Disclaimer: see prologue
Guide: "Talk", Thoughts, ~letters and other written stuff, "Parseltongue"
Warning: None. Except if your name is Harry Potter then you'd better run and hide now. ;)
Beta: Makoto Sagara
AN: Thank you for all the new reviews, favourites and alerts. They really made me happy.
I'd planned for this chapter to be much longer but before you had to wait another three weeks before I finish writing one long chapter, I decided to split it up. The announced Basic test will be in the next chapter. For now enjoy a bit of pranking.
-~-~- Altair -~-~-
-~-~-by Still waters are deep-~-~-
-~-~- Chapter 21 – Pranking with the Lloj Potion-~-~-
Monday, 8th September, 1997
"How did it go?" Draco asked his partner in crime when Harry entered the living room of Room Zero Monday evening.
"Well enough. I'm still alive, aren't I?" the brunet answered, rubbing his hurting left cheek―a gift from Hermione, which didn't go unnoticed by the blond―before letting himself fall down in his armchair. He was utterly exhausted after the afternoon's Quidditch practice and after doing his part in getting both Hermione's and Blaise's blood for the Lloj potion.
"And with you?" Harry asked, interested to know how Draco's own little stunt had gone.
"Let's just say that it was a good thing that I was the one to ambush Blaise here," the blond stated. "If he'd been able to enter our rooms, I most likely wouldn't've had enough time to inspect his potion. I didn't think that Blaise had such good reflexes," he told Harry, remembering how difficult it had been for him to succeed with his part.
Thank Merlin that the door is resistant to spells, or Blaise surely would have blown it off of its hinges to get a good shot at me, Draco thought, remembering how Blaise had been yelling at him through the closed door. Still, we were successful in the end.
The night before, the two boys had spent the better part of an hour coming up with a plan on how to get Hermione's and Blaise's blood to find out their Typos Thesis. In the end, they had decided that using the fact that others needed to be invited to enter their Altair room would be a good advantage to have. If the situation became ugly, they could simply close the door in their friends' faces and hide behind the wards.
Though, Draco had argued that it would be a bit too fishy for them to lure both Hermione and Blaise to their door at the same time, as their friends had already been invited to Room Zero days ago, and with them having to brew the Lloj potion surely one of them would get suspicious, but they couldn't risk one of them warning the other, so they had to get their blood simultaneously. So, they'd agreed that one of them would need to lure his friend to an unused classroom instead.
This was actually the reason why they needed so long to come up with a plan as they spent nearly twenty minutes arguing about who of them would be utilising the help of Room Zero, as neither boy wanted to face their friend's fury unprotected. But, in the end, Draco―the Slytherin he was―had succeeded in guilt-tripping Harry into being to one to get Hermione's blood in an unused classroom. Not only had the blond argued that Harry was the Gryffindor and thus the expected braver one out of them, but also that he had mercifully agreed to bottom during the brewing of the Lloj potion. So, the least Harry could do was to yield the protection of the Altair wards to Draco.
When Hermione had announced at dinner that she wanted to get her things from the tower before going to the library for a study session, Harry saw his chance to get her blood. Giving his blond partner in crime a signal to let him know that he would start with his part, Harry left the Great Hall before Hermione to prepare himself.
And that was how Harry ended up abducting Hermione on her trip to the library after dinner, while Draco told Blaise that he wanted to give him something but had forgotten it in his room and asked the dark-skinned Slytherin to please accompany him to the door of Room Zero.
Flashback, half an hour before Harry entered Room Zero
After putting on his invisibility cloak, Harry had grabbed one of their Lloj potion vials and a knife and walked towards the fourth floor and waited for his friend to walk by. When he spotted Hermione walking towards him not ten minutes later, he dragged his friend into the abandoned classroom, taking care to stay hidden under the cloak.
"Harry?" the brunette woman asked into the seemingly empty room.
"Yeah, it's me," the brunet answered, walking towards his bushy-haired friend. The vial with the Lloj potion had been in his left hand when he had been waiting outside for Hermione. And now that he didn't need his right hand any longer to take a hold of his friend's arm, he gingerly took out his knife from its previous place at his buckle. Then, he held the small but sharp knife between his thumb and index finger of his right hand, while he secured the vial between the middle and ring finger of the same hand. At the same time, he was being careful that neither the knife nor the potion vial left their safe hiding place under his invisibility cloak.
