Chapter Thirty-nine

Brilliant

Harry, Dean, Seamus, Neville, and Ginny stood rather still, staring openmouthed at Hermione with odd expressions. "What?" Hermione asked. "It's a good plan, guys. It'll work."

"Of course it will," Draco said, already relishing the look soon to be on Ron's face.

Luna, who had paused on their journey to the broom shed to examine a rock that looked rather like a Finnish Mimic, wandered over at last and looked from the gaping Gryffindors to Hermione and Draco. Even Luna registered shock at their appearance; Hermione and Draco were both half-dressed and covered in dirt, cuts, grass, leaves, and twigs, with their hair sticking out wildly and their mouths fixed in cheerful smiles. Hovering a few feet behind them was an acromantula as big as Ginny.

"Wrackspurt got you?" Luna asked, looking concerned and sympathetic.

"What?" Draco said, looking around nervously.

"No—we're fine," Hermione said with a smile. "I'm not sure they are, though." She nodded at Harry and the others. "They haven't said a word and they won't stop staring at me funny."

"We… I…" Harry shook his head as if to knock his thoughts out of his ears. "Hermione… are you cooperating with Malfoy?"

"We made a truce, Harry," Hermione said with a shrug. "It's no big deal."

"We still hate each other," Draco added.

Harry chanted something under his breath that sounded like "The dreams aren't real… the dreams aren't real," but neither Hermione nor Draco appeared to hear him.

"So none of us should read anything into the fact that you two are happily working together after spending an hour alone in the forest and emerging with only half your clothes?" Luna asked.

"Of course not!" Hermione said, promptly looking horrified; Draco did as well. "Is that why you all look like you've seen a ghost?" she demanded of Dean, Seamus, Neville, Harry and Ginny.

"Oh, come on," Draco said, grinning. "I'd never do anything like that with her. I mean, she did try to seduce me for a minute there, but I told her that I prefer my women a little more virtuous and a whole lot better-looking and she backed off."

Hermione turned to glare at him, her wand held high. "Gee, Malfoy, want me to show you what an acromantula looks like when it's poisoning someone?"

"Oh, now look, I've offended her again," Draco said with a gusty sigh. "I'm sorry, Granger—I can't help it if I prefer girls from good families who don't sleep around, know how to use a hairbrush and realize that there's life outside the library."

"And I can't help it if I tell everyone I meet how terrified you are of the forest." Hermione waved her arms and assumed a mocking, scared expression, making her voice sound high and panicky. "Murderous centaur! Murderous centaur! Let me hide behind the Muggle-born girl who can kick my butt in every single class! I hope she can save me, because I don't think I can outrun the centaur, especially since I'm tired because I already ran like a terrified four-year-old from the big bad spider!"

Draco swelled indignantly and then tilted his head to the side, his hands clamped to his cheeks in a mockery of grief. "Oh, woe is me, I'm Hermione Granger, my boyfriend doesn't like me because I'm a lying tramp. Let me just sob hysterically for a while in the middle of a forest filled with dangerous creatures."

"I think we were worried about nothing," Ginny muttered to the others.

"I'd say so," Harry said, watching them bicker with a slight grin.

"Hey!" Ginny said loudly, stepping forward. "If you two are through, we should get on with this. You two should take Luna; you might need a spare wand, and I don't know what the twins did with Malfoy's."

"Good idea," Hermione said, turning away from Draco contemptuously, trying to disguise the fact that she couldn't think of a comeback. "I'll tell Luna on the way. You can fly, right, Luna?" She nodded. "Okay. Does everyone know what to do?" There was a general murmur of assent. "Make me proud, guys. Let's go."

Dean, Neville, Seamus, Harry, and Ginny headed off towards the castle. Hermione turned to the broom shed, raised her wand, and blew the door off the hinges.

"Harry and Ginny are dead wrong!" Fred insisted. "Come on, you lot remember us! We're the masters of practical joking, not them!"

"If we say there's a prank about to go down, there's a prank about to go down," George added.

