Chapter Twenty-four
The Cheese Spirit
Harry's brain was still trying to process the chain of events. One minute, they'd been listening to some ridiculous tale by Snape, who appeared to have finally lost it, and the next, Draco was muttering about wine, shagging, and desire. The next thing he knew, Hermione had freaked out, Draco had professed his love to Hermione, and Hermione had thrown herself into Draco's arms.
Harry didn't have time to dwell on yet another impossible event occurring in Snape's morning class, however. Hermione smacked into Draco, her arms outstretched, Harry presumed, to throw around Draco's waist, but Draco was off-balance and they both went toppling over on the other side of Draco's potion, which had turned a dark, putrid green and begun to emit thick smoke. An incredibly nasty smell, like a mountain of limburger cheese, began to fill the room, accompanied by a loud and unpleasant sound, like a magnified, drawn-out mooing noise.
"No one move! Stay still! Don't panic!" Snape yelled, sounding quite panicky himself.
The fog of green smoke grew at an exponential rate, until Harry couldn't see his hand in front of his face. "HERMIONE!" he yelled, and then gagged, coughing on the fetid haze of smoke.
"Har—" Hermione's voice broke off into choking sounds as she, too, inhaled the smoke.
"Get off me, Granger!" Draco gasped.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the smoke began to dissipate, until only the rancid stench was left behind. "Hermione!" Harry called again, when he could at last breathe through his mouth more or less normally. "Are you okay?"
"She won't be if she doesn't get off me!" snarled Draco.
"What have you done? You IDIOT!" Hermione wailed.
When the smoke cleared completely, Harry was able to see that a ruffled Hermione and a worried-looking Draco were staring at the cauldron in trepidation. Harry turned to look and felt his jaw unhinge in horror.
Standing in the cauldron was one of the creepiest creatures Harry had ever seen. Its entire body was three feet tall and roughly humanoid in shape, with extremely lumpy skin that ranged from palest green to yellow-white to yellow-orange in random blotches. It had no hair or external ears, just little indentations where ears might be, and its fingers were wedge-shaped like blocks of cheese. Large black eyes stared around at the class from a face that reminded Harry of nothing so much as Lockhart's pixies.
Everyone was perfectly still, holding their breath (well, that might have had something to do with the stench) and watching warily. The Cheese Spirit smiled, revealing double rows of razor-sharp teeth.
"BOOGA BOOGA!"
The Cheese Spirit's yell was so sudden that most people jumped even as they started screaming. There was instant terror; it was as if the Cheese Spirit had threatened to kill them all or produced a chainsaw.
"Do not panic! DO NOT PANIC!" Snape shouted, but no one was listening; everyone was too busy running for the door.
"Come on, Harry!" Neville yelled.
"You go!" Harry told him, and started forward, determined to make sure Hermione got out okay. "I'll catch up!"
"RAWG!" The Cheese Spirit lunged forward and waved its arms threateningly, wedge-shaped fingers curled into claws. Harry leaped back and drew his wand, watching it warily.
"Oh, for crying out loud, what is everyone screaming about?" Draco muttered as he marched towards it. "It doesn't look dangerous to m—AAAAHHHHHHH!"
With a guttural shriek, the Cheese Spirit launched itself at Draco, its razor-like teeth visible, then jumped onto his head, holding tightly, and with a graceful turn, sank its teeth into Draco's shoulder. Draco screamed and began doing an odd sort of dance, trying to shake the Cheese Spirit from his head and succeeding only in lodging its teeth in deeper. He began beating on its head, trying to get it to let go of his shoulder, scared to death and wondering if the bite should be painful. No blood or rips in his clothing could be seen as the Cheese Spirit lifted its head. Licking its lips, the Cheese Spirit turned to Hermione, grinning eerily as she attempted to back away from the fondue reject before she remembered her wand. As she wasn't able to think too clearly with the Cheese Spirit eyeing her, preparing to jump again, her choice of spell wasn't the best. "Expelliarmus!"
The Cheese Spirit, confused only for a moment, went to lunge for Hermione when Harry, unable to get a clear shot at the Cheese Spirit to cast a spell, ran up and tried to punch the Cheese Spirit in the back of its head. That only turned its attention to him, and took Harry's hand in its mouth, bit down, then spit it back. Harry grimaced at the sight of his wand and hand, all covered with warm, slimy cheese that stank to high heaven.
