One last update to finish off the year. How's everyone hanging in there? Best of luck to all of you in 2021!
~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~
~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~
Harry received a surprise the first weekend back in the form of Oliver Wood shaking him awake at the crack of dawn.
'Oliver, what are you doing?' he asked groggily, though he had a fair idea.
'Quidditch practice!' Wood announced enthusiastically. 'Come on!'
Harry knew better than to argue, and reluctantly dragged himself from bed and began putting on his quidditch robes. Fifteen minutes later saw him entering the pitch with a very excited Colin Creevey in tow, bouncing around and asking him all sorts of questions. Harry only managed to shake him off once they reached the changing rooms, whereupon he felt guilty for being annoyed. It had been the same with Fred, early on – he remembered Ginny saying she'd felt it, too – but even so it felt different in this case. Fred often went out of his way to be irritating on purpose; Colin was merely an overexcited young boy. He couldn't help it that not everyone shared his enthusiasm for everything.
The rest of the team was waiting for him, half asleep, when he entered the changing room. Wood was the only person other than himself who looked remotely alert.
'Getting started a little early this year, aren't we Oliver?' he asked as he took his seat.
Wood furrowed his brow and scowled. 'If one more person says that...' he said, leaving the threat unfinished.
'Are we not even doing tryouts?' Harry persisted.
'Tryouts?' Wood asked. 'What for? You think we're going to find a better team than the one we've got?'
'Not necessarily, but it couldn't hurt to look, right?' Harry distinctly remembered Katie advising him against taking this attitude when he had first become captain; it had never really occurred to him when he was younger to wonder why Oliver always chose to just keep playing the old hands. It had certainly come back to bite them a few times when some of those old hands couldn't play.
'And weren't we going to look into building a reserve team?' Fred asked drowsily, rubbing his puffy eyes. 'One downed player and that's our whole season scuppered. Remember when Harry got poisoned last year? What if that had happened the day before a match?'
'Argh, fine,' Oliver growled. 'You've made your point. A reserve team wouldn't be a bad idea. But in the mean time, we need to get to work. The other teams are all going to be gunning for us this year; we can't afford to get lazy.' He proceeded to pull out several charts and diagrams he had prepared and then talk their ears off over each one. Harry was the only one even remotely paying attention. The strategies weren't bad, he thought, though a better idea would have been to brief the team on them when they were awake and able to concentrate on them.
When they finally emerged, the sun had risen properly and the last of the morning mist was burning away. Ron and Hermione had come down and were sitting in the stands, eating their breakfast. Harry's stomach rumbled, and he was sure his wasn't the only one.
'Aren't you finished?' Ron asked when he caught sight of them.
'Haven't even started,' Harry answered. 'Welcome to the glamorous life of a quidditch player, Ron.'
The team took off into the air and began drilling Wood's new maneuvers, only it wasn't going well since barely anyone had even the slightest idea of what they were supposed to be doing. Wood was quickly losing his patience with them, and when he noticed Colin in the stands taking pictures, suggested he might be a Slytherin spy. Harry had to suppress a laugh when he assured Oliver that Colin was indeed in Gryffindor.
'And the Slytherins don't need a spy, Oliver,' said George.
'And why is that?' snapped Wood.
'Because they're here in person,' said George, pointing to a group of green-clad students making their way onto the pitch.
Oh, bloody hell, Harry thought. He was now remembering what exactly had happened at this particular quidditch practice. Granted, Ron's wand wasn't broken, so he wasn't likely to end up belching slugs all over the place, but that meant he might successfully curse Malfoy, which could very easily turn out even worse in the long run.
He hurried to the ground to see if he could head off the impending disaster. Wood was just ahead of him, already bellowing at Marcus Flint to clear out. Flint presented the note from Snape granting them permission to use the pitch (which, as far as Harry knew, he did not have the authority to do if the pitch had already been booked, but that was beside the point), and Malfoy revealed himself as the new Slytherin seeker. He seemed to have been waiting for the most dramatic moment to do this, and Harry was not able to suppress the compulsion to roll his eyes.
The urge did not abate when Flint and Malfoy began talking up the collection of Nimbus Two Thousand And Ones that Lucius had purchased for the team. By this point, Ron and Hermione had made their way over, and Harry was fully on guard. He knew that Ron's attempted curse had been in response to Malfoy calling Hermione a mudblood, but he could not remember what had prompted the Slytherin to do that. He was listening intently to the conversation, standing on the balls of his feet, ready to react at the slightest hint of a provocation.
'At least no one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way in,' said Hermione in response to one of Malfoy's taunts. 'They got in on pure talent.'
Shite. That'll do it. He was already moving by the time Malfoy opened his mouth.
'No one asked your opinion, you filthy little mudblood.'
'How dare you!' shrieked Alicia at the same time Fred and George lunged at Malfoy, Flint getting between them just in time. Ron went straight for his wand and shouted something, but Harry wasn't even listening at this point. He grabbed Ron's arm and jerked it upward right as a jet of light shot out, which shot harmlessly up and directly into the note from Snape that Flint was holding above his head, out of the twins' reach as he continued blocking their attempts to get at Malfoy. It shriveled up in a slimy mess, causing Flint to drop it in disgust.
Wood, Katie, and Angelina had moved in to restrain the twins while Flint and one of his beaters backed Malfoy away, the rest of his team following him, not sure what else to do.
