HEY YOU GUYS! A lot has happened since the last time I posted a chapter, and I'll get to that in the fun facts at the end. In the meantime, enjoy the chapter!
(Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.)
Chapter 27
Time to Try Again
"The room went quiet. Harry thought...What scared him most in the world?
His first thought was Lord Voldemort - a Voldemort returned to full strength. But before he had even started to plan a possible counterattack on a boggart-Voldemort, a horrible image came floating to the surface of his mind…
A rotting, glistening hand, slithering back beneath a black cloak...a long, rattling breath, from an unseen mouth...then a cold so penetrating it felt like drowning…
Harry shivered, then looked around, hoping no one had noticed."
The world became about as normal as it could be. Other than the constant nervousness about Sirius Black (except from the other time-travellers, for some reason), school wasn't that terrible. Divination turned out to be different than Molly expected; instead of actual looking into the future, all that came out of Professor Trelawney's mouth was the psychic nonsense that Molly could've just as easily seen on Dr. Oz.
Muggle Studies was interesting; Professor Burbage was super nice, and she opened the class with a riddle.
"Who would win in a fight?" she asked. "Ten wizards with ten wands or one Muggle with a gun?"
Molly noticed that a lot of people said that the wizards would win, but for different reasons. A kid named Blaise Zabini from Slytherin said that the wizards would win because they were superior and a Muggle weapon like a gun was, of its nature, inferior. Molly just thought the wizards would win because there were more of them, and they could easily Transfigure the gun into something less harmful, like a football, or a dolphin (in a tank of water and taken care of, of course. Molly wasn't an animal).
"Those were some interesting answers," Professor Burbage said. "At the end of the year, each of you will write an essay about the same question. Keep an open mind and a ready quill, and you'll do just fine."
The year seemed to fly by without incident. Even with threats from Sirius Black and a Quidditch game gone sour, everything still seemed alright - even though there was so much work for each class that Molly still hadn't gotten around to continuing the books by winter break.
"Maybe when I get back," she told Madison right before the train came, "we can read them together."
"Actually, I have something I need to do," Madison said. "Last year, when I wrote in Tom's diary, I only did it to figure out why I can speak Parseltongue, and I never did figure it out. This year, there's something that I can use to decipher my past - but I can't tell you yet."
"Why not?" Molly asked.
"Read," Madison said. "Finish the series, then come and find me."
With that mysterious clue hanging in the air, Madison left, and Molly was in the bathroom, alone. She sighed, before walking towards the Great Hall.
At least I finally got to see Moana, Molly thought as she got back on the train to go back to Hogwarts. At least it was worth it for that.
She sat with Ava and Zoë this time, eyeing the door every so often to see if a Dementor was coming. Fingering her wand, which she held in her lap, ready to pounce, she asked, "So what did you guys do over break?"
"Ava and I actually went to New York City," Zoë said. "We went to see Stephen Colbert's late-night TV show. He was really funny."
"I didn't know you were into that kind of stuff," Molly admitted.
"I used to live in the city for a while," Ava said, "and we'd always pass the theatre where Jon Stewart did his show. I'd be riding past on my bike, and I'd look over and shout 'I LOVE YOU, JON' at the top of my lungs. I like to think somebody other than the naked homeless men on the street heard me."
"I don't watch a lot of them, but I kind of like Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel," Molly said. "I should check out Stephen Colbert. His theatre was right next to the theatre where I saw Holiday Inn - my dad and I got a picture together. It was really cute."
"Nice," Zoë said. "You should also check out Trevor Noah - he replaced Jon Stewart as the host of the Daily Show. He's super funny."
Molly smiled, then looked at the door. Nothing. She let out a sigh of relief.
One Monday, pretty early on in January, Molly was sitting in the common room with nothing to do. She had finished all her homework, and there were still a few hours until dinner. She held a greyish-green book in her lap - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She eyed it, looking at the cover over and over, wondering if it was time for her to pick up the books again. She wondered if the knowledge of what was to come would be too much, or if it would be exactly what she needed to get by.
She picked up her wand and tapped the book. The cover transformed - instead of being an image of Harry and Hermione on a flying horse thingy, it became that of a Divination textbook. Molly opened the book - to her relief, the text inside remained the same.
She turned to the first page and began to read. For the next few hours, she was entranced - she couldn't take her eyes off the book. As soon as she got back from dinner, she promised herself, she'd start reading Goblet of Fire.