Snape's voice made everyone, even the Cheese Spirit, start. "Whatever you do, do NOT let that thing outside of this room!" Snape was doing his best to get to the back of the room, but the flow of students making for the door was slowing him down, no matter how many he shoved out of the way.
Shrieking, the Cheese Spirit turned to Snape and hissed. "Seweeeeruuuus..." Letting out a howl that sounded more like a laugh, the Cheese Spirit pushed away from the three, jumped onto a nearby table, and made a mad dash for Snape. "SEWEEERUUUUS!"
As the final student—Neville—ran out, slamming the door behind him, Snape turned towards the cry of the Cheese Spirit. Face hardening in resolve, Snape planted his feet and readied his wand, staring down the grotesque vision of the Cheese Spirit as it ran, knocking things over as it went, shrieking and flapping its arms like a voodoo priest, its short legs bending at odd moments.
It might have been an impressive sight, really—a small, violent demon running straight at a powerful wizard. However, this was a demon made of cheese, and a powerful wizard who'd lost his mind and was wearing a cheesy—um, dorky—Christmas sweater that took away most of his intimidation factor. Harry, Hermione and Draco all turned to watch nervously as the Cheese Spirit suddenly made a flying leap at Snape.
"Hey, calm down! Everyone calm down! It's okay, it's locked in there!"
Ron was doing his best to calm down the screaming Slytherins and Gryffindors who'd come pouring into the hall. (Well, he really only cared about the Gryffindors, but the Slytherins were there.) "It's locked in!" Ron repeated. "Snape and Harry and Hermione will sort it out!" Ron, Fred and George, who'd been spying on the class since long before the Cheese Spirit's appearance, had seen the whole thing, and hadn't had time to run for it before the class had run for the door and forced Ron and the twins back, cutting off their exit to the first floor. The Slytherins now stood on one side of the three Weasleys—the side leading towards their common room—while the Gryffindors stood on the side of the corridor that would take them to the entrance hall.
"What the hell was that thing?" Parvati gasped.
"Harry and Hermione are still in there!" Neville exclaimed worriedly.
"Hey, if anyone can deal with it, it's Harry and Hermione," Lavender said. Ron shot her a dirty look. "And Ron," she added quickly.
"Don't worry, guys, we're all safe, and I'm sure—" Ron broke off; he could hear the evil cackle of the Cheese Spirit from inside and he shook his head nervously and stepped away from the door, just in case. "I'm sure they can handle it. Neville, go get Dumbledore, will you? He ought to know about this."
"Yeah, sure." Neville ran off at top speed.
"What do we do?" Parvati asked, wringing her hands.
"We wait here," Ron said, trying to sound more certain than he felt. "For now, all we can do is wait for the all-clear. If it sounds like it's getting worse in there, then we'll go back in and give them backup."
"Forget that," Blaise Zabini spat. "I'm out of here."
"Hey! Draco is still in there!" Pansy yelled at him.
"So?"
"We can't just leave him!"
"Hey, you want to go back in there and fight some freakish demon creature, be my guest," snapped Theodore Nott.
Pansy narrowed her eyes at him. "Fine. Leave. I'll be sure to tell Draco you guys left!"
Suddenly, none of the Slytherins were too eager to leave.
Ron rolled his eyes at the Slytherins and turned to Dean, Seamus, Parvati and Lavender. "I'm sure they'll be fine, guys," he told the Gryffindors. "Harry and Hermione have handled a lot worse."
"I'm so glad you're here, Ron," George said, latching onto Ron's arm and pasting a mock-terrified expression on his face. "You're such a big, strong, take-charge kind of guy!"
"Yes, you'll protect us, won't you?" Fred asked tremulously, grabbing Ron's other arm, his eyes darting around as though looking for the demon.
"Oh, shut up," Ron growled, trying to shake the twins off his arms.
"OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT?" Fred screamed suddenly.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" the rest of the class shrieked, and without a single backwards glance, Gryffindors and Slytherins alike took off running, leaving the three Weasleys alone in the corridor.