The crowd of Gryffindors that had returned to the common room from the grounds eyed the twins suspiciously. "It doesn't matter anyway," said one of Ginny's roommates with a slightly sullen air. "We'd get caught if we left again now. It's too close to curfew."

Muttering irritably, the Gryffindors turned towards their rooms. Before anyone had gone far, however, a first year by the window pointed out to the grounds and yelled, "Look!"

There was a mad scramble for the windows. A dazzling display of light and color lit up the path to Hagrid's, turning the Whomping Willow shades of bright pink and orange. Fred, George and Ron exchanged uneasy glances; they had sent everyone outside in the hopes that Hermione and Draco would be seen leaving the forest, and therefore be incredibly humiliated. This wasn't at all what they'd expected.

"D'you think that's her?" Ron muttered quietly.

"Could be," Fred said. "But I doubt it."

"Maybe it's just another prank, a coincidence," George suggested.

"But I doubt it," Fred repeated.

The portrait hole swung open, and everyone in the common room turned to look as Dean, Seamus, Ginny, Harry, and Neville came in, all covered in globs of some sticky substance the same color as the lights below.

"All right, I admit it," Harry said heavily. "I was wrong."

"There was a huge explosion," Neville said, his eyes wide as though in awe.

"Who did it?" someone called from the crowd by the window.

Harry shrugged. "No idea."

"Tell us everything!" Lavender said, pushing her way through the others to reach Harry.

"I need a shower first," Harry said firmly, and he headed for the boys' dormitory with Dean, Seamus and Neville while Ginny went to her own room.

"This doesn't look good," Fred said darkly.

"It'll work," Ron said firmly. "If anyone else sees those lights, they might head down there and check it out, and run into her."

"And if nothing else," George said thoughtfully, "we could always just do this to them again."

"Now there's a thought," Fred said with a grin.

Harry threw open the dormitory window. Hermione and Draco were floating on a broomstick just outside it, the acromantula still floating above them. Luna was just behind them, humming quietly while playing with her butterbeer cork necklace.

"Got the cloak?" Hermione asked in low, urgent tones.

Neville ran up behind Harry, holding up the silvery invisibility cloak. "All right," Hermione said tersely. "Stand back."

Hermione directed the spider in through the window and steered it carefully onto Ron's bed before flipping it over. Looking disgusted and reluctant but still determined, Harry took the cloak and flung it over the spider. Then he picked up his trunk, which had been repacked, and tapped it with his wand to shrink it.

"Here," he said, handing the book-sized trunk to Hermione. "Stick this in the guest room for me, eh?"

"All right," Hermione said, giving him an apologetic look. She handed him Ron's things, which she'd grabbed from the guest room by flying in through the window on her way up. Harry returned them to their rightful size and place by Ron's bed. "Everyone ready for phase two?"

"Yeah," Dean, Seamus, Neville and Harry chorused.

"Okay, then—go for it."

Harry checked one last time to make sure that the acromantula was completely invisible before turning to the door. The four guys headed back downstairs.

"This really is brilliant," Draco said gleefully, rubbing his hands together (and then putting them back on the broom when Hermione yelped).

"Thanks," Hermione said in surprise.

"I wasn't complimenting you," Draco snapped.

"Whatever." Rolling her eyes, Hermione turned to Luna. "If it's okay with you, Luna, you'd best head back to your own common room. We probably shouldn't let Ron know you're involved, and you'll need a good alibi."

"All right," Luna said serenely. "Do tell me how it turned out."

"We'll give you a full report," Hermione promised, and Luna flew off towards the west side of the castle.

"So what now?" Ron wondered aloud, just as Harry, Dean, Seamus and Neville burst back into the common room looking terrified.

"Guys!" Harry hissed, sending a quick look around the room to make sure that no one was watching. "Hermione and Malfoy are in the dormitory, looking murderous! They're destroying your stuff! Hermione keeps growling about you three!"

"Make her stop!" Dean added angrily. "I think she's destroyed my West Ham poster."

