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Results for Poll #5: Who is your favorite ghost at Hogwarts? Peeves the Poltergeist (8 votes), The Grey Lady (5 votes), Nearly-Headless Nick (4 votes), The Bloody Baron (2 votes), and The Fat Friar (0 votes)
Poll #6: Which Marauder do you like the best? Please take the time to vote!!!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Need I say more?
Chapter 12: Fluffy and Denby
"Neville?" called out Dudley, glancing at the scrunched up form of the sleeping boy in front of the portrait of Akikei the legendary Dragon.
Neville jumped and immediately awakened. "Dud-Dudley, Ron, I'm so-so glad to see you. The Bloody Baron's been past twice, and I think he just went to fetch Filch."
"What are you doing out here anyway?" questioned Ron, as the trio hurried out of the corridor before Filch and his irksome cat Mrs. Norris caught them.
"I forgot the password to the Gryffindor Common Room," replied Neville nervously, "I suddenly remembered it when I found the Fat Lady gone from her portrait, so I decided to wait here in the shadow till' a prefect or someone came around."
"Okay, but don't make any noise. We're trying to find Harry so that we can leave before we get in trouble for wandering the corridors after hours," said Dudley, making a hushing noise.
The three of them made their way up the marble staircase to the first floor, and stopped in their tracks when they saw Harry and Draco Malfoy up ahead.
"Psst, Harry!" Dudley called out noiselessly. Harry and Draco jumped and turned around. Harry's face broke into a grin.
"Duds! Ron! Neville! Look what I found!" he exclaimed, pointing at something behind a glass case. Dudley, Ron, and Neville hurried over and saw a golden plaque labeled: James Potter: Chaser of Gryffindor Quidditch Team and Captain from 1975-1978.
"Cool, huh?" Harry piped up, behind Dudley, Ron, and Neville. Draco stood a little distance off, not sure whether he should leave or not.
"Yeah," Dudley replied wistfully. He wished he had a Dad he idolized as much as Harry idolized his. Then his mind turned back to the days before he found out he was a Wizard, when he had been Dudley Dursley instead of Dudley Evans: happy family moments between his mum and dad, him and his siblings, the amusement park trips during birthdays, the frolics in the park, him and Duncan playing baseball with Vernon on weekend, and so many more.
Harry, looking as if he understood what Dudley was thinking, immediately regretted showing him the plaque and said, "Draco and I have been trying to find Filch so that we can sign out and go to bed. Do you know where he is?"
"Would we be here if we knew?" asked Ron, smirking. The others, except Draco, laughed. Suddenly, they heard a sniffing noise near by.
"Who's that?" called out Dudley.
"It sounds like someone's crying," reflected Harry.
Hermione Granger suddenly came out of the girls' bathroom off to the right corner. She was wiping her eyes, but stopped in her tracks when she saw Harry, Draco, Ron, Dudley, and Neville.
"What are you doing here?" she asked them, putting on her usual bossy expression despite the obvious tear streaks on her cheeks. "You're wandering the corridors after dark. What if you got caught? You could lost Gryffindor more points!"
"The same can be said for you!" Ron said, glaring at her. Hermione glared back and was about to retort when Harry shushed them both.
"Listen here you two; we'll all get in trouble if Filch catches us, as Neville and Hermione are here and they clearly did not have any detentions. Let's just get to our dormitories fast, and Draco and I will explain to Filch tomorrow that we left after waiting for him a long time."
The group nodded and Dudley said, "I'll just go back down then. The Hufflepuff Dormitories are on the ground floor."
But when he turned around to walk down the Marble Staircase, he saw Peeves the Poltergeist, hovering a few feet from the ground with a smug smile on his face. He caught sight of them and gave a squeal of delight.
"Shut up, Peeves – please – you'll get us thrown out," pleaded Harry.
Peeves cackled. "Wandering around at midnight, Ickle Firsties? Tut, tut, tut. Naughty, naughty, you'll get caughty."
"Not if you don't give us away, Peeves, please," Hermione said in a sweet voice, trying to convince Peeves to leave them alone.
"Should tell Filch, I should," said Peeves in a saintly voice, but his eyes glittered wickedly. "It's for your own good, you know."
"Get out of the way," snapped Ron, taking a swipe at Peeves – this was a big mistake, Harry smacked his forehead and Draco wondered at Weasley's stupidity. Even he knew that one shouldn't mess with Peeves!
"STUDENTS OUT OF BED!" Peeves bellowed, "STUDENTS OUT OF BED DOWN THE CHARMS CORRIDOR!"
Ducking under Peeves, they ran for their lives, up a moving staircase which dropped them off on the third floor, right to the end of the corridor where they slammed into a door – it was locked.
"This is it!" Ron moaned, as they pushed helplessly at the door, "We're done for! This is the end!"
