Ch 19: Late Christmas Presents
The fact that fifty Death Eaters had been incinerated and another twenty-five were still recovering from severe burns made headlines in all of the wizarding papers for weeks after Christmas. None of the stories mentioned Harry Potter at all, but everyone suspected he was somehow involved. When classes resumed, Harry was being toasted at nearly every meal by three of the houses in Hogwarts. At the fourth table, nearly half of the students glared at him with open hatred.
In the first week of classes following the Christmas vacations, the first, and last, open confrontation occurred between Harry and the members of the Slytherin house. As Harry and Hermione walked down the hall leading to their potions class with Snape, they both realized they were alone, surrounded by hostile Slytherins. Despite the dim torchlight, both Harry and Hermione easily discerned the huge, bulky forms of Crabbe and Goyle, who seemed to be leading the angry group of Slytherins.
"It'll be OK, Hermione. Let me handle this. Just watch my back."
"Harry, I don't need your protection. Don't do anything stupid."
"Just trust me, OK."
"OK, but be careful. It looks like they've given this some thought."
"Who? Crabbe and Goyle? Give me a break. But you're right. They're planning something. We should have anticipated something like this was bound to happen. Probably half of their parents were at my mansion Christmas Eve."
"Well, well, what do we have here. Two high and mighty Gryffindors prancing around our dungeons," snorted Crabbe. He poked Harry with a thick finger in the chest, knocking him off balance momentarily.
"Ha ha," guffawed Goyle. "Not so tough without all of your mighty wizard friends around, are ya, you little runt?" Harry just gazed back at them quietly.
"Look, he's too scared to say anything. Don't start crying Harry. Your girlfriend here might not like that," taunted Crabbe.
"Yeah, she looks a lot tougher than you," sneered Goyle and began to step past Harry towards Hermione. Harry moved sideways to block him.
"Oh, you going to stop me, Potter?" taunted Goyle.
"If anyone here has a problem with me, then let's deal with it. But leave Hermione out of it. Anyone that so much as touches her is going to regret it," stated Harry in an icy voice. A few of the Slytherin students looked slowly at each other. Hermione had never heard his voice so chilling, so menacing. It sent a shiver down her spine.
"You're bluffing, you're not going to do anything, you're all talk," growled Crabbe.
"That's funny. That's almost exactly what the last Death Eater I talked to said, right before she blew herself and all of her stupid cronies straight to hell."
The tunnel exploded with roars of anger. Shouts of "My dad was there!" and "My uncle was killed there!" and "My cousin is still recovering from his burns!" echoed off the walls. Despite her growing anxiety, Hermione glanced calmly around at the faces, trying to detect where the first attack was going to come from. "Are you sure you know what you're doing Harry? I'm not sure reminding them that you just sent half of their families to hell is the best way to defuse this situation."
"Something like this was bound to happen eventually. Better to get it done with now and out of the way."
"You think that's funny, Potter. You're going to pay for that. My dad is dead because of you."
"I've been dealing with bullies bigger than you all my life, Crabbe. Bring it on."
With a roar of anger, Crabbe lunged forward and aimed a huge, ham-sized fist at Harry's head. Sidestepping the punch easily, Harry jammed two of his knuckles right into Crabbe's windpipe. Crabbe dropped to his knees, clutching his throat with both hands. Goyle leaped forward and grabbed the front of Harry's robes, lifting him from the ground. His feet dangling, Harry reached for the front of Goyle's robes and leaned his head back for a moment. Then he snapped his head forward, smashing Goyle's nose with his forehead. Stunned, Goyle let go of Harry, who stepped in closer as he cocked his right fist, and punched him hard on the tip of his chin. Goyle's entire jaw snapped back, pinching the nerves right under his ears, and he toppled over on his side, unconscious.
As the stars stopped blinking in front of his eyes, Harry sensed a movement behind him and he dropped to the floor. A red light hit three other Slytherins, who began madly scratching at their faces, quickly drawing long lines of blood with their fingernails. Whipping out his wand, he cast his spell a split second behind Hermione. "Petrificus Totalus!" was followed by "Expelliarmus!". The transfer student from Durmstrang was first immobilized, then she was slammed into a wall as her wand went sailing behind her.