"And my Mimbulus mimbletonia," Neville whimpered. "She's really angry…"

Fred and George were already on their way to the stairs, Ron right behind. Shooting a triumphant look at Dean, Seamus and Neville, Harry signaled to Ginny, who was hiding on the girls' dormitory staircase. The four boys followed the twins and Ron, Ginny sneaking along behind.

Flinging open the door to the seventh years' room, Fred and George burst inside, intending to confront—or perhaps gloat over—Hermione. Ron pushed his way past them, looking around.

"Where is she?" Ron demanded, turning back to the door just as Harry pulled it shut. "Harry! What—"

"Colloportus!" Harry shouted, and the door sealed with a squelching noise.

George grabbed the handle and yanked but to no avail. He gave up rather quickly, however, when another voice floated in from the window.

"Accio cloak!"

Something large and dark came into view on Ron's bed, but the three Weasleys had fixed their attention on the window. Hermione was clutching Harry's invisibility cloak and floating on a broomstick outside the window, Draco sitting behind her, both of their faces shining victoriously.

"Hi, boys," Hermione said with a purely terrifying smile, rather like one Carrie would have made if she'd smiled after the pig's blood had been dropped at the prom. She raised her wand once more, pointing it at Ron's bed. "Exsuscito!"

The three boys whipped around, their eyes widening in horror as they caught sight of the four-foot-tall spider now clicking its pincers at them, pushing itself up on its eight legs.

"Payback time, boys," Hermione called cheerfully, then yanked the window shut as the acromantula attacked and the screaming began.

"We pranked Fred and George," Dean whispered in awe, looking dazed. "We'll go down in history for this."

"Not if we don't get away with it," Neville said nervously.

"So what happens now?" Seamus asked, grinning as they listened to the screaming.

"Phase three," Harry reminded him. "Dean, Seamus, Neville—you know what to do. Ginny—with me."

McGonagall sighed as she approached the seventh floor. She had been attempting to weasel answers out of Albus; Severus had disappeared again, and no one seemed to know where he'd gone. If Albus knew, he wasn't telling—and she was pretty sure that was the case. She figured she'd pick up Severus's trail in the morning; for now, she was going back to her private quarters for some rest.

As she neared the top of the stairs, she caught sight of Dean, Seamus and Neville racing down them. "Longbottom!" she yelled, and Neville spun and nearly fell. Seamus grabbed his arm to steady him. "Finnigan, Thomas—where do you think you're going this late?"

"To get you!" Dean gasped, breathing hard. "The door to our dormitory is sealed, and we can hear Ron inside it, screaming, with a couple of other people. There's another weird noise but we're not sure what it is…"

McGonagall moved passed them and headed for Gryffindor tower, leaving the three boys to catch their breath on the stairs. (They were on the verge of collapse, seeing as how they'd run up to the tower from the grounds, up seven flights of the boys' stairs, down the stairs, up them again, and down them again before reaching the seventh-floor corridor.)

"What have they done now?" McGonagall muttered to herself, picturing Poppy's reaction to admitting Potter, Weasley and Granger to the hospital wing yet again, along with Malfoy, probably. Poppy was already in a bad temper at the moment, considering that Severus's new personality transplant meant he lived in some alternate reality where he wasn't supposed to be brewing potions for Poppy to help with things like flu season.

McGonagall stalked past the crowd of Gryffindors in the common room and up the stairs without sparing much thought for why they were all staring fixedly out the windows. As she neared the top of the staircase, frantic shouts reached her ears.

"ARGH!"

"HELP!"

"I HATE SPIDERS!"

"I'll kill you all!"

Sighing, McGonagall raised her wand and cast a spell to discover the door's enchantments—Colloportus. A moment later, the counter spell was cast and the door swung open to reveal a comical but frightening scene.

Fred, George and Ron Weasley were running about like Chicken Little during an apocalypse, firing spells around the room at a small acromantula who was chasing them about, rasping out death threats as it clicked its pincers hungrily. The jets of multicolored light from the spells made the room look like a discothèque gone horribly wrong.

