Harry and the Pirates

Chapter 33

Christmas at Hogwarts

by Technomad

A few days later, Ron said: "Oh, by the way, Harry, my brothers and Ginny and I are going to be staying at Hogwarts over Christmas." Harry looked up from where he was revising with Dudley, under Hermione's supervision.

"Not that I'm sorry to hear it, but why?" Harry knew that the Weasleys were a close family, and generally made sure to keep Christmas together.

"Mum and Dad and Bill are off to see Charlie, in Romania, but we didn't want to go along. It's a long trip, and it does cost a lot for all of us to go." Ron blushed. Harry grinned to himself. The new robes that Ron's friends had all chipped in on were safely stowed in the castle, in Snape's storeroom. The head of Slytherin had acquiesced willingly when Hermione had asked him to keep the present where neither Ron nor his siblings could come across it before Christmas.

"I have had concerns about Mr. Weasley's appearance in the past," Snape had said, "and it gratifies me greatly to see that his Housemates are taking steps to deal with the situation, while salving his pride. He can hardly turn away a Christmas present. I have had to have words with Mr. Malfoy and his associates about their habit of denigrating Mr. Weasley. However they may feel about him and his family, he is their Housemate and they should demonstrate Slytherin solidarity with him."

The other presents were also safely hidden away, and all that was left was to wait for the term to end. Finally, the day came when the others left; there had been quite a rush for seats on the Express, since most people were afraid to stay in a castle where people, and ghosts, were being Petrified.

Luna had been sad to go. "I'll be happy to see Daddy again," she'd said, looking up at Dudley with her big silvery-grey eyes, "but I'll miss you!"

Dudley smiled down at the blonde first-year. "Your Daddy misses you. Go on and have a happy Christmas, and don't worry about me and Harry. We'll be all right. This is only our second Christmas in the U.K., and this'll be our first Christmas in Scotland! I'm looking forward to the exotic different things we'll be doing!"

"Happy Christmas, Dudley!" Luna hugged Dudley, stretching up on her tip toes to kiss him. Dudley blushed, but hugged Luna back, as her tears fell on his shirt front. Beside Dudley, Harry, Ron and Hermione all smiled. Luna's innocent directness about such matters charmed Harry. He privately thought that other girls could do with a dose of Luna's lack of subterfudge.

"Oh, look, there she is, the little slapper," came a sneering voice. Harry, Ron, and Hermione all whirled, as Dudley let go of Luna and turned to see who had spoken, his eyes ablaze with sudden fury. "Hogwarts' school broom! Everybody gets a ride, even big Mudblood lumps with no sense of manners!" It was Pansy Parkinson, who seemed to have recovered some of her gumption over the days with no attacks or reports of monsters. She sneered at the friends, her hands on her hips.

Harry felt like taking the nasty bitch down a peg or two; his hand trembled with the effort it took to keep his wand sheathed. Ron went red with fury, Hermione's eyes narrowed, and Dudley stepped forward with murder in his eyes. But before any of them could do anything, Ginny Weasley was whirling Pansy around to deliver a vicious roundhouse slap to her face. Harry's eyes went wide. Ginny knew how to hit so it hurt; she'd hollowed her palm out for maximum effect, and hit hard enough to rock Pansy's head on its hinges.

"You shut your sewer mouth, you slag! Everybody knows how you run after that inbred pinhead! All Malfoy'd have to do is snap his fingers and you'd be out of your knickers with your legs spread…for him and his two goons!" Pansy went white, then red with rage. Ginny bored in, gripping Pansy by her throat. "You keep your filthy mouth off my friend, you hear? I'm looking forward to the hols! A couple of weeks without you will be Paradise! You make the world sick, you know that? Sick!"

Pansy stared at Ginny like the redheaded first year had sprouted fangs and horns. "I…I'm not going home this year! I'm staying at Hogwarts!"

"Oh, what a shame," sneered Ginny. "What's the matter? Your parents finally realize what a mistake they made, having you?"

Pansy looked pale, then sick. "No…I just wanted to stay."

