Harry barely got any sleep that night. She woke up a full hour before she'd usually get up for Quidditch practice and gazed up at the underside of the curtains, still pondering the question of what connected the unicorns to the Stone. After a few minutes of staring at nothing, she got up and changed, as quietly as possible, into the simple jeans and sweater she wore down to the changing rooms each day.
She snuck out of the dorm and down into the common room, where she lay out a piece of parchment, her favorite quill, and her ink bottle. Her writing instruments set up, Harry proceeded to pen a letter to Alex, explaining what she had learned from the detention in the forest. When Harry was finished, she returned to her room, put the quill and ink on her nightstand, and grabbed her wand, tucking it up her shirt's sleeve where it lay flush against her skin.
By the time she'd climbed up to the owlery and found an owl (most were still out hunting), it was nearly time for practice. Harry ran most of the way out to the field, and found, to her amazement, that she'd beat Oliver to the changing rooms. The rest of the team was there, in various states of undress.
Not batting an eye at the multiple chests and legs visible, Harry turned to her own locker and dressed for practice as quickly as possible, so that when Oliver showed up she wouldn't seem too far behind the others.
Oliver didn't show up. Fred fell asleep on George's shoulder, and George leaned back against his locker, both of them snoring softly. Zakir, Aiden, and Ryan made bets on how late Oliver was going to be.
Finally, after an hour of waiting, Harry stood up. "I'm going to go wake him up," she said, grabbing her Nimbus. "I'll be back in a few minutes." The three Chasers nodded agreeably and went back to their quiet game of Exploding Snap behind a muffling charm so that they wouldn't disturb the twins, who now had their extra boxers on their heads courtesy of Harry and Aiden, and purple polka-dots in their hair, a clever jinx that Zakir had aimed at them after a particularly loud snore had made him singe his sleeve when his cards exploded.
Harry launched herself into the sky, kicking off hard and immediately pulling up. She shot into the sky vertically and didn't level out until she was well over the top of the stadium. It took her less than five minutes to find Oliver's window in Gryffindor tower. She landed carefully on the sill and pushed on the panes before realizing that the window opened outwards. After a great deal of precise broomwork, the window was open and Harry, hunched down over her broom, flew in.
Unlike the twin's room, the fifth years seemed to be a great deal more neat, even though there were four of them instead of only three. Percy Weasley's bed was already empty, and Harry knew that he could likely be found in the library or down in the common room, studying for his upcoming O.W.L.'s the next week. Oliver, however, was still in bed, his brown hair mussed and sticking up in odd spots.
"Oy, Oliver!" Harry called loudly, leaning her broom up against the bedpost. Oliver didn't move. "OLIVER!" she yelled directly in his ear, before leaping back to get out of range of his arms.
But, to her surprise and confusion, Oliver didn't so much as twitch. Wary, Harry moved back to the side of his bed and poked him on the arm. Nothing. Pull back the covers. Nothing. Tag him with a Tickling Hex. Nothing. As Oliver refused to respond, Harry grew more and more panicked. Finally, she clambered back onto her Nimbus and flew out the window, not bothering to close it, and through the front doors into the Entrance Hall. Narrowly avoiding a gaggle of third year Ravenclaw girls, Harry steered into the Great Hall, which was thankfully mostly empty, and up to the Staff Table.
Professor Dumbledore was watching her approach with twinkling eyes, but Snape and McGonagall were both giving her dirty looks. Professor Flitwick looked mildly amused before he returned to his conversation with Professor Sprout, and the rest of the professors watched avidly as she landed in front of Professor McGonagall.
"What is the meaning of this!" the Transfiguration professor demanded, lips pressed in as thin a line as Harry had ever seen.
"A blatant disregard for school rules," Professor Snape sneered. "I've told you time and time again, this boy is just like his father, no respect for teachers or - "
"Mr. Potter is my student, Severus, and I will do the talking," Professor McGonagall snapped out. She turned back to Harry. "Potter. Explain."
"Professor, it's Oliver! Oliver Wood! He's not waking up, I've tried everything and he hasn't even moved it's like he's in a coma or something and I could feel a pulse but I can't wake him - "
Professor McGonagall held up her hand to stop the flood of panicked words from Harry. "I see. Professor Dumbledore, sir?"
