Chapter 3:
"Oh, of course!" Hermione said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, as they made their way back to the common room. "We didn't recognize him because he looks different."
"Hermione, that's not a very nice thing to say. I mean, sure he looks a little older, but we hav–" Christine didn't get to finish her sentence; she had been suddenly interrupted by Hermione.
"NO! Not like that, please he couldn't have changed that much. I mean his eyes are a different color, his skin is a little darker, nose longer, hair darker, you get it?" She looked at the blank stares on her friends faces. Hermione on the other hand, had the look of a mother who was at her wit's end.
"Hermione, do you honestly think that we are that thick? I mean come on, we aren't stupid, I was just teasing you when I was talkin' about Kingsley lookin' older." Christine saw that apparently the joke had not been amusing to Hermione, but Harry and Ron were trying to suppress their laughter.
"But why would he have to disguise himself, I mean he's an Auror for the Ministry?" Ron asked, with the most confused look on his face after his fit of giggles had passed.
"Oh honestly Ronald! Sometimes I think that wallpaper paste could out wit you!" Hermione snapped back. "Obviously he doesn't want to be recognized as an Auror."
"Well sorry Hermione, I mean if it's that obvious, I'm sorry I couldn't pick up on it sooner."
This bickering continued all the way up to Gryffindor Tower; Harry and Christine had learned to block out most of it by now. When they reached the common room, Christine and Hermione took their favorite seats next to the fire, and waited for Harry and Ron to change out of their practice robes.
"Hermione, have you noticed anything different about Harry since we found out about Kingsley?" Christine whispered timidly, as she watched the boys walk up the stairs to their dormitory.
"Yeah, he doesn't seem like he hates it here any more. It's almost like he's back to normal. Losing Sirius was really hard on him," Hermione responded.
"Well now who's being Captain Obvious? Sirius was the only..." Christine stopped abruptly as she noticed Harry and Ron returning.
"Ok, the way I see it we have two options. We can either talk to Professor Twopenny or write to Ron's dad. Either way we might not get any information, but we have to try," Harry started when everyone was settled.
After thinking for a minute in silence, Christine answered, "Why don't we ask the professor and if we don't find anything out, ask Mr. Weasley?"
"That sounds good to me."
"Me too, Ron do you think you could ask your dad if we need to ask him?" Hermione asked him.
"Yeah no problem, the problem we might have, is receiving the answer we want from him." However, the vote was unanimous they would talk to the professor then write to Mr Weasley. They stayed up and talked about numerous things for a while before finally going to bed.
The next morning, the friends met in the Great Hall for breakfast. The mail had arrived and with it letters from Christine's family. Christine was not the first of her family to attend Hogwarts. In fact, she was the third one to attend the magic school. Her older brother Rhett, and sister Careen had already left Hogwarts, as they were twins and older than Christine by about 2 years. She hadn't heard from either one of them in a long time, and was surprised when both letters arrived from Boston and Paris on the same day. She eagerly opened her sister's letter first and read:
Dear Christine,
How are you? I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to write you, but work has been chaotic for the last couple of months. I miss you so much, say hi to everyone for me and think of me. Oh yeah, and as to your question in your last letter, sorry the answer is no.
Love ya sis!
Careen
"Dang it!" Christine yelled out loud, forgetting that nobody else knew what she was talking about. She looked up to see if anyone had heard her, but the question was who hadn't heard her, as everyone in the Great Hall stared at her. She smiled weakly, and looked back down at the table. The question that her sister had referred to in the letter was a personal one. Her sister had been working for Flourish and Blotts and Hogwarts at the same time. Her work had taken her to Paris where she met and started dating this guy,named Eric. He was a wizard working for Gringotts in Paris, when they met. Things had been getting very serious, and Christine wanted to know if he had proposed to Careen yet. Feeling sorry for her sister, she re-read the letter to make sure she hadn't missed anything. When she was sure she hadn't, she turned to her brother's letter:
HeyChristy,
How's everything at Hogwarts? I hear that you and Hermione are taking some 'extra classes' this year? Well, don't over do it. Nothing much is going on here. Sorry this is going to be short, I have a meeting in like thirty minutes, so take care! If you don't get a letter from me by Christmas, tell the family that I miss them and love them.
