The Rat Files

Back in the Common Room, Ron insisted on petting Harry’s soft brown fur.  Harry grimaced.  Ron’s touch felt mildly like sandpaper grinding against his soft fur.  The boy was in dire need of lotion.  He made a mental note to swipe some from Hermione for him later on.

            “I wonder what Hermione’s going to do to you.”  Ron wondered.

            Harry didn’t care.  So long as it stopped Ron from petting him.  Earlier Ron had presented his new rat to Lavender and Parvati.  To his surprise, they didn’t run away screaming ‘Eeeek!’.  They actually thought he was adorable and made cooing noises at him.  Their petting was a lot softer and nicer than Ron’s, girls had really soft, smooth hands.  He made another mental note; before he turned back to a human he would find those two and get them to pet him again.

            “Okay Ron, here’s the test.”  Hermione strolled in from her dorm, carrying her giant orange cat.

            “Crookshanks!?”

            “Crookshanks!?” Harry froze.  Good Merlin.

            “Hermione, are you insane!?  I did not bring Bacon here just to give your bloody cat a quick dinner!”  He protectively held Harry against his chest.

            “Bacon?”

            “Bacon!?”

            “Yeah…I think I’m going to name her Bacon.” Ron nodded.

            “Stop calling me a bloody HER!”

            “Why Bacon???”

            “Well I had some this morning and I quite liked it…”  Ron explained, as if this made complete sense.  Harry shook his furry little head.

            Hermione shook her head.

            “What?  It’s not like I named her ‘Crookshanks’ or something.” Ron insisted indignantly.  Hermione glared.

            “Okay…Well here, Crookshanks.  Have a look at him.”  She held Crookshanks closer to Ron.

            “Why!?”  Ron backed away with Harry.

            “Don’t you remember third year?  Crookshanks will tell us if there’s anything wrong with her.”

            “But what if he eats her!”

            “Then he was evil!”

            “Whaat?”  Harry stiffened.  He appreciated Hermione’s insistence on calling him a “he”, but he really wished Hermione wouldn’t do this.

            “Whaaat!?”  Ron stared at her incredulously.  “And what if Crookshanks is just hungry!?”

            “He doesn’t eat rats.”  Hermione said firmly.

            “How do you know?”

            “Because he’s my cat!”

            “Hermione!”

            Before he could stop her, she lowered Crookshanks to Harry’s level.  His tiny black eyes looked into Crookshanks golden ones.  They stared at each other for a long moment and Harry began to wonder why he wasn’t currently in Crookshanks’ stomach being digested.

            “Hi Harry!”

            Harry blinked.

            “Crookshanks?”

            “Yeah!  Hi!”

            “What the hell?”

            Hermione took Crookshanks away and set him down on the floor.  She nodded thoughtfully.  “Looks like Bacon’s clean.”

            Ron was still clutching Harry tightly.  “Merlin, Hermione, I swear Crookshanks almost ate her!  Did you see that look in his eyes?!  Look!  Poor Bacon’s in shock!!”

            Harry was still stunned at having almost had a conversation with Hermione’s cat.

            “Well, I’ll see you around Harry.  I have a spider upstairs I was playing with.”  He bounded up the Girls Stairs in a blurry orange streak.  Harry couldn’t stop blinking.

            “You exaggerate too much, Ron.  Crookshanks barely moved!”

            “Just you wait.  You’ll see.  He’ll end up eating one of my pets again.”

            “He didn’t eat Scabbers!!”

            “Not for lack of trying!”

            “Scabbers was evil!”

            “That’s not the point!”

            Hermione groaned and threw her hands up in the air.  “Fine!  Fine, whatever!  Watch over Beefsteak like a hawk.  At least now your brain will finally be having some usage.”  She collapsed heavily on the sofa, with her arms crossed.

            “His name is BACON.”

            Harry took a moment to take all this in. 

Nope, impossible.  He would never be able to fully comprehend how screwed up this situation actually was.  All he did know was, when some old wizard historians put him in a history book someday, he hoped that they would leave this part of his life out.          

After a fun-filled dinner (which consisted of ogling Gryffindor girls cramming delicacies down his throat and cooing ‘such a cuuuuutie!’ at him) Harry found himself sitting on a blank piece of parchment beside Ron and Hermione.  Hermione was, as always, doing her homework.  Ron, on the other hand…

            “Come on, Bacon!  You can do it.  Stand on your hind legs.  C’mon, do it for daddy.”

