A/N: The finale of this case, wherein the craziest plan yet comes into play to solve the case of A Map Gone Missing! As always, I hope you enjoy reading, and do comment/review what you guys think. I'm always interested to hear people's thoughts and start a conversation.
Without further ado, enjoy!
Season 1 Episode 6 – A Map Gone Missing (The Finale)
"The evidence has been set," Potter announced, jumping into his green armchair and slamming a book into the table. "I come here as the bearer of good news."
Hermione, rather naturally, jumped out of her chair. She placed the book she had been reading, a tome on niffler habits again because too much knowledge was never a detriment, on the same table, before crossing her arms and staring at Potter.
Eyes narrowed. Death infused within her glare.
"You nearly gave me a heart attack, you—"
"Before you start another rant," Potter said, holding a hand up, mischievous smile set in place (he knew exactly what he was doing), "I would just like to announce that the evidence has been gathered, and your final plan can actually be set in motion."
The library, which had until then been quiet and peaceful, suddenly felt charged. As though spirits floated around the air, whispering that Hermione's master plan, which she had thought of only a few days prior in this very Den, was about to spark into fruition.
"You're not pulling my leg, are you?" Hermione asked, still wary of Potter's claims. A seeker, after all, could either catch the snitch, or fail spectacularly and fall flat on their face.
Hopefully, if that seeker's name was Potter, they did fall flat on their face. It would save Hermione the world of trouble.
"I'll show you myself," Potter said, reaching into his bag and hauling something out.
A camera of all things.
The scent of musty and dusty books in the library dimmed. Now, Hermione's curiosity caused the air to brim with something…well…magical, but also with the sweet scent of knowledge around the corner.
Hermione could almost taste something juicy in the air.
"You know that plan I was setting up with Lavender and Colin?" Potter said. "It actually worked, when I checked this morning."
"So magical cameras can do time lapse shots?" Hermione asked. That was an intriguing detail. Typically, only the highest quality of muggle cameras, usually used in nature documentaries and the like, were capable of timelapsing shots over multiple days. And in some cases, months or years.
But magical cameras, even small ones, seemed capable of the same feat. It was, to put it lightly for the muggleborn witch, astounding.
She tried to clamp down on her excitement because, well, Potter was here. And it wouldn't do to lose control in front of him especially.
"But don't magical cameras need, you know, magic to operate?" Hermione asked. "Otherwise, how would they work overnight?"
"Magical items work just as well to supply that magic," Potter said. "Just put any old magical plant next to it and it should be enough 'charge', in that sense. At least, that was what Colin said. But enough about the little details." Potter waved away any further questions and leaned over the table.
"I've got the scoop right here. Take a look."
The camera found its way into Hermione's hands, with the footage already loaded. Hermione pressed the little play button by the corner and waited, with bated breath, for Potter's revelation to enlighten her.
The footage was rather dark, suggesting it was nighttime in the castle. The lights were dimmed, shadows draping across the vent wherein the niffler had originally been sighted on Lavender's camera roll for oddities around the castle.
"Wait for it," Potter said, voice far too giddy for Hermione's liking. Still, she couldn't help but let the excitement rub off on her, and now watched with eagle-eyes at what the camera footage would reveal.
And, a minute or so of nothingness later, the vent appeared to shake a little. And slowly, it inched open. The footage had no sound, but Hermione could almost hear the screech of the vent as it grated itself across to allow the niffler to sneak through.
The niffler seemed to glance around, looking for people no doubt—a classic behavioural mechanism mentioned by the books. Wild nifflers were naturally sneaky creatures, and didn't wish to be seen in general, let alone when they were actively pursuing something to steal.
Still, for that something to be a magical map made no sense to anyone. Least of all Hermione.
The niffler, after noticing not a soul nearby, approached the camera, and then poked its claws out of its fur, like a cat with its paws almost, and rummaged the area around the lens. It paid the camera no mind, of course, and continued its search with wild shamelessness.
This action, of course, led to the niffler dipping down, revealing more of its fur.
And right there, at the top of its head, in that little pouch designed to store gold and other shiny objects the niffler was attracted to stealing—Hermione glimpsed a bit of parchment.
The map the Weasley twins had lost.
The map that had now been confirmed as stolen.
"So we were right?" Hermione asked. "It really is the same map."
"Yep," Potter replied. "Nifflers only get attracted to magical objects in general, and normal parchment ain't magical. So if they're getting their paws on a map—"
"It must be a magical map," Hermione breathed out.
Potter tapped the desk with a hand, before raising his glasses back to their normal level since they had fallen slightly. "Exactly. And when I showed Fred and George before, they basically said the same thing. It's their map for sure."
"And the niffler always keeps it in its pouch?" Hermione asked.
"Well, it was there in Lavender's picture, and that was from more than a week ago. So it's safe to say that yeah, it keeps it there the entire time."