Rhett
When Christine finished reading the letters, she excused herself from the table and ran to her dormitory to store the letters. She returned moments later, in time to meet her friends outside the Great Hall.
"Ready?" she said, as she grabbed her bag from Harry.
"As ready as we're gonna get. Who knows what we're up against with Snape," replied Ron as they began their walk to the dungeons.
Overall the lesson went pretty well; Snape ended up only taking twenty points away from Gryffindor, and yelled only once at Harry, which Christine thought was pretty unnecessary since Malfoy had added the extra dragon claw to the ingredients. When they left, Christine thought that all in all, the lesson was pretty quiet.
That evening at dinner, Christine noticed that Professor Twopenny had returned. Apparently, she wasn't the only one who had noticed this as Hermione and Harry began frantically whispering across the table. But as usual, Ron hadn't noticed anything and had his face buried in his chicken dumplings.
"Hermione, can you pass the kidney pie?" Ron asked with a mouth ful of mashed potatoes. She passed the mashed potatoes to him, then turned to Christine and Harry.
"Well, what are we going to do? I mean we can't just walk up to him here and say, 'Hey professor, we know who you are tell us what you know,'" Christine said.
"You're right. But when should we talk to him?" Hermione pondered, "Should we wait 'til after our lesson tomorrow, or should we talk to him tonight?"
"I think we should talk to him tonight," Harry replied. They finished their dinner and went to Gryffindor Tower to relax until about 8:00 when they left to find Professor Twopenny.
They found him in his office grading their latest homework assignment: describing the side-effects of different memory spells.
"Christine, Hermione, what are you doing here?" Professor Twopenny asked in amazement as Harry and Ron followed behind.
"Professor, um, we need to talk to you about something kind of, well, important," Christine started off.
"Yeah, we've found out something that we think you should know about," Hermione added.
"Well, what's the trouble? You four look like you've just heard a death sentence," Professor Twopenny looked interested in what they had to say; a look that reminded Christine of Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore.
"Professor, um, we don't really know how to say this, but we know who you are," Ron said when nobody responded to the professor's last sentence.
"Oh, way to go Ron! Honestly, do you know what the phrase 'let it out gently' means?" Hermione muttered just loud enough for Ron and Christine to hear, she looked like she could strangle him.
"We figured it out professor. We just don't understand why you're here, Mr. Shackelbolt," Harry continued, noticing that now Twopenny wouldn't look them in the eye.
"You four have got to be the most intelligent group of kids I have ever known," he seemed liked he was surprised that he was figured out only a month into the school year, yet not surprised at who had figured this out.
"We were hoping that you could tell us exactly why you are undercover," Harry said with a pleading tone in his voice.
"Well, I don't see why you shouldn't know what is going on, but I am not going to tell you everything, you must understand that." The kids nodded at his words and anticipated his next.
"The first and most important thing you need to remember is that nobody, except those in the order around here, can know who I really am. Not only would my cover be blown, but the Order and the ministry would be in danger. If Voldemort finds out that I'm an Auror, he will attack the ministry sooner than we expect, then everything will be destroyed."
"He's planning to invade the Ministry? Then why are you here at Hogwarts?" Christine asked.
"Well, I can't tell you what we know about the invasion, but be careful around the school. We have reason to believe that he is trying to gather his old Death Eaters within the castle walls. I'm here to discover where they're meeting, then we'll figure out what to do from there," Kingsley said this with an air of determination in his voice.
