HARRY POTTER AND THE SECRET ENEMY
Harry Potter and all associated characters and situations are the property of J.K. Rowling. I make no claim to ownership.
CHAPTER 20: Pranks and Other Diversions
7 September 1992
The potion turning lime-green was the first clue that something was amiss. The second clue was when it started screaming. Harry was partnered with Neville in Potions today, and he immediately noticed the problem and called out for Professor Snape just before the potion's agonized wailing started. Seemingly in response, Harry, Neville and everyone around them clutched their heads and began to sway as if overcome by vertigo. Luckily, before anyone passed out (or possibly died), Snape was close enough to cast a Silencing Charm on the cauldron which now had what appeared to be several mouths floating in the gooey green surface of the cauldron, all wailing in silent agony. Snape frowned at the contents of the cauldron and then banished it with a slash of his wand, along with the silencing spell. Then, he turned to Neville with an obviously annoyed expression.
"Your hands, Longbottom! Show them to me." A nervous Neville held out his hands, and Snape grabbed one and turned it over so that the palm was facing up. Then, he waved his wand silently, and the boy's hands turned the same vivid green as the vanished potion. The man sighed.
"Five points from Gryffindor. You will both sit quietly until the end of class. Longbottom, you will think long and hard about what you might have done to have earned that point loss. If you can come up with an explanation and a good excuse, I might let you off without an additional punishment."
After enduring a small amount of sniggering from Draco and his lackeys, the two somewhat dejected boys sat down until the end of class. Then, at Snape's summons, they relocated to the front row of class.
"Well," Snape asked.
Neville swallowed and glanced down at his hands which were still green. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't imagine what could have happened."
"Can't you?" he replied. "Well let me hazzard a guess. By any chance were you assisting Professor Sprout with unpackaging the Mandrake seeds that arrived this morning? And were you perhaps foolish enough to not wear gloves while handling those seeds or to even wash your hands afterwards?"
Neville scrunched up his eyes in frustration. "Sorry sir. I did use gloves, but I was running late and didn't have a chance to do a full decontamination. Honestly, I never realized that I'd been contaminated." He looked down at his glowing hands. "Certainly not this much."
"Well, don't apologize to me about it, Longbottom. Apologize to your lab partner for whom you've just earned a zero for the day." The boy looked even more downcast, and Snape sighed. "Unless, of course, the two of you can find a time within the next week that also fits within my schedule to come in and brew that potion over again."
Harry nodded. "We'll compare schedules and let you know before the end of the day. Thank you, Professor."
"However, you're not getting off scot-free, Longbottom. By Monday, I want three feet of parchment from you on the importance of keeping yourself free of contaminants while brewing potions, and another three feet on the reactive properties of the Mandrake plant. I must confess I am disappointed in you, Mr. Longbottom. If there was a single student in your Year who I would have expected to know about the dangers of even the slightest speck of Mandrake pollen introduced into a potion, it would have been you."
"Again, I am sorry, sir. It won't happen again."
"See that it does not. In any case, since you are both here, there is another matter I wished to discuss with you two. Mr. Potter, you will no doubt recall some rather serious concerns you raised last May regarding the confrontation between the Other Potter and the Dark Lord. Specifically, your insinuation that the Headmaster might have deliberately engineered that confrontation. However, I will require a secrecy oath before I tell you anything more. Indeed, I am only offering to tell you anything now because you were both potential subjects of the Prophecy and I believe you are entitled to be kept aware of developments pertaining to it, but only if you can keep it a secret. Speaking of which, how is your Occlumency progressing, Potter?"
"I am confident that I'd be classified as a Second Level Occlumens. I anticipate reaching Third Level by the end of the school year."
"Excellent. And I see, Mr. Longbottom, that you now carry the protections of your Heir's Ring. Your oaths then, gentlemen?"
The two boys each swore a simple secrecy oath followed by a mumbled "so mote it be" that would prevent them both from ever deliberately revealing the contents of their current conversation with the Potions Master.
"Good. Now, I can reveal to you the results of my investigation." He took a deep breath. "It was all just a string of coincidences."
Harry and Neville stared at Snape as if waiting for him to say he was joking.
"That's ... an awful lot of coincidences, isn't it, sir?" said Harry.
