Snips and Scars In Which Snips Gets Snatched, a harry potter fanfic

Chapter 72, everybody! Now to get Snips back.

Seriously Harry in this AU could count the number of detentions he's gotten on one hand. Also mood on the pink torture my first roommate in campus college had everything hot pink and I detested it and her. In other news, Snips is channeling Tulio from The Road to El Dorado and George is quoting Blanche from Golden Girls. Also as it turns out being friendly with house elves has benefits.

Lucy Elizabeth Dawson, thanks for the review! Oh no indeed. D:

Slytherinsal, thanks for the review! I'm backing Snips too.

Juxshoa, thanks for the review! Don't worry, Harry has Suspicions™.

DaveC, thanks for the review! I'm going to need clarification, though.

Snips wasn't present when Harry woke that morning, which was mildly concerning but not cause for alarm. Snips also wasn't present at breakfast, which was heavily concerning.

Snips missing Harry's first class meant that Snips was in danger and definitely cause for alarm.

Harry got as many of his friends as he could and started scouring the castle, all of them calling for Snips and trying to figure out if there was a spell that would point them to him—accio was tried, nothing happened, even Professor Slughorn was in on the searching—

Harry had a theory an hour of searching later.

"Umbridge has him."

"How are you so sure?" Hermione asked him.

"You saw how she was eyeing him—I don't know how she got him, but she has him."

"Great," Ron said. "Now how do we get him back?"

"Better yet, how do we confirm this first?" Hermione said.

Harry had a general idea of how to do that. Hence, him causing a scene that Defense. And when Umbridge gave him detention, he didn't protest.

Now here was hoping he'd be able to spot Snips in her office.

Snips was beyond furious.

Start with the fact that that toad hadn't even bothered feeding or watering him like he was a common pet and then move on to locking him in the absolute worst room imaginable—things being aggressively pink was some form of sensory torture, he was sure. More pressing was this enforced idleness which didn't suit him at all, with the fact that Harry was out there unsupervised as the icing on the cake.

Hence him constantly and systematically going over his cage with the hope that he had missed something insofar as getting out was concerned. Nothing was forthcoming, though—the hinges and such were on the outside of the cage, and the whole thing was enchanted so he couldn't even get a wingtip out.

Which led to his current activity that he engaged in between his scourings: pacing back and forth on the perch and all but tearing his head feathers out in agitation. Dangit this wasn't good Harry left to his own devices was a disaster waiting to happen what if Voldemort kidnapped him again what if the earth had swallowed him whole what if one of his classmates dared him to drink a tub of bubotuber pus for two sickles and a pumpkin pasty he did not trust Harry left to his own devices.

He had reduced himself to banging his head against one of his bars in an attempt to jog an idea loose, thought he might be getting close when he heard a knock at the door and Umbridge going enter. Look—

The Victorian collar stopped him from grabbing his own neck in consternation, ended up squawking and falling off his perch when he saw Harry come in, worse when he heard he had detention. See? See? The minute he had his head turned Harry jumped headfirst into trouble. Grumble as he watched Harry sit and do lines—

Fly into a frenzy when he saw what those lines were doing to him.

Redouble his efforts to get out, ripping out feathers to try and drop on Harry's head to make him look up—no dice, the feathers were being held in place by whatever spell was keeping him inside the cage, tug on the collar in frustration—

The collar that was not him, was an accessory, should in theory not be held in place by this spell.

Tug it off, dangle it out—it slipped through the bars no problem—adjust his pose so it would hopefully fall on Harry's parchment—only one shot at this—

Harry had been flexing his injured hand, twitched and stared at the collar—almost looked up before common sense made him check Umbridge instead, went back to writing. Glanced up when she wasn't looking, pocketed the little collar—

Snips breathed a sigh of relief when Harry finally left, hopefully to get his hand looked at. And yes, he knew that Harry would be careening headfirst into trouble to get him back.

But if it got him out of this mess, he'd happily get Harry out of whatever he landed in.

Harry reported that his detention had been a success, which Ron and Hermione both questioned upon seeing his hand.

"Forget that, that's not important," Harry said, waving his hands negatively and doing his best to ignore the burning from having I must not tell lies carved into his hand. "The important thing is, I found Snips, we have to get him back before that toad takes him somewhere else."

Ron snapped his fingers. "I know just the thing."

Just the thing was the Weasley twins, who were told to make the biggest ruckus that Hogwarts had ever seen, something big enough to get Umbridge out of her office so they could go in and get Snips.

"Oh this brings out the artist in me, Fred," George said.

"We definitely have something we saved up for a rainy day," Fred agreed. "We were saving it for a special occasion—"

"But this occasion feels special enough. Give us say, fifteen minutes."

Ron and Harry, meanwhile, snuck out of the dorm via the window and their brooms, Harry using the Marauders' Map to find Umbridge's office from the outside and make sure of her location.

"Is that going to let us know when she's out of her office?" Ron asked. "I thought Lupin didn't include that in the student maps."

"This is the original," Harry told him. "Remus and Sirius gave it to me on my birthday—Dumbledore gave it back to them and they gave it to me with the stipulation I use it for pranking."

"I mean we're breaking into a teacher's office after curfew, this counts."

"And we got Fred and George in on it. What do you think their distraction is going to be?"