Both Fred and George burst out laughing, releasing Ron and clutching the wall for support. "Oh, that was priceless," Fred wheezed.
"Good one, Fred," George gasped.
"I'm surrounded by idiots," Ron muttered, throwing up his hands and turning to watch the door warily.
Harry, Hermione and Draco stared as the Cheese Spirit flew closer and closer to Snape, and then—
"JUUSTO!"
—and just like that, the Cheese Spirit was knocked out of the air. It landed in an unconscious heap on the floor in front of Snape, who smirked down at it.
"HA!" he gloated, pointing his wand at its body. "I was ready for you this time, wasn't I, Dorwilaron? You… you cheese-flinging bastard, you! HAHAHA!" He looked up at the three students. "Don't worry, it's okay. I know how to get rid of Dorwilaron here."
"Dorwilaron?" Hermione repeated.
"Yes, Dorwilaron the Dairy Demon."
"Dorwilaron the Dairy Demon?"
Snape nodded rather solemnly. "That's what I called it."
Harry, Hermione and Draco gave him a funny look. "…You… named it?" Draco said faintly.
Snape rolled his eyes and glowered at Draco. "I messed up a potions ingredient and conjured a dairy demon and I figured it needed a name, since it was locked in my wardrobe for six hours while I looked up the spell to fix the whole mess. I swore I'd never do something that stupid again." Taking in the looks Draco, Hermione and Harry were giving him, Snape finally frowned. "I was ten years old, okay?" He turned to Draco. "What's your excuse, by the way? Was Hermione not giving you enough trouble so you figured you'd literally make some, or did you just have a cheese craving?"
Draco glared at Snape. "I thought you were lying. So I decided to prove it."
Snape gaped at him, then laughed the Old Snape laugh—all bitter sarcasm. "Draco, if I told you that pointing your wand at yourself and saying an incantation would kill you, would you try to prove me wrong by doing it? How stupid can you be? Idiot boy!"
"How could you even THINK about trying it?" Hermione snapped at Draco. "The gods only know what you've done to Harry!"
"I don't care what I've done to Potter! I care what I've done to me!" Draco retorted, looking mortified at the thought that his Cheese Spirit bite could have side effects.
"What kind of idiot brews a potion with those ingredients?" Hermione demanded. "The caffeine in the root beer would have caused a negative reaction on the rose petals, and everyone knows that rose petals are used to make spirits appear! And all the extra love herbs you used—coriander, ginger, vanilla—and that's not to say anything of the other stuff! Nutmeg and anise—"
"What are you talking about, Granger?" Draco snapped.
"D'you have any IDEA what's in root beer?" Hermione told him, fairly shouting now. "All sorts of herbs, most of them used to enhance divination and psychic ability or for love potions!"
"Well, there is some consolation," Snape muttered. "At least it bit him."
"What does that mean?" Harry demanded in a panic.
"My god, what's happening to Malfoy?" Hermione asked. Odd parts of his skin and hair were turning a shade of pink that slowly darkened to a beautiful shade of fuchsia.
"That would be the bite," Snape said wearily. "If it bites you, any part of your body that it touched or bit turns—"
"MY HAND!" Harry wailed.
"MY HAIR!" Draco wailed, and grabbed a glass bottle off of a nearby table to check his reflection. "AAAAHHHHHHHHH!"
"It goes away, don't worry!" Snape said hastily.
"WHEN?" Draco shouted. "WHEN? MY HEAD IS PINK! AGAIN!"
"Well, the pink goes away in about six hours, if I remember correctly," Snape said, the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement. "Then it turns the color of white cheese, then yellow cheese, over a space of about six hours, then it becomes a sort of moldy green for another hour. I think. Regardless, it only lasts for about thirteen hours."
"ONLY?" Harry roared. "ONLY?"
"Well, compared to the other problems the bite causes, this is quite minimal—"
"What other problems?" Draco demanded.
"Well, as Granger said… the root beer causes a lot of problems. Where did you find a can of Barq's root beer, anyway?"
Draco frowned. "Dobby. I went to the kitchens when you let me go to the bathroom."
"You went to the kitchens with Malfoy? During class?" Harry asked Hermione incredulously as he dug a dragon-hide glove out of his pocket and covered up his pink hand.
