Here's an episodic adventure chapter! I wanted to flesh out my puzzle-box version of Hogwarts a little more before I start taking a sledgehammer to Draco's mental foundations next week.

This wound up being almost 6,000 words long because of the pranking scene I tacked on at the end. I panicked on Friday because I totally forgot I made the twins swear to get revenge, so I whipped it up in the middle of the night.

Professor McGonagall's voice came from behind him. "Mister Weasley, I'd suggest you catch your bugle before it flies off."

Ron sat up with a start. "Huh? Where did it—?" His blackbird-turned-bugle was struggling to flap its wings and had managed to flop onto the desk next to his. "Oh. Sorry, Professor." He picked it up, wary of its beaked mouthpiece, and set it back down in front of him.

Hermione, sitting to his left, leaned over. "You need to emphasize the 'a' in 'Avis' a bit more," she whispered. Her bugle, an elegant thing made of shiny brass and engraved with feather markings around the bell of its horn, sat sedately on her desk.

"It's levi-o-sa, not levio-sa," he muttered back.

Her cheeks turned pink. "Well, it is!"

A five-note chime rang out within the classroom. Ron looked about curiously before Hermione dragged him out of his seat.

"Oi! What the—?"

"Wizzrobe," was her answer.

Whoosh! A quintet of flaming Keese fluttered overhead. Their falling embers forced Ron and Hermione to scramble back to avoid getting singed. Around them, other students were diving for cover, most of them screaming as they did.

Ron gave Seamus and Dean, who huddled practically on top of one another under Seamus's desk, an incredulous look. How had they been getting to Charms class, if they still found Wizzrobes scary? At least one of them usually haunted the corridor outside Flitwick's classroom.

"Read the section about creating metal during animate-to-inanimate transfigurations and write a one-foot essay on the unique difficulties this form of transfiguration presents, to be handed in next Monday!" Professor McGonagall shouted over the din of crashing desks, shrieking children, and squeaking Keese. "Class is dismissed five minutes early!"

A grin bloomed on Ron's face. "We're out early? Brilliant!"

"That isn't a good thing, Ron," Hermione admonished. She slung a couple of light spells at the Wizzrobe when it reappeared. Both spells bounced off and hit the ceiling. Meanwhile, the bird just laughed and casted another summoning spell.

"It doesn't work on Wizzrobes?" she gasped. "But why? It worked so well in the last temple!"

"I dunno, but there's a lot of Keese now!" Ten flaming bats now swooped around the classroom, setting desks on fire and attacking the pile-up of students near the door. McGonagall was shooting off spells with an increasingly frustrated scowl as everything seemed to slide off the bats. Most of the teachers relied on fire spells to banish the Keese and Floormasters who occasionally intruded during class, which had thus far been effective, but fire was useless against monsters that were already aflame. The whips of water the professor snapped out were equally useless; they evaporated the moment they encountered the Keeses' Hylian magic.

Blue and Red vaulted over a line of desks and then brought their swords down and across in a synchronized motion. Four Keese fell to the ground and vanished. On either side of Professor McGonagall, Yellow and Harry cut down any bats that came too close to the teacher. Professor McGonagall didn't look happy about this, but assisted her students by casting Reductos that made the bats falter in the air.

Ron sent a light spell at a Keese and then ducked reflexively when he heard the "whoosh" of another summoning. High-pitched chattering announced the entrance of five more Keese. "We need to find another lesson scroll," Ron said, watching jealously as Yellow sliced through two bats at once. "What if there're other monsters that light spells don't work on?"

"I've been looking into that with Zelda, actually," Hermione said. She shot down a Keese and then shoved her hair back from her face. "Could I borrow your shield for a moment?" she asked.

"Er, sure." He'd taken it off at the start of class so he could sit down, so it lay conveniently under his desk. Flipping it so its straps faced Hermione, he handed the shield over. "What are you going to do with it?"

She stowed her wand in her pocket and hooked the shield onto her arm. "Compensate for a lack of effective spells." When the next Wizzrobe chime went off, she scuttled out from under the row of desks and took off running. The Wizzrobe appeared in the back right corner of the classroom, spinning with its wand held out in front of it as it readied another spell. Hermione barreled right at it with the Hylian Shield raised and braced against her shoulder. Before the monster could end its summoning dance, she rammed into it. The Wizzrobe fell sideways with a yelp, but Hermione wasn't done. She lunged for the creature's feathered hand and snatched up its slim black wand. Mercilessly, she snapped the length of wood over her knee, throwing down the pieces.