Dumbledore frowned slightly. "Minerva, bring Wood to the Hospital Wing. Severus, you'll check his blood for poisons."
Both professors nodded and stood. As they left, Dumbledore turned to Harry. "Mr. Potter, perhaps you should tell your team that your captain is unable to play, and will remain so for the near future."
"But - the Cup - !" Harry couldn't believe it. The entire reason she'd come to Hogwarts was to play Quidditch, and it was being cancelled!
"Will not take place for another two weeks, the day after O.W.L.'s and N.E.W.T.'s finish. With luck, Mr. Wood will be awake, as will Mr. Carmichael and Miss Clearwater of Ravenclaw, and the various other afflicted students currently residing in the Hospital Wing."
Harry gaped at Dumbledore. She'd known that the Ravenclaw Seeker had taken ill some weeks ago, but had no idea that he was like Oliver - asleep and unable to be awakened. "But - how many?"
"It's best if word doesn't get out," Dumbledore said mildly.
Harry refrained from glaring at the Headmaster and turned. She ignored the slightly incredulous stares from the few students already in the Great Hall at seven thirty on a Saturday morning - mostly Ravenclaws - and stalked out of the room. As soon as she was out the front doors, she remounted her Nimbus and kicked off.
The rest of the team was still in the changing rooms, and someone, most likely Aiden (as he was the worst at Exploding Snap and had the most time to spare), had given the Weasley twins' uniforms a makeover so that instead of the plain red jerseys and white pants, they had pink and yellow striped jerseys and neon orange pants to go along with their polka-dotted hair. Harry ignored the clashing colors and poked them awake.
"Wazzat?"
"'M awake!"
Harry snorted. "No you're not."
With a few gestures, Zakir took down the muffling charm. "Where's Ollie?" he asked, stacking the Exploding Snap deck gingerly on the bench next to him.
"Hospital Wing." Her two-word answer woke Fred and George up.
"What?"
"Why?"
"What about Quidditch?" Aiden broke in.
"When's he going to be better?" Ryan wanted to know.
They all turned to her. "What?" she asked, "Why're you all looking at me?"
"You're the smart one," George said with a smirk.
Harry scowled at him. "Fine. I went to his room but I couldn't wake him up so I flew to the Great Hall - "
"You flew to the Great Hall and we missed it!" Fred broke in, then made a repentant gesture when she glared at him.
"Yes, I flew into the Great Hall and told McGonagall. Dumbledore sent her to get Oliver and Snape's going to check his system for poison. And the thing is, it's not just Oliver. There's a whole bunch of students in the Hospital apparently."
Fred and George exchanged looks, while Aiden and the other two Chasers looked confused. "None of them have woken up," Harry explained. "Not even the Ravenclaw Seeker."
"But that was months ago," Ryan said, aghast.
"I know," Harry replied grimly. She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. "Why didn't they tell was this was happening? Why didn't they warn us?"
"Grown-ups always do that." Aiden's words hit the mark perfectly, and there wasn't anything else to say.
"Wish I could get into the Hospital Wing," Harry said after a few minutes of silence. The others made noises of agreement.
"I know," George said sympathetically. "How's this?" He stood up and punched her square on the nose.
Harry let out a howl of pain and outrage. "Whad duh buddy 'ell bus da fo!" she screamed at him, blood dripping down her nose and onto her jersey, hands clamped over her nose.
Fred looked equally as shocked, before anger crossed his face and he slugged his twin. The others were looking on in amazement, and even Harry had to gape as the twins engaged in a fistfight, something Harry had never thought to see.
They exchanged insults as they threw punches.
" - ungrateful lou- "
" - traitor, unchival - "
" - did it for grea - "
" - punching a g - " At that, Harry dropped her hands from her painful nose and dove into the fight as well, determined to get a punch in to the idiot who was about to say 'girl'.
It took a good two minutes for the Chasers to shake themselves out of their stupor and pull the three of them apart. Fred and George hadn't realized that Harry had joined the fray, and she'd taken some serious hits. She knew she'd have at least one black eye, and she'd gotten a split lip to match her broken nose. Her glasses were dangling off one ear, and by the time the next day came around, she knew she'd have a nice collection of bruises on her chest, back, and arms.
"What the hell was that about?" Zakir panted. Someone (Harry had her money on Fred) had landed a good one on his shoulder, which he was holding stiffly.