"I'm under my cloak," he continued, trying to distract the girl while he brought the knife into position. Grabbing Hermione's right hand with his free left hand, so that she would be unable to hex him with her wand, he brought it under the cloak and out of her view before he swiftly cut the underside of the girl's hand, collecting the necessary three drops of blood in the vial.
"Ouch," Hermione screamed when the knife cut her skin. "What are you doing, Harry?" she asked, bewildered by her friend's action. When Harry didn't answer, she grabbed with her left hand for the invisibility cloak as Harry was still holding firmly onto her right hand, not letting it go even as she was trying to get her hand out of his grip.
When she saw a vial containing a red and dark blue striped potion which sported some neon green dots appear from under the cloak, she immediately recognised it as her result of the Lloj potion. After she came out of her initial shock a few moments later, she started an angry rant.
"Harry James Potter, what in the world do you think you're doing!? How could you go behind my back to find out my Typos Thesis?" Here, she again tried to get her right hand free, so that she could slap him, just like she had done to Draco in third year.
When she wasn't successful, she, enraged, brought up her left hand to slap the vial of Lloj potion out of Harry's hand in an attempt to stop her friend from studying all the colours her potion showed. Because the brunet had to hold both the vial and the knife with his right hand, the small glass flask easily fell out of his hand, splattering the stone ground of the classroom with a black puddle. Luckily, Draco had had the foresight to cast an unbreakable charm on the vials, so at least there weren't any glass splinters lying around.
But, even if the potion was now ruined and didn't show her result anymore, her initial hesitation when she saw what Harry had done had given Harry enough time to find out what her specific Typos Thesis was.
"I'm sorry, but I was just really curious if my guess that you're a dominant is correct," Harry told Hermione to try and appease his now very angry friend. He actually had thought about a good possible excuse during today's boring DADA class. And curiosity was the best he had come up with during the forty-five minutes of the lesson.
"CURIOUS?" she howled, speaking in one-word sentences as the given excuse was not appealing to her sense of rightness and thus she was still livid. "There is a reason why those privacy and memory spells Altair Black cast are in place. Don't you have any respect for other people's privacy? I don't open your mail, do I? So, you should honour the Altair secret as much as the privacy of correspondence. If I wanted you to know my Typos Thesis, I would have told you," she scolded her friend, still mad.
As Harry had finally let her hand go, she took a step to the left, turning her body away from Harry and clenching her right hand into a fist, trying to calm down by walking in a circle in front of the young man.
"Come on, Hermione. I really am sorry. But it was getting on my nerves to not be able to remember if my guess of you being a dominant had been proven wrong during our last Sexual Potions class or not. We both know that as soon as I enter the classroom I will be able to remember your Typos Thesis. But the whole memory charms were starting to get annoying," Harry pleaded, hoping that Hermione had calmed down enough to listen.
Couldn't he have simply asked me if I'm a dominant or not? Hermione thought, angry at her friend's action. If he only wanted to know my role, I would have told him in exchange for his. But did he have to find out my whole Typos Thesis! she thought angrily. While she didn't have a problem with Harry knowing her position and role, she really would have preferred if no-one besides Blaise―who shared her kink and thus, couldn't blackmail her with it―found out her bondage kink. Such things are private after all, she thought. What would he think if I tried to find out his little embarrassing kinks?
"If you want to you can find out my Typos Thesis too," he quickly added, as his previous plea seemingly hadn't done anything to calm her down. Maybe I shouldn't have done it, Harry second guessed his decision. Though, it sounded like a great idea last night...
"Oh, you can be sure that I will, Harry," she said in a promising voice. Just you wait, Harry, until I know your kinks. Maybe you're into masochism?
"How about we find out Ron's Typos Thesis too?" he suggested. He already had suspected that saying sorry would not be enough for Hermione, but he was sure that averting her attention from himself to Ron would be able to calm her down and forgive him for his stunt―at least after she had found out his Typos Thesis.
"If we are lucky, Ron's Typos Thesis will turn out to be not compatible with yours. This way we may be able to help him realise that you aren't meant to be together as he thinks," he continued, trying to make the idea irresistible for her.