They could hear footsteps, Filch running as fast as he could toward Peeve's shouts.
"Oh, move over," Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry's wand, tapped the lock, and whispered, "Alohomora!"
The lock clicked and the door swung open – they piled through it, shut it quickly, and pressed their ears against it, listening.
"Which way did they go, Peeves?" Filch was saying. "Quick, tell me."
"Say 'please.'"
"Don't mess with me, Peeves, now where did they go?"
"Shan't say nothing if you don't say please," said Peeves in his annoying singsong voice.
"All right—please."
"NOTHING! Ha haaa! Told you I wouldn't say nothing if you didn't say please! Ha ha! Haaaaaa!"
And they heard the sound of Peeves whooshing away and Filch cursing in rage.
"He thinks this door is locked," Harry whispered. "I think we'll be okay – get off, Neville!" For Neville had been tugging on the sleeve of Harry's bathrobe for the last minute. "What?"
Harry turned around – and saw, quite clearly, what. For a moment he was sure he'd walked into a nightmare – this was too much, on top of everything that had happened so far.
They weren't in a room, as he had supposed. They were in a corridor. The forbidden corridor on the third floor. And now they knew why it was forbidden. They were looking straight into the eyes of a monstrous dog, a dog that filled the whole space between ceiling and floor. It had three heads, three pairs of rolling, mad eyes; three noses, twitching and quivering in their direction; three drooling mouths, saliva hanging in slippery ropes from yellowish fangs.
It was standing quite still, all six eyes staring at them, and Harry knew that the only reason they weren't already dead was that their sudden appearance had taken it by surprise, but it was quickly getting over that, there was no mistaking what those thunderous growls meant.
Harry groped for the doorknob – between Filch and death, he'd take Filch. They fell backward – Harry slammed the door shut, and they ran, they almost flew, back down the corridor. Filch must have hurried off to look for them somewhere else, because they didn't see him anywhere, but they hardly cared – all they wanted to do was put as much space as possible between them and that monster. Dudley ran down the marble staircase to the Hufflepuff Common Room while the rest of them took more staircases to the Gryffindor Common Room. They didn't stop running until they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady on the seventh floor.
"Where on earth have you all been?" she asked, looking at their bathrobes hanging off their shoulders and their flushed, sweaty faces.
"Where on earth have you all been?" she asked, looking at their bathrobes hanging off their shoulders and their flushed, sweaty faces.
"Never mind that – pig snout, pig snout," panted Harry. And the portrait swung forward. They scrambled into the common room and collapsed, trembling into armchairs. It was a while before any of them said anything. Neville, indeed, looked as if he'd never speak again, Draco looked terrified and his usual cocky manner was replaced by a wordless expression as he stared around the common room, for once grateful for its comforts, Hermione's pale face was starting to regain color as she stood up, Ron was slumped across his armchair, and Harry wiped the sweat from his face as he contemplated what he had just seen.
"What do they think they're doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?" said Ron finally. "If any dog needs exercise, that one does."
Hermione had got both her breath and her bad temper back again. "You don't use your eyes, any of you, do you?" she snapped. "Didn't you see what it was standing on?"
"The floor?" Harry suggested. "I wasn't looking at its feet, I was too busy with its heads."
"No, not the floor," Draco broke in, regaining his voice as well. Everyone looked at him in surprise, and Hermione glanced gratefully at him. Finally, someone who understood where she was going! "It was standing on a trapdoor. It's obviously guarding something," he finished
"Well, we're sorry for not noticing what it was standing on, Mr. Obvious. In case you hadn't noticed, it had three heads!" snapped Ron. Neville nodded vigorously. He still hadn't gotten over the shock of nearly dying.
"I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed – or worse, expelled," Hermione sniffed contemptuously.
"What are you talking about? We never asked you to come with us. You were just there!" Ron said, but Hermione was already gone, having hurried up to the Girls' Dormitories for a good night's rest. "And how is getting expelled worse than dying? Boy, does she have her priorities mixed up!"
"Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed," sniffed Draco in a similar manner to Hermione.
Ron stared after him, his mouth open. "No, we don't mind," he said. "You'd think we forced him into a stroll against his wishes or something, wouldn't you? And Harry, since when have you called Malfoy Draco?"
"That is his name," was Harry's reply.
But Hermione and Draco had given Harry something else to think about as he climbed back into bed. The dog was guarding something… What had his father said? Gringotts was the safest place in the world for something you wanted to hide – except perhaps Hogwarts. It looked as though Harry had found out where the grubby little package from vault 713 was.
But the question, as he snuggled up among his sheets, was: what had his parents, Uncle Padfoot, and Uncle Remus to do with the three headed monster? Were they in on Professor Dumbledore's secret? And how important exactly was the little package which the dog was supposedly hiding?