"He punched h - " Fred started angrily, but Harry got there first.
"'e did it doh I could get indo da 'ospidal 'ing 'ou berk!" She twisted in Aiden's grip. "Now led be go, or I'll dackle 'ou nex dime." Aiden let go. Harry straightened up with as much dignity as she could muster and gingerly bent down to retrieve her Nimbus from where it had been kicked under one of the benches. After putting it in her locker and closing the wooden door with more force than was absolutely necessary, she turned to the rest of the team. Fred and George were glaring at each other, while the Chasers looked utterly bewildered.
"I'b going do da 'ospidal 'ing," she said frostily, still unable to pronounce the words properly. She stalked off.
Madam Pomfrey was not pleased to see Harry again. She sat her down on one of the few unoccupied beds and told her to stay put. Harry covertly glanced around the Hospital Wing as the matron gathered the supplies she needed. Most of the beds were screened off, and Harry knew that those were all filled with sleeping students. The scary part was that she hadn't even noticed any of them go missing.
She didn't say anything while Madam Pomfrey fussed over her. The most sound she made was a quiet grunt when the nurse healed her broken nose with a brisk and unpitying, "Episky!" The bruises were easily dealt with - a simple bruise balm applied three times in three successive hours.
As soon as Madam Pomfrey vanished back into her office, muttering something about 'irresponsible' and 'uncouth' young ladies, Harry slipped out of her bed and padded carefully over to the nearest curtains. Glancing quickly to the Hospital Wing doors, she pulled the curtains back just enough to pass through and ducked in. As expected, Oliver's prone form was on the bed, still dressed in his Puddlemere United pajamas, covers tucked neatly around him.
"Oliver?" she hissed into his ear, prodding him with her finger. Like before, he didn't move. She carefully scooted closer and stood on her tiptoes to get a good look at his face. She scrutinized his closed eyes, and decided that he was having some sort of dream. She and Alex had slept in the same room for long enough as young children to teach her to recognize the signs of a dreaming person. Knowing that he wasn't likely to wake up, Harry sighed and made to go back to her own bed, but a sudden groan from behind her made her spin around.
"Oliver?" He was still asleep, but was turning and tossing restlessly. Harry took her wand from the pajamas Madam Pomfrey had made her wear and, with a quiet, "Sorry 'bout this," pointed it at her Quidditch captain and said the incantation for the mildest stinging hex she knew. "Delibo."
Oliver's eyes popped open in shock. "Oliver!" Harry exclaimed, surprised that her hex had actually woken him up.
But already his eyes were drooping shut and he was falling back asleep. "Delibo," Harry said quickly, pointing her wand at the same spot. His eyelids stopped closing.
"Harry?" He sounded like he had just been Confunded. "Ate - stuck - in my own -" Once again, his eyes were closing, but he somehow reached out and grabbed her by her pajama sleeve, dragging her closer. " Trapped - in - head - stuck - help - " His hand went limp.
"Oliver?!" Harry knew she was making too much noise and grabbed his hand. She nearly dropped her wand with relief when she realized that he wasn't dead, just asleep again.
"Mr. Potter!" Madam Pomfrey had heard her last shriek and bustled into the curtained area around Oliver's bed. "What gives you the right to pry into other people's private business!?" Harry didn't say anything about Oliver waking up, and allowed the matron to shoo her back to her own bed. "And stay there this time," Madam Pomfrey sniffed as she went back to her chambers, throwing what Harry suspected to be a mild ward at Oliver's curtain.
Harry didn't even roll her eyes as she leaned back against her pillows, mulling over what Oliver had managed to say before falling back asleep. The most she could get out of his words was that he had eaten or drunken something which, as far as she could tell, had trapped him in his own mind. She frowned as she tried to figure out what could do that to a person. She'd never heard of anything even close to what he'd said, or read of anything similar.
Four hours later, Harry was free to leave the Hospital Wing, with Madam Pomfrey threatening not to treat her if she returned again before the start of next term. Harry merely gave her most charming smile to the matron and said sweetly, "Thanks!"
The first place Harry went was the Common Room. When she climbed through the portrait hole, she could tell by the lack of noise in the circular room that Fred, George, and the Chasers had told the rest of Gryffindor House what had happened.