Ron shuddered. The worst thing you could do to someone was break their wand, yet she'd done it without hesitation. "Merlin, she's scary," he murmured.

The Wizzrobe wailed in despair and then vanished. Hermione calmly collected the red jewel it had left behind and then used the Hylian Shield to smack a fiery bat out of the air. She walked back over to Ron while the Harrys took out the last couple of Keese.

"Here you go." Hermione held out the shield to Ron. "It's rather heavy. I don't know how you walk around with it all the time."

Ron barely heard whatever she'd said. "That was brilliant," he blurted out.

She smiled. "Thank you. I wasn't sure it would work, but I thought it would be quicker than hitting the Wizzrobe with a dozen Incendios."

Ron just nodded dumbly as he hooked his shield onto his back.

"I-Is it over?" Neville appeared from under his desk. He stood half-crouched while his scared eyes darted around the room, ready to dive for cover if the Wizzrobe came back.

"You were here this whole time?" Red asked. He slid his sword into its sheath, sauntering over. "Is there anyone else here?" he called to the classroom.

"Me," a tremulous voice said. A slim hand rose from behind an overturned desk, followed by the rest of a thoroughly shaken Lavender Brown. "I didn't want the bats to set my hair on fire. I use hairspray, you know?"

"Yes, I know," Hermione said in long-suffering tones. "It's safe now. There aren't any more Wizzrobes or Keese."

Lavender gladly took that as her cue to leave. She picked up her school bag and sprinted out of the classroom with speed Ron hadn't known she'd possessed. Neville morosely packed his scorched Transfiguration textbook into his bag and shuffled out after her.

"We should go before Professor McGonagall notices we're still here," Ron muttered to Hermione as he ushered her out the door. The irate professor was currently occupied with lecturing Red, Harry, and Blue about safety and not following instructions. Yellow appeared to have escaped during the commotion.

"But shouldn't we offer to help clean up?" Hermione asked. She retrieved her bag and Ron's, holding his out to him. "The classroom is a mess."

"She's a professor, Hermione. One spell, and she can fix everything." Ron ushered her out of the room before she could bring Professor McGonagall's wrath down on them. They'd only just finished their detentions with her the day before, and he preferred to go without for a while longer.

Red noticed them leaving and sent him a puppy-eyed look.

"Sorry, can't save you," Ron mouthed back.

Once they were out of the classroom, they set off toward Gryffindor Tower. Meals were still going to be taken in the House common rooms for the foreseeable future, since a single Keese was still enough to incite a panic. The resulting mess was much less catastrophic when only a quarter of the school was sent scrambling for cover, rather than hundreds of students at once.

"I can't believe that one Wizzrobe on its own could cause that much chaos," Hermione said, shaking her head. "That's the first time I've seen one appear inside a classroom. I thought the bigger monsters couldn't leave the halls unless they were part of an ambush-trap."

"Either that one was a fluke, or we'll be getting out of class early more often." Ron grinned. "I could live with that."

"They might push the school year out longer, though, to make up for time missed," Hermione warned. "Muggle schools do that if there are too many snow days that force them to shut down."

Ron's face fell. "What? They can do that?" The idea of school eating into his summer break was a horrifying one. How many days of playing backyard Quidditch with his siblings would he miss? How many missed chances would there be to have the special butterscotch fudge that Mum sometimes made for him?

"I don't know about magical schools, but Muggle ones have to be open for a certain amount of time during the school year. That's how they determine how many hours there are in a school day, and how many school days in a year. If a school day gets missed in the middle of the year because of the weather, it might get tacked on at the end."

"I hope Hogwarts isn't like that. Muggle school sounds awful!"

Hermione tried to appear stern, but his expression made her snort. "You look so earnest," she remarked. "Is school really so—?"

Suddenly, the floor disappeared. For a moment, time seemed to stop. Ron's heart seized in his chest and the smile froze on Hermione's face. Then they were falling into the dark pit that had opened underneath them.

Fathomless darkness sped past Ron. He had no way of determining how far he'd fallen, where Hermione was, or how much time they had before they hit the ground. He screamed, his hands flailing in search of something to hold onto. The boy's fingers chanced across a cool, slick material and he gripped it with desperate strength. It wasn't going to save him, but it was something that distracted him from anticipating the inevitable impact.