This suggestion seemed to appease her as she, just like Harry, had forgiven their red-haired friend, but couldn't forget his explosion during the first day back at school and all his rants before that. Besides, Neville had told her in private that Ron still wanted her back. So, Harry does have a point, she thought. Though, I still wouldn't be any better than Harry. Disrespecting Ron's privacy―although, he hadn't respected our privacy either when he attempted to prohibit us from talking Altair electives, she argued with herself. But as I already promised retribution for Harry, what does it matter if I find out Ron's Typos Thesis too?
Decision made, she told Harry, "Okay, we'll do it. But it's only an exception to the rule because of dire circumstances as he had disrespected our privacy too when he forbid us to take Altair electives," she defended her decision, which went against all she said in her previous rant.
"Great," he happily answered, glad to see a mischievous spark in her eyes instead of the angry glint from before. "I've already reserved one vial for him. So, the only thing we need to do is to get his blood," he told her, excited.
"How about you come and watch our next Quidditch practice and send a Bludger after him to draw some blood?" Harry suggested the plan he had the day before. "I'm sure he wouldn't notice that anything is amiss."
"You know that we will need fresh and clean blood. Scrapping it off of a Bludger won't reveal anything. But, I'll come up with something. Don't worry," she told him, mentally adding, and I will also figure something to get your blood.
The only question was how she could use the Bludger to her advantage as she knew that if some dirt which would be on the Quidditch ball got into the Lloj potion, it would turn as black and useless as the one currently sprayed on the ground before he feet, which reminded her that she still hadn't given Harry the slap he deserved for his act. I can't let him think that he got away with trying to distract me with Ron, she thought. So, before she got distracted again, she quickly lifted her right hand and slapped Harry's left cheek.
"Ouch," Harry groaned out; the slap had taken him by surprise.
"You deserved it," was all she said, before she took out her wand to get rid of the ruined Lloj potion at her feet.
"Are we good now?" Harry gingerly asked, rubbing his throbbing left cheek.
"Yeah, yeah," Hermione answered, dismissively. She was already busy plotting. "I'll tell you if I come up with something for Ron. Now though, I really have to go to the library before it closes at eight. You've already taken up enough time with your stunt." And with that, she left the room, leaving Harry behind to pick up his invisibility cloak and the glass vial before he too left the classroom to go join Draco in Room Zero.
End Flashback
"Though, it is a good thing that you suggested that we put an unbreakable spell on the vials, otherwise mine surely would have broken," Harry told Draco, remembering Hermione's reaction to seeing him holding the vial with the result of her Lloj potion.
"So," Draco asked, "is our Head Girl a dominant just as we thought she would be?"
"Yes, she is. A complete dominant even," Harry answered. "Though, that isn't all."
"Let me guess," the blond interrupted him, "she has a kink for bondage just like dear Blaise."
"Yup," Harry agreed, popping the P.
"Blaise, by the way, is like you only a mainly submissive. So, they're bound to clash sometime in the future over who will take on the dominant role. I'm sure it will be fun to see," the blond told his Altair partner.
"Oh, yeah," Harry agreed, laughing about the image. When he thought back at how easy it was to persuade Hermione to go back on her own words to find out Ron's Typos Thesis, Harry laughed even more, now that he wasn't threatened with getting slapped again.
"So, do you think that they will try to get our blood in the near future?" Harry asked Draco when he finally stopped laughing.
"You can bet on it. Though, it won't be right away, because while Blaise was cursing me, he inadvertently gave away that they don't have any spare vials left because Hermione insisted that they'd better be safe and thoroughly test their sample before submitting a vial of it. So, they will have to brew a new batch if they want to find out our Typos Thesis. Not that Blaise seemed to be against the idea."
"And Hermione will surely not have anything against another opportunity to brew the potion. Extra practice and all that," Harry added.
"Hmm," the blond hummed in agreement. "The only question left is if we want to make it easy for them to get our blood or not?"
~-~-~-~-~-~-Altair-a life changing event-~-~-~-~-~-~-
Next: The Altair students will be graded on their lubrication and cleaning charm casting skills by the Professors Greige.
AN2: You have still time to suggest some kinks for Ron. So far, my favourites are him liking to be spanked and handcuffed to the bed and having a submissive tendency.
I update a little chart for the Lloj potion, where all the so far used colours and meanings are listed. The link is on my profile page.