"Even more than you realize, I suspect. Tell me, Mr. Longbottom. How exactly did you and your Gryffindor compatriots even discover the Cerberus in the first place?"
Neville quickly related the tale of Jim's abortive duel with Draco, how he and Hermione only accompanied Jim and Ron because they'd been locked out of their dorm, how they'd all ran from Filch and Mrs. Norris, and how Hermione got them inside with the Alohomora spell she'd picked up from an out-of-print book she'd acquired.
"In other words," said Snape, "the only reason the Other Potter ever learned of the Cerberus and the trapdoor it guarded was because Miss Granger accompanied him by complete happenstance and because she just happened to know how to unlock the door with a rare spell not a part of the First Year curriculum, again by complete happenstance. Honestly, do either of you really think that the Headmaster could have engineered such a sequence of events as part of any coherent plan? If you doubt me, then consider this. You may recall that during his announcements last year after the Sorting, the Headmaster specifically said that the Third Floor corridor was out of bounds for any students who did not wish to die a painful death."
Harry nodded. "Yes. I always thought it was odd for the Headmaster to draw so much attention to that corridor if he wanted everyone to stay away from it. Looking back, I'm surprised the Weasley Twins didn't find Fluffy that night!"
"That, Mr. Potter, is because you are young and still ignorant of the more subtle warding techniques. When the Headmaster spoke those specific words, they served to trigger a memetic ward on the corridor in question. Any student who heard those words and who later intentionally tried to enter the Third Floor corridor would have been overwhelmed by an ever-increasing sense of impending certain death that would have driven away anyone not at least a fourth-level Occlumens or possessed of comparable protection. The only reason Mr. Longbottom, the Other Potter and the other two Gryffindors were able to overcome that ward and even approach the door was because they were lost at the time and didn't realize where they were. And you all were only able to return to that corridor for the final confrontation with Quirrell and the Dark Lord because Quirrell had secretly deactivated that particular ward earlier that afternoon precisely because he wanted all of you to join him in the Mirror Room."
Harry and Neville must have both looked astonished, because Snape shook his head before speaking again. "The truth, Mr. Potter, is that far from trying to engineer a confrontation between the Boy-Who-Lived and the Dark Lord, the Headmaster was attempting to ensure that such a confrontation never happened. The original plan was for the Mirror of Erised to be in place by September 1st with the expectation that Quirrell would attempt to steal the Philosopher's Stone sometime around Halloween. That plan was thwarted almost from the beginning by a series of increasingly improbable coincidences that eventually brought about the very confrontation the Headmaster sought to avoid."
Harry's eyes widened as he recalled the words of Countess Zabini. "Prophecies want to come true," he repeated aloud. "And they have the power to shape minor random events to help bring themselves to fulfillment."
"Indeed, Mr. Potter. The entire incident proved rather conclusively that the Prophecy cannot simply be subverted, or at least, not as easily and directly as the Headmaster had thought."
"Well, in that case," asked Neville. "Why are they trying to subvert it at all? I mean, Jim's pretty clearly the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. So why don't people focus on letting him do that?"
Snape actually winced at the Gryffindor's bluntness. "Questions like that, Longbottom, are why I swore you to an oath of secrecy before I said anything at all. Let me begin by saying that I still do not know the entire Prophecy. To my knowledge, no one does except for the Headmaster and both Lily and James Potter. However, note that the first line refers to 'the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord" rather than simply 'the one who will vanquish the Dark Lord.' I suspect that whatever hidden power is at the Other Potter's disposal, it is not one that guarantees his victory."
"So what's Plan B?" asked Harry as he considered the implications of what Snape had said. The man shrugged.
"I imagine that the Headmaster and the Potters are investigating stratagems for ensuring that any future confrontations take place under controlled circumstances that will give the Other Potter the best chance for victory. That is certainly what I would do in their position. Beyond that, I do not know. Lord Potter does not wish to allow me any role in their strategizing, and I have no particular interest in forcing my way into their deliberations. " Snape paused. "Which segues into another related but more personal matter for you alone, Mr. Potter. Mr. Longbottom, will you excuse us?"
Neville looked at his friend who nodded silently. Then, he left the room.
"I had planned to contact you about this later," said Snape. "But now is as good a time as any. Your mother wishes to have lunch with you one day this week at your convenience."