"Well it's Fred and George, so maybe they bribed Peeves into knocking a ton of stuff down, or they're going to send another herd of slinkies down the stairs—"

Both of them nearly fell off their brooms in startlement at the first series of BOOMs, night turning into day—looked up to see a cacophony of fireworks exploding and morphing in the sky above Hogwarts, first wave flying off to do mischief as a second wave shot up—

"Or they could do that," Ron said. "What on…those aren't Zonko fireworks."

"I don't know but hide," Harry said, scooting Ron behind a buttress as Umbridge stuck her head out her window. Peek around, watch her gape at the blinding sky before ducking in—

Harry didn't even need to bother with Lumos to consult the map, the fireworks were so thick his main concern was getting hit by one—but at the very least, they illuminated the little dot marked Dolores Umbridge running away down the hall—

Squint at the other name still in her office—at first he thought the second word was Snips, but the Map didn't show familiars—

Startled when Ron shook his arm. "Did she buy it? Are we in the clear?"

"I don't know—it looks like there's someone else in there but they're not moving."

"We'll risk it—come on." Follow as Ron cautiously eased his way to the window, angling in such a way that Harry could come alongside. Alohomora for the lock, Revelio to see if there were any traps or suspicious characters—

Accio didn't work, which led Harry to leap in, pulling his Firebolt in after him, use it to get up to where Snips was, little familiar busy railing soundlessly at him—

"Good to see you too," Harry said as he grabbed the cage—they'd figure out getting him out of that later, but for now, they had an escape to pull off.

Hopefully everyone was too distracted by the fireworks to notice.

They made it back to the dorm without incident—Harry had the impression they could have walked up from the front doors with a band accompanying them and no one would have noticed.

"What did you two do?" Hermione asked when Fred and George came back in.

"You like them?" Fred asked. "Our own personal inventions."

"We call them Weasley Wildfire Whizbangs," George announced. "Boy I can't wait for when the teachers try to get rid of them."

"Remember what we did with the glitter howlers?"

"Well we took that information and applied it to the fireworks."

"Pardon us, we need to be taking notes—this is functionally our test run."

"So this explains a lot of the noises coming from their room over the years," Ron decided as Fred and George retreated to a table piled with books by the window. "And here we thought they liked the noise."

"One more—aha," Hermione noised, finally vanishing the cage around Snips. Snips chattered at her, nodding—

Immediately lit over to Harry, wrapping his tail around Harry's wrist and pitching a fit over what Umbridge had made him carve into his hand—Harry couldn't help but wince at the red smeared everywhere from him ignoring it.

"Sorry," Harry told him. "I figured she was keeping you in her office but I needed to confirm."

Snips narrowed his beady eyes at Harry, flew back over to Hermione's homework and wrote murtlap essence in the margins.

"Probably a good idea," Hermione said, reading it. "Except I don't know how we can get it—murtlap tentacles are in the Potions cupboard, but since they're a rare ingredient we wouldn't have them in our kits."

"We ask a house elf nicely?" Harry guessed. "I think they're members of the Secret Order of Familiars—"

Snips chittered something, prompting a house elf to appear next to him, the crack of her appearance drowned out by the fireworks.

"Oh, Mister Harry Potter sir!" the elf squeaked.

"Hi Mipsy," Harry greeted.

"What did you get into now?" she asked upon Snips' chattering, bouncing and pointing at Harry. Upon Harry showing her his hand—"Yes murtlap essence would help—give Mipsy a moment."

She indeed was only gone a moment—came back with a bowl of something yellow and a platter of snacks for them.

"Your hand goes in this one, Mister Harry Potter sir," she said, motioning for him to sit down as she put the bowl on the table. "And you need to come see Madame Pomfrey in the morning about that awful cut—nasty dark magics were involved, Mipsy can tell."

"Thank you, Mipsy," Harry said—sighed with relief when he stuck his hand in the bowl. "I'll definitely see Madame Pomfrey in the morning, but this helps, thank you."

Mipsy nodded. "I'm sure Mister Snips will remind you. Have a good night, please stop getting hurt."

"I'll do my best."

"On the one hand, I'm still against the exploitation of house elves," Hermione said once Mipsy had left.

"On the other, she gave Harry immediate medical attention and gave us snacks to boot," Ron said, taking a mug of steamed milk. "Okay I'm going to just hold this for a while it was getting nippy out there waiting for our distraction."

"But the important thing is, we got Snips back," Harry said, offering Snips one of the smaller cookies from the tray. "She didn't do anything awful to you, did she?"

Snips still looked hot enough to fry eggs on, took the cookie and attacked it with a vengeance.

"So that's a yes," Ron said, dunking a different cookie in his milk.

"Or—you said he was above you in Umbridge's office," Hermione said. "He probably saw what was happening and hated that he couldn't do anything about it."

Snips pointed at her, dunked the remains of his cookie in Harry's milk and polished it off. Looked over to where the twins were now plotting, apparently debating….

Flew over and landed on their desk, to everyone's consternation. The twins looked up, stunned, watching as Snips tugged a book out from their pile and started flipping through it.

"And what's the little veggie-pusher up to now?" Fred wondered aloud.

"Something peculiar, no doubt," George agreed.

And then Snips stopped, looked at them both as he tapped a spot in the book.

The twins read it. "I don't know," George said. "This smacks of revenge to me."

"Most potent revenge," Fred agreed. "Are we understanding you correctly?"

Snips nodded pointedly.

Fred and George offered their hands, which Snips shook with his tail, one at a time.

"Welcome to the dark side, Snips," George said, a wicked grin on his face.