Chapter 2
The Slytherins and Gryffindors stood freezing on the damp grass before Hagrid's hut. Since Potions had been cancelled early due to Snape because "possessed by demons" (as some of the students "helpfully" suggested was the case) they had hurried down for Care of Magical Creatures. But Hagrid was not answering. When they peered inside the windows they couldn't see a thing through the thick fog that lay inside. They also couldn't hear anything except contented sighs (from Hagrid) and miserable howls (from Fang).
"What's that racket?" Goyle demanded. He looked around for someone to answer, a bit at a loss since Draco was also "possessed" and in the hospital wing.
"That was amazing," Hermione whispered to Ron and Harry, "He said something almost half-smart!" But when the boys looked at Goyle he was drooling on himself and muttering incoherently, tongue lolling.
"That's it," Hermione said with a huff ten minutes later. "I'm tired of waiting. I'm going to open that door and demand that he teach class!" She grabbed the door and threw it open. A cloud of fog rolled out and hit the children -- literally. With hand-shaped tendrils, it slapped the children, then flew away, snickering mischieviously. The class stared, feeling hurt and indignant and wondering why Hagrid hadn't noticed them yet. Finally he looked around slowly, spotted them, took a moment to realize what he had spotted and that he should react somehow to it, stood, tottered, shouted something, tottered some more, then shuffled to the door and fell on top of Neville. The class cringed at the sound of the boy's crunched bones.
"Whoops, sorry Neville," Hagrid mumbled and stood, brushing off his mole-fur jacket. Neville lay in a pathetic lump on the grass, whimpering softly. Hagrid whistled an off-tune and looked around, rocking on the balls of his feet, then remembered why he had come outside when he re-spotted the children. "Oi, wha' do you wan'?"
But before anyone could respond, they heard a loud slap from inside and Mrs. Norris came storming out of the hut, followed by Fang. The slobbering dog fell to his knees in a begging position and tearfully shouted at Norris' back. "No! Don't leave me, please!"
She turned and glared sharply. "I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in an inter-species relationship!" She put a paw across her forehead. "I love...Crookshanks!" And a jarring chord played in the background. The children looked around in confusion and spotted Colin Creevey on an organ. "Er...sorry," he said, and scuttled off, organ and all. Shrugging, they returned their attention the scene folding out between the two animals. Mrs. Norris bounded up the lawn towards the castle, and Fang fell to the ground, shrieking and sobbing. The hound peeled himself off the grass after a good few minutes of throwing a fit and ran inside, throwing himself onto a butcher knife, which was for some reason lying at the perfect angle for a dog to throw itself onto and die. In his last moments he attempted to write a suicide note, although he probably should have tried doing that before committing suicide, because in the few seconds trying to find a paper and pen he kicked the bucket. After kicking said bucket, the dog actually died.
Hagrid didn't notice the bucket, or the dog, or really anything at all. "Hm-hm...Wha'? Oh, roight, class. Well, let's take a walk in th'woods, shall we?"
"What!" Harry shrieked. He was severely opposed to the idea after the other trips in the Forbidden Forest, one time where Voldemort tried to kill him, then a swarm of giant spiders, then a werewolf, then a pack of Dementors. But Hagrid and the rest of the class had already set off and were breeching the forest border. By the time Harry caught up to them, the great half-giant was swatting at trees as if they were spooks and shouting about how they were watching him.
"Now, childrin, you mus' unnerstan', tha', the thing aboot, wha' Oi mean ter say is..." Hagrid had veered away from the path, which had been patchy at best, and was now crashing knee-deep through underbrush (chest-deep for the kids). "Now Oi berleev tha' Oi'm gurtly tall an' all tha', but, Oi gots feelins too, an', you all are no', well, you keep, bein' all, 'Woooo!' an' Oi jes' go, 'Oooow' which is 'Woooo!' bu' th'other way aroond..."
"What is he going on about?" Ron said to Harry.
"I don't know," Harry said with a helpless shrug. They swatted branches and grass out of the way as they tromped, and more than once they nearly stepped on a snake or worse.
"I think he's possessed by demons, like Professor Snape and Malfoy," said Susan Bones. And there was quite a bit of rejoicing from the small and obscure Susan Bones Fanatics Anonymous, because up 'til now the poor girl hadn't gotten any lines or recognition for her contributions to the school.
"That's utterly ridiculous!" Hermione said. "Demons cannot possess people like many people would like to believe. I know it as a fact because I read it in a book, and books are always right! Also, it's not, 'Professor Snape and Malfoy', because that could imply that both Snape and Malfoy are professors. Rather, it should be, 'Malfoy and Professor Snape', or, 'Professor Snape, and Malfoy' with a comma to show that they're--"
"Lookie 'ere!" Hagrid cried suddenly, stopping. The students bumped into him, and the students behind them bumped into the students who had bumped into him, so on and so on down the procession until everyone had bumped into at least one other person. Except Lavender Brown, who had leapt heroically aside to dodge it all and ended up in a tarpit on accident.
"What is it, Hagrid?" Harry asked.
"Oi don' know!" The professor spun around, his coat throwing a few more students into the tarpit as he moved. In his hand he held a curious sort of squirrel, complete with vicious fangs and bat wings. It chittered angrily and tried to bite Hagrid but couldn't pierce the calloused skin of his hand. (Take that as you will...)
Anyway, Hagrid eyeballed the creature, and all the students stood on tip-toe to eyeball it also and looked at him for guidance. "Wha'! Oi SEZ Oi donno! Tha's yer assoinmen', kiddies! Ter foind oot wha' this li'l beastie be!" He waved it around emphatically, accidentily tossing the poor thing straight into the tarpit as will, where it drowned tragedically with the other students. "Oh, erm...Class dismissed!" And with that, he went whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as he went.
