The Lunacy of Lupin
Dark and prone to violence---here's your Leo chapter! Hope you enjoy it!
Chapter Seven: Peace, Love, and Lupin?
The clock in the Gryffindor Common Room tolled another hour, two soft chimes, as Hermione came through the portrait hole, followed closely by Harry. Everything was as still as they had left it, not a sound disturbed the sleepy silence that coated the tower room.
"Well, that was a waste of time," Hermione said frustratedly. "If I had known I would've been devoting an hour traipsing all over the country and having the pants scared off me by Lucius Malfoy... And at that, an hour that I would've otherwise spent sleeping..." she trailed off.
"It's all right. I mean, at least we know it's not Malfoy. Maybe Lupin's not even being controlled. And plus, it was exciting, wasn't it?" Harry said.
Hermione sighed. "Yeah, I suppose. I just wish that hadn't been so pointless." Harry folded up the Invisibilty Cloak.
"And now we have a story to tell Ron...," he said. "Maybe he can help. Maybe he knows something. You never can tell if Ron knows something..." Hermione laughed. Harry continued, "I guess I'll see you about...five, six hours from now?" Hermione grinned slightly and disappeared up the stairs to her dormitory.
It felt like he had just eased into sleep when Seamus threw a pillow at Harry to wake him up five hours later. He sat groggily up and looked down at himself; he had fallen asleep in the clothes he had been wearing the night before. Shrugging, he decided it didn't look all that bad, ran a comb through his inflexibly messy hair, and headed down to breakfast without changing clothes at all.
When he arrived in the Great Hall, he saw Ron and Hermione were already there. Ron's, er, attachments had gone down, but were still undeniably present. They now resembled an extremely bad case of acne, except that they were shaped somewhat like cucumbers. Ron, however, smiled as though nothing was horribly mutating his face and Hermione gave Harry a meet-me-in-a-minute glance.
As they left for their first class a short while later, Hermione pulled Harry aside and whispered,"Okay, I told Ron over breakfast this morning. About last night?" she said in response to Harry's confused look. Harry gave her a mischeivous grin.
"Oh...That sounds dirty, Hermione...Anyway, what did he say?
"Well, at first he told me that he didn't catch the last bit of what I told him because he was too busy eating, and of course in between bites he was staring at this Ravenclaw girl like she was his last chance of living...," Hermione looked disgusted for a minute then carried on. "But after I finally got the entire story through to him, all he said was 'Hmm.' That's it, just 'Hmm.' What does he mean, 'Hmm'?"
"Hermione calm down, you sound scandalized. How should I know what he means? He probably didn't mean anything! He probably had absolutely nothing to say, so he just said 'Hmm'!" (A/N: Is this sounding like Seinfeld yet? Let's move on...)
All through Potions Hermione muttered under her breath and cast glances at Ron that were suggestive of throttling or extreme pain. Snape was looking extremely sour about something and Harry thought he was probably in one of his detention-for-nothing moods, so he tried his hardest to keep Hermione's temper down. It did seem, though, that Snape cheered up a little after catching sight of Ron's cucumber-protrusions.
Luckily, the three made it out of the class unscathed, no detentions, no additional bady parts accounted for. When they arrived at Lupin's door, an odd kind of sweet, smoky smell met their noses. Hermione liiked cautious but pulled open the door...
The room seemed hazy, out of focus. It was filled with an undeniable, over-powering gray smoke, which seemed to be giving off the sweetish odor. It was hard to see; Harry almost tripped over a desk before he realized it was there. Sitting at his own desk, a game of checkers in front of him, was Lupin. He himself had gray smudges on his face and a tie-dye bandana tied around his head. The rest of his clothing was mostly denim; he had on a denim sleeveless jacket with a faded black sleeveless shirt underneath and baggy, dirty blue jeans. The "Hell's Angel" tatoo was still there, but fading away on his arm. A pocket chain was on his jeans and he was grinning in a dim, confused sort of way. He appeared to have no opponent in his game.
"Ha!" he yelled jubilantly after a second or two. "Shows you!" He moved one of the red checkers a space forward. Swiftly, he reached right across the board and double-jumped two red chekers with a black one. "Awww, man...,"he said.
"Er, Professor Lupin?" Hermione said quietly. Her eyes were watering from the smoke. She coughed a little.
"What?" Luipn said dazedly. "Oh, you're that smart one, man! Wait...where'd you come from?"
"Er...the bell rang...Didn't you hear it, Professor?"
"Yeah...no...hear what?" Lupin said. Hermione sighed, then started choking because of it. Harry patted her delicately on the back.
All of the students repeatedly coughedand rubbed their irritated eyes that day. Lupin was so out of focus that no one even tried to hold a converstion with him. Twice, Lupin burst out loudly to Parvati Patil, "The birds are coming after you! BIrds, man, birds!" Parvati asked him what he meant but he just looked at her dumbly.
Everyone was taken aback by outbreak of squawks about halfway through the class.
"SQUAWK!" he yelled. He wasn't flapping his arms or anything, he was just sitting at his desk, which made it all the more strange. "SQUAWK!" he shouted, incessantly for one full minute. Then he stopped, looked around matter-of-factly, and stood up. He made his way over to the chalkboard and said, "Okay, man...mans...oh yeah, men! Okay, men, today...we're, er, gonna learn 'bout...er...graphorns. Yeah." Hermione shook her head as if no one could be as stupid as her professor was being now.
"Sir, we learned about graphorns last Wednesday. And besides, you said yourself we were done with dark creatures." Lupin nodded approvingly.
"That's right, Smart One. Graphorns are from Europe," he said, still in a daze. "They kinda look like giraffes, that's right," he said to Dean Thomas, who hadn't said anything. (A/N: Those of you who have read Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them know none of this information is true...)
Lupin stopped in his "lesson" and stared suspiciouly at Neville for thirty seconds before shouting out quite suddenly, "YOU HAVE MY GRANDMOTHER'S NOSE!"
The class went totally silent. Hermione sighed deeply again. Neville was trembling, startled by Professor Lupin's outburst. Lupin had a look of mingled fury and scandal on his face.
"Professor, maybe you should go to the hospital wing, sir," Hermione said. Harry and Ron nodded fervently. Lupin vaguely looked in her general direction, speaking to a spot three or four feet to her left. "My grandmother never went to jail!" he said, as if in the middle of a heated arguement. Hermione looked to either side of herself at Harry and Ron. They nodded again and moved forward like a two-man army, picking Lupin up under the armpits and carrying him out of the room. The class clapped and cheered like a game-show audience.
A short while later, Harry and Ron came back. Harry gave a report: "Well, he kicked us a little and he screamed all the bloody way there...,"he grunted. Ron nodded weakly and said, "Yeah, he kicked us in all the wrong places..." He crawled to a desk.
After class, Hermione took Harry aside again and said, "Okay, so far Lupin's gone from aromatherapy to that! Something is definitely wrong here, Harry!" She looked at him expectantly.
"All right," he said. "Meet me in the library tonight, okay, we can talk there. Right now, I'd rather not be late for class," he said a little apologetically. Hermione smiled and went on to class. As Harry walked away, he distinctly heard Lupin yell, several floors above, "BUT I MADE A GOOD DRUGGIE-SEVENTIES GUY!"
Ok, tell me your thoughts if you please...The next chapter will hopefully be up shortly, and I'm thinking this story will end probably two chapters from now. So, giving my humble blessings to your psychadelic parakeets, uraniumbombz.