand and evaporated the steaming liquid with a complex spell, and then turned to Harry. He was still howling in pain because of the blistering burns that covered his legs from the knees down. She groaned, and then prodded his calves with her wand and new skin started to replace the old, red flesh.
"What a simply excellent way to start the mourning." She growled under her breath as the last of Harry's skin was mended. She turned her attention away from him to glance at her schedule. "Oh good, Defense Against the Dark Arts. Crap! It's with the Hufflepuffs; I can't dump Harry with Draco." She looked back to Harry and found him loudly reenacting his own coffee incident with those ever present finger puppets of his. Sighing, she grabbed the sleeve of his robe, which happened to be on backwards, and dragged him from the Hall.
Because of their immediate departure, Hermione and her delusional charge arrived at the classroom ten minutes early. Hermione poked her head through the door to check if there was a teacher present and jumped in surprise as she saw Tonks sitting behind the desk. She then remembered the chaotic night of the Welcome Feast and how she had seen Tonks at the Head Table. Since that evening she had not even glanced at the table, for she had been to busy protecting her fellow students from Harry's spur of the moment ideas, nor had she spoken to any of her peers who had attended the class. She pushed the door open the rest of the way and strode inside, Harry skipping in behind her.
Tonks looked up from the papers on her desk and grinned as she greeted them, "Wotcher, Harry, Hermione."
"Hello Tonks, er, I mean Professor." Hermione said as Harry proceeded to do a back flip onto a nearby desk and act like a seal.
"Who's got him under the Imperius Curse?" The pink-haired witch asked, jabbing her thumb in Harry's direction.
"His cousin beat him over the head with a baseball bat," Hermione reeled off dully, "he is insane and impervious to magic."
"A baseball bat, eh? Now how'd that happen?"
Hermione was about to respond when she realized that she didn't know the entirety of the attack on Harry so she said," I don't know exactly. Harry what did happen when you, er, got a bang bang on the noggin." She asked using the words Harry had used to first describe the occurrence.
Harry thought for a moment then started talking rather fast in a cheerful tone, "I was walking in a park, a very very pretty park; lots and lots of birdies and squirrlies and flowers, yes very very pretty. Then, BAM, a rock came flying through the air and went bang bang on my noggin, didn't even say sorry, just bang bang. Then lots of pretty stars started frolicking all around me. Very pretty! I stared and stared at them, very sparkly, very nice. I was so busy looking at the sparklies that I didn't notice the fat boy come over with a big stick. More bang bang. The sparkly stars go away and everything goes black, like burnt potato black, only blacker. Then everything goes colorfully light again and I was very very happy, 'cause that's when I met all my friends. Do you want to meet them?"
Though Hermione was shaking her head violently and frantically mouthing 'no' behind Harry's back, Tonks couldn't let down the hopeful look on Harry's slightly dazed face so she replied, "Of course, Harry. I'd love to meet your friends."
Harry beamed in delight as he dug a hand into the pocket of his robe and began to scoop out his finger puppets. Bouncing over to a nearby desk, he began to line them up. He continued pulling out more and more of his inanimate friends from pockets concealed all over his person until the desk was filled up, but this didn't stop the wizard, he simply moved on to the next desk. When the surfaces of five of the desks were no longer visible the cardboard creations finally stopped emerging from Harry's bottomless pockets.
"Well here they are! Do ya like 'em?" He asked gleefully. Tonks could only nod numbly in reply. Suddenly, the wizard leaned in close to a puppet that looked oddly like a leprechaun, and then straitened up again before addressing the two witches, "He says that space is hotter than potatoes."
Tonks couldn't think of anything to say to this random, seemingly nonsensical statement so she settled with a question. "Harry, how'd you fit all your, um, friends into your pockets?"
"With this little stick I found." He said, pulling his wand from his robes, "I poke it at things and they do weird stuff." To demonstrate he walked over to a chair and prodded it with the wooden stick, instantly turning it into a monitor lizard. He poked the snarling reptile and watched as it transformed into a chocolate chip which he promptly devoured.
Tonks conjured up a new chair and said out of a corner of her mouth to Hermione, "Who came up with the bright idea of giving him a wand? He's barking mad!"
"None of us realized he still had it! And besides, Dumbledore wants him to continue his magical training on the off-chance that he can still defeat Voldemort."
Tonks rolled her eyes at this statement and raised her voice, addressing the students that were now entering the classroom, "Everyone find a seat. Harry if you could, er, please ask your friends to move."
"Right-o" Harry responded and scooped the figures back into his magically enlarged pockets. Some students stared at him in confusion while others simply shook their heads and found a seat.
Once all the desks had been taken and the noise of those rummaging through their materials had died down Tonks spoke to the class, "I am Professor Tonks and as some of know, I am an Auror for the Ministry of Magic. So, this year I've been assigned a position here at Hogwarts. You see, they think extra security is needed because Voldemort is gathering more troops so here I am. Now today I thought we'd just do a bit of practical review on defense spells, so wands out."
Harry proved to be just as good at spells as he was at answering questions and because Defense Against the Dark Arts was naturally his best class, he outshone the rest of the students by far. Tonks' previous puzzlement at the odd wizard was replaced by pride as the lesson went on and, by the end; even she thought that Harry had a chance against Voldemort.
The rest of the day mimicked the day before with the insane, though talented, wizard excelling at everything he did. He even managed to be outstanding at Potions, for Snape no longer intimidated, or even distracted him. Unfortunately, now Harry had realized that wands could be used for things other than simply poking, and if words were said when the wand was in use, who knows what could happen. Hermione spent yet another meal going hungry because she was constantly trying to get the magical wooden rod away from Harry while, at the same time, casting numerous counter-spells to stop the disasters before they had a chance to start. And so she went to bed listing to Harry's magnified voice sing, or rather bellow, "Tomorrow" down in the common room, and she wondered how she would survive the rest of the year.
A/N: Well, I can't think of much to say so I guess I'll apologize for the disclaimer. That has got to be one of the most annoying songs on earth, but it's been going through my head for the past two or three weeks. Stupid school musical…