"The question is still there though, isn't it? What on earth does a niffler of all animals want with a magical map of all things? It's not as if the map's got stars shining out of it or something."
"I guess that's a question we'll have to answer with your magical plan, won't we?"
Potter's smile was nearly infectious.
Nearly being the operative word.
"We're actually going ahead with it, aren't we?" Hermione said, doing everything she could to stamp down on the excitement ready to burst from her like a patronus. "We're actually going to solve the case using proper detective skills for once, and not your out-of-the-box thinking."
"Yep, we are," Potter muttered, averting his gaze from her eyes as if he didn't want to admit the fact. "I've forgotten most of the details of your plan, not that you told me the whole thing anyway, so if you could run them down for me I'd appreciate it."
"So polite, aren't you?" Hermione said with a slight (and this was very slight, mind you) chuckle. She grabbed her notebook, the case notebook which she couldn't truly call just hers anymore, and opened it to the case page.
The details were scrawled there, in rushed handwriting so Hermione didn't forget any of the important bits and pieces. Hastily written in bullet points, but the main gist had been jotted down.
"Ready?" Hermione said.
Potter nodded. "I'm ready."
Hermione wasn't buying it. She knew the craziness Potter was about to go through, but if it solved the case and got the Weasley twins off her back, it was all worth it.
"Well then," she muttered, staring down at her own handwriting with giddiness threatening to rupture her heart with happiness. "Here we go."
Harry Potter shivered. It was the evening, the castle a little chilly a few hours before curfew, and the vent wherein the niffler resided was thankfully out of the main thrush of Hogwarts.
In fact, other than Lavender and Colin, who came to observe the castle's strangest oddities, only Granger and Harry stood outside the vent.
Everything they needed for the plan—and it was a wild as all hell plan, mind you—was gathered and ready. Granger had run down the plan for Harry in their shared space on the library's second floor, and by the end Harry's eyes had nearly gouged themselves out from sheer insanity.
How the bookworm of the castle, known for the straight and narrow, had put the pieces together to come up with something so crazy was beyond Harry Potter's comprehension.
But he was here now, and that was all that mattered.
Essentially, Granger's plan came from these pieces fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle. Pieces gathered from not only their research, but earlier in the case too. With Granger's mind making all the connections between the dots.
In a spell invention book, Granger had read something about human to animal transformations. Whilst the finer details ( finer, my arse, Harry thought) were omitted from the book, the basic charms were easily accessible.
Since Harry, despite how small he was compared to the average boy his age, wasn't tiny enough to get into the vent, he needed to be transformed into a…well, rat.
For God's sake, he thought, remembering the other details Granger had told him.
Apparently, Hagrid had mentioned something about 'Ol' Leon' doing research on animals, and Granger had realised he'd been speaking about Leonardo Da Vinci, a famous muggle who was, surprisingly, also a wizard.
Apparently, alongside his research on humans, Da Vinci also conducted research on animals, particularly nifflers and their capabilities. Though most of his findings were lost to time, some of the conclusions had survived.
Mainly that, though nifflers tended towards shiny objects and gold in particular, there existed methods to entice them towards other objects too. Ways to alter their mind, cause them to change the very essence of their biological coding.
Such methods, of course, were not available to the public, or to the private.
Da Vinci's notes, after all, were almost all lost to time. Only a few books mentioned him as an aside, and a little of the work he did. In the magical world, he wasn't as famous, being overshadowed by those such as Dumbledore and the Hogwarts founders, as well as Merlin himself of course.
Granger also mentioned that Da Vinci was a bit of a joker, and a playboy too at that who liked metamorphmagi. But that was merely historical information, and couldn't be verified as anything other than old stories in magical tomes.
Aside from that, Granger didn't shy away from taunting Harry about the whole ordeal.
"I've always thought you're like a rat in a cage," Granger muttered, doing little to hide her subsequent chuckle. "But now you're actually going to be a rat in a vent, doing the Lord's work, of course."
Harry gritted his teeth, but remained silent. He didn't want to anger the person who was, in a few minutes, about to transform him into a rat, after all.
"You know how to do it properly, right?" Harry asked, trepidation causing his stomach to nearly sink to his feet. His legs felt heavy, arms heavy too, eyes drooping as though wishing for sleep so this whole nightmare could end.
The cold swept through the Hogwarts corridor, only adding to the discomfort Harry felt about…well, life in general.
This would certainly be a story to tell the grandkids.
If he made it out alive in one piece, that was.
"I've done it dozens of times as practice on various objects," Granger assured him. "Nothing awry happened in those cases, so I'm confident it will work here, too. Of course I can do it well. It would be wise to trust me, at least on this front."
"Easy for you to say," Harry muttered. "You're not the one getting turned into a rat, are you?" But he conceded the point anyway, and soon he readied himself to be transformed.