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As the month of October arrived, the grounds of Hogwarts were covered by orange, red, and golden leaves, and the students daily saw Hagrid sweeping them away while humming a tune to himself. The weather turned chillier, and in their respective Common Rooms, groups of kids could be found doing their homework huddled around the fireplaces. A true sight to behold was the enormous pumpkins planted in Hagrid's large garden behind his cozy hut, nearing 8 ft. by mid October. They would be later used for the Halloween Feast.
Harry had tried to discuss the three headed dog with Dudley, Ron, Neville, Hermione, and even Draco, but other than Ron and Dudley, the other three could care less what the dog was doing there. They just didn't want to go near it again.
"I wonder what it's guarding that could be so important as to have a three-headed dog guard it," said Harry one morning in Mid-October.
"It's either really valuable or really dangerous," said Ron.
"Or both," said Dudley. Harry and Ron were sitting at the Hufflepuff table that day with Dudley, Justin, and Ernie, as they had not received any interested reaction from those of their own table. Justin and Ernie had been filled in on the whole incident the morning after, and were just as curious as Dudley, Ron, and Harry as to what it could be.
"Maybe we could ask the teachers what three-headed dog is doing here," suggested Justin. Ron looked at him incredulously.
"Are you joking? We'd get in trouble before you could say 'Magic'! We're not supposed to know about what's in the 3rd floor corridor," he stressed.
Since all Harry, Ron, or Dudley knew for sure about the mysterious object was that it was about two inches long, they didn't have much chance of guessing what it was without further clues.
Neither Neville nor Hermione nor Draco showed the slightest interest in what lay underneath the dog and the trapdoor. All Neville cared about was never going near the dog again. Hermione was now refusing to speak to Harry and Ron, but she was such a bossy know-it-all that they saw this as an added bonus. Especially after Ron's insult to her a month ago, her feelings towards them had never been warm, and this incident did nothing to improve them. Draco was his usual silent self, and immersed himself in his school work.
After learning that Harry had made the team, Lily and James had sent him a note telling him how proud they were, and sent through the mail his Nimbus 2000 which he had gotten for his birthday. Harry's classmates had crowded around his broom and oooed and aawed for hours. Oliver Wood, the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, had been ecstatic when Harry brought the broom to his first practice, and all the team members had taken turns riding on it out of sheer awe. They felt the Quidditch Cup was sure to be theirs this year, not only because of the Nimbus 2000, but Harry's apparent talent as a seeker.
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On Halloween morning they woke to the delicious smell of baking pumpkin wafting through the corridors. Even better, Professor Flitwick announced in Charms that he thought they were ready to start making objects fly, something they had all been dying to try since they'd seen him make Neville's toad zoom around the classroom.
Professor Flitwick put the class into pairs to practice. Harry's partner was Draco Malfoy, which wasn't as bad as he would have originally thought. Ever since the 'peace treaty', Malfoy hadn't been as nasty as before, but he wasn't profusely friendly either. Ron, however, was to be working with Hermione Granger. It was hard to tell whether Ron or Hermione was angrier about this. She hadn't spoken to either of them since the day they had the run in with the three-headed dog.
"Now, don't forget that nice wrist movement we've been practicing!" squeaked Professor Flitwick, perched on top of his pile of books as usual. "Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick. And saying the magic words properly is very important, too – never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said 's' instead of 'f' and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest."
It was very difficult. Harry and Draco swished and flicked, but the feather they were supposed to be sending skyward just lay on the desktop. Draco got so impatient that he prodded it with his wand and set fire to it – Harry had to put it out with his hat.
Ron, at the next table, wasn't having much more luck.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" he shouted, waving his long arms like a windmill.
"You're saying it wrong," Harry heard Hermione snap. "it's Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa, make the 'gar' nice and long."
"You do it, then, if you're so clever," Ron snarled.
Hermione rolled up the sleeves of her gown, flicked her wand, and said "Wingardium Leviosa!" Their feather rose off the desk and hovered about four feet above their heads.
"Oh, well done!" cried Professor Flitwick, clapping. "Everyone see here, Miss Granger's done it!"
Ron was in a very bad mood by the end of class.
"She thinks she's so good," he said to Harry as they pushed their way into the crowded corridor. Then, mimicking her, "It's levi-o-sa, not levi-o-sa! Honestly, she's a nightmare!" Seamus and Dean snickered at Ron's impression of Hermione, but Harry and Neville stared uncomfortable at each other. Someone knocked into Harry as they hurried past him. It was Hermione. Harry caught a glimpse of her face – and was startled to see that she was in tears.
"I think she heard you," he said quietly.
"So?" said Ron, but he looked a bit uncomfortable. "She must've noticed she's got no friends with that attitude of hers."
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Hermione didn't turn up for the next class and wasn't seen all afternoon.
