An Incomplete Potter Collection ch Collection 9
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Occulemency Lessons
Water Translation
Arriving in Hogsmeade
The Mind of a Cat
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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
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Story: [Occulemency Lessons]
Summary: Snape's teaching methods causes a bit of a situation. Which Snape's attempts to rectify then snowballs into something truly bizarre.
Genre: Humor, Crack
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"Clear your mind Potter!" Snape shouted at him.
Considering how this was his first lesson, that Snape hadn't explained what 'clearing your mind' entailed, and that he was given all of three and a half seconds before the man responded to his confusion by continuing the lesson, Harry didn't stand a chance.
"Legilimens!"
The fact that Snape saw no real point in being subtle about entering the mind of Gryffindor's Golden Boy didn't make it any better.
Which Harry promptly displayed by twitching oddly a few times and then falling over.
Snape blinked as he stared at the unconscious form of his student. He hadn't even managed to get to any of the boy's memories. He'd just collapsed on entry. And now he was foaming at the mouth.
It was at this point in time that Severus Snape realized that he was in trouble.
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"Detention Weasley." Snape hissed at the boy who'd nearly bowled him over when turning a corner.
"Gahk!" Ron clutched at his chest. "Bloody hell, Harry. You scared me!" Ron chuckled in relief. "I thought you were someone else."
Snape blinked, realizing that he'd again forgotten who he was 'dressed' as. It was becoming a reoccurring issue for him, though – as Weasley so helpfully demonstrated – nobody was suspecting him for it yet.
"Sorry, Ron." 'Harry' told the redheaded dolt.
It was going to be a long day, Snape mused tiredly as he the boy started chattering on about quidditch.
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It'd seemed like such a fine idea in the beginning.
With Potter's mind having been... accidentally broken in their first Occulemency lesson, Snape was left holding what could easily translate into a lifetime sentence in Azkaban – though, admittedly, it was hard to find a sentence in Azkaban that wasn't lifetime.
Of course, Snape being Snape, he'd concocted a brilliant plan of hiding exactly who was responsible for the accursed brat's coma. The plan basically consisted of pretending to be Potter through polyjuice until he could find someone else to pin the deed on.
Unfortunately, he'd been forced to shift the idea a little in order to create an alibi for himself, which meant that he'd stolen himself a time-turner so that he could both teach as a Professor, and learn as a student.
Which was where the unpleasantness had started.
A Harry that sneered at everyone not of Slytherin, a Snape that greeted Gryffindors warmly – he was a good actor – and the few moments added onto each other until his paranoia waited for Dumbledore to pop out of the woodwork and start harassing him about his deceitful behavior.
Instead, Dumbledore had cheerfully told him that he was proud of Snape for finally allowing himself to make friends with his students. And Slytherin was starting to become too confused about his behavior to feel even remotely comfortable in his vicinity, going to great lengths to avoid their Head of House.
He could handle that though. He didn't like the brats anyway.
What disturbed him was that he'd socked Draco in the face for calling Potter's mother a 'mudblood', and then started yelling about him badmouthing his mother. Whilst not in Harry-disguise.
It wasn't that he'd approved of Draco badmouthing Lily, or that he regretted socking the little git in the face, but it certainly hadn't helped clear up the confusion that his peculiar behavior as of late had created amongst both Slytherins as well as Junior Death Eaters.
He really needed a drink.
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Story: [Water Translation]
Summary: The single most frustrating symptom of showering, might lead to the single most efficient way of figuring out a solution.
Genre: Humor, Crack
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Harry shook his head, annoyed.
It was one thing to be forced to out-fly a dragon, it was an entirely different matter to do so and not end up having to take a shower due to the rapid temperature-changes that came from its fire-breath.
So, he'd taken a shower, because he quite frankly didn't want to take part in a surprise party when he smelled like a boy's changing room. It kind of put a damper on his interactions with his surroundings, knowing that they'd be able to smell him.
Which was why he was now annoyed.
Harry tilted his head and jerked it up and down a few times to no effect.
The bloody water wouldn't damn well get out, and it was driving Harry mad.
Shaking his head again, Harry tried to focus on the 'surprise' party that Gryffindor had sprung on him – considering the amount of parties Gryffindor tended to spring on people for little to no reason, out-flying a dragon in front of the entire school made it rather obvious that some manner of celebration was bound to happen.
Finally however, the cheering mass tried to convince him to open the Golden Egg so that they could all hear the clue.