"Remember, I'll tie a string to your back after you transform, so make sure you don't lose track of it, okay," Granger said. She brought the string out from her pocket and tied a knot around her hand. Wrapped the string to her wrist to keep it stable. "Colin's camera will also be attached to the string further back so we can see everything that's going on. Once you take the map back from the niffler, we'll get you out of there by pulling on it."
"What if the string breaks?" Harry asked. "And I'm left there at the niffler's mercy."
You know, the important question to ask when one was about to be transformed into a rat and sent on a retrieval mission.
"It's spelled to be proper tight," Lavender said, and Harry finally remembered that Colin and her were here to witness the clown show as well. "Some spell Ma taught me for hairbands so they ain't slippin' all that much. Never thought I'd use it here though. You and Hermione are doin' some strange business, that's for sure."
"Are you sure you'll be all right, Harry?" Colin said, his eyes near-watering as though his favourite superhero was on his last legs. "I'm excited for the scoop…but what if something really bad happens? I don't want that to happen!"
Lavender ruffled Colin's hair. "He'll be fine, I'm sure. He's been through worse."
Harry didn't know, actually—was a Dark Lord he couldn't remember worse than the Demon Niffler of Hogwarts, as he mentally called the creature they were chasing today?
Harry gave a light smile anyways, trying not to dwell on the impending battle. "Don't worry, Detective Potter will solve the case and ride into the sunset after saving the day."
Colin's smile brightened, but that worry in his eyes never left. Harry almost sighed—trust his biggest supporter to get him second guessing himself moments before his transformation.
"You ready, then?" Granger asked, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
"Sure," Harry muttered, before he stripped down to his vest and trousers beneath his robes and stood shivering in the chill. He glanced around, but luckily none else was there to witness him undress.
The fangirls—gosh, they would've had a field day with this scene.
"Do it quickly, please," he told Granger, who was…well, staring at him, for lack of a better term. She snapped back to her senses promptly, however, and swung her wand in the air the way a troll did a club.
Said an incantation beneath her breath.
And milliseconds thereafter, the world became oh-so- very large.
And Harry Potter, the so-called saviour of the wizarding world, revered by most but especially by one second-year Colin Creevey, was now officially turned into a rat.
Harry tried to laugh at the whole thing, but all that emerged was a small growl from his now constricted throat. He stared up at Granger, Lavender, and Colin. Granger stifled laughter, Lavender just looked perplexed, whilst Colin's expression had turned white as snow and he looked ready to puke from worry.
Oh well, can't go thinking about them all the time, that voice in his mind said. I asked for more field work, and Granger's given me some. So it's time to get to work.
And get to work he did.
Everything had been successfully set up, and now all Hermione had to suffer through was a waiting game of making sure everything went to plan.
And of making sure Potter actually survived in one piece, not that she'd tell the boy of her concerns. That was worse than a death trap. She didn't want him to die on the job, not like—
Anyway, she might've hated Potter, might've secretly wished for him to be sent to Azkaban and rot in a cell somewhere with dementors as roommates. But deep inside, somewhere really deep, Hermione wasn't a morbid, evil person when it came to Potter. And solving cases with him was, at times, fun.
Basically, she didn't want him to die, but also didn't want to admit to herself that she didn't want him to die.
Talk about an emotional overload. And she wasn't even the one inside the actual vent as a rat of all things.
She rubbed the wrist the string was wrapped around absentmindedly, a reminder of the mission she'd sent Potter on. A spell ensured that more string would spawn as Potter moved, so she didn't need to worry about running out.
Still, every little tug against her wrist reminded her of the ever-present danger Potter was in.
To distract herself from what was going on, as well as the chill wrapping its tendrils over the rest of the castle and causing her to quiver, Hermione turned to Lavender and Colin and asked for an explanation as to how magical cameras separated the viewing screen from its lens.
You know, the important stuff when your detective partner was in the throes of a vent within the bowels of a thousand year old castle that was definitely stable.
"Well, this here's the viewing screen," Lavender said, pointing to the screen hovering in mid-air. Hermione reached out a hand, and the screen warped over her fingers like a ghost would. Strange, definitely. "You know how, like, you can have connections between magics even over long distances, right, like a patronus? This here's basically the same thing."
"It's all about energy!" Colin exclaimed from Lavender's other side. "The magical energy is projected from the camera through the string to our wand, which means we can keep the camera on from far away, and we can look at what it's filming all the way over here. It's amazing!"
"But why develop all this technology?" Hermione asked. "Do wizards have movies and other forms of entertainment that would require such advanced cameras?"
Lavender's eyes gaped at Hermione's question, and she smacked a hand against her lips. "You're kiddin' me, right. Don't tell me you ain't seen Merlin's Watch?"
"Merlin's… what?"