"Kill it… kill it!"

"I don't know how!"

"Why didn't I pay more attention to Hagrid?"

"You will all die horribly for this!"

McGonagall crouched low and aimed at the spider's underside. "Stupefy!"

The three boys stopped running as the spider fell over. Looking around in relief and shaking badly (the front of Ron's robes were actually quite wet, as though he'd had an accident) their eyes fell on the professor.

"Thank you!" Fred wailed, running forward and throwing his arms around her, followed quickly by his two brothers.

"Thank you thank you thank you! Oh, we forgive you for the singing!" George said.

"Get off! For heaven's sake, get hold of yourself!" McGonagall barked, thoroughly nonplussed. They stepped back hastily. "Does someone want to tell me what happened here?"

"It was Hermione!" Fred exclaimed immediately.

"And Malfoy!"

"And Harry!"

"And Ginny!"

"And probably Dean, Seamus and Neville!"

"How, exactly, did this happen? That's an acromantula… one would have to go into the Forbidden Forest to secure one of those…"

"Er… then that's what they must've done!" Fred said quickly. McGonagall raised a suspicious eyebrow but said nothing. "Harry, Ginny, Dean, Seamus and Neville came in, and they all went to their rooms, but Harry, Dean, Seamus and Neville came back down and said Hermione was in here trashing the place and we ran up to stop her and Harry locked us in."

"And the spider was under Harry's cloak so we couldn't see it," George added. "Hermione was on a broomstick outside the window, and she used her wand to Summon the cloak off the spider, and then she and Malfoy flew off."

"And—" Ron began, then suddenly turned away and retched violently.

"Do you have any proof?" McGonagall asked.

"Well… Hermione and Draco looked like they'd been in the forest," Fred said slowly. "They had dirt and leaves all over themselves."

McGonagall sighed. "To the hospital wing, all of you. I'm not certain, but I believe acromantulas can spit poison; you might have been infected. At the very least, you look like you could use a Calming Draught. I'll go find Hagrid and deal with Miss Granger and Mr. Potter."

The three of them nodded and, still trembling, headed back downstairs. McGonagall cast a binding spell on the spider, just in case, and then headed for the guest room.

"Love and bunnies," she called at the wall. As it slid open, she cast a stern look at the students in the common room to make sure no one followed, then approached the portrait.

"Password?" the painting asked.

"Prank war." All teachers were privileged to every password in the castle.

"Sorry, it was just changed."

Having no idea what the new password was, she instead elected to use the password given personally to the professors for just such a situation, which would open any password-protected wall and was assigned by Dumbledore. "Catwoman," she said heavily.

"Right, professor." The portrait swung open.

McGonagall looked around. There were the two beds, standing a few feet from each other, both unmade. Hermione and Draco were sitting at the table, yelling at each other, books scattered between them.

"Loser!"

"Know-it-all!"

"Wimp!"

"Freak!"

"Idiot!"

"Granger! Malfoy!"

The two of them turned from their heated argument and looked around at McGonagall. "Professor!" Hermione said in surprise. "Is something wrong?"

"What do you know about the acromantula in Weasley's dormitory?" McGonagall barked.

"What's an acromaculad?" Draco asked.

"There's an acromantula in Ron's dormitory?" Hermione repeated in alarm. "Is he all right?"

"He's fine," McGonagall said suspiciously. "Badly shaken, but fine."

"He hates spiders," Hermione said worriedly. "Are you sure he's okay?"

"Weasley hates spiders?" Draco said gleefully. "What a wimp!"

"Hey, Hermione—ready to go to sleep?" said Harry, coming out of the bathroom in his bathrobe. He stopped at the sight of McGonagall. "Professor? What's going on?"

"What are you doing in here?" McGonagall asked.

"I've been staying in here," Harry said with a shrug. "Sleeping on the couch and keeping Hermione company. She fights with Malfoy too much if I'm not here to fight with him for her."

"The Weasley twins claim that you set an acromantula loose in your dormitory."