'What did you do that for, Harry?' Ron yelled angrily.
'Later,' Harry said curtly, still monitoring the situation in case Malfoy or Flint or one of the others decided they wanted to strike back.
'You'll be sorry for that one, Weasley,' Malfoy spat from under Flint's arm, where he was still being herded back and off the pitch.
'For what?' Harry yelled. 'Nothing even happened. Get your bigoted arse out of here, Malfoy, or next time I won't stop him.'
'Professor Snape will be hearing about this, Wood,' Flint warned as he took his team off the pitch, all seven of them glaring daggers at the Gryffindor team. Harry remained on guard; they seemed to be giving up far too easily.
'Bloody hell,' said Fred. 'To see them carrying on, you'd think it was one of us said something foul about one of them.'
'What's Snape going to do, you think?' George asked.
'Nothing as far as quidditch is concerned,' said Wood, looking furious. 'He doesn't have that authority. But he can make life miserable for us in other ways. Coming down hard on us in class, booking the pitch for his team all the time so we can't use it, that sort of thing.'
'So same as always, then,' said Fred. 'That's fine. Nice curse work, Ron. What were you trying to hit him with?'
'Slug belching curse,' Ron said. 'Seamus was telling me about it; his cousin used it on him last summer. Why'd you stop me, Harry?'
'Can you imagine the kind of hell you'd have to pay if you cursed Malfoy?' Harry asked. 'I'm not just talking about detention or something, either. Malfoy's dad could make life difficult for you in a way that would make anything Snape could do seem like an afternoon stroll on the grounds.'
'It would be worth it,' said Ron, snorting angrily. 'Just to wipe that smug look of his face. I can't believe he said that.'
'I can,' said George darkly. 'Rotten little creep. His whole family's like that. It's no wonder he's picked it up.'
'What does it mean, though?' Hermione asked. 'I mean, I could tell it was awful of course, just from the way he said it, but I've never heard that word before.'
'I should hope not!' said Angelina. Katie and Alicia nodded emphatically.
'It's a foul name for someone who's muggle-born,' Ron explained. 'Remember we were talking about it in the carriage the night we came? Some folks like Malfoy's family think being "pure-blood" makes them better than everyone else, and that people from muggle families don't belong in the magical world. "Dirty" blood, you see. "Common" blood. It's disgusting.'
It was several minutes before anyone on the team was in the mood to start flying again, but on the bright side they were now most definitely awake. Harry was definitely regretting not having breakfast though, and it was only another half hour become the whole team started to threaten mutiny if Wood didn't let them go and eat something.
'We're supposed to be getting an early start,' he grumbled as they headed back to the changing rooms. 'We didn't get much done today at all, and now the Slytherins are going to be going out of their way to book the pitch out from under us every chance they get.'
'Maybe next time you can tell us in advance you want to have an early morning practice,' said Angelina irritably. Wood scowled, and Harry suppressed a laugh; he remembered all too well just how manic she had been during her own tenure as captain. There had definitely been times when she'd made Wood seem positively reasonable in comparison.
When they emerged again, Colin called down from the stands to say that he saw the Slytherins coming back down from the castle, now accompanied by Snape. Harry, who had expected this, already had a plan to deal with it, but the twins beat him to it.
'Did they seriously run all the way back to Snape to tell on us?' Fred asked incredulously.
'Well, he can't dock points or yell at us if he doesn't spot us. See you lot later!' said George, and he mounted his broom and took off, swerving around the back of the changing rooms. Fred followed his lead and took off in the other direction. The rest of the team looked at each other, shrugged, and mounted their own brooms, flying off every which way.
'What are we supposed to do?' Ron asked once everyone was out of sight. Snape and the Slytherins would be arriving at the pitch any second. Thinking quickly, Harry reached into his robes and pulled out his invisibility cloak.
'Put that on,' he said quickly. 'And get Colin, too. It wouldn't be right to leave him to face Snape and that lot alone.'
'What, do you carry this around with you everywhere?' Ron asked, running it through his fingers excitedly.
'You never know when it might come in handy,' he said, shrugging. The truth was, he'd never really gotten out of the habit after the war, and ever since he'd come back to school after spending Easter hols at the Burrow, using it to sneak Ginny in and out of her room every night, he'd taken to keeping it on him at all times once again.
'What is it?' Hermoine asked, feeling the almost sheer fabric.
'It's an invisibility cloak,' said Harry. 'Ask later; for now just get under it,' he added swiftly, for she'd already opened her mouth, no doubt to ask where he'd gotten it.
She conceded and ducked under the cloak with Ron. He could hear them hurrying off to meed up with Colin, who'd come down to the base of the stands. He could also see the first of the Slytherins on the far side of the pitch, so he darted behind the changing rooms before any of them had a chance to see him. From there he mounted his broom and flew low to the ground until he was a good distance away, where he looped around toward the forbidden forest. Strictly speaking, students weren't supposed to fly their brooms around the grounds, but as long as he didn't get caught, there wouldn't be a problem. Besides, he distinctly remembered flying around a few times in his younger days with no trouble. He'd once eavesdropped on Snape and Quirrell in this very forest from atop his broom.