His stomach flipped as his fall slowed. The air around him seemed to become tangible for a few seconds. It caught him, feeling not unlike a kindly pair of giant hands, and then gently set him on his feet.

"Blimey," he said hoarsely. His legs shook like they'd been hit with a jinx. "Hermione? Are you there?" He couldn't see anything in the cave-darkness of wherever he'd wound up. This must have been a new trap; he'd never heard of a pitfall sending someone elsewhere than the floor below.

Firelight bloomed in the darkness. Hermione's face appeared in the golden illumination of her magic lantern. "Yes, I'm here," she said. "Where are we? Another temple? A cave?"

Ron did a double-take. "You're over there?" He frowned at his hand, which was still holding onto smooth, almost fluid cloth. Snatching back his hand, he whipped out his wand. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"It's just me!" a voice bleated. Harry appeared out of thin air with a rustle of cloth. His eyes and the colored stripe in his hair were dyed gold in the lamplight…actually, no, they were already that color to begin with. "I snuck off before Professor McGonagall could get mad at me," Yellow said. "I didn't want to take off the cloak in the hallway because someone would see." He stuffed the Invisibility Cloak in his school bag and conjured his lantern. "Have either of you ever gotten stuck in one of these traps before?" he asked. "Green's good at sensing where pitfalls are, so we've never set one off."

"No, this is new," Hermione said. She held up her lamp and squinted into the gloom. "I think I see one of those Hylian fire-bins over there. If this is a puzzle, we should find and light them all. Even if it isn't, at least we'll at least be able to see better."

Ron moved to light the bin nearest him, only to run painfully into a block of solid stone. One knee bounced off its surface and its chiseled top edge bit into his hipbones as his body folded over it. The boy pushed himself away and stumbled when his injured knee threatened to fold. When he'd regained his balance, Ron angrily thrust his lantern forward to reveal the obstacle that had accosted him.

A waist-high wall of dull blue-gray blocks appeared from the gloom. As he swung his lantern around, he saw the blocks formed pathways like hedges in an aristocrat's garden maze. "Great, a block puzzle," he groaned. The ones that popped up in the castle were usually simple things, like an inconveniencing row or a square that needed rearranging because they refused to be climbed over. Those were just minor annoyances, unlike the monster down here. This one had to have at least twenty blocks!

"Don't touch anything yet," Hermione ordered. She had her lantern held high and was scrutinizing their surroundings with an academic look on her face. "If we don't do this right, we may trap ourselves. This looks it was designed with single-push blocks, and if we push one the wrong way, we won't be able to fix our mistake."

"What if we do get it wrong?" Yellow had gone pale. "Will the puzzle reset itself? What if it isn't like the ones in the castle?"

Ron clapped him on the shoulder. "Hermione can solve this, mate. Don't worry." He knew this sort of thing was hardly a challenge to Hermione. In the (very) unlikely event she had trouble, he could step in himself. He had a head for chess and considering what every move of a game piece might affect, a skill that lent itself well to obstacles such as these.

Hermione seemed to come to a decision and marched toward one of the blocks forming their square enclosure. Giving it a firm push prompted it to slide back one block's-width. She then shoved the stone cube adjacent to it, opening the corner of the little corral. Ron followed after her and held his lamp high to help the girl see the puzzle better.

They trundled through the maze at a decent speed, considering the lack of visibility. The castle was taking it easy on them, not throwing giant spiders or flaming bats into the maze to hamper their progress. This underground area, as dark as it was, didn't have the oppressive heaviness of a Hylian dungeon. It felt like they were being played with, not tested.

When they reached the end of the maze, they were faced with a wide door bordered on either side by a fire-bin and an odd handle. Yellow walked up to one of the bars sticking out of the wall and peered at it curiously. "We're supposed to pull these, I think," he said. "There's probably a trick, though. There's always a trick."

"Do we pull both, or only one?" Hermione asked. "Have you come across these before?"

"No. They just look like things designed to be pulled to me." Yellow dismissed his lantern, gripped the bar, and began hauling it backward. A chain reeled out of the wall as Yellow dragged the handle farther out. It was reluctant to move, though, and Yellow quickly began going red in the face.

Ron set down his lamp and went to help his undersized friend. Gripping Yellow around the middle, he used his greater strength to pull the switch out to its full length. It finished its extension with a decisive click.