"What? Why would I do that?" Harry spluttered. "I hate acromantulas. Call me crazy, but ever since they tried to kill me, I've steered clear of them. How did it get in the dormitory?"

"That's what I'd like to know," McGonagall said. "They claim Miss Granger and Mr. Malfoy flew up to the window on a broomstick."

"But I hate flying!" Hermione exclaimed.

"Tell me about it," Draco muttered sourly.

"I wouldn't fly all the way up here! That would scare me to death. Ask anyone—Professor Wood knows, and Madam Hooch…"

"And I'm never getting back on a broom with her again," Draco said darkly.

"Are… are you sure it wasn't one of the twins?" Hermione asked tentatively. "Ron told me the reason he hates spiders is because Fred turned his teddy bear into a spider once. Maybe it was their way of pranking him—you know how they are."

McGonagall knew that made perfect sense—but she also knew it was certain that the three people in front of her were the culprits. "I suppose all three of you can account for your whereabouts this evening?" she inquired, the ghost of a smile on her lips.

"Malfoy and I have been here all afternoon," Hermione said, also smiling slightly. "I told Ron I wanted to go research the chain more in the library; time's running out before Christmas. Harry just got back from his detention; he was covered in some strange globs of paint or something and he went straight for the shower."

"We'll let you know if we hear anything, though," Harry said.

"I'm sure you will," McGonagall said with a small laugh. "Now, then—you three wouldn't happen to know where Severus is, would you?"

"No," Harry said with a sigh. "After my detention I saw him heading for Hogsmeade, though, and I followed him—but he Apparated as soon as he was past the winged boars."

"So he probably wasn't going to Hogsmeade," McGonagall said thoughtfully. "All right, then… he must be going to visit a friend who lives farther away."

"Snape has friends?" Harry blurted out.

"Yes," McGonagall said with a slight smile. "He may be a rude overgrown bully, but even rude overgrown bullies have friends."

"Kind of like Malfoy," Hermione said thoughtfully before she could stop herself.

"Hey!" Draco growled.

"If you'll excuse me," McGonagall said, turning to leave with a grin. "I've the matter of this acromantula to sort out. I also need to inform Albus that you three have alibis and couldn't possibly have been involved. Oh, and by the way—if you're going to put dangerous creatures in your friends' beds, try to make sure they aren't poisonous, won't you?"

"Sorry," Hermione said sheepishly.

McGonagall chuckled. "You really do remind me of myself at your age, Miss Granger," McGonagall said, then turned and left.

"She… she knows? She knows and she's not going to punish us?" Draco breathed, looking scandalized and indignant.

"Doesn't surprise me," Hermione admitted. "After all, she figured out the Quidditch goalpost prank."

"She knew it was you?" Draco shouted.

"Of course she did. She helped pull off the same prank on my dad when he was seventeen," Harry said with a smirk.

"Looks like we've gotten away with this, too," Hermione said with a yawn. "Now come on, I've got to get some sleep, I'm exhausted."

The three of them headed to the bathroom. Hermione checked her hair again and, discovering that she'd missed a few twigs with her cleaning spells, she insisted on getting in the shower. Wearily Harry drew up a chair, and Draco Summoned one from the bedroom (the chairs he could conjure had a tendency to dump the user maliciously).

"So what do you think of this Snape-having-friends thing?" Harry called to Hermione over the noise of the shower.

"Now that I think of it, there's no reason he wouldn't have friends," Hermione said. "He may be a jerk to us, but he's nice to the Slytherins."

"Of course he has friends," Draco said with a snort. "A lot of them, actually."

"You knew that?" Harry demanded.

"Of course I did. He was close with my father," Draco replied. "My father had connections all over the world—and Snape was part of his circle of friends. My mother always said Snape was one of her favorite people, and Fudge was fond of him too."

"And obviously they're great judges of character," Harry muttered sarcastically, rubbing the faint outline of the scar Umbridge had forced him to cut into his hand.