Once he was safely hidden by the trees, he disillusioned himself and flew straight up, climbing until he was at a level with the dormitory windows in Gryffindor Tower. He flew over to them and, peeking in to make sure the room was unoccupied, opened the window with his wand, swooped in, dropped down next to his bed, and removed the disillusionment charm. There were definitely perks to being a fully qualified wizard. If he'd known half of what he knew now while he was still in school, he would have gotten away with so much more than even Fred and George could ever have dreamed of.
He was still ravenously hungry, so he made a beeline to the kitchens to get something to eat, as it was still over two hours until lunchtime. He emerged back into the empty Entrance Hall just as the front doors opened seemingly of their own accord. He heard scuffling and frantic whispering, and allowed himself a chuckle. They really were terrible at this; it was a wonder Snape hadn't noticed them right off.
'I can see you,' he said loudly.
Ron gasped at the same time Hermione let out a panicked little squeak, and the cloak came flying off. They looked equally annoyed and relieved when they saw him standing there laughing at them.
'Oh, it's just you, Harry,' said Hermione, her hand going to her chest as she let out a breath.
'Sod off, you prat,' grumbled Ron. 'I thought we were really in for it for a second!' Harry just laughed harder.
'Could you really see us, Harry?' Colin asked, enthralled as ever.
'Of course not,' he said, catching his breath. 'But I could hear you just fine. You'll want to be more careful if you're trying to sneak around. Speaking of which, why did you still have the cloak on? Is Snape coming back to the castle or something?'
'Er, no,' said Ron, not meeting his eyes. 'It just, er, didn't occur to us to take it off, I suppose.'
There was a long pause, then Harry burst out laughing again.
'You mean you've been sneaking up to the castle for the last twenty minutes invisibly hiding from no one?'
'That's one way to look at it,' said Ron.
'I prefer to think we were merely being overly cautious,' Hermione said primly, but her red cheeks gave away that she was embarrassed for not realizing it either.
'It was so cool, Harry!' Colin gushed. 'Being invisible, you feel like you can do anything and no one will know! We walked right past Snape and the Slytherins and they had no idea we were there!'
'If you were making the kind of noise you made when you came in here, I wouldn't be too sure of that,' said Harry wryly.
'We were careful,' said Ron, looking rather defensive.
'Where did you get this, Harry?' Colin stampeded on. 'Did you make it yourself? Or did you buy it somewhere? Is it rare? Is it expensive? Are you allowed to have it?'
'It was a gift,' he said simply. He knew that wouldn't be enough for Hermione, but hopefully it would satisfy Colin. 'Would you mind if I went off to talk with Ron and Hermione? A lot happened out there this morning and I want to make sure they're all right.'
Ron, standing behind Colin, opened his mouth – likely to say that they were perfectly fine and why wouldn't they be – but Hermione elbowed him in the ribs. He glowered at her, rubbing it melodramatically, but he remained silent.
'Sure, Harry!' said Colin. 'Thanks for letting me come watch this morning. And thanks for letting me try this cloak, it was sooo cool! See you later!' He trotted off, and Harry was left in the Entrance Hall with his two friends.
'That was a very tactful way of handling that, Harry,' said Hermione.
'He's all right, Colin, but he can be a bit much in large doses,' said Harry.
'That's an understatement,' said Ron. 'So you were just telling him to bugger off without being rude? I get it. Nice one.'
'Ron!' Hermione snapped.
'Something like that,' said Harry. 'Are you all right, Hermione?'
'Oh, I'll be fine,' she said. 'It's not as if it's the first horrible thing anyone's ever said to me. And it's not as if I had any idea what it meant, so there wasn't any danger I'd have a strong emotional reaction to it or anything. I suppose that won't be true in future, though.'
The three of them ended up turning around and heading back outside, for they had promised to visit Hagrid that weekend, and as they had plenty of time before lunch and nothing else to do it seemed as good a time as any. The conversation inevitably fell to their confrontation with Malfoy, and Hagrid was incensed on Hermione's behalf which cheered her up immensely.
'Good thing Harry stopped yeh cursin' him though, Ron,' he said after a sip of tea. 'Mind, I don' blame yeh for wanting ter, but I 'spect Lucius Malfoy'd come marchin' up ter the school if yeh'd cursed his son. Least yer not in trouble.'
'That's what Harry said,' Ron replied. 'But I still say it would've been worth it. Foul little git.'
'I do appreciate you sticking up for me, Ron,' Hermione said, 'but I'm much happier that you didn't get in trouble.' Ron's ears went a little pink, but he didn't protest any more.
Hagrid showed them the giant pumpkins he'd been growing for Halowe'en, and they had some fun abusing Lockhart (to Hermione's chagrin) before they finally headed back to the castle to eat some lunch.
'You must be starving, Harry!' Hermione said as they traipsed up the hill to the front door.
'I'm all right,' he said. 'I grabbed a bite while I was waiting for you lot to sneak back.'
'How did you do that?' Ron asked. 'Breakfast would have been long over by then.'
Harry smiled wide. 'Remind me to show you where the kitchens are.'
~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~
The next few weeks went by agonizingly slowly. As Wood had predicted, Snape booked the pitch so often that Gryffindor was barely able to find any time at all to practice. What bothered Harry about this the most was that the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw teams would be affected by this too, but Snape wouldn't care as long as he was serving out his vendetta.
After a full week of this, with quidditch players from all three of the other houses grumbling about it amongst each other, Harry wrote an anonymous letter to Dumbledore explaining the situation. The quidditch schedule from then on had to be run by the headmaster personally each week, which meant each house once again had equal opportunities to practice.
