The Way It Goes
Part One: The Alarm Sets In
Disclaimer: No, Harry Potter and all of the others don't belong to me. They belong to JK. Let's be honest.
Something was very wrong at Hogwarts.
Harry realized this on a Tuesday in January. The day itself didn't seem to have much significance, beyond the fact that it was, quite possibly, the strangest day of his life, and Harry had enjoyed a rather odd life.
As he sat back in the plush, comfy chair in the Gryffindor common room, he tried to think back to what it was that had clued him in on the utter mayhem that was becoming Hogwarts.
Perhaps it had been the extra tower that had appeared on the east end of the school last month, in the middle of the year. The girls there (for it was entirely populated by females) were honest, sweet, caring, amazing witches, and strangely sparkly. Their perfectly formed lips would smile at just about everything any boy said at them, though they had an awful obsession with Harry, Ron, and Draco Malfoy, often coming and going in fits. He and Ron had finally figured out a pattern to the madness and… well, stalking. Usually they rotated their love weekly, going from Harry, to Ron, to Malfoy.
Oh, god.
Panic suddenly rising in him, Harry bolted from the common room and up the stairs to his own bed, frantically eyeing the calendar that had been placed between his bed and Ron's.
Oh, never mind. Good. It was most definitely not his week; it was Draco's however. He grinned, suddenly, at the thought. The glitter would never get out of the Slytherin's carpet.
Green and sparkly. Brilliant.
Harry stood there, smiling to himself, crossing a wild-eyed, ferret-Malfoy being chased by the utterly perfect, completely ridiculous girls of… wait, what was the name of the tower? It changed often, occasionally becoming an extension of one of the other Houses.
Sparkly-Happy-Time? Perfection House? That's what it was last… time.
Ah, well.
The thought, however, promptly brought him back to what he was considering in the first place. Something was rather wrong at the school. Sighing, he went to the stairs, only to be greeted by a scream.
"HARRY!"
The voice was pitched lower on the scale, but undeniably girl.
Startled, he bolted down the spiraled staircase, ripping a bit of crimson fabric from the wall, tripping down the last stair as he attempted valiantly to stop before running headlong into Ginny.
She reached out to grab him before the floor could save his hapless soul; she stood him up, brushing at her robes, and absently kissed his cheek. "Harry."
"Ginny, you nearly gave me a heart attack! Thought it was those…" He gestured inarticulately. "Girls."
"Yeah, we're a bit of a plague, hm?"
"No, that's not what I meant…" He could feel himself blushing, the heat rising in his cheeks. Damn. Ginny laughed, wry.
"I know, I know… Harry, we have a problem."
"More? We have lots of problems, Ginny," he said, waving at the wall where the last vestiges of last week's assault on Ron still clung. Glitter adorned one of the paintings of a trio of witches outside of a stable, each one looking several shades of irritated. "It took us an hour to get them out of the room; three the week before."
"Yeah, but that was with me beating them over the head with my books." She sighed, brushing a bit of curl out of her eyes. "More… ah, issues."
Harry found himself pulling his wand out of his pocket. Ginny laughed. "What do you mean?"
The laughter faded. "Hermione's locked herself in some room with Draco, apparently Snape's pregnant, and… well, the Room of Requirement is rather colourful."
"WHAT!"
The blush, as well, had faded, and the remaining color in Harry's face had decided that it had had enough of the madness and left with it. Ginny blanched, grabbing Harry around the waist and leading him to the chairs which, for some reason, were now more plush and rapidly approaching painful shades of red. "Damn room keeps changing… sorry. I should have told you to sit down. Ron's awfully whiny today, must have put me off…"
Harry struggled to push himself out of the plush that was threatening to swallow him. "What do you mean?"
"Snape is pregnant. Huge, by the way. It's kind of off-putting. He keeps putting on some corset and screaming about subjugation in the middle of Potions today." Harry shuddered.
"Haven't had Potions yet."
"Oh, well. Hermione… ah, well, she keeps going from room to room. I caught her with Lavender earlier. Locked in Malfoy's right now, I think," she added, pondering a moment, throwing one hand out to keep Harry from falling over, or fainting, whichever the deathly pale stare meant.
"…oh, god."
"Mostly." Ginny seemed less frightened so much as she was perturbed. She tightened her grip on Harry. "Lupin's been looking for you, by the way. He's rather… sparkly, himself. The glitter seems to be catching. He's dressed up as… well, someone. Ziggy something. Ron's incredibly loud, whiny, and irritating."
Harry didn't respond.
"Harry."
He shifted, a distant, horrified look crossing his face. Ginny shoved him, purposely pushing him into the suffocating cloud that was a pitiful excuse for a chair. It wasn't even really red. "Harry!"
He shuddered. "Yeah."
She sighed. "This isn't Voldemort, you know."
Resigned, he closed his eyes. "I know. Just… answer a question quickly."
"Mm?"
"What's the Room of Requirement like?"
Ginny stopped, flushing. "Ah. Um."
Harry opened his eyes, raising an eyebrow. "What?"
"Well. It seems that no matter what you're thinking off, it turns off into a… well, rather comfortable place, until you notice the candles never stop burning, there's mood music playing, and condoms strewn all over the place."
Slowly, Harry rose from the chair. Or, rather, tried to. Using each other as leverage, both he and Ginny managed to swim from the suffocating, eye-smarting-red chairs, and Harry looked at Ginny rather seriously. "You do know what this means, don't you?"
"Badfic?"
"Badfic."
"Damn."
Heaving another sigh, Harry tugged Ginny toward the Fat Lady's portrait, and then out from behind the painting and into the hallway. The Fat Lady eyed the pair suspiciously, but said nothing.
"We have to find the Suethor, Ginny," Harry breathed, watching the hallway. "They can't be far; there may be many of them."