And that's when Harry first heard the song, singing about 'something he'd sorely miss'. Though, admittedly, it was a bit hard to hear it over the screaming and flailing of his housemates as they tried to get him to shut the Egg again.
Harry frowned at them. "Shut up, I'm trying to listen!" He hissed as he tried to memorize the entire song.
When they'd managed to convince him to close it, Gryffindor came to the conclusion that it must've been specifically charmed so that only one of the Champions could hear it. When Harry woke up the next day, and found it screeching awfully when he'd tried to get another crack at the clue, that explanation went out the window.
After an entire day of experiments, Harry managed to get water stuck in only one of his ears, and promptly learned that it was very disturbing to hear both the screeching and the song simultaneously.
On the third day after out-flying the dragon, Harry knew to prepare for a visit into the Black Lake come February.
'Sheer dumb luck' is a funny thing.
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Story: [Arriving in Hogsmeade]
Summary: Hermione's experiment goes a tiny bit wrongly, and the trio ends up in an alternate reality. Not that they know that yet.
Genre: Humor, Crack, Friendship
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The ground shook underneath their feet as another wave of magic washed over them.
Then, it happened.
In a space that had previously been empty, suddenly there was something new, its arrival kicking up a cloud of dust that hid whatever object had caused it from sight.
"Bloody hell!" A voice shouted from within the cloud of dust.
"Ronald Bilius Weasley! I will tear out your ribcage and shove it down your throat!" A feminine voice cried in rage.
"What did'ya say?! I can't hear you!" A third voice joined the chorus from the dust-cloud.
"I wasn't speaking to you, Harry! Now, shut up before I break your kneecaps!" The feminine voice turned its ire towards the slightly bewildered one.
"What did you just call my mother?!" The bewildered voice demanded, seemingly working itself into a fury.
"Shut up, Harry!" The feminine voice yelled back at the confused voice.
"Bloody hell!" The first voice exclaimed once again.
There was a pause, and the sound of something moving, and possibly impacts.
"Get her off! Get her off!" The first voice begged.
"Shite! 'Mione! Stop it! You'll kill him!" The previously confused voice exclaimed, just as the sound of a roar of feminine fury reached the onlookers.
Not that the onlookers could actually see anything, due to the dust-cloud.
"Look at what he did to my books! He ruined them!" The feminine voice argued, sounding like she was struggling. "Let me just flatten his head out like a pancake!"
"Bloody hell, Hermione! Why the hell is it my fault?! You're the one who wanted to do all those bloody experiments!" The first voice demanded, sounding indignant and quite angry.
"You ruined my books!" The feminine voice shouted back, sounding near-rabid in her own fury.
"It was your bloody experiment! That makes it your own bloody fault!" The first voice argued.
"Merlin's pants, I thought that the sexual tension was supposed to stop once you two started shagging." The confused voice muttered loudly.
"Harry!" / "Oi!" Both of the other two voices seemed to pause in their argument to turn their anger at the third.
"I'm just calling it like I'm seeing it." The voice defended itself.
And that was the moment when the dust finally settled, and the crowd was finally able to see just who the three voices belonged to.
A redheaded boy was sitting on the ground, a girl with bushy hair nearly in his lap – though both of them were turned towards the third member – from where she'd probably been trying to inflict harm upon the source of her annoyance.
The third person stood on his own, looking exasperated and annoyed at what was apparently a couple. His hair was black and looked to be the victim of a very localized tornado, he wore glasses that appeared to have been mended repeatedly, and his eyes were a shocking shade of nearly luminescent green.
The standing boy blinked, looking around at the revealed surroundings.
"Well, that's new." He commented absently.
"Your experiment sent us to Hogsmeade?" The redhead asked incredulously. "What? You no longer wanted to bother with Apparating, like us average mortals?"
"Shut up, Ron!" The girl huffed. "And it wasn't supposed to do anything of the sort!" Then she paused, considering. "I wonder how it made it through the wards like that? It'd have to-..." She seemed to trail off in thought.
"So, your experiment failed, because it did something unexpected, and now we're in Hogsmeade as a result?" The black-haired boy summarized. "Maybe it's a sign?"
The redhead snorted. "To do what? Grab a butterbeer and wander around? You do remember that we flunked Divination, right?"
"I should've gotten an automatic pass." The black-haired boy grumbled.
"Mate, just because you're subject to a prophecy, doesn't mean you're qualified to make them." The redhead grinned at him.
"Divination isn't a valid subject!" The girl interrupted the two boys, sounding slightly hysterical. "Or I wouldn't have flunked it!"