"Gosh, it was like the best thing of last year," Lavender exclaimed, looking as shocked as Potter would if he beat Hermione in an end of year test. "I went with Parv to see it at Christmas. Gosh, the story was to die for. And they got someone juicy to play Merlin. So hot, let me tell you."
"I watched it too!" Colin said. "With my mum and dad."
"You're a half-blood, aren't you?" Hermione asked. "Which means—"
"It's something you can share with everyone!" Colin beamed. "If you want, I can tell you where the theatres are, and you can take your mum and dad with you too. It's like Diagon Alley—a magical place, but that don't mean muggles can't get in if they know where to look and got a wizard or witch with them."
For a girl who valued knowledge (and school rules, too) above everything else—Hermione was utterly, utterly shocked. She'd shoved her head so far into books that the entire magical world actually around her had passed her by.
And here were things she could do to share magic with her parents. The one part of her life that formed a rift between herself and those she loved—it wasn't as far-fetched anymore. The magical world…it wasn't something that would whisk their daughter away from them.
It was something that could bring them all together.
And Hermione was, for once, genuinely lost for words.
The implications flooded her mind. Of days in the summer spent watching movies and magical plays, enjoying butterbeer (or firewhiskey for Dad), lazing about on beaches whilst Hermione spelled their drinks to remain cool.
For a reason she couldn't fathom, her mouth remained agape. Strangely, her eyes felt prickly. She gulped the emotions down her throat.
Utterly, utterly lost for words.
Until she couldn't be lost for words much longer.
Because the camera's viewing screen suddenly changed from the typical darkness of a vent to something more ominous.
Instead of a regular vent that was akin to a thin chute running through muggle buildings, the vents all led to a large central room of sorts. A huge area—at least, when compared to the size of a rat—that spanned seemingly forever to each side, with chutes running out from every direction.
The middle was cold, empty metal. And nothing but that.
Hermione watched as Potter, in rat form, paused and glanced around him, clearly confused as to where to go. What to do. How to proceed from here.
Their plan had worked for now, but Hermione couldn't tell Potter what to do anymore. It was all up to him and his out-of-the-box thinking.
If he made the right choice, he'd survive.
Else…else he would…
And a familiar worry thrummed through Hermione. A worry from her childhood. A worry she was all too used to, until she no longer needed that worry in circumstances she wanted to never repeat.
It started out as a sinking in the pit of her stomach. Like gravity was pulling everything around her directly into her belly. Then, pins and needles overtook every inch of skin on her body, until she was shaking yet felt numb at the same time.
Her body was turning cold, colder than the castle in deep Scottish winter, and nothing she did could alleviate that.
"Hermione, you all right?" Lavender asked, glancing at her in half-concern. "Gosh, are you that worried about him? And you say you don't fancy him, huh?"
But after Hermione didn't respond, and merely stared at the ground in worry, Lavender's eyes dropped and the teasing tone in her voice fell.
"He'll be all right, won't he?" Hermione muttered to herself. "Because if he doesn't, it's all my fault. All my fault, just like last time."
" Nothing's your fault," Lavender said. "Not now, and not last time either, okay." She turned to Colin. "Give me your robes please, Colin. Hermione here needs some warmth."
"Right away, Lav!" Colin exclaimed, ever the excited one. His outer cloak somehow found its way around Hermione's shoulders, and that innocence and kindness warmed her a little. Made the millions of injections feel more like regular pins and needles.
But that worry as she watched the screen—that worry from a time all too long ago—refused to go away. Persisted like an annoying Potter who just wouldn't budge from Hermione's Den no matter how many times Hermione had wanted him to leave.
Hermione thought she'd gotten over it all long ago. But those memories of the past, or perhaps just the feelings of that day…they always existed, deep within, waiting to strike when one least expected it.
And then those worries spiralled out of control.
Potter, in rat form, was still in that central room, just glancing around and inspecting each chute to see if the niffler was inside.
But then the string suddenly turned, and the part attached to Hermione's wrist flinched a little. Hermione grabbed her hand, more for her own comfort than anything else, and watched as Potter turned to face what had spawned behind him.
The niffler.
The same niffler with the map hidden in its pouch.
And now—now Potter truly was in a fight for his life.
Harry had always been a small child, probably from not eating much as a kid. He'd never had the biggest appetite, and that lent itself to skinny arms and legs and a thin frame when he entered Hogwarts. Of course, quidditch did help balance things out, especially since part of their training was bodyweight exercises and weights, just for speed purposes mostly.
Not that the Weasley twins took that advice. They'd bulked up like crazy over the last six years of Hogwarts, at least from what Harry could see.
But yes, quidditch developed one's physical strength and other abilities like nothing else could whilst cooped up in the castle for most of the year.
Because of that, Harry'd gotten fit and a little toned after four years, and his recent growth spurt hadn't let him down in that regard either.