"Well, we're staying, too! So watch it, Parkinson! There's more of us than there are of you, even if you manage to get that wanker you claim to love to join in! Mind your 'P's and 'Q's, or by the time school starts again, you'll have a starring role in one of Snape's glass jars, you mutant cow!" Pansy looked at Ginny, then at the others, who were all giving her stony stares. What she saw clearly didn't reassure her; she turned and ran, and Harry could hear her first sobs as she left.

Dudley and Harry exchanged glances. "Sheesh," said Dudley, very quietly, in Russian. "She could stand up to anybody this side of Balalaika, I think!"

"I know," Harry answered. "When she's older, it'd be fun to see how she and Revy Two-Hands dealt with each other!"

"What are you two nattering about?" Hermione grumbled. "Is that Russian?"

"Yeah. Sorry. We were just thinking that Ginny'd be able to handle Roanapur. Don't you think she could?" Dudley indicated Ginny, who was being fussed over by her next-older brother, and assuring him that no, Mum didn't know she knew such awful language.

Hermione looked the younger girl over, clearly remembering her time in the Thai pirate port. "You know, I really think she could deal with that town. One thing I noticed while I was there is that shrinking violets don't do well."

"You got that right," Harry said. Meanwhile, Luna had gone on up to Ginny, and the two friends embraced.

"Happy Christmas, Ginny," Luna said, her voice thick with unshed tears. "I'll miss you! It's been such fun having friends!"

"Happy Christmas back to you, Luna," Ginny answered. "You'd better run along if you don't want to miss your train! I'm sure your Daddy wants to see you!"

The castle was rather strange, Harry thought, without its usual population of boisterous students. It was quiet, and to Harry and Dudley alike, rather eerie. They'd been raised in crowded, noisy, chaotic cities, and the relative silence felt unnatural.

The Weasley twins did their best to keep the place lively, but Harry noticed that their monkeyshines did not extend as far as actually pranking him or his Housemates. The demonstration of just what he and Dudley in particular were capable of, and the knowledge that they might have more such lethal surprises in store, kept the twins' ingenuity in bounds. They did hex Percy's badge so that it read "Pinhead," though, instead of "Prefect," though. When Harry pointed it out to Percy, the Gryffindor prefect sighed.

"Look," he said, "I don't like it myself. But letting them get away with it makes them feel like they've accomplished something, and that way, they don't go on to do other things. Think of it like a 'loss leader' in business. That's when you knowingly sell something at a loss, in the hopes of enticing people into your store so you can sell them other things at a profit."

"Oh. I see. Basically, you let them do this and they feel happy and proud that they've got one over on you. If you took countermeasures, they'd escalate, and before long chaos would reign."

Percy nodded. "Believe me, Harry, I wish things were different. Don't get me wrong; they're my brothers and I love them. But they've always been a team, them against the rest of the world, and there have been a lot of times I wished very hard that either they or I had Sorted differently." Harry understood; Ron had filled him in on how much fun being trapped in the same house with a bored Fred-and-George wasn't. While in some ways, Ron was an odd duck among the Slytherins, pureblood or no, he seemed to be happy away from where the twins could get at him easily when they wanted entertainment.

To everybody's surprise, Luna showed back up one day. "Oh, Daddy got invited to a journalists' conference, and he says such things are no place for a young girl," she said, when asked why she'd come back so soon. Dudley was very glad to see her.

Slytherin itself was peaceful. While Draco Malfoy and his two tame goons were around, they were keeping strictly to themselves. That made it doubly startling when Draco buttonholed Harry, Ron and Dudley one day in the boys' bathroom.

"Have you lot noticed anything odd about Pansy Parkinson lately?" he asked. Draco sounded concerned, and Harry fought the temptation to put his back against a wall and get out his wand. "She's been acting very rum of late."

The three friends looked at each other. "What do you mean, Draco?" Harry noted with amusement that Dudley and Ron were both just as suspicious as he was.

"She used to be after me all the time. Not that I blame her…that old Malfoy charm does have its way with the ladies, if I do say so myself!" Draco preened slightly, and Harry felt a surge of disgust. "But lately, she's taken to hiding away, and she scribbles incessantly in some damn diary or other." Suddenly, Draco looked serious. "I know you don't much like me, and Merlin knows, I'm not too fond of any of you for various reasons. But Pansy's my betrothed, and I'm worried about her. Can you ask the other girls if they know of anything wrong with her? I don't want to go to Snape about this, and I'm not sure what Snape could do. She is a girl, after all, and there are lines he dares not cross."