Harry did a double-take. "Sorry? My mother does what now?"
Snape sniffed at Harry's lack of decorum. "Pursuant to the injunction which your solicitors put into place at your direction, your parents are forbidden to interact with you except when I am present. After the events of this past summer, your mother now wishes to try to get to know you and presumably seek some sort of rapprochement."
"Will my father be there?" asked Harry doubtfully.
"Good Lord, No! Your mother knows us all well enough to realize that putting you, your father and myself into an enclosed space is a recipe for disaster."
Harry thought that was probably an understatement.
9 September 1992
On a bright sunny afternoon, Ginny, Tori and the rest of the Slytherin First Years made their way outside for their first day of flying lessons. Following Harry's advice, Ginny had worked herself like mad to stay ahead of her class work. She'd won a total of six points in the last week which put her near the top of the Slytherin firsties, but she wasn't exactly dominating her Year academically the way Harry had the year before. Since their last encounter, she'd avoided Ron as much as possible, though he gave no outward sign of his former hostility. She'd also spent as much free time as she could with her other brothers. "I wonder if Percy still has his notes from First Year," she thought to herself.
Once out on the pitch, she noticed that the Slytherins were paired with the Ravenclaws. She'd only met a few Eagles so far. Dequon Chang ("Deck" to his friends) was a extremely outgoing and genial Asian boy who was determined to embarrass his cousin Cho Chang at every opportunity. Saffron Brown was a bookish girl with curly brown hair and glasses who seemed resigned to living in the shadow of her older sister Lavender. Jacob Harrison was a Muggleborn from Liverpool who was still getting used to the whole "magic thing" as his father was a computer programmer and his mother a secondary school physics teacher. And of course, there was Marietta Edgecombe who was busy gossiping with Drusilla Crabbe, probably about her. While Crabbe was doing her best to act poised, Ginny thought she looked a bit queasy.
"Are you okay, Crabbe?" she asked.
Drusilla coughed. "I'll be ... fine, Weasley. After all, how hard can this be?"
"You should listen to Weasley's advice, Crabbe," said Niles Harper in a nasty voice. "She's probably used to flying on second hand brooms that fall apart all the time. I bet that's all her brood can afford." Harper and Bletchley laughed at that until Madame Hooch blew her whistle.
"Alright, everyone," she said. "Everyone take your position next to a broom." She gave her usual instructions on how to call the broom into one's hand and instructed the class to try it. Tori yelled "UP!" a little too assertively, and her broom jumped up and bopped her in the nose. Ginny, who was just about to summon her own broom, stopped to see that her friend was alright.
"Better look after yourself first, Weasley," said Kevin Bletchley with a laugh. "Assuming you can even get your broom to listen to you."
Ginny said nothing. She just stared at the two Slytherin boys with obvious disdain. Then, without even looking down, she casually put her hand out and calmly said "Up" without even raising her voice. The broom flew up into her hand with a slap faster than any of the Slytherin boys had managed. "Anymore advice from the peanut gallery, Bletchley?" she asked mildly. The nasty grins faded from the boys faces to be replaced by looks of angry consternation.
A few minutes later, after everyone had managed to summon their broomsticks, Madame Hooch instructed the class on how to properly mount and hold the broom – stopping briefly to compliment Ginny on her perfect grip – before preparing them for their first take-offs. She blew her whistle, but immediately there was a commotion as Drusilla Crabbe suddenly shot up off the ground higher and higher until she took off into the air, screaming the whole way.
"Oh for Merlin's sake," exclaimed Madame Hooch, who suddenly was reminded of the Longbottom fiasco from the previous year. "Not this again!"
By this point, Drusilla was about sixty feet up in the air and screaming her head off when there was a blur of motion from the ground. Before anyone even knew what had happened, Ginny was up in the air facing the other girl with her hand firmly gripping the tip of Crabbe's broom which suddenly stabilized. "DRUSILLA! SHUT! UP!" Startled, the girl stopped screaming.
"Good!" said Ginny. "Now, keep your hands on your broom but relax your grip. Just barely hold on to keep yourself steady. And just keep looking at me." Drusilla swallowed and nodded, and the two brooms gradually started drifting back down to the ground in a gentle corkscrew motion. After a few seconds, they touched down, and to Ginny's surprise, a tearful Drusilla rushed forward and gave her a huge hug that nearly squeezed the life out of her.