Both boys jumped when a disapproving horn noise sounded all around them. The bar snatched itself from Yellow's hands and retracted into the wall.

Hermione shrieked and Ron felt something stab into his leg. He aimed his wand at his unseen attacker with unthinking speed and fired off a light spell. A bright green snake was revealed and summarily banished into dark smoke.

"G-Get them away!" Hermione screamed. Ron followed the sound of her voice to see the girl practically wrapped around one of the room's torches, wildly firing light spells at any snake that came too close. Her eyes were wide with the kind of terror that could make even the smartest person unable to think straight.

"Hermione!" Ron snatched up his discarded lantern and began viciously dispatching the snakes threatening his friend. Though he received another couple of cold, numbing bites while neglecting his own safety, he stubbornly focused on keeping Hermione safe. He didn't know what her problem with snakes was, but he wasn't about to leave her to face it on her own.

A third bite from one of the little beasts caused his ankle to wobble and give out. Ron swore and aimed at the snake, only to find Yellow had chopped it in half with his sword.

"I guess I pulled the wrong switch," Yellow said sheepishly as he helped Ron to his feet. "Are you okay? Your legs are bleeding."

"I'm fine," Ron said, though the bite wounds were starting to sting as the mild venom wore off. "What about Hermione?"

"None of them managed to bite me," Hermione said as she shakily extricated herself from the fire-bin she'd been huddled against. "I just…er, well, the basilisk from last year left something of an impression." She looked away, her cheeks pink with shame. "I know it's irrational, but I can't seem to fully convince myself of that yet."

"You got Petrified by Salazar Slytherin's basilisk, Hermione. I'd say that's a pretty cool reason to be afraid of snakes," Ron said. He smiled at the shyly grateful look she gave him.

Yellow was poking around the other switch now, inspecting it for any signs of impending snakes. "Er, do you think we should pull this one?" he asked. "What if there's another trap?"

"If there are more snakes, we can deal with them. If it opens the door, we're one step closer to getting back in time to finish lunch," Hermione declared. She banished her lamp and grabbed hold of the switch's wide handle. Yellow and Ron lined up behind her and soon, the bar had been pulled out to its full length.

A moment of tense silence passed. Then the door grated open and all three children breathed a sigh of relief.

Ron led the way into the next room. It was small and circular, with a peculiar yellowish glow faintly reflecting off its domed ceiling. He frowned at the odd light for a moment before his attention was captured by the prize that sat in the middle of the room.

"Treasure!" he crowed. Maybe it was a new, stronger spell to use against Hylian monsters! Ooh, or maybe it was a new piece of equipment like his shield! Ron happily strode forward to claim whatever was inside the shiny red and gold chest.

His excitement quickly turned into apprehension as he saw the reason for the light illuminating the ceiling. As he approached the treasure chest, the yawning hole eating up half the room's floor became visible. It seemed to open wider with every step he took.

Ron was practically tiptoeing by the time he reached the chest. The metal box was perched a scant few centimeters from the edge of the hole, seeming as though it would teeter back and fall at any second.

Hermione and Yellow walked up behind him at a cautious pace. When they, too, saw the reason for Ron's unease, Hermione gasped and Yellow let out a low whistle. Yellow planted a hand on the treasure chest's rounded lid and leaned over it. Apparently even the most timid of the Harrys was totally unfazed by heights. Ron was tempted to yank Yellow back from the hole by his collar and only refrained because he was afraid of accidentally sending his friend tumbling in. Even though Ron had been playing Quidditch since he was practically a toddler, he still had a healthy fear of long drops.

Golden light from whatever lay below lit up Yellow's face. "That's the Great Hall all the way down there," the boy commented with a raised eyebrow. "Weird. I could have sworn we were underground." He straightened up and took a step back from the hole. "Well, we know how we're getting out of here," he said cheerily, as if falling from the celestial ceiling of the Great Hall were nothing more than a modest tumble.

"Harry, we'd die if we fell from this height," Hermione told Yellow. Her voice was shrill with worry. "I don't think there are enough Cushioning Charms in the world to save us if we tried to land on a stone floor from so far up."

"We didn't die when we fell into the block maze," Yellow pointed out. "Something caught us. Maybe it'll do that again."

"If it doesn't, we'll die!"

"But how else would we—?"

