Ron and Harry spent pretty much the entirity of that night waiting outside the nurse's station with baited breath. Susan just had to be okay. She just had to.
Neville, the gossipy nit that he was, had raised the alarm right after the attack and there was a whole crowd of sleepy eyed students milling about in the now cramped and close hallway corridor. Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy where there, sniggering and trading crude comments about Susan's condition in typical Slytherin fashion.
"It'd have to've been a blind beast what attacked her," Pansy said, maliciously, "otherwise it'd of run off at first sight of her ghastly face!" Draco and the mean spirited Slytherin girl doubled over with guffaws of hateful laughter. Susan had been in a rather bad car accident over the summer and her face was still lined with stitches after her trying and lengthy reconstructive surgery.
Ginny whipped out her wand and prepared to deliver a savage bat bogey hex. Ron tackled her against the wall, nearly snapping her wand in two. "None of that lil sis," he hissed, "or the Slytherins are sure to win the house cup this year!" Ginny shot him a baleful glare and stomped away to much jeering from the little pocket of Slytherins who were so intent on fouling up everyone's night.
"Control your dog Weasley," Malfoy guffawed at his own cruel humor. Pansy clutched her sides in an absolute dervish of self satisfaction.
With a great show of self control Ron let the remark slide off of him like water.
Finally the great clock struck 2 am and the crowd began to disperse, wholely unsatisfied and with much worry still floating around the dire predicament of their woe befallen classmate.
That night Susan Bones's dreams were filled with jet black fur and the gnashing of saber like teeth. She shivered and clutched at her blankets in her unconcious delirium of terror, some small part of her mind willing the night terrors to pass on, to pass on. But they would not.
The Following Morning
The next morning Harry woke up with a thundering crack. He jolted out of bed, desperate to believe that the wild and sordid happenings of the previous night had been all some foul weltering of vapors and ill humors but the general despondancy and nervous tension prevading the Grfyindor common belied his ill conceived self deception.
Everyone was on edge. Worried about the Night Stalker, the Hogwarts Monster, the Beast.
He strolled lackadasicaly to the dinning hall and plopped down with a groan. Ron and Padma were there, their heads buckled together as usual while Ron whispered silky insinuations into Padma's dainty ear. Luna was beside Padma, balthering on about goblins and their sneaky ways, generally and easily ignored as usual.
Seamus seated himself across from Harry, his broad forehead glistening with sweat. "You seen the Daily, eh, Potter?" Seamus inquired eliciting a beam of self satisfaction from Luna's ivory face.
Harry grumbled some response, still not much in it yet. He hadn't had his coffee yet and the whole world could go and fall in a pit for all he cared at the moment. He was ever so tired. Having spent the night woefully distracted and bewildered as ever he was in his life.
Seamus chuckled with a dour set about his ruddy features. "Well well, you may be in for a bit of a shock I tell you."
This got Harry's attention somewhat. He raised his dazed head in query and Seamus continued with redoubled gusto.
"Yep. Ol' Daily had some rather pointed things to say about your pal the Time Child it did..."
Under her curtain of jet black hair Padma smirked with grim consternation. Her plans were yielding fruits already. But not just any fruit. Nothing sweet, that was for sure. The fruit her plans yeilded were bitter, poisoned things. She longed to throw her patient plotting and waiting to the wind and begin her all out pyschological assault on the Golden Trio immediately, but witheld her raging passions. She would see this through to the very end, with her inescapable, unavoidable patience.
"Leave off about the darn Golden Trio for a Kraugblasted moment will you," Harry huffed, regretting giving Seamus the time of day. His jovial nature always rounded him into a spot of some sort.
Seamus glowered and shrugged. He began stuffing great heaps of buttered rolls into his craw, splaying crumbs about the table and those seated nearest him. "No need to get so cheeky, pal." He mumbled under layers upon layers of buttery golden bread. "Just thought you'd like a headsup's all." He concluded, in a final spattering of flakes.
"Yeah, thanks a lot mate," Harry managed. He had felt the cruel claws of despondancy clutching at his throat trying to strangle away his bitter words. He got up to leave and Luna bumbled after him leaving a trail of silly off the wall expostulations behind her. Something about "the Wizard's burden" or other.
Harry wondered why the strange little blonde haired girl was following him but didn't question it too fiercely. It was nice to have people always nipping at his heels once again. In the old days he was the most famous wizard alive... and he had hated it. If only he knew then what he knew now. About the addictive and alluring nature of fame.
He humored Luna all the way to his first period class, potions. Luna was slated to take Occlumency all the way opposite the school grounds but she dogged his steps regardless. Unbeknownst to the embittered boy wizard Luna had been sent to follow Harry by her new best friend Padma.