"No, I was dragged to the kitchens," Hermione replied, glaring at Malfoy.
"What are the other problems?" Draco repeated worriedly, heading for his desk and seizing his hat, then pulling it as low over his head as he could.
"Well, the most annoying parts, as I recall, were the psychic visions. They're quite bothersome, mostly because they usually don't make sense in the slightest. As for the other effect… well, who were you visualizing, Draco?"
"What?"
"You followed the directions exactly?"
"Yeah…"
"Then who did you visualize as the intended recipient while you spoke the love poem?"
Draco blinked. "I didn't visualize anyone," he said. Draco had been too busy worrying that Granger would catch on to what he was doing and muck it up to remember that he was supposed to visualize a girl that he wanted to make fall in love with him.
"Did you, Potter? Did you think of anyone while he said the poem?"
"No—"
"Then you're probably both safe from the other side effects," Snape said. "So don't worry about them. The visions are more annoying than anything else—you'll see a flash of the future or something, just a jumble of images that probably won't make sense until it happens for real. That goes away after about a week. You might also spout miniature prophecies, a line or two about the future. Hopefully, if neither of you visualized anyone, the effect should be lessened. And ignore any strange dreams for the next week or so, okay?"
Harry and Draco just sort of stared at him in horror.
"Um… right," Hermione said. "Back to the point… what happens to the Cheese Spirit?"
"I say we toss it in the fire," Draco said, tugging his hat down a bit more and rubbing his shoulder.
"It's a demon, though, isn't it? Would that even work?" Harry asked.
"No, it wouldn't," Snape replied. "There is only one way to get rid of it, as I discovered twenty-nine years ago. And it is most certainly not pleasant."
"Wow, a demon-banishing ritual," Hermione said, her eyes lighting up. "Can I help? That would be so interesting—"
"There is something seriously wrong with you," Draco said, giving her an annoyed look.
"Shut it, Pinky."
"Actually," Snape said, ignoring the argument, "you will all have to help. This particular ritual requires four people. I had to enlist Avery and the Lestrange brothers."
"The Death Eaters?" Harry said sharply.
"They were the only people I had who'd help me with it," Snape told him, shrugging. "They were friends of mine, children of my father's friends. Well, we had best get started," he said, and turned towards the door.
"Where are you going?" Hermione asked.
"To find an unsuspecting student to rope into banishing the Cheese Spirit," Snape replied cheerfully. "I swore, once we'd banished it, that I would never, ever have to do it again. Well, technically," he added, pulling open the classroom door, "I swore I would never be stupid enough to conjure it in the first pla—WEASLEY! Just the man I wanted to see!"
Snape, who'd opened the door to find three Weasleys standing in the hallway (who now all wore nervous expressions) grinned at the sight of them and grabbed Ron by the arm, pulling him into the classroom. "You can be the fourth person for the banishment ritual," Snape said, marching Ron over to the unconscious demon on the floor.
"Hey, there's no way I'm going anywhere near that thing," Ron said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Especially not to help those three." He sneered at Harry, Hermione and Draco.
"Oh, you'll do it, Weasley," Snape said in a pleasant tone, "or there will be serious consequences."
Draco blinked, looking up at Snape, the only teacher in the school who actually liked him, who favored him above Harry and Hermione, the only teacher he felt was really on his side, threatening a Weasley even while wearing his bizarre Christmas sweater and bells and smiling.
"I knew it!" Draco yelled, running forward and flinging his arms around Snape. "You really are still an evil Slytherin bastard!"
Everyone just sort of stared, including Snape. "Yes, well, we evil Slytherin bastards don't usually hug, you know," Snape said in disgust, patting Draco on the back awkwardly.
"Can we banish the demon now, please?" Hermione said. "I really want to see how it's done, and we have another class right after lunch—"
"Plus that's just disturbing," Harry said, nodding at Draco, who was still hugging Snape.
"Yes, we'd better," Snape said, and frowned, trying to remember the banishment ritual. "Right. Now… I believe Professor Vector might have some colored ink we could borrow, and we'll ask the house elves to make Draco a necklace of garlic bulbs—"
"What?" Draco demanded, stepping back immediately.