Ron tuned out the ensuing debate in favor of opening the treasure chest. A rolled-up scroll lay within its leather-padded confines. "It looks like we got a new spell," he announced. "Are you guys far enough from the hole that you won't fall in?"

Hermione and Yellow quieted and both took a generous step back from the opening in the floor. Once he was sure his friends were safely back, Ron took the ancient scroll from the chest and unfurled it.

The resulting flood of knowledge was neither as great nor as painful as those he'd been subjected to before. It was positively gentle in that regard—more like a rubber mallet to the skull than a steel hammer. Ron blinked the spots out of his eyes while he mentally sorted out the lesson he'd just been taught.

"Ah, so that's how that spell works," he heard Hermione mumble. She pulled out her wand and circled her arms in a wind-milling motion. A soft breeze tickled Ron's cheek as an invisible force briefly lifted Hermione off her feet. The magical wind set her down lightly and then took its leave.

Yellow's face lit up. "Does this mean we can fall from any height and be okay?" he asked. The enthusiasm in his voice sent a shiver of unease down Ron's spine.

Ron leaned over the open treasure chest and stared into the hole beyond with dread. The polished stone floor of the Great Hall lay far below, frighteningly far out of reach. Ron had been this high up on a broomstick before, but he'd never fallen from this altitude. He remembered when Percy had caught a Bludger to the chest while refereeing a backyard Quidditch match at the Burrow and fallen almost twenty meters. Even though Charlie had casted frantic Cushioning Charms, Percy had broken his collarbone; the Healers had pronounced him lucky for not breaking his neck. What would a fifty-meter drop do if Ron didn't manage to cast this new spell at the right time? Ron's stomach turned at his mental image of the mushy red result.

"Seems easy enough." Yellow wind-milled his arms and floated off his feet for a few moments. "I can't wait to use this during a Quidditch match." The boy's eyes sparkled excitedly. "Even if a Bludger took me off my broom while I was looking for the Snitch, I could land just fine!" He took a couple of springing steps toward the hole in the floor. "Red's going to be thrilled when I tell him about this!"

Yellow's nickname tore its way from Ron's throat as he watched his friend take a flying leap and begin plummeting toward the unforgiving stone so far below. Ron stood frozen with horror as Yellow fell with arms held out wide and his feet cycling beneath him. There was no way. Nobody could land from that height as anything but a broken mess.

And then, a mere moment from his death, Yellow swung his arms around and slid comfortably through the air to land on his feet. He did it so fearlessly, so smoothly, that it looked second-nature.

Ron's mouth hung open. He looked at Hermione, who was similarly dumbstruck.

"You're barking!" he hollered down at the small figure of his friend.

Yellow beamed up at him, his smile wide enough to gleam in Hogwarts' magical torchlight. "It's fun!" echoed his faint shout.

"'It's fun'," Ron repeated incredulously. "He's as much of a nutter as Red! And here I thought he was the sensible one." Still, it was highly unlikely that there was any other way out of the two-room puzzle-box. There hadn't been any more doors to go through and the spell they'd just found was clearly designed for situations such as these. He also wanted to get to Gryffindor Tower before he missed lunch.

"It looks like we have no choice," Hermione squeaked. She stared into the hole with even more fear than Ron had. It made sense; she could hardly stand to ride a broom, let alone soar to the heights that Ron and Harry were used to.

"Good thing we're Gryffindors." Ron grinned with more bravery than he felt and reached out to take her hand. "Want to jump together? That way, no one gets left behind."

"I'd rather not jump at all, but alright." She clasped his hand and they both walked up to the edge. After a deep, synchronized breath, they both stepped off into the open air.

Ron watched out of the corner of his eye as Fred gradually got closer and closer to Cormac McLaggen and his mates at the dinner table. George was sat a distance away, which was…suspicious. They were up to something.

At Yellow's tearful request, Ron had been staying away from the whole "McLaggen punched Yellow" situation; if not for the threat of his friend's disappointment in his character, Ron would have absolutely had Scabbers piss on McLaggen's pillow by now. Yellow had neglected to give the same speech to Fred and George, however, perhaps naively thinking they would let the incident slide if he didn't kick up a fuss about it. The twins did often present themselves as people who could shrug a lot of things off.

"I miss Quidditch," George announced, slumping over the table. That got the attention of every Quidditch player in the room. He had brought up the Forbidden Topic.