"So much for keeping it quiet," she shot at the twins. She was only faintly aware of their audience, but a quick glance told her that most of the seventh years were indeed missing, as were around half of the sixth and fifth years. Hermione and Neville pushed their way over from near the fire where they had been sitting with Ron, Seamus, and Dean. Harry glared at the eavesdroppers, and the volume of conversation suddenly rose.
"It was him," they said, pointing at each other. Against her will, the corner of Harry's mouth twitched.
"Naturally," she drawled. Harry looked them over. Both of Fred's eyes were developing nice bruises, and there was dried blood under his nose. His left eyebrow had split, and it looked like George had bitten him on his earlobe. And that was just what she could see - like her, he had taken more than a few hits to his chest and upper arms.
George hadn't fared any better than his brother. Only one of his eyes was going to be black and blue, but his lower lip was split and he had what looked like claw-marks on the nape of his neck. Harry winced - she could remember doing that.
"Erm. Sorry about the - you know," she apologized, pulling the container of Bruise Balm from the small pocket in her Quidditch jersey and tossing it at them. Fred caught it and read the label.
"He deserved it," he said with a glare at his twin, who glared right back and snatched the bruise balm from his brother, opening it and dipping his fingers in.
"So," George said as he spread the pale yellow paste over his developing bruise. "What'd you find out?"
"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, looking from the twins, who were sharing the Bruise Balm, to Harry, who still had the faint traces of a black eye.
"Harry, what happened to your face?" Neville asked, also noticing the lingering evidence of the fight.
"Just a minor misunderstanding," Harry said absently. Fred and George snorted, and Zakir chuckled from his armchair only a few feet away.
"Minor my arse," he said. "The three of them were rolling around on the floor pounding whatever bits of each other they could reach." Ryan and Aiden nodded their agreement.
"No one asked you," Harry snapped. She turned back to the twins. "And you broke my nose," she added.
"Oh, you hear that Georgie?" Fred joked, all enmity between himself and his twin forgotten. "He's angry. Look Harry," he added with a smirk, "He's trembling in his shoes!"
Harry slid her eyes to Fred and narrowed them. His smirk faded and he busied himself with the bruise balm.
"Harry, what happened?" Hermione asked insistently. "Why won't Wood wake up, and is that why all of the other seventh and sixth years aren't here? Because I just thought they were all in some sort of special class, or the Restricted Section."
"Only seventh years are allowed in the Restricted Section," Harry pointed out.
"I know." Hermione looked to be at the end of her tether. Harry smiled - Hermione hated not being allowed to read, or even simply browse, through the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library.
"Not here," Harry said, and started up the stairs. She bypassed her dorm and went all the way up to Fred and Georges.
"Oi!" Lee protested half-heartedly when she barged in without knocking. He was lying shirtless on his bed, only wearing a pair of flannel pajama pants even though it wasn't very warm in the room.
"Oh," Hermione squeaked when she followed Harry in and saw the shirtless boy. She flushed bright red and turned her back while Lee found the nearest shirt, which advertised a match between the Wigtown Wanderer's and their neighboring Quidditch team, the Montrose Magpies, from the summer past.
"He's decent," Harry said once Lee had pulled the shirt on. Harry had ignored the flushing dark-skinned boy in favor of climbing onto one of the twins unmade beds. "You two are slobs, you know," she said from the foot of the bed.
Neville took a seat on the cleanest windowsill he could find, carefully pushing a pile of nearly undecipherable notes aside to make a spot for himself. Fred tugged the covers up on the bed Harry was sitting on and flopped down, George following suit right after him and nearly sending Harry off the mattress with his over-exuberant bouncing. Hermione wrinkled her nose at the detriment littering the floor and stepped over shoes, socks, underwear, ties, books, sweet-wrappers, quills, an overturned ink-pot (now empty), and a small, two-liter cauldron that had a fine layer of crusty green scum at its bottom. Harry watched in slight amusement as her friend finally just took out her wand and brandished it at the room. Books stacked themselves neatly, the cauldron settled itself on top of a stack of books, quills sorted themselves into three piles, parchments stacked themselves according to handwriting, dirty clothes formed a heap at the end of each person's bed, and trash zoomed to the small receptacle near the doorway.
"There," she said, tucking her wand away. "Now I can move without harming myself or your things." And she sat on Fred's trunk lid.