Fred and George, who'd been hanging back in the doorway, trying to decide if they should leave before something bad happened or stay and watch the action, immediately came into the room and shut the door behind them, sitting down together on one of the tables. "Oh, there's no way we're missing this," Fred said, grinning his head off.
"Minerva? Are you there?"
McGonagall jumped and spun to face the classroom fireplace, where Snape's head sat, smiling at her in the same creepy way he'd been smiling yesterday. "Hello, Severus," she said wearily. "I'm giving my second years their exam, what—"
"Sorry to interrupt," Snape said, nodding at the class, who promptly looked confused at his apologetic nature, "but I need to talk to you about Granger and Malfoy. I need you to reschedule their exam."
McGonagall arched an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Oh… the reason's not important, I just need them here for a while, and I don't think they'll be fit to take an exam today…"
"Tell. Me," McGonagall growled, tired of never getting any answers. "And it had better not have anything to do with this prank war, or so help me, Severus..." Letting her sentence hang, McGonagall rubbed the bridge of her nose, waiting for an answer.
Snape gave her a nervous smile. "Well... I told my morning class about the first potion I ever made… and how it went… wrong… Well, now Draco's wearing a garlic necklace while Granger and Potter draw symbols on his face—"
"What?" McGonagall spluttered, startled. Whispers and giggles erupted from the class, causing McGonagall to snap around quickly, glaring at them sharply before turning back to the fireplace when the whispers disappeared.
"It's a long story—" A sudden scream, which sounded strangely like Fred Weasley and was only slightly muffled by coming through the Floo network, cut Snape off.
"ARGH! THE CHEESE SPIRIT'S AWAKE!"
"RUN!" came Draco Malfoy's panicked voice.
"Yes, well, I'll tell you later," Snape said worriedly, and quickly disappeared.
End Notes: Ah, the lovely Cheese Spirit chapter. My best friend Freyja SilverWillow was an enormous help writing this one, and from what I understand it's become one of the most memorable things about this story.It's one of my all-time favorite chapters, and I'm especially proud of it.In the original posting of this story, this chapter was the one for which I received review number one thousand. God, that seems like eons ago…
Anyway! For those of you who might wonder where the hell I got this… I know some of you ask where I get my ideas on occasion… I've decided to include the story.
Once upon a time, my dear friend Freyja and I were talking to this guy, who was quite a nuisance but very entertaining… the way movies on Mystery Science Theatre are entertaining. He'd asked us to teach him to do magic, saying that he'd always been intrigued by the idea of Wicca. This idea made us very frightened, as this guy using said skills was quite terrifying and possibly—no, definitely dangerous, possibly deadly. So we gave him a long list of books, hoping he would never read up on it and as such, never start playing with things like magic.
Well, naturally, he contacts us a few days later to say he used cheese and a candle in a spell and something went wrong (imagine that) and now there was a creepy spirit in his house who wouldn't leave.
…Now, Freyja and I were certain this was a horrid attempt to be funny or to play a practical joke, but there was also a chance (a much larger chance than with a normal person) that he'd actually done something involving a candle, cheese and magic and was now convinced (in other words, hallucinating or paranoid) that there was a malevolent spirit in his house. Well, we did the only thing we could do—we invented a fake demon-banishing ritual and told him that performing it would get rid of his problem. The ritual was quite hysterical; it included things such as covering all the furniture in the house in garlic, eating more cheese of a different brand, a goofy chant and symbols to draw all over his skin.
This may have been slightly cruel of us, but we knew that there was almost no chance that a spirit would be conjured with cheese and a green candle and almost no chance that he really did the counter-spell. …Okay, there's a huge possibility he did the counter-spell, because he just… was that brand of dense…
Anyway, that was where the cheese spirit came from. A whacked-out guy whose furniture now reeks of garlic… antics with him show up in many a story, actually…
Another thing I wanted to mention was that Freyja SilverWillow and I did actually look up the ingredients for root beer and then cross-referenced those ingredients with the magical properties of herbs. Apparently, there really IS a lot of stuff in root beer that's used in love spells, such as coriander and sarsaparilla. Go figure.
Finally, thanks to Adel for pointing out my mistake in chapter twenty-one regarding the toast story. It has since been fixed.