Harry understood, and, appealed to in that way, could not help but respond. However much he disliked Pansy Parkinson, and distrusted Draco Malfoy, they were his Housemates, and if something was seriously wrong with Pansy Parkinson…that is, other than being Pansy Parkinson, which she, and they, were rather stuck with…he needed to help.

"We'll talk to Ginny. She's sneaky, and she shares a dorm with Parkinson. She can probably find out what the matter is." Ron's promise seemed to reassure Draco, and the four parted on reasonably good terms, which was all Harry asked when dealing with Draco Malfoy.

When approached, Ginny agreed to help out. "Parkinson's been awfully quiet. Malfoy's exactly right; she does spend a lot of time scribbling in some diary or other. The diary may offer us clues. I'll see if I can get hold of it."

"Try to do it without her twigging you've got it, if possible," Ron warned her. "She would probably have an eppy if she knew we had hold of it."

"Can't honestly say I would blame her," Ginny mused. "Can you get me some sleeping potions? One nice thing about the hols, nobody has to be anywhere." Harry recognized the expression on her face; she was coming up with a good solid scheme. He had seen it many times in Roanapur and Hogwarts, on many different people.

Harry didn't know the details of what went down. Ron took the lead in this, since Ginny was his sister. Sure enough, in a couple of days, Ginny appeared in the boys' midst, triumphantly pulling a small leather-bound book from under her robes.

"We've a day at least to look through this thing," she muttered. "Parkinson managed to eat a whole chocolate cake laced with the most powerful sleeping potion I could get; she's out for a good few hours. We'd best not let Snape see us with it; he likely knows who owns it, and he wouldn't be happy."

Harry agreed. Snape would likely be furious with them, although he had had reports that the head of Slytherin had laughed himself sick in private over the Palanquin Incident. Drugging a Housemate to steal her diary, though, was another kettle of fish. In Snape's boots, he'd come down on Slytherins who did that like a ton of bricks. Eagerly, he opened the diary…and was utterly shocked at what he found. "Ginny…did you take the wrong book?"

"What?" Ginny's eyes flared with hurt pride. "Do you doubt my skills?"

"Look at it!" Harry held up the diary, and they all stared in wonder. "It's blank! It's as empty as the inside of Crabbe and Goyles' skulls!" Sure enough, the pages, although rather yellowed with age, were empty of writing.

Dudley took it out of Harry's hands. "Here…here's a name. T.M. Riddle. That sounds familiar." He thought for a second. "I know that name, or should!"

Ron peered at the name. "It does ring a bell with me. Let me see…I've got it, I think! Back last year, Filch had me cleaning a bunch of the old school trophies, and his name was on one of them!"

Soon, the investigators were looking through the case where the old school trophies were kept, gleaming dully in the dim light. Ginny pointed. "There it is! 'Thomas Marvolo Riddle, for Special Services to the School!'" She narrowed her eyes. "This is dated '1943!' What in the world is Parkinson doing with a diary that old?"

It was a good question. Pansy Parkinson came from a family with money; she had only the finest robes, newest books, and best gear, and loved rubbing that fact in the faces of girls from poor families. Ginny had fumed about it more than once.

"And it's got the mark of a Vauxhall Road shop. What would Parkinson be doing with something like that?" As a pureblood from a pureblood family, Pansy was unlikely, at best, to have Muggle-made objects in her possession. Harry had formed the impression that she would be utterly lost in the Muggle world.

Idly, Ron pulled out a quill and began to write. "Hey, cut that out!" snapped Dudley. "We don't want her to know we had this! Leave the book alone!" Ron looked at what he'd written, and his eyes widened.

"It disappeared! It was like it sank into the page!" He turned the book so they could all see it, and sure enough, the page was as blank as Crabbe and Goyle's faces when asked a question in class. Then words in a handwriting none of them recognized appeared:

Hello. My name is Tom Riddle. Who are you?

END Chapter 33