The rest of the students crowded around the duo as Madame Hooch moved through the students. "Miss Crabbe, are you quite alright?" The girl nodded. "Miss Weasley, I would say that was very reckless of you if it weren't obvious that you were in complete control the whole time. Would you care to explain though what exactly you did up there?"
"Oh, well, from the way Miss Crabbe's broom took off, it looked to me like some of the dorsal bristles must be loose and that threw the vertical stabilizers off. But I realized that if I could grab hold of the tip of her broom with my offhand and get her to relax her grip enough, the brooms would sync up and I could pilot her down." She turned and looked innocently in the direction of Niles and Kevin. "It was obvious what to do if you're experienced enough with a broom."
Hooch chuckled and examined Crabbe's broomstick. "You're quite right. My apologies, Miss Crabbe. This broom should never have been put out for student use. In fact, I wonder now if it's the same one poor Longbottom got last year." She turned back towards Ginny. "Well handled, Weasley. Can I assume that your brother Charlie has had an influence on you?"
Ginny gave what she intended to be a bashful smile. "Yes, Madame Hooch. He always made a point of making sure the family brooms were thoroughly rethatched every summer. When he couldn't get any of our brothers to help him, I volunteered. He taught me a lot ... when my parents weren't looking, that is."
Hooch laughed again. "Very good. Five points to Slytherin for quick thinking and deft broom-handling. Miss Crabbe, do you wish to go to the infirmary for a Calming Draught? I would not want you flying on this broom in any case." The girl nodded. "Weasley, since it's abundantly clear that you're past the beginner level, why don't you escort Miss Crabbe?"
Ginny nodded. As she led Drusilla away, she noticed that most of the students (including the Slytherin boys) were giving her slightly awestruck expressions. Tori was grinning from ear to ear and giving a thumbs-up gesture. Even Wilkes smiled approvingly and offered a "Nice job, Weasley" as she passed by. When they were away from the class, Ginny turned once more to Drusilla. "Are you going to be okay?" she asked.
Drusilla nodded. "I think so. And ... thank you ... Ginny." Ginny smiled at that. "Mind you, I'll probably still have to be somewhat horrible to you whenever Draco is around ... but thank you."
Ginny nodded. "It's alright. I'll try not to take it personally."
Later that night ...
"I still don't know if this is a good idea," said the first Weasley.
"Look, we all agreed he deserves a little something for always slagging on the Slytherins even though he knows our sister's in there, right?" said the second Weasley. "Well, hopefully, this will make him think twice about it in the future. And it won't hurt anyone. It's completely harmless. Honestly, I bet he'll even get a laugh over it."
"I dunno," said the third Weasley. "You have to be careful about pulling pranks on a house-mate even if he deserves it. We all do have to sleep here, after all."
"That's the beauty of this," said the second Weasley. "He'll assume it was Harry or some other Slytherin. He'll never even realize it was us. Best case scenario: Jim learns to keep his mouth shut about Slytherins."
"And the worst case scenario?" asked the first Weasley, uneasily.
The second Weasley shrugged "Most likely, Jim and Harry get into a prank war between themselves, and we just get to sit back and watch."
The second and third Weasleys laughed at that, while the first remained pensive.
10 September 1992
The presence of Neville Longbottom in the Potions room first thing in the morning when the boy did not have class again for four days was the first clue that something was amiss. The look of obvious anger on the face of a boy known for serene unflappability was the second.
"Mr. Longbottom," drawled Snape. "What can I do for you?"
"I'm still working on your six feet of parchment due on Monday, sir. Fair is fair – I should have done a full decontamination just to be safe. But I thought you should know about this!" With that, the Gryffindor slapped a pair of heavy gardening gloves onto Snape's desk. The man crooked an eyebrow at his student who was acting remarkably out of character.
"I see a pair of gloves, Longbottom, the presence of which tells me nothing I don't already know."
"They're my Herbology gloves, sir. And someone has thoughtfully filled both of them with powdered dust from crushed Mandrake leaves. It was some idiot's idea of a joke, I'll wager, but one involving a dangerous ingredient that could have killed us if Harry and I had been working with a different potion last Monday."