On their way down to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, Harry and Ron overheard Parvati Patil telling her friend Lavender Brown that Hermione was crying in the girls' bathroom and wanted to be left alone. Ron looked still more awkward at this, but a moment later they had entered the Great Hall, where the Halloween decorations put Hermione out of their minds. A thousand live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter.
The feast appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had at the start-of-term banquet. Harry was just helping himself to a baked potato when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the hall, his turban askew and terror on his face. Everyone stared as he reached Professor Dumbledore's chair, slumped against the table, and gasped,
"Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know." He then sank to the floor in a dead faint. There was an uproar. It took several purple firecrackers exploding from the end of Professor Dumbledore's wand to bring silence.
"Prefects," he rumbled, "lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!" Percy was in his element. "Follow me! Stick together, first years! No need to fear the troll if you follow my orders! Stay close behind me, now. Make way, first years coming through! Excuse me, I'm a prefect!"
"How could a troll get in?" Harry asked as they climbed the stairs. Their year was getting weirder and weirder
"Don't ask me, they're supposed to be really stupid," said Ron. "Maybe Peeves let it in for a Halloween joke."
They passed different groups of people hurrying in different directions. As they jostled their way through a crowd of confused Hufflepuffs, Harry suddenly grabbed Ron's arm.
"I've just thought—Hermione," he said urgently. Then, glancing over his shoulder, he found Dudley wedged between two third year Hufflepuffs, and called out, "Oi! Duds!"
"What about her?" asked Ron, as Dudley made his way over to them
"She doesn't know about the troll," Harry said. Then, when Dudley reached them, he explained the situation to him. "We have to find her."
Ron bit his lip. "Oh, all right," he snapped. "But Percy'd better not see us."
Ducking down, they joined the Hufflepuffs going the other way, slipped down a deserted side corridor, and hurried off toward the girls' bathroom. They had just turned the corner when they heard quick footsteps behind them.
"Percy!" hissed Ron, pulling Harry behind a large stone griffin.
Peering around it, however, they saw not Percy but Snape. He crossed the corridor and disappeared from view.
"What's he doing?" Harry whispered. "Why isn't he down in the dungeons with the rest of the teachers?"
"Search me," said Dudley.
Quietly as possible, they crept along the next corridor after Snape's fading footsteps.
"He's heading for the third floor," Harry said, but Ron held up his hand.
"Can you smell something?" he asked suspiciously.
Harry sniffed and a foul stench reached his nostrils, a mixture of old socks and the kind of public toilet no one seemed to clean. And then they heard it – a low grunting, and the shuffling footfalls of gigantic feet.
Ron pointed – at the end of a passage to the left, something huge was moving toward them. They shrank into the shadows and watched as it emerged into a patch of moonlight. It was a horrible sight. Twelve feet tall, its skin was a dull, granite gray, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. The smell coming from it was incredible. It was holding a huge wooden club, which dragged along the floor because its arms were so long.
"It reminds me of Denby the Troll," Dudley suddenly remarked quietly. Ron and Harry looked at him strangely. "Denby," repeated Dudley at their confused expressions, "Haven't you heard of Denby? Oh, never mind! It's a children's story."
The troll, now nicknamed Denby by Dudley, stopped next to a doorway and peered inside. It waggled its long ears, making up its tiny mind, then slouched slowly into the room.
"The key's in the lock," Harry muttered. "We could lock it in."
"Good idea," said Ron nervously.
They edged toward the open door, mouths dry, praying the troll wasn't about to come out of it. With one great leap, Harry managed to grab the key, slam the door and lock it.
"Yes!"
Flushed with their victory, they started to run back up the passage, but as they reached the corner they heard something that made their hearts stop – a high, petrified scream – and it was coming from the chamber they'd just chained up.
"Oh, no," said Ron, pale as the Bloody Baron.
"You didn't—" said Dudley, eyes widening.
"It's the girls' bathroom!" Harry gasped.
"Hermione!" They all said together.
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Harry didn't remember exactly what had happened after that, but it did include rushing into the girls' bathroom, battling with the troll, and Ron finally knocking it out with its own club. Needless to say, Professor McGonagall had been furious when she found out they had gone after the troll themselves, but the fact remained that they had knocked out a fully grown mountain troll, and after Hermione's first ever lie to a teacher, in which she had said she had gone after the troll thinking she could stop it, McGonagall rewarded them 10 points (and Dudley 5)—but only after taking away 5 from Hermione.
It's strange how things work out. There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll—also called Denby--is one of them. From that day on, Hermione Granger became a friend of theirs, and the trio became a quartet, all due to Denby the Troll. Bless him.
A.N. You might have noticed that I used quite a lot of passages from the book. I tried changing it as best as I could, so if it sounds too familiar, I apologize. However, I do not take any credit for any passages you recognize as belonging to JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone…..just to let you know.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I'd really appreciate it if you review. I'd really love to know how I'm doing. So please please review!