"Snape could be going anywhere, from London to Australia," Draco continued with a yawn. "Hurry up in there, would you, Granger?"

Hermione shut off the water and reached for her towel. "We should make a list of everyone he knows. Friends, acquaintances—"

"Not tonight," Harry complained. "I'm tired. In fact, we should leave it for a few more days. I thought we were going to try to research the chain and see if we could get it off before Christmas?"

"Yeah," Draco grumbled. "I don't want that filthy Mudblood in my h—OW!"

"Oops," Harry said innocently.

"You're right," Hermione said loudly, trying to stop another fight. "We've got a lot of research to do and I'm exhausted. It'll have to wait."

"Why does it even matter?" Draco demanded. After the Cheese Spirit incident, he rather felt the Snape mess was best left alone.

"It… well, aren't you curious?" Hermione asked, emerging from the shower dried and dressed in her nightgown.

"Not really," Draco said bluntly. "I'd just as soon ignore it. So he's acting weird. So what?"

Harry and Hermione frowned. "That's just not the way it works," Hermione said loftily.

"Excuse me, but don't you think you're a bit old to be forming some cheesy detective club?" Draco retorted. "I mean, come on. It's none of our business if he's gone a bit funny."

"A bit?" Harry repeated incredulously. "He's lost his frigging mind!"

"Let's talk about it tomorrow," Hermione said, interrupting Draco. "We're all tired and we've got a lot of books to read if we want to have any hopes of removing this chain."

"And there's the small matter of Ron's retaliation," Harry pointed out.

"A very small matter," Draco said derisively.

"Let's hope so," Harry muttered.

"We're talking major mayhem here. They have to DIE for this," Fred growled angrily.

"Humiliation factor's just gone up. We're talking every person on the planet's gonna see this," George added darkly.

"What are we going to do?" Ron asked shakily.

"Oh, we know exactly what we're going to do," Fred said.

"So tell me."

"Not in the hallway, you idiot. Anyone could be listening."

Dean, Seamus and Neville had just started back up the steps when they heard Fred, George and Ron approaching, talking in loud, pissed-off voices. "Phase four," Neville whispered, and Dean and Seamus nodded.

"What are you lot doing down here?" Fred demanded, glaring at them as he rounded the corner with his brothers.

"After Harry tried to open the door, we went to find McGonagall," Neville explained, looking worried. "Are you guys all right? What happened?"

"Tried to open the door?" George demanded. "He's the one who sealed it shut!"

"Harry wouldn't do that," Dean said, frowning. "He cast about fourteen spells on it before telling us to go get McGonagall while he kept trying."

"You expect us to believe that?" Ron demanded.

"What d'you mean?" Seamus asked. "We were trying to help, mate. Did McGonagall get to you in time? You weren't hurt?"

The three Weasleys looked at each other. Fred nodded grudgingly. "I don't suppose they would have gone for her if they were in on it," he said. "They're probably telling the truth."

"Of course we are!" Neville said indignantly. "Harry might be our friend, but you are too!"

"What, do you think we'd hear you screaming hysterically and not try and do something?" Seamus asked.

"Thanks," Ron said gratefully. "I'm going to kill Hermione… how could she, she knows I don't like spiders…"

"If it hadn't been us, it would have been a bloody good prank," George said grudgingly. "I wish we'd have thought of it."

"We've already thought of something better," Fred reminded him. "Now come on, I've got to get Hagrid before that thing wakes up."

Before any of them could take a step, however, a loud, inhuman screeching met their ears. "What now?" Ron moaned… just as a giant pink-and-orange beast flew round the corner, straight at him. "ARGH!"

The three Weasleys took off screaming for the second time in less than an hour, leaving Dean, Seamus and Neville behind. The three of them grinned as the flying monster chased Ron, Fred and George around and around the seventh floor.

"Hermione really is brilliant," Dean said appreciatively as he, Seamus and Neville stood back to watch.

"Yeah," Neville said. "Who else would have thought to cover Pig in that magical paint of hers and set him loose in the castle?"