"Thanks, Hermione."
"I'm sorry I didn't see her sneak out her wand, she had it in her sleeve already. There were too many people too watch and too many minds to try and look at."
"It's OK. I'm fine."
"Is there anyone else who would like to discuss this past Christmas? If you have friends or family that died or were injured, then I am sorry. But they made a terrible mistake in backing Voldemort. He is a monster that will not hesitate to use and discard any one of you, or your families, to get what he wants. Do not make the same mistake they did. Now if there's nothing else, I would recommend that you take those five up to the infirmary."
Glancing back at the stunned girl, he added, "Maybe take her, too." Looking at her wand that had stuck itself in a wall between two cracks, he commanded, "Accio wand."
Walking in front of the stunned girl, he said, "Until you learn to play nice, I think this will do much better." Aiming his own wand at hers, he transformed it into a pink teddy bear with red hearts on the stomach and frilly ribbon around its neck and tossed it at her feet.
"Well, its been fun chatting, but Hermione and I are already late for Spape's class so we'll be running along now." Looking around at the cowed glances, Harry didn't think there would be any more problems from the Slytherins. Hermione just followed along in awe. Harry had dispatched two of the largest Slytherins with his bare hands without breaking a sweat. Then he had dodged a sneak attack from behind that he couldn't even see without getting hit at all.
"How on earth did you do that?"
"Well, not all of the training Lupin and Moody have been giving me has been magical practice. There are a lot of situations Aurors find themselves in where they can't use magic, so they have to know how to defend themselves physically as well. They've been teaching me a few tricks. The dodge was just lucky, I think."
"Somehow I doubt it was just luck." thought Hermione to herself.
They paused briefly before entering Snape's classroom, expecting the worst, especially since they were late.
"Well, well. If it isn't our most notorious twosome. I'm so pleased you've decided to finally make an appearance in my class today. Twenty points from Gryffindor…from each of you." snarled Snape. Looking closely at Harry, he added, "What's wrong, Potter, did you forget your glasses and walk into a wall this morning?"
Glancing quickly at Harry, Hermione noticed that his nose was scraped and bleeding where his glasses had probably been shoved backward when he smacked Goyle with his forehead. As he reached to wipe away the blood, she noticed that his right knuckles were skinned as well.
"No, sir," replied Harry politely. "Actually, I was exchanging a few late Christmas presents with some of the Slytherins." Harry grinned at Hermione as he sat down while Snape watched with a confused look on his face.
*-*-*
By noon of the next day, everyone in the castle had heard about the late Christmas presents. But as when happened when Harry retrieved the Philosopher's stone, even though Harry and Hermione had told nobody what had happened, everyone had learned of the confrontation in the dungeon.
Officially nothing was done, because there were no witnesses who came forward or official complaints lodged. The Slytherins in the hospital wing made up a variety of pathetic explanations ranging from miscast acne removal charms to falling down the dungeon stairs. Unofficially, many teachers were working overtime restoring points being taken away left and right from the Gryffindors by an extremely irate and vengeful Snape. The first day after the incident, he took nearly eight hundred points from Gryffindor students in one day, a school record. Harry himself lost nearly three hundred points all by himself in the next potions class he attended, another school record.
By the end of the week, when most of the Slytherins had recovered, Crabbe still had a rather hoarse voice, Goyle's nose had somehow healed crooked, and the girl's wand was still in the form of a teddy bear, which she tried to carry hidden under her robes. They tried to ignore the laughs and comments directed at them as they sat at their table, glaring at the Gryffindors in general but at Harry and Hermione in particular.