Well, turning into a rat, though it seemed to transfer his physical attributes across, did little to alleviate that feeling of being small in almost every aspect.
He stared at the chasm he'd found himself in. After traversing the depths of the ventilation system, climbing up and down and jumping all around, he'd stumbled across the place where all the vents convened like moths to a light.
The smell was horrid, absolutely horrid. As if every bad smell in the world had been mixed with Uncle Vernon's underwear, then cooked in a stew in Snape's personal dungeon, before wiped across the walls in a thick kind of slime.
Harry tried to wrap a hand over his nose, before realising that he couldn't since he was a rat. And since he was a rat, his sense of smell was heightened to hone in on every, single terrible smell.
He'd walked across the chasm floor, trying to find any sign of a niffler whilst that string followed him around. He'd glanced back a few times at the camera bobbling along behind him, as though it recorded his own personal movie.
Wouldn't be too bad, would it? Being in a movie would fit my whole persona as the so-called Boy-Who-Lived, eh.
Whilst struggling to ignore the rancid smell and the near-infinite greyness that wrapped across the dimly lit chasm (lit only by the camera's light function, mind you), a noise emerged from behind him.
The noise of a scuttle.
The kind of scuttle he'd heard in Care of Magical Creatures.
A niffler, no doubt.
Harry snapped around, neck nearly cracking from the process. He rested on his haunches, little paws held up as the niffler stepped out from a vent and stared at him.
It was, to put it no other way, absolutely massive.
That's what she said, a part of Harry's mind quipped.
Not the time for jokes, the rational part replied.
Definitely not the time for jokes, since the niffler laid its beady eyes on him, and the already charged atmosphere seemed to electrocute itself as they faced off.
A shiver tore down Harry's spine, and his legs began to shake. He'd thought it was a simple retrieval mission…but this was…well, like climbing a mountain on stilts level of mission. Or catching a snitch whilst upside-down and hanging from the legs with seventy mile an hour winds to deal with.
Harry glanced up at the niffler's head, where the map poked out a little from the pouch. Rats could, thankfully, climb up vertical walls and large jumps rather easily, and Harry was physically fit, so it was only a few easy movements for Harry to reach the map.
Oh, and reach his stolen galleon. Harry wasn't short on money in the least, but that didn't mean he wanted to just hand criminal nifflers his parent's hard-earned galleons.
He breathed in, stale air roaming his lungs like fog, before staring at the niffler—
The niffler made the first move.
Swiping a paw across the floor right at Harry's legs, trying to topple him over.
Harry hopped over with everything his little rat-body could give. He fell to the ground again, disoriented for a second or so.
Before a flash took over the right side of his vision.
The flash of near-black fur.
He rolled under the swipe, fur brushing his back as he did so. The niffler growled, death in its gaze. The empty chasm did little to provide cover, and the vents were basically a death trap for Harry.
He had to stay in the middle, and fight for his life.
Or probe other opportunities.
Go on the offensive, his quidditch instincts told him in a voice that sounded eerily like Oliver Wood's. When you're down a hundred, you can't just chase the game. You have to really go after it with everything you have.
Thanks Oliver, Harry thought. Even if, you know, this is the furthest thing from quidditch I could've ever imagined finding myself in.
But the principles were the same, so Harry could use them.
And use them he did.
Since rats were quite agile, he dipped under another attack—one that threatened to take his stomach out—and scaled the right wall. Smells bashed into his nose, raking over his senses, yet the walls seemed to stick to his feet.
As the stench worsened, he resisted the urge to puke and climbed higher, until he was almost near the top of the chasm. The camera dragged behind him, creating a grating sound that shook the entire room like nails across a chalkboard.
Three seconds was all Harry needed, all whilst the niffler stared after him, beady eyes trained as though the thing was somehow possessed to attack Harry Potter and only Harry Potter.
Take…this, Harry thought, leaping off the summit of the wall and diving down to the niffler. He landed on the niffler's top right and clung with his paws to its fur. Clung as hard as he could so he didn't fall to the ground once again.
If he dropped now, he'd be right under the niffler. Ripe for a body slam to end his life, there and then.
The niffler screeched, tried to wring him off, but Harry held on for dear life. Held on despite the ache spreading across his entire rat-body. Held on despite the tremors wracking his spine and stretching down to his mid-air scrambling legs.
The niffler, however, wasn't an idiot. It was intelligent, a worthy opponent. Instead of attempting to get Harry off, it would force him off.
And so, with the side Harry hung onto set low, the niffler bolted towards the far wall.
Seeking to squash Harry into a pulp against the metal. Blood and all.
Only at the last moment did Harry realise what was happening. With agility borne from years of being Gryffindor's best seeker, he leapt off the fur and landed back on the wall.