But before she went downstairs, she brought the book back up to her room. She found a page - page 255 in her version. "It was Defense Against the Dark Arts," the book said, "that Harry was keen to get to; after his conversation with Wood, he wanted to get started on his anti-dementor lessons as soon as possible."
She turned the corner of the page down, like a dog ear, and put it on her bed. Then she scurried off to dinner.
"Harry?" Molly asked, three days later, as she ran through the crowd of Gryffindors heading over to Potions class.
"What is it, Molly?" he asked.
"Well, uh…" She hadn't worked out how she was going to say this, but she knew she had to.
"I heard about your dementor lessons," she said as quietly as she could, for the Slytherins had joined the group of children, and she didn't want to risk Malfoy overhearing their conversation.
Harry's eyes widened. "How?" he asked.
Great, Molly thought.
"Uh...a little bird told me," she said. "But that's not important. What's important is...well, I want to come."
"What?" Harry said, almost laughing.
"I want to come to the lesson tonight," she said. "I want to know how to protect myself. It'll be like a little -"
She almost said Dumbledore's Army, but she bit her tongue.
"...like a little extra Defense Against the Dark Arts class," she finished.
Harry shrugged. "Well, I don't see why you can't come," he said.
Molly nearly jumped with joy.
"Thank you so much! I'll tell Professor Lupin if I see him at lunch - oh, thank you!"
She smiled and shuffled through the crowd, Potions class seeming ten times better than usual.
"Now, Molly," Lupin said as the two of them - as well as Harry - stood in the empty History of Magic room, the sun having faded from the sky and a brown trunk lying in front of them, shaking violently. "Have you ever seen a dementor before?"
She nodded. "On the train. There was a big flash of light, like a blue glowstick had just exploded, and then everything got really icy and cold and one came in."
"Oh, dear," Lupin said.
"What is it?" Molly asked.
"That was my patronus," he said. "I was getting the dementor out of our train car with it - it must've gone to you. Did you faint?"
Abashedly, Molly nodded.
"It was like this mist had gone into me, and I could hear people from my old school yelling at me, and I felt like I was falling through thin air," she explained. "And then I heard Mackenzie telling me to wake up."
"Was she in the car with you?" Harry asked, hanging on every word.
Molly nodded again.
"I wonder why the dementor left, then," Lupin said.
"I think it might've been Mackenzie - she probably could've cast the spell that you did," Molly said.
"But how does she know it?" Harry asked.
Molly bit her tongue. "I don't know," she said. "But I want to get started with the spell. How do I cast it?"
"With an incantation," Lupin said. "Concentrate on a happy memory - any happy memory."
Molly thought for a second as she took out her wand, and then landed on one - when she wrote her first song. She thought about her fingers strumming her eight-string ukulele, that Eureka moment when she finally figured out the tune, and the incredible celebratory dinner afterwards.
"Now say the incantation: Expecto Patronum!"
"Expecto Patronum!" Molly said, her mind still lost in the memory.
She didn't feel anything happen, so she brought herself back to the present.
"Try it again - and keep thinking about that memory," Lupin said.
Molly squared her shoulders and thought about the song.
"Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum!"
Suddenly, she saw a bright bluish-white light burst forth from her wand. It was indistinct, but definitely there.
"Whoa," Molly said.
"Nice one!" Harry said, patting her on the back.
"Are you ready to try with a dementor?" Lupin said. "Well, not an actual dementor - I found a boggart that we've been using with Harry."
"I think I'm ready," Molly said.
"Alright," Lupin said, walking over to the trunk and flicking the lock open. Almost instantaneously, a black, hooded dementor emerged from the trunk, towering over Molly. The world suddenly grew cold and icy, and Molly was reminded of the train.
"Expecto Patronum!" Molly cried, trying to keep her mind on the song. "Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum! Expecto Pa -"
Suddenly, the white mist from the train clogged up her line of vision. She heard those same voices again. There was Kirsten, screaming, "You don't have the right to do this with us! You mess everything up!" There was Amber, right beside her, yelling, "Yeah, just go away or else!" And then Kirsten again, yelling, "Molly pushed me!"
For some reason, in her panic, Molly's mind landed on a moment from the first Percy Jackson book. At the very beginning, Percy had "pushed" the school's resident kleptomaniac, Nancy Bobofit, into a fountain at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it was pretty obvious that it was the first sign of his powers as a demigod.