Oliver Wood, the team captain, who had been counting on this year to seal his future career as a professional Quidditch player, slammed his fists on the table. Now every other Gryffindor looked in that direction. He breathed out a hoarse breath. "You miss Quidditch?" he said, his eyes wide and wild. "Do you know how many times I've petitioned Professor McGonagall to let us have practice again? Just to let us practice? DO YOU KNOW?"

Ron's eyes slid back along the table, away from the clamor building on Wood's end, and back to Fred. His older brother was pulling his arm back from something to his left. If Ron had to take a guess, he'd say that Fred's hand had most likely just been over McLaggen's pumpkin juice.

Fred caught Ron staring and eyed him speculatively. "Gonna say something?" his expression challenged.

"You're being sneaky about this?" Ron silently asked with a raised eyebrow and a flick of his eyes toward the loud distraction that was Oliver Wood. Everyone knew not to mention the year-long closure of the Quidditch Field to the beleaguered seventh-year, precisely for this reason.

Fred smirked. "Paranoia," he mouthed.

Ron looked down at his pumpkin juice. His innocent, trustworthy mealtime drink. If someone poisoned it one time and he never found out who, he'd probably be too afraid to have it ever agai—actually no, who was he kidding? The only people he knew who'd mess with his drink were Fred and George, and they'd do it again even if he were having water. He rolled his eyes and took another gulp of juice. If his brothers felt like indulging their sadistic tendencies on a deserving victim, who was he to stop them?

McLaggen, who'd gotten into a loud, enthusiastic match of agreeable shouting with Wood, Angelina Johnson (who apparently also missed Quidditch quite a lot), and George, snatched up his goblet of pumpkin juice and did a toast with the other two. Then all three of them drank deeply from their cups. To look extra uninvolved, Ron chose that moment to glance at Yellow and see what he was up to.

Yellow was tucked between Blue and Hermione, still afraid to sit next to any of the Gryffindors outside his friend group. He'd been quiet all meal, although that wasn't unusual for him. When he wasn't cheerfully weighing in on something or disarming a potential quarrel, Yellow was very good at ducking under people's notice. As Ron watched, the boy seemed transfixed on the loud discussion at the opposite end of the table. He wasn't sitting up attentively or craning his neck to stare, but his owlish golden eyes kept jumping from speaker to speaker as he absently nibbled at a sausage. He hadn't taken a single proper bite of it and most of his meal was untouched.

Ron wondered if the boy was so hypnotized because he wanted to join the discussion. While Harry liked Quidditch a fair amount, he hadn't complained about it being cancelled at all that year. Maybe he'd been feeling stir-crazy this whole time and just kept it to himself.

Dinner continued with a surprising level of normality after that. Wood lost volume as he ran out of steam, leading to the sports conversation petering out. People ate and chatted like usual, including McLaggen, who didn't seem at all affected by whatever Fred had put in his drink.

'Was it Veritaserum, maybe?' Ron wondered. That potion tended to make the person rather hazy, though, and McLaggen was talking in his normal loud, brash tones. Was it something with a delayed effect, to help confuse the timeline of events and throw off suspicion? Was it even a potion at all, or a mild poison like a laxative? That seemed too mundane for the twins, though, especially since he knew they'd been brewing something up.

A soft magical chime rang in the air, signaling the end of dinner, and the food and drink vanished from the golden dishes on the table. Ron got up, keeping a close eye on McLaggen. What had he been dosed with? Ron was absolutely itching to know.

The fourth-year stood up from his seat, stretched with a wide yawn, and then slammed his knee into the table. He dropped, swearing profusely, back onto the bench.

Ron let out a surprised laugh, and luckily for his alibi, he wasn't the only one. Several of the Gryffindors filing out of the room stopped to titter at McLaggen's clumsiness.

"Oh, shut up!" the afflicted boy shouted at them. One of his mates offered a hand to help him and he slapped it away. "I'm fine!" he snapped, standing up again. He turned to take a step…right into the table again. This time he didn't bang his knee, but folded partway over the table as he rammed his hips into it. "What the hell is going on?" the boy cried. "I didn't go that way!" With panic forming on his face, he walked into the table a third time.

Gryffindors started wandering back in to see what the fuss was about. "Didja have too much pumpkin juice at dinner, mate?" Seamus Finnigan teased. He leaned comfortably against the wall to watch the show.

