Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters.
Chapter Thirty- One
Love is in the Air
"Hermione, while we're waiting to find out what's happening with Ginny, I have a funny question for you."
"Funny weird, or funny ha-ha?"
"Definitely, funny weird. I was wondering, where are those valentines the boys made us write to Professor Snape?"
Hermione thought for a moment, her expression perplexed. "Come to think of it, I don't know. I remember writing them, but I don't recall what we did with them. I don't think we sent them. Do you, George?"
"No, I know we didn't send them. I remember writing them too though. It was right before I met Sirius. We had the parchments on the Common Room table we always 'take over'. We must've left them there when we ran up to get my notes on the Paper Dolly Potion."
"You're right! We had to have left them there! The question is, where are they now?" Hermione asked George with an anguished look on her face.
George shared the same concern. "Those were supposed to be a joke. I wonder who has them..."
"And what they've done with them!" Hermione finished her friend's thought. "Did we actually address them to Snape? Maybe there's no name, and some one thought it was rubbish. Oh, I could just throttle those two boys!"
"I could too, but we were stupid enough to agree to do it! And all because we felt bad we made them dress as girls."
"Which saved Harry's life anyway!" Hermione groused.
George showed her usual bias to action. "Let's go down to the Great Hall and look about anyway. Maybe they got stuck in our papers, and then dropped out. They could be under something. Then we can quietly ask around to see if anyone's found them."
Playing along, but not nearly as optimistic, Hermione agreed. The two stopped in their tracks at the door to the hall. It was filled with tons of students studying. A few teachers, Snape being one of them, were grading papers at the professors' table up front. Surreptitiously finding their stray bits of parchment with effusive love notes in the crowd assembled here was going to be like finding the proverbial neddle in the haystack. They looked at each other with matching dismayed faces, and started walking through the hall.
Their progress slowed as they watched the bemused and delighted faces of their fellow students as they caught sight of Hermione and George. Conversations hushed and faces began turning to look at the two walking up the center aisle. Some just grinned, some snickered, and some began laughing outright. Soon the professors looked up from their work as well, and slow grins began forming on their faces- with the exception of Snape, who looked like he would be very sick, very soon.
The girls looked at each other's faces with befuddled expressions, whispering to each other under their breaths. "Do I have something on my face?" "Do we smell?" "Did I rip these pants?" "Is my skirt tucked into my underwear?" The giggling wasn't stopping as George and Hermione tried to figure out its cause. Finally, Susan Bones took pity as she looked up at them from the Hufflepuff table. She gestured upwards in a small fashion, alerting the girls to something over their heads.
Hermione and George again looked at each other, and then pulled their heads back at the same time to gaze above the other's noggin. Hovering over each of them were large, throbbing, red Valentine hearts- each with Cupid's arrow shot straight through their centers. The holographic images were realistic, yet cartoonish. The girls looked yet again at each other's horrified faces, letting out little whimpers.
The duo's obvious clueless-ness, comical expressions of discovery and funny little peeps of distress were more than their 'audience' in the Great Hall could handle. The crowd roared with laughter, and it took several minutes for McGonagall to restore order. All the while, George and Hermione stood frozen in the center of the gathering place, both surveying the faces of their peers and periodically stealing glances upward to see if the large hearts were still there.
When the crowd finally died down almost to silence, the girls were again terror-stricken to discover that the pulsating hearts were actually making a sound. The familiar 'lub-dub' of moving hemoglobin got louder and louder as more and more students strained to hear it. Just as it seemed every occupant of the hall was being mesmorized by the syncopated rhythm, it was broken by another communal outburst. This time, it seemed the laughing would never subside.
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry!" George said to Hermione with both tears and a smile on her face.
"Me neither!" Hermione said, breaking out in a severe case of the giggles.
Their own laughter appeared to break the underlying tension within the hall, and people started yelling out jokes and questions at the two of them. "Couldn't Ron and Harry afford engagement rings?" Dean Thomas teased.
"Do the hearts mean you're taken- or available?" asked a handsome fifth year from Ravenclaw.
Pansy Parkinson taunted, "I've heard of wearing your heart on your sleeve, but this is a bit much!"
The girls reveled good-naturedly in the teasing of their fellow students for a bit longer, giggling uncontrollably. They then looked to each other to leave, both feeling worn out from the release effect of their own simultaneous laughing and crying. Both caught a glimpse of Snape as he left the Great Hall through the teachers' door, scowling, "What's all this about, George?" Hermione asked, hoping her smart friend had figured it all out.
"Beat's me, Hermione. Beat's me. But I have a feeling we better find out fast!"
Just as they turned to go, quiet descended on the hall. The two looked around to see the sea of surprised and awed faces looking up over their heads. They looked up too, only to see...nothing was there.