This didn't put an end to Snape's vindictiveness, however. He never came out and said anything of course, but it was obvious he suspected someone from Gryffindor of ratting him out to the headmaster. Every member of the Gryffindor quidditch team started getting the same type of treatment in Potions class that Harry usually got: being called on for every question on topics that they hadn't covered yet, ridiculed for wrong answers and accused of cheating or showing off for right ones, "accidental" zeros when their work mysteriously disappeared, and being blamed for anything and everything that went wrong in class, this last of which often accompanied by a loss of house points or even detention.
Ron and Hermione were included in this, since it was known they had been there during the incident in question, and Ginny informed him that even Colin was getting his share of it. This absolutely incensed Harry, and he decided he would need to take matters into his own hands.
It was the end of the third week of school before he and Ginny were finally able to meet up in the Room of Requirement. He sneaked out of his dormitory at eleven as they'd planned, and crept through the common room, disillusioned. As he was better at casting the charm than Ginny, he'd surreptitiously passed her his invisibility cloak earlier in the evening.
When he reached the familiar seventh floor corridor across from Barnabus the Barmy's tapestry, he walked back and forth three times, thinking, 'I need a place where Ginny and I can work on our plans privately.' The two of them had worked out the exact phrasing in advance, so both of them would always be able to get in whether they were the first or second to arrive.
On the third pass, as always, the door appeared. He opened it, and found he had indeed beaten her here, and to his delight the room had come up with the absolute perfect layout for them.
There were armchairs and a table where they could sit and talk, as well as a loveseat if they wanted to sit together. Set apart from this was a workbench with a pair of high stools, full of empty scrolls of parchment both large and small, in case they needed to diagram out something specific. There was also a cauldron, scales, and a full potion making kit. Beyond that space was an open area with a padded floor should they need to work on spellwork. All along the walls were shelves of books and reference materials. The room had essentially created a cross between the old DA practice room and the drawing room at his and Ginny's home in Somerset.
Ginny arrived a few minutes later, removing the invisibility cloak as soon as the door clacked shut and taking a moment to look around and appreciate their surroundings much as he had done.
'It's really nice in here,' she said. 'Like if we started hosting DA meetings at the house.'
'I was just thinking the same thing!' Harry said, hurrying over to engulf her in a hug. She returned it enthusiastically. 'Let's go sit. I want you to catch me up on how you've been doing.' They hadn't had much opportunity to talk openly since the beginning of the school year, so all he knew was what she felt safe discussing in company.
'I think this is going to be harder than I thought,' she said, letting out a sigh as she plopped down on the loveseat and beckoned him to join her. He did so in short order, draping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her toward him. It was just like the old days. Well...almost.
'How do you mean?' he asked.
'Well, I've managed to hit it off well enough with both of them,' she said. 'And neither of them seem to have any problem with me, or with anyone else in the dorm, but they can't be around each other for more than twenty minutes without one of them having a go at the other.'
'That's more or less what you expected though, right?'
'It is, but it's still disheartening,' she said. 'I was hoping that as a secret adult, I might be able to exert a tempering influence on at least one of them like you did with Ron, but no luck so far on that front.'
'Do they outright hate each other again?'
'No!' said Ginny, exasperated. 'That's the crazy part! They'll be getting along perfectly fine and then all of a sudden one of them says or does something that sets the other one off and they're at each other like a pair of rabid kneazles. It's mental!'
'Sounds an awful lot like Ron and Hermione, actually,' said Harry, chuckling.
'They were never this bad, surely.'
'I don't know; you didn't spend a lot of time around the two of them your first few years here. They could be downright unbearable at times. They grew out of it. Mostly.'
'I suppose...'
'And didn't you say that Sharon and Rikissa full on hated each other in your first year until suddenly they didn't? And didn't we both compare them when they were older to Ron and Hermione? Sounds to me like youhavemade a difference already.'
"Hey, maybe you're right,' said Ginny, her face lightening. She gave him a squeeze around the middle. 'This is what I need you for. I was so focused on the negative I didn't even notice the plan was working!'
'That's usually my job.'
'Hush. What about you? Anything out of the ordinary?'
'Well, outside of stopping Ron cursing Malfoy, no. But you already know about that. Which reminds me! I want to do something about Snape.'
'Snape? What do you mean?'
'He's completely out of control. First he was trying to get back at the Gryffindor quidditch team and taking his frustrations out on everyone else, and when I ratted him out to Dumbledore for it he's decided to punish everyone on the team with an extra harsh version of his usual bullying tactics. And you said he's even going after Colin! As a kid I may have had to take it lying down, but not anymore. I want to get back at him.'
'Not that I'm not one hundred percent on board for getting back at Snape, but how do you expect to get away with it?'
'I don't need to get away with it; I just need to do it,' said Harry. 'What's Snape going to do to me, anyway? Detention? Please. He needs to be brought down more than one peg. If he were anyone else, I'd try to get him sacked – he shouldn't be able to get away with treating students like that – but there's a good reason for keeping him here, so I'll have to settle for seriously pissing him off instead.'
'Did you want my help?'
'You can if you want, but don't feel like you have to get dragged into trouble with me.'
'I know,' she said. 'I'm not worried about detention any more than you. Do you want my help or not?'
'I'd love it. In fact, I'm sure you can come up with something much more diabolical than I could, so I'm really glad you offered, actually.'