With slow, careful movements and some help from his friends, McLaggen successfully escaped the clutches of the dining table. "Are you saying you dosed me?" he growled at Seamus.

"If you think I have the chops to do whatever this is, you've got more confidence in my magic than I do."

McLaggen conceded the boy's point with a grunt, then walked into the bench. He banged his knee on it, tripped, and fell chin-first onto one of the golden plates on the table. The fit of angry, pained swearing that followed had some of the upper-years in the room sweeping the first and second-years out.

Percy strode in, his polished Head Boy badge sparkling on his chest. "McLaggen, mind your language," he said sternly. "Why are you climbing the table? Pawing at the dishes won't make the food reappear."

"I keep moving backwards!" McLaggen bellowed in outrage, clambering the rest of the way over the table. "I want to go one way, and I go the other!" He fell off the opposite bench and tumbled to the floor.

"Ohhh," a chorus of understanding rang through the growing audience.

McLaggen turned back toward the table.

"No, your other left!" Seamus called out with a grin.

"It's like he's stuck in the table's gravity well," Dean said from next to Seamus.

The heads of several purebloods turned in his direction. "What does that mean?" Lavender asked.

Dean faltered. "Well, uh…"

Ron watched Mclaggen stumble dizzily about the room, continually weaving on his feet as he tried to figure out what direction to make them go. It was mesmerizing to watch. There was a certain sense of suspense, waiting to see whether the boy would manage to wobble his way over to the door. His friends were trying to help, but in his panic, McLaggen kept flailing whenever they laid hands on him. Percy, meanwhile, was standing there watching with his hands on his hips and a look of utter bafflement.

"Finite Incantatem," Percy tried. McLaggen took three staggering steps backward and fell over. "Hmm, that didn't work. I'm going to find Professor McGonagall. Try to stay still for the time being." Percy left to find an adult authority figure, his work done here.

"What's wrong with him? Did someone curse him?" a young voice asked at his shoulder. Ron glanced over at Yellow, who was watching McLaggen's drunken stumbling with horrified fascination. "It looks like he's possessed by a Poe."

Ron snapped his fingers. "Oh! That's what it is!" The twins had said they'd found the Poes to be a source of inspiration, and they apparently hadn't been kidding. He wouldn't have expected them to come up with a potion for that this fast, though.

Blue popped up beside Yellow. "What is 'it'?" he asked. "I'm assuming a potion, if the general counter-spell didn't work."

McLaggen was almost at the door to the dining room now. He smacked into the wall with a heavy thud. The audience weighed in on his performance:

"How hard is it to switch your right and left?"

"Is your nose alright?"

"How about you walk a little slower if you can't tell where you're going?"

"Oooh, better luck next time!" Ron joined in. Lowering his voice, he said, "The twins planned this."

"Ah, the twins," Blue said. "I figured it had to have been someone who's seen a Poe before. I'm guessing it's for that black eye McLaggen gave Yellow?"

MacLaggen stumbled into an unsuspecting Parvati on his way out the door, causing both of them to topple over. Lavender shrieked and bodily shoved him off of her friend.

Ron winced at the stream of invective McLaggen sent her way. "Yeah, I reckon so."

Yellow shrank in on himself, clapping his hands to his mouth. "I didn't ask them to do this, I promise!"

Ron gave him a funny look. "Er, we know?"

"Just making sure."

The fun ended when Percy returned with Professor McGonagall in tow. McLaggen had almost made it to the portrait door, after much tripping over furniture and the edges of carpets. The Head of House ended his struggles by casting a Levitation Charm on him and floating him out the door as she set off at a brisk walk toward the Hospital Wing. Ron was a little sad to see him go. He would have liked to see McLaggen step out the door and wobble right into a Moblin.

Item get: Landing Spell

-The Sunburst Spell is specifically a banishing charm much like a Patronus. It's mainly effective against undead creatures, shadow monsters, and creepy-crawlies. Most other monsters are immune or take low damage from it.

-The twins made their Poe Potion by modifying a Dizziness Draught. If they were going to invent a whole new potion, it would definitely take more than a few days!

-What Yellow is doing during the bit when all those people are shouting across the table is what I (as someone who has faced long-term verbal abuse) do when people raise their voices. Basically, you do your best to stay below anyone's notice, listening to every change in tone and watching every micro-expression to make sure those loud voices don't mean an argument and/or violence. Even friendly loud voices can set off mental alarm bells.