Molly still couldn't remember pushing Kirsten. But it dawned on her, all of a sudden, that maybe she hadn't.
"Molly - wake up!"
One minute she was standing up, trying to defend herself against the dementors, the next she was lying on the floor, her eyes slowly opening (had they ever really closed? Molly wondered) to the sight of Harry and Lupin looking over her. It was such a bizarre, disorienting feeling that Molly couldn't help but feel a little nauseous.
"Are you alright?" Harry asked.
Molly nodded slightly as she sat up.
"Let's try that again," she said.
Harry and Lupin helped her up, and she readied her wand. Lupin flicked open the case, and the dementor-boggart flew out.
"Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum!" Images of her ukulele, the tripod, and buttery cornbread flickered through Molly's mind, disappearing about as fast as they came.
"Expecto Pa-"
There was the white fog again, the voices, teasing her and then telling on her, the feeling that she was falling through thin air, with no bottom to land on -
"Molly!"
She opened her eyes to see Harry and Lupin looking over her again, that strange sensation of a shift in orientation hitting her again.
"One more time," she said.
She said one more time a lot more - probably seven or eight times. She and Harry began to alternate - Molly trying to ward off the dementor, and then Harry following her. Each time, it took a little bit longer for the dementor's joy-sucking power to take her over, but she still hadn't managed to get her patronus to work.
Finally, Lupin insisted that she leave and go back to the Gryffindor common room with Harry. "Madam Pomfrey'll kill me if she finds out," he said, giving each of them a Chocolate Frog.
Slowly and silently, Molly and Harry walked back to the common room. After what felt like an eternity of trying to figure out passwords, the children walked in, Molly going up to her room. She grabbed a blue Muggle Studies textbook from her nightstand, lay belly-down on her bed, and began to read.
Luna said vaguely that she did not know how soon Rita's interview with Harry would appear in The Quibbler, that her father was expecting a lovely long article on recent sightings of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. "And of course, that'll be a very important story, so Harry's might have to wait for the following issue," said Luna.
Molly laughed. After the dementor lesson, a bit of Luna would probably do her some good.
Thanks for reading! Before the fun facts, a big announcement...
I WENT TO UNIVERSAL ORLANDO! And it was AMAZING! I went with my dad, who doesn't know the Harry Potter books or movies (although he likes Downton Abbey, so I'm trying to convince him to watch them solely for Maggie Smith), so he just let me drag him around. Escape from Gringotts was my favorite ride - it was so much fun, and I was able to ride it twice! (I also might have a celebrity crush on Domnhall Gleason now.). Besides the Harry Potter areas, I was able to revisit Seuss Landing (which is the area I spent most of my time the first time I went, years and years ago), as well as go on the Despicable Me and Jimmy Fallon rides for the first time. I didn't get to go on the new Hagrid's roller coaster (the line was already two hours long by the time we got to it, and the ride didn't open until midday), but it looks kinda scary on YouTube, so it worked out. It was a lot of fun, and I kept on thinking about Shine On Rainy Day, especially in the little London pavilion right outside Diagon Alley. I went in the bathroom in Hogsmeade, and I could hear Moaning Myrtle in the music loop, so I said a little hello to Madison and Opa. ;)
Alright, with that out of the way, on to the behind-the-magic fun facts!
1) One of the things I wanted to include was a look into Muggle Studies - since Harry doesn't take the course, we never get to see it in the books. I thought it would be cool to start with a philosophical argument that's been plaguing humankind for ages. (Also, I was even able to throw in an AVPM reference, as well as tease Opa and Madison's inspirations, so there ya go.)
2) Ava's inspiration actually did live in New York City for a while, and the Jon Stewart anecdote was an actual story she told me once.
3) The thing with Madison and Parseltongue is a storyline that will continue for a few chapters.
4) I specifically put together the timing of Molly's reading the books to match the dates when I read them.
5) I thought it would be good to give the Percy Jackson moment a shoutout. It was one of the things I wanted to include, just to add a little more evidence that Molly is a wizard. (Although, in real life, I did actually push the girl. So...sorry.)
That's all for this chapter. I'm really excited for the next two chapters - they're the reason I wanted to write this story in the first place. See you soon!
Feel free to review, but please no negative reviews or cursing. (And please, NOTHING POLITICAL!) Thanks!