'Of course I did. Did you want to start planning now? We've got time and the perfect place to do it.'
'We do at that,' he said. 'But this shouldn't supplant all our other priorities. Have you been able to keep practicing those diagnostic spells?'
'Only a bit,' she admitted. 'But I think I've got the hang of them now. Most of them, anyway. Should we try it?'
'Lets,' he said. 'That'll be our work for the night, and we can worry about Snape starting tomorrow.'
'Sounds good to me.'
They rose from the loveseat and made their way over to the open, padded area. There they sat cross-legged across from one another and began to steady their breathing. The spell worked best when both the one casting it and the one being read were as calm and serene as possible. It wasn't normally cast by two people on each other simultaneously, but there was no reason that still shouldn't be the case.
'Are you ready?' Harry asked after about a minute of silent meditation.
'As I'm going to be,' said Ginny. 'On three?'
He nodded, and they raised their wands and began counting together. 'One...two...three.' They cast the spell in perfect unison, and Harry was at once filled with the odd sensations that accompanied this particular diagnostic. It was used by healers and investigators alike as a way to "see" and "feel" their way around something when they didn't know what they were looking for. It converted magical effects and enchantments into almost physical sensations to allow the caster to try and make sense of it. The downside, of course, was that it took a lot of practice to be able to correctly interpret those sensations, but the more one worked with the spell, the more reliable a method it became for finding answers.
'Are you getting anything?' Harry asked.
'No,' Ginny answered. 'Is this...am I doing it right?'
'You're doing fine; just keep your wand steady. Once our senses are fully attuned we can start poking around.'
'You say that like I'm supposed to know what it means.'
'I know,' he said. 'Sorry. There's not really a better way to explain how this spell works. You just sort of have to feel your way through it. It'll make sense once you get the hang of it.'
'If you say so.'
They sat for several minutes while the spell poked and prodded around. Harry had done this many times, and had yet to discover anything other than that odd resonance. He was hoping that the two of them together might be able to isolate it and perhaps even identify it. If it was caused by whatever was responsible for bringing them here, or keeping them here, following it back to its source was their best way out.
'Okay, I think I've got it,' said Ginny finally. 'I'm still not sensing anything, but I feel like I know how to look now at least.'
'Good,' said Harry. 'Follow my lead. I'll show you what I found before; maybe together we can get to the bottom of it.'
'All right.'
She let him take control, and he started searching for that faint echo once again. It had been a while, and he'd lost the sense for how to find it, so it took longer than he was expecting, but eventually he did find it. It was just as faint as ever – almost as if there was nothing there at all – but he was sure he sensed something.
'There it is again!' he announced. He tried to guide her to it, which was difficult as that was not actually part of the spell; as usual, he was making things up as he went along, but it seemed to be working so far.
'That's...what is that?' she asked. He could tell from her eyes the exact moment she felt it, too.
'Like I said; I don't know,' he replied. 'I've tried every method of detecting dark magic that I know, and found nothing. It wasn't until I branched out that I found this, literally the only thing of note I've detected so far.'
'You weren't kidding when you said you couldn't describe it,' she said. 'It's like...when you see something in the corner of your eye, but when you turn there's nothing there. Or when you feel someone watching you but there's no one. A shadow of a shadow.'
'But you definitely sense it?'
'Definitely,' she said, nodding. 'And you're sure it's not dark magic?'
'That's the only thing I am sure of. I'd be able to tell if it was; I'm confident enough to be certain. But other than that, I have no idea.' None that I want to give voice to yet, anyway.
'It feels...like a heartbeat,' she said, concentrating. 'No, that's not right. But something about it, like a vibration or a hum. Like a string that someone plucked.'
These descriptions all sounded very familiar; he was convinced now they were detecting the same thing, whatever it was.
'Any thoughts?' he asked. 'I'm all spent. I'd love some new perspective.'
'Hey, you're the auror,' she said. 'I'm just here for extra wand power. But if I had to guess, I'd say...no, that's absurd.' She shook her head. 'Never mind.'
'No, what?'
'Is it...are we connected by it? It feels like it's holding us somewhere.'
'"Holding" us?'
'Maybe? What do you think would happen if we tried to sever it?'
'I'm not entirely certain we could, but even so, I don't think it would be a good idea to try until we have a better idea what it is. I was hoping that with the two of us together, we'd be able to get a feel for it, or maybe even find something else I couldn't find on my own, but I'm starting to think this is really all there is.'
'Be patient, Harry, this is only the first time we've tried this,' she said. 'And you used all kinds of spells on us over the summer and on Easter hols. This is just the first one we've cast. We'll find something.'
'None of those other spells turned up anything at all,' he said. 'This is literally the only thing we have to go on.'
'Which makes it a good starting point, but we're not finished by any stretch of the imagination. Have you been to the library to look up what this might be?'
He shook his head. 'No. It's been a while, so I wanted to see if I could find it again and refresh my memory so I knew exactly what to search for.'
'That should be our next stop then. Do you reckon the book we need is in here?' she gestured to the myriad bookshelves lining the walls.
'I'd say yes, since that's how the room is supposed to work, but given that we don't know exactly what it is we're looking for...'
'Right,' she said, twisting her lip. 'Nothing can ever be easy, can it?'
'Not in my experience, no,' said Harry.