"Ah, that's better," George sighed from the bed, gazing around his now-neat room. "Say, d'you think you could come up here once a week?"
"I am not a maid," Hermione gritted out between clenched teeth, but the slight blush in her cheeks told Harry that Hermione was pleased with the compliment.
"You're not?" Fred asked, amusement showing in his eyes. "So, who was it, then?"
Hermione's eyes widened in horror as she realized what Fred was alluding to. "No - I meant - not like that - " Her cheeks, previously a slight pink, were now flaming red with embarrassment. Fred, George, and Lee were stifling snickers in their sheets and Neville just looked confused.
"Stop it," Harry snapped, coming to Hermione's rescue. "She's muggle-born, she doesn't know that we only use the word maid when referring to one's, um…" Now Harry was blushing. "One's romantic status," she settled on after a moment's deliberation. Neville's eyes widened and his face flushed as well. "Muggles," she continued once the older boys had settled down a little, "use the word 'maid' in reference to a person, typically a woman, who comes to someone's house every so often to neaten it up. You know, dusting, cleaning the floors and bathrooms, things like that."
"So like a house-elf, then," Lee said, looking thoughtful.
"Exactly. Just they're paid and don't live with you."
"Wizards - wizards have slaves?" Hermione whispered, previous embarrassment forgotten. "But - but that's inhumane! And utterly ridiculous! Slavery went out of fashion one hundred fifty years ago!"
"They like it," Harry assured her, slightly amused by Hermione's behavior. "I was practically raised by my family's house elves." Hermione gaped at her.
"But - that's - "
"That's not what we're here to discuss," Harry cut her off firmly. "We're here to talk about the weird illness that's been putting fifth, sixth and seventh years in the Hospital Wing and leaving them in comas."
Hermione huffed but let Harry continue. Lee had dropped The Quidditch Play-Book (Updated To Include The Somerset Broom-Surf and Vanderbilt's Vivisection, Score Charts Added From Last Four Years) to his bed and sat up, an intelligent glint in his dark eyes as he listened to the conversation. Harry hadn't spent much time with him, as she interacted more with Fred and George, but knew that Lee had his own brand of intelligence: the ability to see the whole picture, even when playing out a single role. For that reason, he was the only person in Gryffindor Tower, and likely the whole school, who was known to have beat Ron at chess three games out of five. Ron hadn't asked for a rematch. It helped a great deal in his commentating Quidditch matches, as well.
"Oliver woke up," Harry said.
"You're joking!" the twins said immediately. Lee merely frowned. Neville gaped and Hermione exclaimed, "But no one else has!"
They fell silent when Harry glared around the room at them. "Now that you're done acting like you just had your brooms snatched from under you, I can finish." Fred made a face at her. She ignored him and continued. "It was only for a few seconds - maybe ten - and I had to, erm, help him along a bit."
"What did you do?" Hermione asked, arms crossed as she recognized the tone of voice Harry usually reserved for those instances where she couldn't avoid telling Hermione and Neville about her assisting the twins in their nighttime pranks.
"Just a little stinging hex," Harry answered quickly. When Hermione made to object - doubtlessly something about jinxing a sick person - she overrode her. "But that's not the important part! He told me," she said importantly, lowering her voice to make sure the others would pay more attention, "he told me that he was trapped in his own head!"
Silence was her only response.
"That's helpful," George said sarcastically.
"We always knew he was mental," Fred added snarkily.
"Shut it, you two," Harry snapped. "This is serious. When has Oliver ever over thought anything? Besides Quidditch, anyways," she amended.
"Point taken," George allowed with a quick grin, but it seemed hollow.
"But that still doesn't explain how or why Wood woke up," Hermione piped in. "We don't even know if we can take what Wood said seriously. Maybe he talks in his sleep."
"I think I know when someone's talking to me, Hermione," Harry said, trying not to get too irritated. "He was looking right at me when he said it. He even grabbed my sleeve!"
"All right!" Hermione said quickly, obviously wanting to avoid an all-out row. After a moment of silence, she asked, "But what did he mean, 'trapped in my head'? I haven't read of anything like that."