The redhead reined in his grin, and reached over to pat the girl on her shoulder. "There, there."
"If it makes you feel any better, she probably flunked us in revenge for accidentally wrecking the Hall of Prophecies that one time." The black-haired boy grinned momentarily, before the joy behind it dimmed somewhat. "Damn, I should probably go piss on Umbridge's grave again."
"Quit doing that, mate." The redhead glared at him. "There are people who're trying to dance there, and the smell ain't getting any better."
Harry scoffed. "I have seniority."
"That doesn't make it any less of a dick-move." The redhead reminded him.
"Shut up! Both of you!" The girl hissed, looking like she was trying to think.
"Right, right." The redhead shook his head and crawled back to his feet. "How about you think about what went wrong over a butterbeer?" He asked the girl, smiling slightly as he held out a hand to the girl who'd apparently been trying to kill him only moments before.
The girl opened her mouth to argue, but then her frown softened. "Fine." And with a resigned – and possibly quite fond – sigh, she grabbed the offered hand and pulled herself to her feet.
"Great." The black-haired boy grinned as he fell into step with the couple.
Only to have all three of them pull to a sudden stop as they took in the surrounding onlookers.
"Uhh... Hi?" The black-haired boy greeted them, looking rather uncomfortable with the attention they were receiving. "Something on your minds?"
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Story: [The Mind of a Cat]
Summary: Spending ones childhood as a cat can cause a child to act quite strangely indeed.
Genre: General
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The first thing to remember about being a cat is... well, that you are a cat.
It's not the sudden increase in the size of everything-that-isn't-you, or walking on four legs, or even the tail, that actually cause issues. No, the big problems are generally caused by the brain.
Because you now have a cat-brain, and cats aren't humans.
In much the same way that a bird of prey may be instinctively inclined to swoop down from the sky to grab at small rodents running around the underbrush, a cat will be inclined to do things that we as humans believe to be highly peculiar.
There's the cleaning, of course, being rather obvious. It should however be noted that it's more of an instinctual necessity than any actual desire to lick themselves all over. Firstly, because the cat's rough tongue is generally quite well suited for brushing loose hair out of its fur, and secondly, because water is unpleasant as fuck.
The second explanation for their way of cleaning themselves is a combination of many things, but among those, firstly it should be noted that whiskers are cool, and useful, and very different from any sensory organ that you as a human have previously experienced.
Whiskers allow a cat to touch things, to be absolutely aware of the size of its own head, something which is of vital importance when you realize that a cat can fit through most any space if it can get its head through the opening. Basically, instead of getting stuck with their head through a crack in a fence, they brush it with their whiskers and asks themselves if this is a good idea or not.
Which brings us back to the earlier point about water being uncomfortable. Water makes hair cling, and whiskers, in spite of their amazing utility factor, is still only hair. So the whiskers cling to the cat, and the cat realizes that the opening is too tight to squeeze through, but there's no opening, and it's out completely in the open, only there's water everywhere and it can't get away from the clingy feeling even when it finally escapes from the water.
So, water to a cat is a bit like closed spaces are to humans with claustrophobia, only it's genetic.
There are other reasons, such as a cat's fur not drying out comfortably, and how it gets impossibly cold even when the water ought to be hot to the touch. A good demonstration for how it feels for a cat, would be for a human to walk into the shower wearing clothes, because even when the heat is on to the point of burning what the water from the shower-muzzle directly touches, everything else will feel like ice.
You will by now most likely have some idea of what it's like to be a cat. Or at least a reason why a cat would decide that licking itself clean makes an awful lot more sense than willingly exposing itself to a horrible combination of hypothermia and claustrophobia.
There are of course more differences in how you perceive the world as a cat, but that's generally down to things like catnip, sudden motions, and the sudden willingness to sink your teeth into another living and kicking creature and feel it die.
So yeah, not really anything particularly interesting to consider.
... Alright, fine. The desire to kill things might come as a bit of a shock to some people. But it should be remembered that cats are hunters by nature, and despite how 'tame' cats supposedly are to be regarded as pets, they were never technically tamed upon their inclusion into our society. They were simply kept around because having a cat eat all the rats was a lot more pleasant than trying to tame a snake that wanted to poison you for your insolence.
Cats are also generally not big enough that you'd have to worry about them attacking humans in their sleep, much like elephants don't really have to worry about foxes. Add this to the fact that they can't truly be used for hunting on command, like pack animals such as wolves could be trained into doing, and suddenly there was not much point in bothering to tame them beyond making sure that they didn't pee on the furniture.