At Ginny's insistence, they tried a few of the other detection and diagnostic spells he'd taught her, all of which turned up nothing as before. Harry tried not to be discouraged. Ginny was right; this was only their first attempt. They had plenty of time. They left the room together under the invisibility cloak – something they hadn't done since dating at school, which brought back all sorts of fun and exciting memories – and when they arrived back at Gryffindor Tower, Harry took it and they crept back upstairs to their respective dorms. They could try again tomorrow.
Tomorrow netted them similar results, however. As did the night after that, and the night after that. By Wednesday, Harry was growing frustrated and suggested they shift their attention to Snape, who still showed no signs of relenting in his completely inappropriate behavior toward the Gryffindor quidditch team.
As soon as they started discussing ideas, they realized that pranking Snape was going to be exceedingly difficult. For one thing, they wouldn't be able to rely on any kind of potion, since they had no hope of surpassing his ability in that field, and he'd likely detect anything they tried to does him with. Likewise, he was very skilled at defensive magic as well, so a hex or a jinx, even one placed in advance, was not likely to catch him off guard. Anything that would be powerful enough or subtle enough to ensnare him would be too risky to try, in the unlikely event that it were ever traced back to them. In the end, it was Ginny who hit upon the solution. Much like Ron, she did so completely by accident.
'Arrgh, this is useless!' she growled after they'd ruled out another jinxing idea. 'We can't dose him with anything; we can't jinx him or hex him; we can't set up a trap; we can't do anything that a first or second year shouldn't be able to do, so basically we can't use any magic at all!'
'What was that?' Harry asked, his head snapping up.
'I said we basically can't use any magic at all; he'll see whatever it is coming a mile away or else we'll blow our cover! Or both!'
'Ginny, that's brilliant!'
'What? What's brilliant? What did I say?'
'We won't use magic! If we pull a muggle prank on him, he'll never see it coming!'
'A muggle prank? Like, no magic at all? How would that even work?'
'Oh come on, it's not that crazy. Muggles pull pranks on each other all the time! And if he's on the lookout for anything magical we might do to him, it's the only way to catch him unawares.'
'Do you even know any muggle pranks?' she asked.
'A few. Dudley pulled a number of them on me when we were young, and on teachers and other kids, too. And I've seen some in films and on TV.'
'All right,' she said. 'If you think it'll work then I'm all for it. What have you got in mind?'
Harry listed off every muggle prank he'd ever seen or heard of. Ginny laughed and declared that they were petty and juvenile, which was true, but was also the point, as Harry explained.
'That's what's going to irritate him the most,' he said. 'It's even better than pulling off something spectacular; that would just make him furious. This is going to needle him incessantly day after day; the fact that they're so childish is going to bother him as much as anything else.'
'You haven't really reverted to a twelve year old, have you?' Ginny asked, widening her left eye at him and looking him up and down.
'Maybe a bit,' he admitted. 'I do confess I fantasized about doing something like this more than once as a kid. But you have to admit; the way he's acting lately is completely unacceptable.'
'Yes,' she agreed. 'But there are other ways of dealing with that.'
'True. But they're far less satisfying. Also, I've a feeling that if he complains to Dumbledore about this, Dumbledore will want to know what prompted it, and he won't like that.'
'Fair point. And I'm not saying I don't want to go through with it,' she said. 'It just seems...silly.'
'We could use a bit of silly,' said Harry. He paused and thought for a moment, then laughed. 'And it doesn't get much sillier than this. We're taking a break from our plan to save the wizarding world in order to prank a teacher.'
Ginny laughed, too. 'And a muggle prank, at that. Oh, Fred and George would love to be in on this.'
'It'll kill them not knowing who did it,' said Harry, grinning.
'It really will. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they were able to figure it out eventually.'
'Snape will too,' said Harry. 'Or rather, he'll automatically suspect me as he always does; he'll just be right this time.'
'You're not concerned?'
Harry shrugged. 'What's he going to do? Try to humiliate me in class? Threaten to take points away? Try to intimidate me with vague threats? That's his default state when it comes to me, and he's already doing all of it anyway. Besides, he won't be able to prove anything, so worst case scenario he just refocuses all his ire back on me and leaves everyone else alone.'
'Hang on,' said Ginny. 'Was that really your plan all along?'
Damn. She really did know him inside and out.
'I won't deny I'm counting on it,' he said. 'But he really does deserve something, and it really will be fun.'
'Honestly, can you for once in your life stop being so bloody self-sacrificing?' she said, exasperated.
'Hey, come on, this isn't about that,' he said. 'You know as well as I do that Snape's never going to stop being Snape. No matter what anyone says or does, no matter what Dumbledore tells him or threatens him with, he'll always be a miserable, vindictive bully. I'm more than used to it, and since I'm not a kid anymore, he can't really get to me like he used to. Nobody else around here deserves to be treated like that.'
She looked at him contemplatively for several long seconds. 'I thought you made your peace with Snape,' she said finally.
'I did,' he said. 'I acknowledge what he did for us – for me – and I'm grateful for it. I was even impressed; its rare to find someone with that level of courage. I'll always owe him for it and I'll honor his memory accordingly like I promised. But I'm never going to like him. He's not a nice person, Ginny, nor do I think he has any interest in trying to be one. A few heroic deeds don't excuse his kind of behavior. I mean for Merlin's sake, did you know he was Neville's boggart? What kind of teacher is their student's worst fear?'