Skidded down to the ground just as the niffler bashed into the metal, causing a pinging noise to reverberate in Harry's little rat-ears and nearly destroying the entire ventilation system in the process.
The chasm rumbled, as though alive and witnessing the fight with crowds of spectators cheering for the niffler to crush Harry's body to dust.
Fear grounded Harry's breath, but adrenaline pumped blood around for him instead. He needed to get his wits about him, and not get overconfident.
He dove to the side, paws outstretched and landing half a metre to his right.
Right as the niffler slammed its body mere inches from where Harry had been standing.
Sucking in the stale air, eyes darting around the niffler's body looking for an opportunity to attack, Harry was at a loss. He'd tried his out-of-the-box thinking like a seeker was supposed to do—but he hadn't anticipated the niffler actually possessing fighting tactics.
Weren't animals supposed to be, you know, dumb and stupid and predictable?
Just what monstrosity was Harry up against here?
He ran sideways, feet nearly tangling in the string attached to his back, a string that seemed near infinite the more he ran. Whirling and swirling, nearly glowing like a path out to salvation constantly behind him.
Granger had mentioned that a spell made sure the string would never run out, which meant Harry could use it to his advantage.
And another detail from Granger slammed into Harry's mind, right as the niffler's paw slammed into the wall. Shook the entire place. Bags of dust rushed to the ground, ready to bury Harry alive in an early grave.
He dodged out of the way, recalling Granger's words as he rushed to the far wall, between two open vents, and stared at the niffler leering over him.
"What happens if you can't get something out of a niffler's pouch?" Harry had asked during one of their research sessions in the library. "Like if it completely just blocks you off and doesn't want to give in?"
Granger, book spread out before her on the table, glanced up with narrowed eyes, as though Harry deserved death for disturbing her reading time.
"That's where squeezing comes in," Granger said, rather matter-of-factly. "I don't know if you've noticed yourself, but in Care of Magical Creatures, Professor Hagrid always squeezes the nifflers right down the middle, from either side, and that makes them release whatever it is in their pouches and shrink a little in size."
Granger returned to reading, though she continued to speak. "Perhaps it's a sort of self defence mechanism they've developed, to return what was stolen for fear of death, and getting smaller so they can more easily escape."
Interesting, Harry had thought, and he'd shelved the information at the back of his mind, finding no use for it at the time.
Until now.
Go on the offensive, he could almost hear Oliver Wood whisper in his ear, and Harry vaulted across the grey chasm to the far wall. He climbed the wall, stickiness clinging to his paws, scaling to the middle, and located a path around the entire perimeter free from vent openings.
Then, with every ounce of energy left in his body, Harry sprinted across the wall.
Sprinted.
Sprinted.
And sprinted.
Tunnel vision focussing only on grey, like a supercar across tarmac. Like a hamster on a wheel made solely of stinky, slate-like metal.
And across the walls Harry ran, letting that string build up behind him. Before, on the seventh time around, with the niffler looking dumbfounded whilst rotating in the centre, Harry took a leap of faith.
Right at the niffler.
And his prayers, silent and fervent, were answered.
The loops of string he'd built up, at once, collapsed into the centre, following Harry's rat body like a snake.
Circling the niffler's middle as Harry ran around the niffler once.
Before Harry turned and—this was the crucial part—ran back beneath the string in the opposite direction, camera just sliding through behind him, creating a knot between the niffler and the string.
I've actually bloody done it.
And with each bit of infinite string generated with Harry's movements, the string tightened and tightened, squeezing the niffler's body. The niffler choked once, twice, entire body wracking the chasm, brown dust raining across grey, Harry's vision near-blurring as his energy emptied itself.
And Harry ran around the niffler, once more, twice more, thrice more—
Before the niffler's pouch exploded, map and galleon flinging themselves out and onto the chasm floor. And Harry, as they had planned earlier, hurled towards the parchment and bit onto the map's top left corner with all the strength his little teeth could muster.
Bit with all his might.
The niffler's pouch exploding had shrunk its size, and because of that, the string released itself from its stomach, allowing it to pool across the chasm floor. The niffler jumped away from the string and turned, stared at Harry with anger and defeat and fear in its beady black eyes—the eyes of a villain.
A super-villain.
The Demon Niffler of Hogwarts.
Harry scampered over to the vent he'd entered the chasm from. Tiredness raking its claws across his rat-skin, his back legs barely able to hold his body up.
And Hermione, who'd likely seen the debacle on the camera behind Harry, began pulling him in. Through the vent, back to safety, back to salvation, with the all-important map held between Harry's gnashing teeth.
The adrenaline faded as Harry was being tugged out, body bashing into walls on the way since merely pulling on a string wasn't the most dignified way of reaching safety.
And as that adrenaline faded, Harry had only one thought. One regret over the whole fight. One regret pumping itself into his veins with each beat of his tiny rat heart.