"You wouldn't have read about magic like that in one of your books," Lee said, speaking for the first time. "Spells like that are Dark magic." Harry turned to look at Lee, but the twins best friend and roommate wasn't interested in meeting any of their eyes. "My Mum, when she split from her family to marry my Dad, brought some of the more expensive items with her. I - I snuck into her room just before I came to Hogwarts and read some of the books. Got most of the way through one of them before she caught me."
He had the room captivated, and Harry had an inkling of what Lee must have found. Her own father was very careful about keeping the more dangerous books on the top shelves, with anti-tampering charms on them, but one day Remus had taken one down before going to the bathroom and Harry had hidden it away. He had never noticed, and by the time Harry was eight she had read it. She'd had nightmares for nearly three months.
"There was a section on spells that would trap a person in their worst memories, or make a world so amazing that they wouldn't ever want to wake. Things like that." Harry watched as Lee picked at a loose thread in the weave of his pajama bottoms.
She was very glad when Neville spoke up. "I heard my Great-Aunt Enid mention something once," he said, very quietly. Harry felt bad at how surprised she was at Neville's words. Neville rarely spoke about his childhood, even with her and Hermione. "I only remember because it was just before my Great-Uncle Algie pushed me off the Blackpool Pier. Someone had just found out that when you combined two potions, they act like a hallucination."
"Hallucinogen," Hermione corrected almost automatically, but she was frowning, deep in thought.
"Do you remember which two potions?" Harry asked hopefully as Fred and George started whispering together over her head and Lee fiddled with his pajamas.
"Sorry," Neville answered quietly, shame apparent on his face. "I just - you know how hopeless I am at Potions. If it was two plants, I know I would have remembered."
"That's all right," Harry said, before trying once more. "Not even a guess?"
Neville shook his head.
"Maybe if you close your eyes and picture yourself there?" Hermione cut in, giving up on her train of thought in favor of Harry's conversation. "I read that pretending your where something happened will sometimes jog a memory."
Neville gave her a dubious glance but squeezed his eyes shut. Harry hissed at Fred and George to shut up, which they did, watching Neville, whose hands had fisted themselves in the fabric of his robes.
"I'm sorry," he said after two tense minutes of Harry, Fred, Hermione, George, and Lee staring at him while he strained to remember. Neville's shoulders slumped forward in defeat.
"What did you remember?" Hermione pressed. Harry felt like calling her off, but still held out hope that her clever friend could be right.
"Not much," Neville admitted. "Just a bit about Aunt Enid saying something about October or autumn and how miserable it - "
"Wait," Harry cut in, propping herself up on her elbows, nearly hitting both of the twins in the process. "Say that again."
"Er." Neville tripped over his tongue as he repeated his sentence. "Au - Aunt Enid s-said something like October or autumn and that it was miserable. I think. I can't be sure!" He seemed panicked by her vehement reaction.
"That's a potion," Harry exclaimed. "Autumn Misery! It's a simple flu-inducer, which, when taken in concentrated doses, can make someone ill for up to three days!"
Hermione gasped. "That's how long all of the teachers got sick!" Harry stared at Hermione as the implication set in.
"Oh Merlin," she said softly. "That could mean that they're trapped in their heads too!"
"But they're not asleep," Lee pointed out. "How can they be?"
Harry frowned. "Well," she said slowly, trying to remember what her mother's seventh year potion's book had said, "We know from Neville's Aunt Enid - "
" - Great-Aunt Enid," Fred corrected. Neville grimaced.
Harry ignored the interruption. " - that Autumn Misery, when taken in conjunction with a certain unknown potion, causes hallucinations. What if," she continued, before anyone else could speak, "someone did further research into the matter?! It's not a far stretch of the imagination! And there could be other potions, or at least variations, that cause something similar!"
Neville looked at her with wide eyes. "You're a genius," he said in awe. "I could never have known that."
Harry tried not to blush, but could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks.
"Oh, how precious," George cooed, pinching her cheek. She scowled and dumped a pillow on his head.
"Don't even think about it," she growled at Fred, who smiled beguilingly at her from her other side, innocently running a hand through his hair, a hand which Harry suspected had, only seconds ago, been poised to pinch her other cheek.
"That's all very nice," Hermione said, drawing Harry's glare away from Fred, "but what does it mean? I can't think of any reason for…" she trailed off, a thoughtful expression on her face. Harry's own mind was searching for reasons as to why someone would put all the older students in what essentially amounted to a coma, while at the same time wondering who had done it. Hermione got there first. "The Stone," she said with a gasp, meeting Harry's eyes with wide ones of her own. "Whoever's doing this has to be after the Stone!"