'I remember hearing that, but I thought it was just a silly rumor,' said Ginny.
'It was real. And so, I might add, was what Neville transformed the boggart into, which was bloody hilarious. But that's beside the point.'
'Really?' she howled with laughter. 'With the vulture hat and everything?' Harry gave her a withering look, and she cleared her throat and composed herself. 'Right. Okay, so I see where you're coming from. It's not like I wouldn't love to take the greasy git down a peg or two myself. I just didn't want you to lose all the progress you made after everything happened, but if you say you're all right, you're all right. Let's do it, then.'
They started simple. One of the most common muggle pranks that Harry was aware of involved setting something atop a door to fall on someone when it opened. As he would never expect anyone – save perhaps Crabbe or Goyle – to ever fall for this, they modified it slightly. They filled a bucket with stinksap and suspended it from the ceiling in Snape's store cupboard. From there, they set off a dungbomb inside it (both to lure him in and to disguise the smell), and rigged a trip wire to the door that would tip the bucket on him the moment he entered. Sneaking in and out unseen was tricky, and they did use a levitation charm to rig the bucket (though he supposed they could have just as easily used a step ladder), but there were no spells whatsoever surrounding the prank itself. Even Snape wouldn't notice it until it was too late.
Harry felt delightfully petty and childish setting up this trap. It was the sort of ridiculous fun he hadn't really been able to have since sneaking around Umbridge in his fifth year – and even then, the stakes had been immeasurably higher. He made sure to let Ginny know how much he appreciated her indulging him.
'It's not exactly a big ask,' she told him cheerily. 'I'm having fun, too.'
The hardest part would be setting off the dungbomb without being physically present. They finally set upon the solution of a long fuse, which would burn for nearly twenty minutes before igniting the dungbomb. This would ensure that neither of them were anywhere near the cupboard at the time it went off. Unfortunately, it also meant that they wouldn't be able to witness Snape's reaction, but they consoled themselves that they would at least hear about it.
As luck would have it, Stephen and Natalie were in Potions when it went off, and they were not stingy on the details when they met Harry and Ron in the library that afternoon to play chess.
'You should have seen it!' Stephen said after relating the tale to them, barely containing his laughter. 'He was completely covered in it! The smell was horrible, but his face! Absolutely priceless! I think he could have killed whoever he looked at; he was so furious.'
'Of course, we were all afraid to laugh,' said Natalie, 'but it was really hard not to. One of the tensest potions lessons we've ever had.'
'And there's no clue as to who did it?' Hermione asked.
'None,' said Stephen. 'He threatened us all, of course, but I don't think it was anyone in our class.'
'It'll be Fred and George,' said Ron. 'No doubt about it.'
'I don't know,' said Harry. 'If this was their doing, I kind of feel like they would have been boasting about it already. Besides, it seems a little too simple for them.'
'You do have a point,' said Ron. 'I'll ask them about it. If they admit it or deny it, it was them. If it wasn't them, they're likely to give their opinion on how well it was done.'
'That sounds about right,' said Harry.
As it turned out, the twins did have a lot to say regarding the prank. They were interested with who did it, and they awarded it "high marks for target selection and nerve, poor marks for creativity, but decent marks for execution." Harry was reasonably happy with this assessment, but Ginny thought they could do better.
They continued badgering Snape for the next several days. They replaced the sugar at his place at breakfast with salt, and then his salt at dinner with sugar (he was savvy enough not to get caught the second time). They rearranged and relabeled all the supplies in his cupboards, slipped stinging nettles into his shoes, and Harry's personal favorite: lowered his chair by an inch and a half so that when he went to sit in it, he overbalanced and tumbled to the floor. Gloriously, this happened to him four times before he finally cottoned on that there was a problem, and even then he was never able to ascertain what the problem was. They sneaked back in and reset it to its original height before he was able to thoroughly examine it.
By the end of the week, Snape was a towering thunderhead, snapping at nearly everyone and everything he came across. Most of the student body was scared out of their wits; it was all Harry and Ginny could do to keep from bursting out laughing every time they saw him storm by.
Potions on Friday was as tense as it had ever been; even the Slytherins were on tenterhooks, terrified of doing or saying anything that might set Snape off. He'd already shouted at Goyle for coughing and threatened Pansy Parkinson with detention for daring to ask him to repeat an instruction.
When the lesson was over, everyone began packing as quickly and silently as they could, eager to get far away from the furious potions master as soon as possible.
'Potter!' Snape practically shouted. 'Stay and see me after class.'
His house mates looked at him with sympathy, and Ron and Hermione looked as though he were off to his execution. Even a few of the Slytherins (not Malfoy, of course) looked as though they might pity him a little.
'Yes, sir?' he asked calmly once everyone else was gone.
'Come up here, Potter,' Snape snarled, beckoning Harry to his desk at the front of the classroom.
'Sir?' he repeated once he arrived, putting on an air of utmost innocence.
'This childish nonsense will cease immediately, Potter,' Snape growled through gritted teeth. 'Do I make myself clear?'
'What do you mean, sir?' he asked.
'Do not play innocent with me, Potter. I know you are behind the parade of childish pranks I have had to deal with this week.'
'What pranks, sir?' By avoiding direct eye contact and responding with only questions, Harry was reasonably certain Snape's legilimency wouldn't be able to sniff out any proof of deception. And even if he did, he'd have a rough time explaining where he got it.