Sandwhiched between her non sequitors of unabashed paranoia and familial aggrandizement were seemingly innoculous questions and queries about the golden trio. Luna, for all her whims and fancies was a rather sly girl and did her best to word these leading inquiries in a way that would not prickle against Harry's pride and for the most part she succeded.
"Well..." Harry pondered out loud in response to her last mention of Hermione Lion Heart, "well I guess you could say she doesn't have much investment in the lives of the people here in this timeline, being from another timescape entirely... But... No I don't suppouse that translates to any sort of callous indiference... surely..." But the words began to ring falsely in his mind... maybe she really didn't care.
"Anyhow, I'd best be off, you know how Trelawny gets when her students dally!" Luna said, giggling behind her hand.
"Yeah, right," Harry laughed. "Suspect she's had a nip at the sherry too..." he added, catching Luna's bright blue eye momentarily.
He was seriously curious about her sudden attentions to him. And not a little bit curiously pleased as well.
"Totally. I'm so sure," Luna agreed. Harry giggled heartily, glad to share a risque shot at a faculty member.
Luna was playing coy and relishing in this newfound power her previously unemployed feminine wiles so suddenly garnered for her. She swelled with the energies Harry directed her way in his navietee and found a grim pleasure from a miasmic space at her core she had met newfound.
These black feelings had shocked Luna at first, but ever since she'd befriended Padma she had felt a growing sense of brazen confidence. Something she had surely previously missed out on, even to the point of having convinced herself that she had never even needed it to begin with.
Just last year she had been content to stumble through the obscure intersections and dead ends of the social rat race that snaked invisibly, for the most part, through every occurrence and situation.
Reveling in innocuousness... What a foolish concept, she thought. 'I am Luna, hear me roar!' She laughed to herself and the silly boy took it as a sign of complicit joy. Harry was slowly but surely coming under her puissant thumb.
After an interminable guerilla interview with that absolute cad Harry Potter she had finally wrangled some bit of darning quorate for the second part of her Golden Trio Expose.
"I better jet though," Luna said, leaving him wanting more.
The potions dungeon was damp and shadowy as ever. Snape was there, lurking behind his lectern. He was still badly abashed from his public shaming the other day and in an especially sour mood.
"You were very nearly late, Potter!" He spat when he saw Harry. "10 points from Gryfindor!" Pansy Parkinson snickered and Malfoy and Goyle high fived. The Slytherin Squad were sure to win the house cup now.
Harry couldn't believe his ears. He still had a full minute and a half to get to his seat before the tardy bell clangored. "But that's absurd," he burst out. "I'm not late yet!"
Snape trembled all over with anger. He had not encountered such flagrant insubordination in all his lengthy, lonely days. "1000 points from Gryfindor! Now find your seat Potter or it'll be a million!"
"More like Harry Potterswheel," Goyle sniggered.
Of course Snape did nothing to reprimand him, he eve curled his thin white lips in the a close semblance of a smile. On him it was a leer and quite unsettling.
The few scattered Gryfindors gasped and transferred their ineluctable rage toward Harry. Harry slumped into his seat bombarded from all sides by feeble glowers. He could practically feel the tear misted eyes of his Housemates crawling all over his taut young body.
Snape's droning incantations signaled the beginning of class and Harry gratefully disappeared from the malefic stares of his ruefully assembled peers. The class progressed as usual, with Harry struggling to catch up and Snape flagrantly embellishing the praises he sailed to his Slytherin students while cruelly shooting down the other students, especially the Gryfindors he loathed so much.
Harry had planned as usual to copy Hermione's work but she seemed unnaturally distracted that ill fated morning. She half heartedly slogged through Snape's dirge of instructions and admonishments and her resultant practice potion for the day was a murky black morass of failure which Harry couldn't even manage to replicate. At least hers didn't emit a foul stench like Harry's did. Snap had sneered at the odorous solution with self import and written in big red strokes F on Harry's class work scorecard.
He had tried to pass a note to the Time Child but she had dropped it into her bubbling concoction, watched it dissolve and paid no further heed to him and his prodding and whispers. The most she invested in him was an exasperated shush! here and there. Otherwise her eyes were set firmly straight ahead, occluding him from her orbit of sight.
Once that merciful saving bell had rung and class concluded for the day Harry had tried to delve into the mysteries of Hermione Lion Heart's surly disposition. Of course he couldn't let this mystery fall by the wayside.