            It was a shame no one could see Harry’s severe eye roll. 

            “I don’t think he likes that much.” Hermione commented, looking up for a moment from her essay to give Ron a similar severe eye roll.

            “She.”  Ron corrected. 

            “Damn it, Ron!” Harry desperately wanted his human body back so that he could give Ron a good kick in the -

            Ron grabbed Harry gently by the front paws and swayed them in a wave motion.  “Atta girl, Bacon!  Wave your hands in the air!  Wave them like you just don’t care!”

            “Ron, you are in dire need of a hobby.”

            “Ron, you are in dire need of a hobby.”  Hermione snipped, dipping her quill in ink.

            Harry was this close to kissing Hermione.  Thank God, at least she saw how irritating Ron was being.  And at least SHE acknowledged him as a GUY.  Unfortunately he didn’t think Hermione would fancy a peck on the cheek from a little brown rat.  He just looked up at her in appreciation.

            And was disappointed to find an amused smile on her face. 

            “Et tu, Hermione?”  Harry’s eyes traveled to the ink pot by Hermione’s hand.  !  That was it! 

            When Ron finally gave the absurd dance of stupid a rest, he scrabbled across the sheets of parchment towards Hermione’s inkwell.  He had a message to write.  Carefully, so as not to fall in, Harry dipped his little paws into the deep black ink.

            “Ron, you’re rat is trying to drown itself.  You drove the poor thing to suicide.”  Hermione plucked Harry’s soft body away from the ink.

            “No!  Unhand me!”

            Hermione placed Harry down on the table.  Harry really did not want to write on the table surface, but at this point he had no choice.  He’d worry about detention for defacing school property later.  He raised his paws and began writing.

I AM –

“Whatcha doing there, Bacon?”  Ron carelessly picked Harry up, causing his tail to smudge the three letters he had written.

“NO!”

“Hermione, look!”  Ron pointed at the now illegible ink spot.  Hermione looked and frowned.

“Your rat just ruined this table!”

“She did not!  It’s art!”  Ron declared.  “Hey, Dean!  Dean!”

Gryffindor’s best artist made his way over.  “That’s a pretty slick rat you got there, Ron!”

“Look what she drew on the table!”

“I didn’t bloody draw a damn thing – “

“Blimey!”  Dean exclaimed upon further inspection.  “I reckon it looks a bit like a star!”

Ron took a moment to marvel at the genius of his rat.  Harry inwardly barfed.  Soon the entire had gathered around to ogle at the beautiful masterpiece now titled “Bacon’s Star”.

“That’s ruddy brilliant!”

“A rat drew that?”

“It must be a magic rat!”

“It’s so adorable!”

“Can I pet him?”

“It’s a her.”

While Ron was holding in a proud yet ever-so-breath-impeding grasp, Hermione seemed relatively quiet.  She looked at the little smudge of writing deep in thought, then at Harry, then back again.  She seemed to be working something out in that amazing brain of hers.

“Come on, Hermione.  You’re the smart one.  You see I was writing something.  Say it!  Say it!”

“Ron…I don’t think that’s a star…”

“YES!  YES!!!  I LOVE YOU HERMIONE!”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just an accidental smudge.”

Now Harry wanted to drown himself.

“It is not!”  Ron cried defiantly.  “It’s obviously a star!”

“Why do you always have to be so cynical, Hermione?” Lavender scolded, then resumed her cooing noises over Harry.  Hermione pressed her lips into a skeptical line, but said nothing more. 

~*~

            Harry spent that night on Ron’s pillow, forced to withstand Ron’s powerful and vastly unpleasant snore-breath.  Every time he tried to move it was like he set off some alarm that only Ron could hear, so that he would grab Harry by his disgustingly cute middle and pull him back.

            “Stay right here, Bacon.  We don’t want you getting lost.”

            “Ron, if Scabbers weren’t already evil, he would have learned to be.”  Harry mumbled, resisting the urge to bite him on the nose.  Ron snored at him.  A few minutes later, after several tosses and turns by Ron that sent Harry tumbling off the pillow onto the floor, Harry decided there was no way he was going to sleep that night.  He scampered towards his own bed, which of course was empty. 

