Chapter 10: Two Steps Forward
Disclaimer is in the first chapter. R.R at the bottom. Please note Mr Clovetoes is now Mr Silver. Poll at the bottom.
Harry sighed as he wandered into the Great Hall and his skin promptly began glowing a rather sickly green. Installing enchantment bubbles in various choke points around the castle meant maximum coverage, but also necessitated sacrificing yourself. He glanced up at the words on the wall – from Mr Silver and Miss Pebbles, with love. It didn't make him feel much better. In all honesty, he was unbothered by the glowing enchantment. He just wasn't looking forward to the random-activating expelliarmus. The spell had been his own idea, until George got bored and decided that it wasn't breakfast without a food fight… and since the food fight they'd started in their own first year earned them a month's detention, they'd begged Hermione to help them research a way to randomize Harry's spell. It also had the funny side-effect of causing the Hermione's Glow Charm to be chosen at random too, which was why the Headmaster was glowing lilac, McGonagall Slytherin silver, Snape an all-too-cheery blue, and Colin hot pink.
"Morning," Harry said, sitting down at the table and reaching for an apple.
Ron, whose glow was a similar shade of red to his hair, mumbled something through a mouthful that was probably a 'Good Morning' but also might have been a 'Hoop Earrings'. Hermione smacked his shoulder with a yellow-glowing hand.
"Bit tame, this," Dean commented, attacking his toast with the marmalade.
"Especially after the punch," Seamus agreed.
"You do realise that could have just been Fred and George, right?" Neville asked.
"They spend the day before scaring us all witless, remember?" Dean shook his head. "The Gang might not have claimed the punch, but it was definitely them. After that, glowing puce just isn't interesting."
"Speak for yourself, I look like a flower," Seamus grumbled, crossing his arms.
Ron snorted, dropped his spoon, and ducked under the table to get it.
"Not all flowers are pink," Neville commented mildly. "You're more candyfloss coloured."
Seamus growled and stuffed two whole eggs into his mouth as Ron snorted and popped up again.
"Personally, I think these colours mean something," Hermione said. "I mean, colour psychology is a thing in the muggle world. They probably muddled the colours intentionally, though, I mean, that's what I would do. Ooh, I wonder what spell they used? They could make the skin glow, I suppose, or maybe draw on the magical aura…"
"Now I'm enjoying this even less," Seamus groaned.
Hermione sniffed, ignoring a small yelp from the Hufflepuff table as an orange landed in the porridge pot. "Well, you can kiss goodbye to any chance of replicating the spell, then…"
"Maybe," Ron said thickly, "They just meant to make everyone paranoid."
"They're doing it wrong, then. I mean, this –" Dean stopped as his butter knife went sailing from his fingers and narrowly missed Alicia Spinnet. "Wow, that went far."
"Don't kill the sporty ones," Seamus said.
"What about the rest?" Hermione asked indignantly.
Neville sighed. "Not this argument again…" he said, as there was a loud splash from the Ravenclaw table and several shrieks.
"You know," Harry said, finishing his bacon, "Everyone seems to have a bad case of the butterfingers today."
"Yeah, Warrington just hit Parkinson with a pear," Ron agreed.
There was contemplative silence for a moment, before Angelina Johnson lost her fork to a spot on the Hufflepuff table a few inches away from Cedric Diggory's fingers.
"You know," Seamus commented, "I always wondered why the Weasley twins never started throwing food."
"What the hell, Vaisey!" someone yelled from the Slytherin table.
Neville put his head in his hands. "We're doomed, aren't we."
An undersized Ravenclaw was hit on the side of the face with a banana, and promptly threw a bowl of porridge back.
"Aaand…" Fred (or maybe George) commented, holding up a finger.
"Food fight!" Terry Boot yelled. To be fair, he was entirely coated in pumpkin juice.
"Called it," Fred-George said smugly.
Within a few seconds, Hermione was hiding behind a shield charm as the Ravenclaw table turned into a mess of flying, edible objects. Not long after, someone missed their shot and hit Ernie MacMillan on the nose with a banana, causing the Hufflepuffs to get dragged into the chaos, not that they seemed to mind, judging by the way Susan Bones dumped a pitcher of juice over her best friend Hannah's head. The Weasley twins, for their part, didn't bother waiting to be pulled in and started banishing Cheeri-Owls at the prefects. The Ravenclaw prefects ranged between unamused and distracted by flying sausages; the Hufflepuff prefects hit one of the twins in the eye with a piece of toast.