But, before Harry could pry Hermione had stuffed earphones into her head and scampered off with Atreyu blasting out from underneath her unruly mop of light brown curls and ringlets. People gave her a wide berth, but had no such consideration for Harry, who had to struggle and shove his way through the reforming crowd on his way after her.
A couple of third year girls stalled in the walkway blocking Harry's passage. They admired the Time Child from the rear, "she's so hip!" One of them caterwauled in an ecstasy of fandom.
After a few trying minutes of struggle Harry finally lost sight of her. He slouched against the cold stone walls outside of Dumbledore's office in consternation. What had gotten into that crazy lass? he wondered.
He was so absorbed in his wondering, wandering thoughts that he didn't notice Ron approaching him. The redheaded pauper socked him playfully on the shoulder causing Harry to jump and drop his books and quills. They scattered about the floor eliciting cruel giggles from a gaggle of passing Slytherins.
"What's gotten into you Ron Weasley! Didn't your mother ever tell you not to sneak up on people!?" Harry wanted to know, projecting his frustrations on Ron without fully realizing it. He calmed down almost immediately and apologized for his snippy-ness.
With ineluctable ease Ron sheared the tension and the two hugged after a bashfully indulgent moment of synchronicity.
"Anyway," Ron eventually sallied forth, "how's Kraug then? Still paralyzed?"
Harry sighed, "yeah, pretty much."
Remus passed them; the friendly duo called out to him but he was scurrying along at a near frantic pace and didn't seem to notice them, or to care to.
"That's odd," Harry said, frowning. He began to wonder about all the mysteries swirling around him. They were so daunting and numerous. What had attacked Susan last night, why was Hermione Lion Heart so lugubrious and emotionally taut, where the two related?
Harry shuddered. 'What a nefarious line of thought,' he said to himself, and decided to just try and forget about it. There are some mysteries that should be left to lay with dogs in the sleeping dust. "What does it all mean," he ventured, in a breathy rasp of wonder. He was content to be confused.
"It really makes you wonder," he concluded throatily.
"Yeah sure does. Like, I was wondering just earlier today about all that in the Daily about the Time Child, and not having an appendix... That's so crazy, I can't believe you almost dated her." He had admitted a little more than he meant but to his bewildered joy he realized that Harry hadn't caught the latest issue of the D, it had sold out pretty fast he conceded. He'd no clue and was too shocked to even noticed Ron's little faux paus.
"No... No Appendix? I don't understand, how can that even... Ron? Tell me more please I'm very curious about this whole subject now. It had previously escaped my knowledge but seems potentially vital to deciphering Hermione Lion Heart's earlier behavior, which was initially baffling to me."
Ron filled him in. "Well," he started with a bit of relish, "Being from an alternate timeline... the one where Kraug was god in, right?"
Harry nodded. 'Poor Kraug, from godhead to paralysis, so sad...' he thought. But he kept that to himself. Unlike Ron he didn't spew out every little fancy that crossed his mind.
"Well, er, yeah," Ron continued, wondering if he could drag out the juicy guilty pleasure of telling any further, "so in that timescape people don't even have appendixes. It's pretty wild..."
Just then the Time Child stomped into their midst. They were both suddenly quite red-faced, and for Ron that was something of an accomplishment.
"Having a little chat?" she queried with a vicious bent upon her words. "Little back and forth, huh?"
Neither dared answered her furious rhetorical question. They both found something very interesting too look at along the wall, unable to contact their guilty eyes with her.
"I don't even care about that stupid article anyway, Luna is a misguided curiosity at best, I'm here, Harry, to ask you if maybe forgot a little something something last night." She crossed her arms and tapped her foot menacingly.
Tap tap tap. The fervor or her rhythmic impatience increased with rapid exponentiality. "Well? Can't remember a single thing you forgot last night? Eh? Too busy snickering about a by the way completely illogical bit of slander..." She became momentarily even more flustered and lost her words.
Harry and Ron exchanged looks knowingly.
"Look. People in this timeline don't even need their Appendixes, okay? It's a useless organ and..." she huffed up, remembering what she'd come for, "whatever! "
"Listen, Mecha Granger 20-30 has been sobbing all day long because you stood her up last night. She really wanted to go out with you and you stomped on her heart! She's been crying so much her tear valves have rusted..."
Harry doubled over with shock. As though Hermione's news had been a physical thing. Crippling him for the nonce.
"Not that you care but a technician's on his way out to see if he can fix them. But according to the help line the problem's probably terminal. She's going to lose her tear valves because of you Harry Potter!" Hermione pointed a horrifyingly not misdirected finger of blame at Harry and he fell to his knees in mortification.