            And almost got squashed to death by an invisible foot.

            “Sorry, Bacon.”  A soft voice whispered.  Whoever it was stood directly over Harry, so that he could look up underneath the Invisibility Cloak.  And, to Harry’s embarrassment, the person’s nightgown.

            Hermione bent over and scooped him up in one hand.  Harry’s mind was swirling at the sight of Hermione’s –

            Harry slapped himself with his paw.  Don’t think like that.

            “You’re a strange little rat, aren’t you?”  Hermione whispered.  Harry noticed she wasn’t cooing or going all lovey-dovey over him like all the other girls (and some boys) did.  Intriguing.  “Come on, let’s go wake Ron.  We’re going to go visit Harry.”

            Harry’s heart soared.  This was it!  Now they would see that Harry was missing and eventually he’d get them to realize he was a rat and THEN he would be free!  Harry practically leaped from Hermione’s arm to wake Ron up.

            “Psst, Ron!”  Hermione removed the invisibility Cloak, to reveal her head.  Unfortunately this was a bad idea.

            “Wha – AHHHH!”  Ron saw Hermione’s floating head and launched sideways off his bed.  Everyone in the room jolted up.

            “What-what-what is someone trying to knife you in your sleep again, Ron?”  Seamus yawned, referring to a third year incident.

Thankfully, Hermione had swung the cloak back over her head.  It wouldn’t do for the entire school to know he had a bloody Invisibility Cloak.   Ron just stared breathlessly at the space where he had seen Hermione’s head.  Harry looked up from Hermione’s palm and saw that Hermione had her eyes squeezed shut.

“N-no.  I’m fine.  Go back to sleep.”

The boys didn’t need to be told twice.  Within a few seconds snores filled the room again.  Hermione took off the cloak.

“Sorry.” she apologized sheepishly as she handed Harry back to Ron.  Ron glared.

“Give a man a bloody heart attack, why don’t you.”  He fumed.  Then he climbed back into bed as if nothing had happened and Hermione really wasn’t standing there in an invisibility cloak.  Harry grew impatient and scrabbled at his face.

“Ow!  Bacon! What are you doing?”

“Waking you the hell up, obviously!”

            “Ron, I want to go see Harry.”  Hermione whispered urgently.

            “Why?”

            “Because we haven’t seen him since class!”

            “You heard Madame Pomfrey.  We’re not allowed to.”  Ron half-snored dismissively.

            “That’s why I’ve got his Invisibility Cloak, you prat.  Come on!”

            Ron groaned softly.

            “Nice to know you care so much, mate.”  Harry said dryly.

            “Ron!”

            “All right!”  Ron heaved himself out of bed and stuck his feet into his slippers.  “All right, let’s go.”

            They made their way to the door under the invisibility cloak.

            “Hey!  Wait for ME!”  Harry skittered after them on the hardwood floor.

            “Bacon wants to come too!  How awesome is this rat?”  Ron gushed, picking him up.  Hermione rolled her eyes. 

            “I know, right?”  Harry borrowed her eye-roll.  Hermione was much cooler than he thought.

~*~

            Moments later they stood at the door to the infirmary.

            “Open the door.” Hermione whispered.

            “You open it!” Ron whispered back.

            “You’re closer.”

            “Ladies first.”

            “Good lord, you two.”  Harry groaned. 

            Hermione huffed and turned the door knob.  Before them were a dozen beds, each with a grimacing student on it, curled in a ball.  They all seemed to be asleep.

            “Where’s Harry?”  Ron wondered.

            Hermione gave him a “How am I supposed to know?” face.

            Harry tried to make the same face, but of course failed due to the pointed nose and fur.  He sympathized with Hermione, he really did.

           

            Quietly, they searched each bed, looking for the familiar shock of black hair and the tell-tale scar. 

           

            “Oh, disgusting.”  Ron hissed.

            “What?”

            “Crabbe drools.”

            Harry had to agree. The sight of Crabbe’s thick saliva trailing down his cheek and soaking into his pillowcase was enough to make his little rat stomach turn. 

            “Ron?”

            He looked up from inspecting the intriguing viscosity of Crabbe’s spittle and saw Hermione, leaving against a wall as if she might faint.  “What?”

            “Harry isn’t here.”