I couldn't get my galleon back, for God's sake.
Well, damn.
At least I'm alive, though.
And for now, for the galleon-less Harry Potter who'd gone through rat hell and back, that would have to suffice.
The library a day after their heist was peaceful, the atmosphere of a solved case causing the air to lighten itself and taste a little sweeter. And they'd managed to get it all done in time too—a few days before Halloween, the absolute worst time of year for Hermione.
The shelves and books nodded in agreement with Hermione's satisfaction at a job well done. That case had really taken it out of her emotionally, and she hadn't even transformed into a rat and gone into the depths of a Hogwarts' plumber's worst nightmare.
Potter, on the other hand, sat opposite Hermione, his knee bouncing with excitement as though he'd just gone on a rollercoaster and couldn't wait for another ride.
Hermione resisted the urge to threaten spelling him again into a rat. He really had gone through hell and back for the sake of the case, and a part of her respected that massively.
Respected that in the way she had respected someone else's foolhardy bravery so long ago.
The same person who led to Hermione's perpetual worry brimming beneath the surface, emotions just waiting to rear their ugly heads.
She shook her head and focussed again on her case notebook, ignoring the chatter of Fred and George (or was it Gred and Forge, haha… not) standing behind Potter. She shut the notebook, since the case had been solved well ahead of time, and stared around at the library.
Over the last month or so, the place had taken a brighter turn. As though the shades of all four houses had been infused into the place. What had once been Hermione's Den alone, where she relaxed and completed homework and read books in solitude—it now featured Potter, as well as those related to the case whenever they needed to speak to them.
She recalled what Colin had spoken about—magical things one could share with others, even muggles, and Hermione realised something from Colin's words.
That the magic of the world wasn't just in books and knowledge.
No, the magic of the world was in the people around you.
Perhaps love, and friendship, and companionship, and in the case of Potter a strange sense of detective commiseration—perhaps that was the true magic of life.
Perhaps…perhaps a young Hermione Granger back then hadn't been able to see it, and perhaps she, now, was finally coming to her senses. Senses that had been asleep for far, far too long.
The thoughts were a little too close to home and heavy to handle, for now at least, so she shoved them to the back of her mind and concentrated on Potter again, with the Weasley twins flanking him.
"She's finally back with us," Fred, or was it George, said. Whoever it was, he bowed slightly before Hermione. "As agreed, we won't make you help us with our ordering system since you've already saved our arses by getting this map back. And I think breaking more school rules than you even know about will probably give you an aneurysm."
The other twin, whoever it was, added, "Rather, we just wanted to extend our humble thanks to the utter mastermind behind the entire case being solved. Not our words entirely, they belong to young Harrykins here."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. " Harrykins?"
Potter groaned and sank deeper into his armchair. "Please, don't."
"What if I refuse, Harrykins?"
"Ahh, so you want to switch to first names, do you?"
It was a perfect comeback, and promptly caused Hermione to revert to her usual address. "I think Potter was the VIP of this case. We got the footage of him as a—a rat, scurrying around and—and fighting off a niffler of all things—"
And Hermione burst out laughing, laughed so hard that her cheeks began hurting and her stomach ached at the sides. Perhaps it was the fact that the case had been solved, perhaps it was that natural giddiness that existed deep within every bookworm girl who just wished to be heard—she didn't know.
But she laughed and laughed until her throat felt emptier than that niffler's pouch..
Meanwhile, Potter gave his thoughts.
"Colin and Lavender benefitted the most, though," he said. "They got a couple new people to talk cameras with, and they got the best scoop they could've ever wanted for their magazine at the end of the month. It's a win-win."
"I think it's a win-win for everyone," George said. "Alicia—or should I say Alice?—is gonna get her treats from the kitchen back, so that's all well and good. No more angry chasers on our case."
"She'll have your head for using that nickname, dear brother," Fred muttered. "But you're right, getting this map back has saved our necks in more ways than one. And we have two superb people to thank for that."
"Just a question," Hermione interjected, now that her mind had returned to the present. "What does this…map actually do? To me, it just seems like an empty piece of parchment."
"Ay, there's the rub," Fred said, a pitiful reference to Shakespeare, whose works Hermione was aware of since they were on her mother's bookshelf.
"This is top secret, okay," George said, holding the parchment in one hand. "You can't tell anyone else, and since you helped us, we'll let you use the map whenever you need to. Might as well pass it down since we'll be leaving Hogwarts soon anyways."
"Could you just, you know, get on with it, please?" Hermione's curiosity forced her to ask.
"Patience, dear Hermione, all will be revealed," Fred said, procuring his wand and whispering the words, " I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," under his breath.
And suddenly the map expanded to show the entirety of Hogwarts, with every student therein, and secret passages Hermione hadn't even heard of. And the whole thing moved too, in real time, names drifting across the parchment like ghosts.