After dinner that Friday, while most of the Gryffindors were heading back to the common room, Ron and Hermione stopped to talk about something from Transformation class while Harry continued on ahead. Suddenly, Ginny's very full backpack split and everything tumbled out. There was a hiss and a sharp meow from the side of the hall, and out ran Filch's cat, apparently startled by the sound of the bookbag dropping. Trying to help, Harry picked up several books and handed them to Ginny and then picked up a strange looking orb with what looked like a green rope twisted around the bottom. He looked at it oddly while it seemed to grow misty.
"Give it here, it's mine," snapped Ginny angrily.
"Here you go, I'm just trying to help," replied Harry, looking at Ginny strangely. She finished putting the rest of her things in the bag and left without another word. Just then, Ron and Hermione caught up with Harry and looked at Ginny stalking away.
"What was that all about? Why was my sister hissing at you?"
"What?" asked Harry.
"Weren't you listening, Ron? She said, `Give it here, it's mine.'"
"You must have better ears than I do, all I heard was her hissing and spitting like a cat. I thought she was going to scratch out your eyes, Harry." Shaking his head, Ron headed back to the common room.
Looking at Hermione sharply, Harry thought "You heard her say that, right?"
"Well, yeah. Why didn't Ron? We weren't that far away."
"Remember in second year, when only I could understand what the basilisk and that black snake were saying, because I was the only Parseltongue?"
"Yeah, what are you getting at?"
"Well, I couldn't tell the difference between Parseltongue and English, they both sounded alike to me. But now you're able to translate different languages as well because of your Animagus form. Are you sure you heard her say that, or is that what you interpreted her to have said?"
"I'm not sure now. I might have interpreted it. Why-Ginny can't speak Parseltongue. She could only do that when…Harry! What are you suggesting? Surely you don't think Ginny is working for Voldemort!"
"Listen to me first. Ginny has been acting strange ever since her brother's death. I know everybody was. But Ginny still is. Not as strange as she was our second year perhaps, but she's been much different than last year. Now the Weasleys got a lot of presents and gifts at the funeral-remember there was a ton of people. What if another Death Eater slipped Ginny something? Not a book, but something else. That globe I picked up, it had a green serpent wrapped around the base of it. What if it somehow reminded Ginny of when Voldemort was controlling her through the diary? She knows better than to look at a book like that now. But it might only take a glance for something like that globe to do something similar. And it could have happened as soon as it was opened. I don't think that as long as Voldemort is alive, either of us will be completely free of him. Even though I'm not having nightmares anymore, I can still sort of feel him there at the edges, like he's waiting to come back and pounce. What if it's the same for Ginny?"
"Why do you think her strange behavior has anything to with Voldemort?"
"Somebody had to have told Voldemort where we were all heading for Christmas. Somebody had to have told him where the mansion on Grimmauld Place was. Somebody betrayed us. Either intentionally or unintentionally."
"But Snape and Draco were there too."
"Now you sound like Ron. Yeah, I suppose Snape could have done it, but neither of them were invited until the last minute. And Draco had never been there before."
"Do you really think she might be the spy?"
Harry thought quickly. He didn't know if he should tell Hermione the truth. He did think she was the spy and he wanted to help her, but if they did, it might tip off Voldemort. No, better to keep acting like he wasn't learning that much, continue to keep Ginny and most everyone out of the loop about his secret training. The fewer that knew, the better. So many secrets. It nearly broke his heart to abandon Ginny like this, if she really was under the influence of Voldemort again. How could he do this to her and her family? How could he live with himself or ever look her in the eye again? To use her as another tool against Voldemort-did that make him the same as Voldemort? He tried to think of what a final victory would mean to everyone, a world without Voldemort. Would that be worth the price of a few more months, maybe years of torment for Ginny? The benefits of that final victory had to be worth it. It had to be.
"No, I think you're right. Ginny's probably not the spy. Ron was probably just hearing Mrs. Norris or his stomach rumble or something. I guess I'm just getting paranoid."
Hermione didn't look convinced. "Are you sure you're OK, Harry?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine." he told her. To himself, he thought, "I hope. And I hope Ginny will be fine. I hope I'm not making another monumental mistake. I hope."
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