A couple of weeks had passed since Christine and her friends had discovered why Professor Twopenny was there. The season began to change, and the autumn that was once so warm, became the coldest winter Hogwarts had seen in many decades. The lessons themselves were also changing; meaning they were becoming more complex. In Charms, sixth years were learning how to do the Retrorsum Curse. The curse would show the opposite of what was really there until the counter-curse was cast. The first time Ron tried the curse on Harry, he accidentally singed Harry's hair. Christine was paired with Neville and was, well, frankly, scared out of her mind. She heard the fateful words of "Repenitus Retrorsum!" escape his lips and the next thing she knew she was on the floor with a huge bump on her head.
"What happened?" she asked getting up slowly from the ground and looking all around her.
"Sorry Christine. When I tried to cast the spell I think something went wrong," Neville had the most nervous look on his face. Poor Neville didn't improve much through out the rest of the day, he was yelled at by Snape threeor four times, lost his toad, and had to go to the hospital wing because when it was Christine's turn to try the Retrorsum Curse, he flinched and the curse hit his head at an odd angle causing him to lose all of his memory.
Finally, the day was over and the friends were once again sitting in front of the fire in their favorite chairs. They sat around thinking about the homework they had to finish by Monday and talked about the events of the day.
"What a boring day. I think I could have lived without the lecture on wolfsbane," Ron said in an exasperated tone.
"Ranunculaceae Interstinctus, or wolfsbane, is one of the blah blah blah blah blah!" Christine mimicked the voice of Professor Sprout and sounding almost exactly like her. "Honestly, I usually like Herbology, but this is ridiculous. If I had known that she was going to name all 317 ways of using wolfsbane, I would have stayed in the library."
"Yeah, but Potions was horrible. I can't believe that Snape took awaytwenty-five points from us just because Seamus forgot one of his ingredients. But I think that this new potion we're learning about is kind of cool," Hermione observed, "I think that it's going to be easier to make than the last one."
She was right, when Potions rolled around on Monday, they began to brew the Flagrantia. They were to complete the potion in pairs and turn it in at the end of the class. Hermione was paired with Ron, and she was nervous about allowing him to do too much on his own. Christine on the other hand was paired with Harry; he at least knew how to do most of the things.
As the class went on, a strange silence seemed to fall on the two friends; the situation was different, and it almost seemed like the two were not friends at all. There were awkward silences and neither one of them knew why. As Harry added the Phoenix ashes to the potion, Christine began to feel strange about the situation. She felt like he was more than a friend, and sometimes he would look at her and her hands would get all sweaty. Then, there was one moment when they both reached for the potion flask, and an awkward moment followed, as did an awkward smile from both of them.
"Ok, get a hold of yourself. He's one of your best friends. He's just Harry. Nothing has changed in the last two days. Just because he's your partner all of a sudden it doesn't mean anything has to change," Christine was thinking to herself as if to convince her own mind that she had no feelings for him. " I mean, come on, he's the same tall, dark and handsome...What are you thinking! He only sees you as his little sister! Just forget about him!"
She was still thinking to herself when the class ended. She packed her things in her bag, noticed Hermione walking quickly down the hall, andtried to catch up to her. But, she never made it; Harry had called her name from the classroom door.
"Christine! Wait!" Harry stuffed the rest of his stuff in his bag and ran to meet her in the hallway.
"Hey, what's up?" Christine asked, wondering what he could need.
"Um...the Hogsmeade trip is coming up," Harry sounded really nervous, but determined to say what ever it was he was going to say.
"Yeah, I can't wait to go back. I have been craving a piece of candy from Honeydukes," Christine's eyes started to sparkle as she thought about the upcoming trip.
"Yeah, it's great. But I was wondering if I could talk to you about something when we were there? I mean, I want to show you something," he finished and waited for Christine to respond.
"Of course! I mean, sure, let's say 12:30 then, in the Three Broomsticks?" Christine answered. "Oh way to go Christine! First you're too enthusiastic then you act like you don't care! What is wrong with you?"
"Ok, I'll see you there," and with that Harry and Christine walked the rest of the way to Gryffindor Tower together.