'I SAID DO NOT PLAY INNOCENT!' Snape shouted. 'The stinksap, the salt, my potions stores, whatever was done to my chair; I know it was you and you will stop immediately! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?'
'What makes you think it was me, sir?' Harry asked.
'Because, Potter, I know exactly who you are. A nasty, arrogant little boy who considers rules to be beneath him. Exactly like your father.' Harry's temper flared, but he managed to tamp it down and keep his face calm.
'But I never knew my father, sir,' he said.
'That is immaterial!'
'More to the point, sir, if someone's been pranking you, don't think you think you ought to tell Professor Dumbledore?'
'The headmaster need not be involved,' said Snape, back on track. 'I am telling you now that this is to be the end of it, and you will obey.'
'But what if it's not me, sir?'
'IT IS YOU, AND YOU KNOW VERY WELL IT IS!'
'How do you know?'
Snape's face puffed up like a bullfrog and a vein throbbed in his forehead. Harry was trying to make him admit to something he had no intention of admitting to.
'I think, sir, that whoever's been doing this must have a reason,' he went on. Snape was either too flummoxed or too livid to speak, which gave him an opening. 'I don't think it came out of nowhere. If you talked to Professor Dumbledore, he might be able to help you figure out what that reason might be, and then you could find the culprit. I'll even go with you, if you want.'
'I have told you that the headmaster need not be involved,' Snape said, finding his voice. The cold fury with which he now spoke sent a chill up even Harry's spine.
'I really think he should be, sir. Pranking a teacher like this is a serious matter, don't you think? Don't you want to know why it's been happening? And anyway, if you really think it's me who's been doing it, I'll want to talk to him myself anyway. We might as well go together.' He at last met Snape's eyes as he said this last part, making sure his implication was clear: if Snape was going to drag this out any further, it would mean coming clean to Dumbledore about his behavior toward Gryffindor and his motivation behind it.
Snape stood frozen still for several tense moments, grinding his teeth. Finally he jerked his arm toward the classroom door.
'Get out,' he spat. 'Get out of this classroom this instant.'
'Sir?'
'I've got my eye on you, Potter. If I find proof you're responsible for so much as a pair of tweezers being out of place at any point, you'll be in detention until the end of the school year. Expelled, if I can manage it. Do I make myself clear?'
'Absolutely, sir,' said Harry, and he turned and walked calmly out of the room.
Ron and Hermione were waiting for him around the first corner in the corridor outside.
'Are you all right?'
'What did he want?'
'I'm fine,' he told them. 'He wanted to know who was behind all the pranks being pulled on him.'
'Why would he ask you?' Hermione asked, puzzled.
'Because he thought it was me.'
'That's ridiculous!' Hermione gasped. 'Why would he think that?'
'I don't know,' said Ron. 'Harry's got more of a reason to hate Snape than just about anybody here.'
'Well, perhaps, but that doesn't automatically make him the culprit,' countered Hermione. 'Did he offer any proof?'
'Of course not,' said Harry. 'He basically admitted to assuming it was me purely because he doesn't like me. But he couldn't prove it, and as I obviously didn't confess to anything, I haven't got detention or anything.'
'I should think not!' said Hermione.
'I'm surprised,' said Ron. 'I wouldn't put it past Snape to give you detention anyway, proof or no proof.'
'Nor would I,' Harry agreed. 'But he didn't seem keen on the idea of talking to Dumbledore about it, so that probably put him off punishing me without cause.'
'Why wouldn't he want to talk to Dumbledore?' Hermione asked.
'Come on, Hermione, isn't it obvious?' Ron asked. 'Whoever's doing this is probably trying to get back at him for the way he's been treating Gryffindor lately. If he went to Dumbledore he'd have a lot of explaining to do. I bet he was hoping he could just intimidate you into making it stop, Harry.'
'It would've worked on me,' said Hermione, shivering. 'Not that I'd ever pull such childish tricks in the first place, mind.'
'I reckon you're right, Ron,' said Harry. 'And he probably doesn't have anyone else on his suspect list past me, assuming he hasn't already gone after Fred and George.'
'He'll have an even harder time intimidating them than you,' said Ron, laughing. 'Not that it matters, since we already know it isn't them.'
The three of them speculated on the possible suspects all the way up to lunch. Harry was delighted to learn that neither of them considered the possibility of him being responsible even the slightest bit plausible.
Harry informed Ginny that night about his conversation with Snape. She was impressed by how he handled it.
'Oh, to have been there in your invisibility cloak.'
'Let's hold off for a bit and see what he does,' Harry said. 'If he lays off Gryffindor, we'll know he's gotten the message.'
'But won't that just him even more likely to suspect that you're behind it all?'
'Oh, I'm counting on that. But as long as he can't prove it, he can't do anything. Not without implicating himself, anyway. And all this would have been for nothing if he didn't understand why we were doing it in the first place.'
'If you say so,' said Ginny. 'I just worry that this could turn out to be a very exhausting year.'
'Never had one of those before.'
~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~
~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~
~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~
Most of this was written in November during my NaNoWriMo blitz. But it started to get away from me, as so often happens, and then I got bogged down with holiday stuff. I wanted to get it in before the new year though, so I buckled down on NYE to finish it off. Hope y'all enjoyed it, and Happy New Year!
If you could find the time to leave a review, I'd be very much obliged. ^_^