"The what?" Lee asked, while Neville's jaw dropped and the twins stared at Hermione.
"The Sorcerer's Stone," Harry answered absently, trying to absorb the full implication of Hermione's statement. Someone was after the Stone. Someone had tried to kill her in the Forest. Someone was keeping the teachers occupied by creating an epidemic, after weakening the professors themselves, starting with Professor Dumbledore. "It can turn any metal into gold and is the vital ingredient of the Elixer of Life."
Lee let out a low whistle. "I can see why someone'd want that," he said. "Everlasting life and endless gold. Who wouldn't?"
"The question is, who is, and who can," Harry said grimly, her fingers worrying the scarlet sheets underneath her.
"Professor Snape," Hermione burst out after a moment of silence in which all of them sat in thought.
Harry stared at her friend. She didn't like the Potion's professor much - at all, really - but he didn't strike her as the sort to cross Dumbledore. He was dark and moody, yes, and he was a Slytherin amongst Slytherins, but he respected Dumbledore too much.
"I don't think so," Harry said, and was met with objections from the others in the room.
"But - it's Snape," George protested. "You know - evil slimy git who lives in the dungeons and never washes his hair?"
"And he's a Potions Master," Hermione pointed out. "He'd have been able to make the potions easily."
"He's scary enough for it," Neville offered with a slight shiver. "And mean enough, too." Harry had to agree with Neville: Professor Snape was a mean bastard at times, especially to the two of them.
"But he was sick too!" Harry exclaimed exasperatedly. "Why would he make himself sick!?"
"So he wouldn't look suspicious," Fred said, then added, a bit lower, "You should know that after all year with us."
Harry glowered at him.
"And plus," Hermione said, in an almost smug tone of voice, "The only adults here who didn't get sick are Filch and Hagrid. I just can't see either one of them stealing it." Harry half felt like laughing at the mental image of Mrs. Norris leading Fluffy on a long chase through the corridors while Filch opened the trapdoor, but didn't.
"That could hold true for any of the professors," Harry snapped at Fred. "They're teachers, for Merlin's sake, they're not stupid enough to think they wouldn't look suspicious if they were the only one not sick."
"I don't think it was Snape either," Lee said quietly from his bed. Fred and George made noises of disbelief, while Hermione turned a stony but polite face towards him. Lee continued in the same quiet voice. "Like Hermione said, he's a Potions Master. If anyone with any sort of power ever figured out what was happening, he'd be the first suspect because of it. That's an amateur's move, that is. Self-incrimination, almost."
"So?" George asked mulishly.
"He probably just thinks no one's ever going to figure it out, arrogant bastard," Fred snarled, anger distorting his face into a twisted mask.
"He's a Slytherin," Harry said simply. The others stared at her, nonplussed.
"What's that got to do with this?" Neville asked, confusion clear on his round face.
"It means that he's not that stupid to think so highly of himself," Lee explained.
Harry nodded her agreement. "Slytherins always have backup plans, or fail-safes to keep themselves out of blame's way. That's just sloppy, expecting that no one will figure it out."
The six of them sat in silence for a long minute.
"Then who could it be, if not Professor Snape?" Hermione asked.
They all turned to look at Harry. She scowled. "Don't look at me," she snapped. "I just don't think it's Snape. That doesn't mean I know who it actually is."
June 1
Harry -
Centaurs are notoriously enigmatic. We've got one teaching here (Interpreting the Heavens and
Magical Flora), and even during lecture (which we can sit in on if we haven't got a class during
that period) he can't seem to speak plainly. So take whatever they told you with a grain of salt.
I looked up unicorns, and you're right. Whoever's drinking that blood is mental, if you ask me,
since living after you've drunk it sounds horrible. Food turns to ash in you mouth, you're always
thirsty, and you can only see black, white, and blue.
Exams are next week for me, so please don't send any more letters. I've got major studying to
do for Transfiguration if I'm planning on passing my classes and getting the ones I need for next
year.
And I'm glad you're okay.
-Alex
June 2
Dear Alex,
Thanks for the quick response, and good luck on exams. See you soon.
Love,
Harry