It was, frankly, extraordinary, and the greatest magical feat Hermione had seen in her entire life.
It put her small spell inventions utterly to shame, and sparked that curiosity within her to greater heights.
Four friends—Moony, Padfoot, Prongs, and Wormtail—binding their skills together to create something magical that, alone, they could never have invented.
"For the kitchen, you gotta tickle a pear down at one of the portraits," Fred explained after closing the map's secrets with a quick 'mischief managed'. " But, you also need a password that only the elves know, and that password gets changed all the time."
"But this map, somehow, gets the password right every time," George added.
"Which is why losing the map meant you couldn't get us treats," Potter said with a sigh. "That makes sense now, thinking about it."
They all chatted for a little while longer, after which the Weasley twins bade farewell and trotted to the other end of the library's second floor, before disappearing from sight.
And it was only Potter and Hermione left, sitting as they had for the last two weeks when solving the case.
And Hermione, remembering her sheer dread whilst watching Potter defy death in the middle of that ventilation death chamber, struggled to meet his eyes. Instead, her eyes shifted to his body—
A body that's toned to the gills, that sinful voice in her mind said, recalling the scene of Potter stripping down before being transformed into a rat.
She shook her head, freeing her mind of that image, before forcing herself to look at Potter's face. With considerable difficulty, mind you.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Potter said, his smile wide. "Cheer up a little, will you. I've even got chocolate frogs to sweeten the deal." He chucked a few onto the table, and it took every ounce of self-control within Hermione not to reach out and grab a packet and rip it open and bite the ever-living sh—
"There's one thing that concerns me, however," she said in a high-pitched voice, to get her mind off chocolate and definitely off Potter.
"About chocolate frogs? Or about the map?"
"No, about the nifflers," Hermione said. "Nifflers don't struggle to protect random maps, nor do they try so hard to fight against their base instincts of wanting gold and other shiny objects." Hermione's hand rubbed her chin. "Nor do they try to rip pages out of books and sneak through ventilation systems. It's not, for lack of a better word, natural for them at all."
"Which means something's happening to make the nifflers act that way, right? Like something wrong with their genes?"
"Or maybe gene-defecting of just the one niffler," Hermione reasoned. "We don't know yet if the niffler who stole the map is the same one who took a page out of the book." Hermione sighed, leaned back in her armchair, let the fabric caress her spine and ease her into comfort. "I guess that will prove a mystery for another day."
"I guess it is," Potter muttered, folding his hands together and leaning back too. His eyes closed, before he continued speaking. "I heard something interesting from Lavender and Colin, you know, earlier today. Apparently, when I was in that vent fighting for my life, you were proper hyperventilating with worry to the point where they needed to calm you down. Shaking and all that madness."
"Not at all," Hermione quickly muttered. "And if you don't want an Azkaban life sentence, I suggest you don't follow that up with another question, Potter."
"Whatever you say, Granger," Potter said. But he conceded the point, thank the Lord.
And they spent the rest of the evening in that comfortable silence, broken only by the tearing of chocolate frog packets and the occasional scrape of an armchair leg against floorboard.
Though she could never have predicted it earlier, Potter had, rather annoyingly, become a staple of Hermione's life. Such that getting rid of him now would make everything feel rather unnatural, rather strange and weird.
Like a niffler stealing a map or tearing a page out of a book.
But Hermione could've never predicted just how close she and Potter would become as Halloween, the worst time of year, descended its looming shadows over the castle.
She could've never predicted it at all.
A/N: Whoa, just got this chapter finished (wrote it all in one day, actually, which is kinda a record for me since I ain't ever done that before) and that was a whirlwind to write. Especially that fight scene with the niffler—what a climax!
I often say that I don't outline my fics, which means I write them as if I'm the reader. So when a cool moment or plot twist or revelation happens, it's as surprising for me as it would be for a regular reader, which is kinda cool to think about. And it gets me to the keyboard too, since I really wanna find out what happens next in a story, and I can't find out if I don't write it!
In any case, it's around midnight now, and my eyes are getting blurry. Not to mention that I'm flying abroad tomorrow (hence needing to get this done within the day), so won't have proper internet access for a couple of weeks. I'll still write, but no updates in that time unfortunately. I'm also trying to get an original novel finished before regular life hits again once the holiday's over.
The next chapter of this fic will mark a MAJOR milestone for Harry and Hermione's shared development, and I'm so so excited to write it. This is a slow burn, so don't expect anything romantic, but their characters will deepen a lot more for sure.
It's a Halloween interlude chapter, so won't introduce any new cases (that'll be in Episode 8). The constant references to Hermione's past and that familiar worry within her will all be answered in the next chapter, not to worry.
In any case, hope you're all doing well wherever and whenever you are. Do comment/review your thoughts, since they always bring a smile to my face, and as always, thanks for reading!