"The demons are getting to everyone!" Ron cried.
Pomfrey appeared from yonder Hagrid vanished. "It's not demons!" she reprimanded. "They're...high!" Everyone gasped loudly, then silence settled, and crickets chirped.
"What's that mean?" Neville asked.
"Isn't your back supposed to be broken?" Harry said.
"Oh, right..." Neville then fell over and whimpered again. Pomfrey rolled her eyes and started to drag him away by his feet.
"Wait!" Harry shouted.
"Yes?" Pomfrey said with a trace of an irritated sigh and a sharpness to her eyes that made Harry pause before saying, "What are you doing out here in the first place? Shouldn't you be tending to patients?"
"Minerva turned the both of them into turtles to keep them from wreaking havoc. Of course, then they ate my ferns..." she said sadly, and left.
"Well, we've got half an hour to kill before the next class," Harry said, sitting down heavily. But the grass was wet, and his butt got wet.
"Well, there's always that strange powder..." Ron suggested.
Half an hour later the fifth year students stumbled into Divinations, following by a thick fog that nobody noticed since Trelawney's classroom was hazy in the first place. The bespectacled woman glided and flitted through the room, rambling on in her dreary voice about insight and foresight and highsight ("Which," she said, "Is not always 20/20, but more like 40/20, even 80/20 if you're really good"). She then noticed that the students were paying less attention than usual, most of them watching her only out of fascination of her sparkly dress, others muttering and giggling to themselves, some contemplating the awesomeness of their own hands. She huffed, clasped her hands behind her back, and went into pacing.
"Now, children," she said, "Who here can tell me the future?" They probably would have been able to give her astoundingly accurate guesses under the influence as they were, but none got the chance, for Justin decided at that moment to speak what no one was thinking.
"You're hot," he said, eyeballing her, or at least trying to before getting distracted by a speck of dust he thought was flipping him off.
Her stare was stone. "Um, no. Ten points from...what house are you in again?"
"I know!" Harry shouted, waving both hands. Parvati Patil was amazed by the motions.
"You know what house he's in?" Sybil asked.
"No, the future!" Harry said. Lavender Brown giggled at the word. Fyoo-chur. Hee hee. (For those observant, nit-picky folk reading this, yes, she managed to survive the tarpit incident in time to get to class half an hour later.)
Angelina Johnson, who really couldn't hold her drugs, suddenly jumped up, shrieking about how -they- were watching her, stumbled over next to the teacup shelves, and vomited.
"Oh dear," Trelawney muttered, going to clean it up. "You were saying, Potter?"
He hiccuped. "About what?"
"Your future."
"What about my future?"
"You said you knew what it was!"
"Oh yeah. According to you, I die painfully," he replied with a shrug. "I am SO hungry."
"How can you be hungry!" she demanded. "You've eaten twice today already!" She looked around at the other children, noticing many of them were looking rather hungry. "Oh no...you all have it now, too. You're all possessed by the drug demons!"
The now very angry teacher ushered and herded the students into the hospital wing, where they tormented the two turtles already in there, having completely forgotten that the turtles were in fact Snape and Malfoy. Hermione picked one of the turtles up and cooed, "Aww, it's SHOOO adorable!" and gave it a sloppy kiss on the mouth.
Once everyone had sobered up, McGonagall came into the hospital wing in-between teaching classes, and un-transfigured the two turtles into their human forms, then swept away again. Draco immediately darted to Hermione and gave her a passionate smooch on the lips. She stared in shock. "What was that for?" she said in an aghast breath.
He became uncharacteristally flustered. "Well, you...you kissed me! And...I just thought..." He buried his face in his hands. "I shouldn't have done that!"
Hermione put a hand on his shoulder. "It's alright, I like you too."
Draco looked at her with eyes like a puppy who's just been handed a bag of Beggin' Strips. Harry jumped up from his seat and stomped over in anger. "What! But I thought you liked me, Hermione!"
"But you like Cho Chang!" Ron said. "Why should you care?"
"Well, I...I just wanted a back-up, in case I lost one of them."
"Chang's your back-up now," Hermione said. Harry looked perplexed, since that comment really made no sense at all, but the author had kept it in the second draft anyway because she didn't want to think of another one instead. By the time Harry came out of reveling, Hermione and Draco were sucking face.
"Ugh, get a room!" Ron snorted.
"Alright," Hermione said with a sly wink, and the gruesome twosome slunk off together to somewhere private. The rest of the students filed out of the wing and went to Transfigurations.
Harry did nothing through class but pout, sigh, and moan. "I can't believe it...my rival...and my second-best friend..." he said. It really was horrible, although he was probably making way too much of it. Just because a couple of people are having sex doesn't mean they're going to stay a couple right? Draco and Hermione couldn't possibly stay together! Well, that's how Harry tried to reason it, at least. It was the only thing keeping him clinging to sanity today.
Ron was no happier, maybe even a little less happy, but had gotten really annoyed by Harry's moans and sighs, so shushed him. "Be quiet. You know she was too smart for you anyway."
Harry frowned and sank back into desponency and distraction. Suddenly he snapped alert to McGonagall's irritated screams.
"Harry? HARRY!"
"Uh, five!" he blurted out.
She smiled. "Good job, Potter. Ten points for Gryffindor."
"What?"
Her smile vanished, replaced by the steely gaze of a woman scorned. "The square root of 25! Weren't you even listening!"
"No. I mean, yes, of course!"
Minerva glared, raised her wand, and zapped him, and he felt himself transforming...