"I see. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will make appropriate announcements in my classes regarding the dangers of using Mandrake for frivolous purposes. And in light of this, perhaps my earlier punishment was too hasty. Reduce your writing assignment to a foot and a half on each topic."
"If it's all the same, sir, I'd rather keep it at the original length. Somebody may have pranked me but that's no excuse for not washing up properly. As for the other, well, it's actually kind of interesting. I had no idea what all you can use Mandrakes for."
Snape snorted. "Gryffindors."
Later during lunch ...
The weight on Jim's head was the first clue that something was amiss. The second clue was when the high-pitched singing started. Lunch was nearly over when Jim Potter bit into a treacle tart and immediately felt the sudden pressure on the top of his head. Hermione, Neville and Ron looked at him in amazement, while several other Gryffindors started to laugh, particularly after the singing started up in a thick Irish accent. Specifically, singing which emanated from the brilliant green and golden royal crown that had appeared on Jim's head, the one bearing the golden inscription "Jim Potter, King of the Leprechauns." And the song the crown produced – and which half the school would sing regularly for weeks to come whenever Jim came near – was set to the tune of "God Save the Queen" with lyrics as follows:
King of the Leprechauns
His brains are made of bronze
He makes us sick.
It's really obvious that
Jim is a total prat
Smart as a Beater's Bat
and just as thick.
Jim snatched the crown off his head and examined the inscription, his face turning red as more people in the Great Hall looked in his direction and started laughing. The song was apparently on a loop, as it started up again immediately. Annoyed, Jim shook the crown repeatedly in an effort to get it to stop. Then, he cast a Silencing spell on it. That somehow caused the singing to increase in volume. Finally, in frustration, Jim dropped the crown onto the floor underneath the table, hoping that would at least muffle the singing. Instead, as soon as it left his hands, the crown disappeared with a pop ... and then immediately reappeared on top of his head. This continued for several minutes, with Jim continually trying to dispose of the crown and it reappearing on top of his head and still singing its insipid tune. Finally, several Sixth and Seventh Year students (led by Percy Weasley) all cast Finites simultaneously on the crown while Jim held it in his hands, and that worked. But before the joke crown vanished, just for a second, Jim (and only Jim) could make out four small sparkling letters at the base of the crown: SRGD. And almost immediately, Jim knew what they stood for.
"Slytherins Rule. Gryffindors Drool."
At the sound of continual laughter all around him, the boy's face flushed in embarrassment. He looked up across the room to see if Harry was watching. He was, although the Slytherin actually had the gall to act surprised, as if he'd had nothing to do with the prank even though it practically bore his signature. Part of Jim wanted to walk across the room to confront his twin... and punch him in the jaw. Luckily, he was studying Occlumency now from the book his godfather had secretly gotten for him, and so Jim followed the advice the book gave for dealing with feelings of anger, embarrassment or unhappiness:
"Take all those negative feelings and squish them down into a tiny ball deep in the pit of your stomach until you can freely unleash them all at once on your enemy."
So Jim took that burning feeling of shame out of his cheeks and shoved it down into the pit of his stomach where it joined all the other little fires of anger, fear and unhappiness that he'd been shoving down there since his twelfth birthday. And the fire grew just a little bit hotter.
I regret to inform my loyal readers that between a recent minor injury and increased work commitments, I am not as far ahead on "HP&TSE" as I had hoped. I am also at a point in Book Two where the plotting is becoming a bit intricate and I don't want to screw anything up and leave a plot hole for later. Finally, as I mentioned previously, I will be writing a separate novel-length work for NaNoWriMO. So, rather than risk getting ahead of myself and being forced to have an unscheduled lapse in updating, I have elected to reduce my updating schedule down to once per week. This will continue at least through November and possibly through December depending on how far ahead I can work through the holidays. I hate to do it, but I do think quality is more important than posting frequency and I hope you all agree.
Accordingly, the next chapter will be uploaded on Friday, November 6, 2015. "Pranks and Other Diversion (Pt. 2)," in which Harry and Lily have a rather tense luncheon, and then someone makes a stink in the Slytherin Common Room. Also, why DO the Malfoys and Weasleys hate each other anyway?
AN: Also, to Guest reviewer "lampshade," I regret to inform you that the phrase "So mote it be" will likely be used again and, in fact, may very well prove integral to the ultimate plot. Sorry.