So, cats are quite similar to wild animals in their behavioral patterns, though their bodies have been bred into being more aesthetically pleasing to us humans, until they're not really fit for life in the wilderness any longer.
Still, this means that as a cat, you're now suddenly assaulted by the desire to maim things on a regular basis. Mostly, this inclination can be oppressed, since it's only really going to appear when you're given the opportunity, and the prey of cats have a tendency to flee at the sight of a cat. But sometimes, you're going to be reminded of the truth of it.
Now, technically, this isn't really that big of an issue to deal with, even for a human that is suddenly a cat. Unless, of course, the human has a phobia for rats, or is a vegetarian. The clashing between the nature of one's species, and the individual's ideologies, rarely end well.
However, with the exception of spending a few days puking your guts out as your worldview falls apart at the seams, this still only very rarely truly leads to any more long-term complications.
Unless someone screws up the transformation of their brain somehow, or stays stuck in a feline state-of-mind until it becomes their personality even when returning to human form.
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Minerva McGonagall knew a lot about being a cat, having spent moments as one for several decades now, but she didn't truly understand what it was like to be a cat when one wasn't a cat. Because she was skilled enough not to fudge the transformation, and had no real reason to spend night and day for several months as a cat.
Being a cat would in fact be heavily detrimental to her duties as a Vice Headmaster of Hogwarts. Cats, having no opposable thumbs, were quite bad at doing paperwork, after all.
Still, this dedication to her duties meant that she honestly didn't know what to do about the young boy sitting in front of her, his hands still splattered with red after he'd killed a troll in cold blood.
It wasn't that she was against him killing the troll – though he ought to have left it to the faculty to deal with the danger – or against him saving a fellow student's life – even if she should've been present at the Feast, or on her way to the dormitory, not in a bathroom. But the fact of the matter was that he was a First Year, and First Years shouldn't be able to casually stab another living creature in the throat when it was already rendered unconscious.
He hadn't even done it out of spite, or anger. Simply calm, cold efficiency.
In the light of that, she ought to give him detention, because Albus wanted to shove it into the young boy's mind that killing other living creature was wrong.
However, doing so would also serve to place her in the situation where she was punishing a brave young boy for saving one of her own favorite students. That might not be the actual reason, but Minerva knew enough about children to know that that would be the reaction that she would be receiving.
So, she was caught between punishing the boy for ending the life of another creature, and alienating him to the point where she might never be able to get him to listen to her again. Or rewarding him for saving a fellow student, and giving him future incitement to kill again.
There weren't really any correct choices, and she knew that Albus would be breathing down her neck about this – the man's priorities had always been a bit peculiar – but it looked a lot more promising to say 'well done' and then tell him of Albus's frustration at him.
She felt her lips twitch in dry amusement. It wasn't every day that Minerva managed to pin the blame on her boss.
So, even if she knew that he would be quite upset with her indeed when she told him of young Mr Potter's punishment, and that Snape would be sneering at her and speak of 'blatant favoritism' for months to come, she decided that it would probably be worth it.
"I will advice you, Mr Potter, not to carry around a knife. It is seen as inappropriate, and it would reflect badly on you in the future." She started neutrally. "I would also like to point out that our Headmaster has given me the task of explaining to you of the virtue of living creatures, and how such things should not be ended without very good reasons. Normally, I would agree with him, seeing as how the troll was already disabled. However, considering the lack of faculty present when you actually committed the act, it can be considered as a precaution towards it getting back up again, which is more a thing of practical resourcefulness than aggression."
"Will I be punished?" The boy asked in a kind of bored curiosity, that they'd all grown quite used to over the last month of classes.
"You will not be punished for the execution of a troll who made it past the school's wards and endangered the life of a fellow student." Minerva explained, before raising a calm eyebrow at her. "I will be expecting that unless similarly extreme circumstances appear, that this will not be your response however. There are many dangerous things out there, and the decision of whether they should be disposed of for the safety of others, should be left to those in charge of such things."
There, clear and concise. Killing the troll in an attempt to keep it from hurting others again, will not be frowned upon in this environment. But should it happen elsewhere or under different circumstances, actions will be taken.
Hopefully, she'd managed to slip past the losing scenarios she'd found herself surrounded by, and with a little luck maybe he'd even listen to her and stay out of trouble in the future.
She wasn't holding her breath though.
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