The turning point, however, was when Pucey got nailed with the contents of a jar of peanut butter. As Snape dropped his head onto the table, a few very inventively launched pieces of food left the green table. For once, this was met not by boos but by laughter, not that those nearby didn't reply in kind. By this point, Seamus was levitating flaming toast, Lavender and Neville had taken cover under the table, and a rather irritating fellow who was apparently named Cormac McLaggen had been knocked out by an entire bowl of fruit banished across the room. One would have thought the Great Hall had reached peak chaos by the time Professor Flitwick was knocked off his chair by a perfectly spelled pile of waffles.
Unfortunately for anyone hoping for de-escalation, the owls showed up a minute later. They ranged from confused to irritated to appreciative of flying food. The confused ones flew in circles and generally got knocked out of the sky, the irritated ones dive-bombed people in puffs of feathers, and the hungry ones stole people's missiles. Dumbledore tried to call for order, but was ignored and hit by a buttered pancake. The thing about young wizards, something noted by the Gang long ago, was once you had them riled up, they just didn't stop. By the time Harry got up to leave the Great Hall, accompanied by a bacon-stealing Hedwig, he was covered in marmalade and Pixie Puffs, had milk in his hair, and was sporting a moderately-sized bruise on the arm from a high-speed apple core. At this point, he was more irritated about the fact someone had thrown a half-eaten piece of food at him than he was about the bruise.
The house elves, for their part, were confused at this strange human tradition, though strangely happy at the enthusiasm by which their work had been used, never mind it was meant for eating.
The perfect thing about these pranks, Harry thought as he spied on 3rd-year transfiguration with Ron and Hermione, was that they were completely blameless.
"Puffskeins!" Ginny blurted. Professor McGonagall stared at her.
"Open sesame!" a Ravenclaw boy said, looking slightly terrified.
McGonagall frowned. "Are you alright, Miss Weasley, Mister Cornfoot?"
"Never gonna let you down," Luna commented, though nobody seemed to think this was strange.
"Spaghetti is made of worms!" Colin chirped, entirely unbothered.
"I've lost my toad," a Gryffindor girl mumbled.
"Snape is a dungeon bat!" A Ravenclaw girl said, looking far too pleased with herself.
McGonagall sighed. "The next person to speak will be losing five points from their house."
"Can you transfigure mistletoe from missiles and toes?" asked a Gryffindor boy.
"Blishwick –" McGonagall began.
"Chips, crisps, fries, what's the difference?" someone from the back called out.
"Luke, I am your father!" said a confused Ravenclaw pure-blood. Luke Dawson, for his part, thought this was hilarious.
"Class!" McGonagall snapped.
"I like turtles. Turtles are very nice. In fact, I think turtles should become the new house symbol."
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"Frogs."
"This is a public service announcement. Sirius Black is hot."'
"Please ignore the prior announcement. Sirius Black is an idiot."
"This was an awful idea."
"Dobby is free-ee-ee!"
"Lots of love, Messrs. Brushtail and Points, and Miss Wishbone."
"What does the fox say, anyway?"
Professor McGonagall gave up. "Class dismissed," she sighed, then walked out to find Dumbledore. And possibly some strong liquor.
Weirdly enough, Harry was stuck in the habit of meditating on his mind every night. Aside from helping to strengthen his Occlumency shields, it made him feel pleasantly calm, which was always a bonus. Even as one of the masterminds behind the day's chaos, Harry felt washed out by the days' end. Unlike the giggling school populace, he knew what was going to happen, and had also spent the night before setting things up and trying his best not to trigger the spells, lest the timers run out before the students even got there. Focussing on reaching his magic out, however, was oddly soothing, perhaps because he was connecting to a part of himself that was becoming as natural as breathing; in any case, it made his magic hum in a rather cat-like manner, and Hermione was always going on about how cat purrs were good for you.
Peace, however, was never something that lasted within the Gang, even voluntarily, and once he felt a little better, Harry came out of his meditation efforts to find Fred and George explaining to a thoroughly confused Lee about how Luna was not Luna but her alter-ego Circe Lovegood. Truth be told, he didn't quite understand how Fred's concept of alters worked, but he figured he'd leave them to it. The preliminary trials, involving a moderate truth potion and a compulsion charm, had come up positive after all. Then again, Luna wasn't an ordinary test subject…
"We're never doing this again," Neville said seriously, checking his arms for the third time to make sure they were no longer glowing. "The cost is too high."
"Seconded!" Lee called out. "It took me half an hour to remove those spells."
"I just want to know how exactly we were meant to get anywhere floating two inches above the ground," Ginny mumbled. "I wonder if that's what it feels like to be a ghost?"
"Personally, I'm hoping to Merlin Colin got a picture of Malfoy emitting love-hearts every time he looked at Goyle," Ron said. "Anyway, what's on the agenda?"
"Well…" Harry frowned. "Does anyone know a way to breathe underwater?"
"Bubble-headed charm," Fred said instantly. "Good for Dungbombing corridors, too…"
"Gillyweed," Neville suggested. "It, um, gives you gills."
"Technically," Luna said dreamily, "Anyone can breathe underwater. It's just bad for you."
"Er…" Ron blinked at her and decided not to pursue the subject.
"I could learn to perform a bubble-headed charm, but Gillyweed would be good in case it fails," Harry mused.
"You figured out the egg, then?" Hermione asked.
"Actually, Cedric said to take a bath. I figured it must be some sort of cryptic clue, so I dumped the egg in the lake. What's down there, anyway?"
"Merpeople," Lee said. "I thought everyone knew that."
"Also Myrtle, sometimes," George added. "Not that she likes it very much."
Ron opened his mouth, then decided that he wouldn't pursue that subject either.
"You know," Ginny said slightly indignantly, "Karkaroff scored you unfairly last time. Why haven't we targeted him?"
"We can't target him specifically, that would be a good way of getting people to think we're racist bigots, or something," Ron pointed out, happy to have something to speak of that wasn't weird or extremely questionable.
"Why not catch them all, then?" Fred asked. "You're going into the lake, obviously. It'll be boring."
"You know," Hermione said thoughtfully, "That's a good point. How long do you think it'll be?"
"An hour," Harry replied. "They're nicking a hostage and putting them under, I suppose."
"If we timed something to go off at the half-hour mark…" Neville said slowly. "What, though?"
"We could ask the Marauders for advice," George suggested.
Ginny raised an eyebrow. "You didn't see Transfiguration class, did you?"
"Whimsy is kind of the point," Ron said. "I think it was hilarious."
"That's settled, then. Dobby!" Harry called.
"What can Dobby be doing for Mister Harry Potter, sir?" Dobby asked as he appeared with a pop.
"Can you take us to the Marauders, please, Dobby?" Harry asked.
"Wait, we're sneaking out?" Fred asked. "Brilliant, we haven't done that in a fortnight, I was worried we were turning…" he shuddered dramatically, "…well behaved."
"Harry," Hermione said worriedly, "What if Dobby isn't strong enough?"
Harry frowned. "Good point. Dobby, will you even be able to transport us at all without hurting yourself?"
Dobby nodded violently. "Mister Harry Potter is powerful magics. He is being giving Dobby magics too, putting on top of House Elfs magics. Dobby can do!"
"Great!" Harry beamed. "To Padfoot and Moony!"
Hermione sighed as Harry grabbed her right hand and a grinning Lee her left. "You know, I'd hate to be Karkaroff. Or Crouch, considering Sirius hates him – oh, wait, he's sick... Or Dumbledore. Come to think of it, do you think Sirius would have us target Percy if he showed up?"
"We might have to glue his mouth shut anyway," George pointed out.
That was the last thing the Chamber heard before they all disappeared with an oddly ominous 'pop'.
A.N
A little shorter than I wanted; honestly, it feels more like a bridge than a full chapter. It's taken me 10 chapters to get to the second third of the year...
Ships. I'm embedding the poll into my profile. Drop in if you want to share your opinion...
R.R
RebeccaRoy: I'm glad you think it was good. I honestly spend a good amount of time wondering if I'm too lame to be the writer behind the Gang... Makes me feel proud.
ScoutGinevra: Great, thanks! That was the whole purpose of the scene, glad to hear it! Here's your update, I hope it's okay...
CoolFanfictionLover: It's a little sad Neville always seemed so scared of Snape. Who knows what he might have been capable of?
David305: I'm ashamed to say I had to look up the joke. I think I get it...?