Adventures of Harriet Potter

Grawp

The story of Fred and George's flight to freedom was retold so often over the next few days that Harriet could tell it would soon become the stuff of Hogwarts legend. While the birth of her daughter, whom she named Lily, passed without notice outside of the teachers. Within a week, even those who had been eyewitnesses were half-convinced that they had seen the twins dive-bomb Umbridge on their brooms, pelting her with Dungbombs before zooming out of the doors. In the immediate aftermath of their departure there was a great wave of talk about copying them, so that Harriet frequently heard students saying things like, "Honestly, some days I just feel like jumping on my broom and leaving this place," or else, "One more lesson like that and I might just do a Weasley . . ."
Fred and George had made sure that nobody was likely to forget them very soon. For one thing, they had not left instructions on how to remove the swamp that now filled the corridor on the fifth floor of the east wing. Umbridge and Filch had been observed trying different means of removing it but without success. Eventually the area was roped off and Filch, gnashing his teeth furiously, was given the task of punting students across it to their classrooms. Harriet was certain that teachers like McGonagall or Flitwick could have removed the swamp in an instant, but just as in the case of Fred and George's Wildfire Whiz-Bangs, they seemed to prefer to watch Umbridge struggle.
Then there were the two large broom-shaped holes in Umbridge's office door, through which Fred and George's Cleansweeps had smashed to rejoin their masters. Filch fitted a new door and removed Harriet's Firebolt to the dungeons where, it was rumored, Umbridge had set an armed security troll to guard it. However, her troubles were far from over.
Inspired by Fred and George's example, a great number of students were now vying for the newly vacant positions of Troublemakers-in-Chief. In spite of the new door, somebody managed to slip a hairy-snouted niffler into Umbridge's office, which promptly tore the place apart in its search for shiny objects, leapt on Umbridge on her reentrance, and tried to gnaw the rings off her stubby fingers. Dungbombs and Stinkpellets were dropped so frequently in the corridors that it became the new fashion for older students to perform Bubble-Head Charms on themselves before leaving lessons, which ensured them a supply of fresh clean air, even though it gave them all the peculiar appearance of wearing upside-down goldfish bowls on their heads.
Filch prowled the corridors with a horsewhip ready in his hands, desperate to catch miscreants, but the problem was that there were now so many of them that he did not know which way to turn. The Inquisitorial Squad were attempting to help him, but odd things kept happening to its members. Warrington of the Slytherin Quidditch team reported to the hospital wing with a horrible skin complaint that made him look as though he had been coated in cornflakes. Pansy Parkinson, to Hermione's delight, missed all her lessons the following day, as she had sprouted antlers.
Meanwhile it became clear just how many Skiving Snackboxes Fred and George had managed to sell before leaving Hogwarts. Umbridge only had to enter her classroom for the students assembled there to faint, vomit, develop dangerous fevers, or else spout blood from both nostrils. Shrieking with rage and frustration she attempted to trace the mysterious symptoms to their source, but the students told her stubbornly they were suffering "Umbridge-itis." After putting four successive classes in detention and failing to discover their secret she was forced to give up and allow the bleeding, swooning, sweating, and vomiting students to leave her classes in droves.
But not even the users of the Snackboxes could compete with that master of chaos, Peeves, who seemed to have taken Fred's parting words deeply to heart. Cackling madly, he soared through the school, upending tables, bursting out of blackboards, and toppling statues and vases. Twice he shut Mrs. Norris inside suits of armor, from which she was rescued, yowling loudly, by the furious caretaker. He smashed lanterns and snuffed out candles, juggled burning torches over the heads of screaming students, caused neatly stacked piles of parchment to topple into fires or out of windows, flooded the second floor when he pulled off all the taps in the bathrooms, dropped a bag of tarantulas in the middle of the Great Hall during breakfast and, whenever he fancied a break, spent hours at a time floating along after Umbridge and blowing loud raspberries every time she spoke.
None of the staff but Filch seemed to be stirring themselves to help her. Indeed, a week after Fred and George's departure Harriet witnessed Professor McGonagall walking right past Peeves, who was determinedly loosening a crystal chandelier, and could have sworn she heard her tell the poltergeist out of the corner of her mouth, "It unscrews the other way." To cap matters, Montague had still not recovered from his sojourn in the toilet. He remained confused and disorientated and his parents were to be observed one Tuesday morning striding up the front drive, looking extremely angry. "Should we say something?" said Hermione in a worried voice, pressing her cheek against the Charms window so that she could see Mr. and Mrs. Montague marching inside. "About what happened to him? In case it helps Madam Pomfrey cure him?"
"'Course not, he'll recover," said Ron indifferently. "Anyway, more trouble for Umbridge, isn't it?" said Harriet in a satisfied voice. She and Ron both tapped the teacups they were supposed to be charming with their wands. Harriet's spouted four very short legs that would not reach the desk and wriggled pointlessly in midair. Ron's grew four very thin spindly legs that hoisted the cup off the desk with great difficulty, trembled for a few seconds, then folded, causing the cup to crack into two. "Reparo!" said Hermione quickly, mending Ron's cup with a wave of her wand. "That's all very well, but what if Montague's permanently injured?"
"Who cares?" said Ron irritably, while his teacup stood drunkenly again, trembling violently at the knees. "Montague shouldn't have tried to take all those points from Gryffindor, should he? If you want to worry about anyone, Hermione, worry about me!" Sounding miserable to Harriet's ears as she checked on her daughter Lily who was mercifully sleeping soundly in the magical baby carrier Madam Pomfrey gave her once it was safe enough to take Lily out of the hospital wing. "You?" she said, catching her teacup as it scampered happily away across the desk on four sturdy little willow-patterned legs and replacing it in front of her. "Why should I be worried about you?"
"When Mum's next letter finally gets through Umbridge's screening process," said Ron bitterly, now holding his cup up while its frail legs tried feebly to support its weight, "I'm going to be in deep trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if she's sent a Howler again." Harriet shot him a surprised look. "But —" began Hermione. "It'll be my fault Fred and George left, you wait," said Ron darkly. "She'll say I should've stopped them leaving, I should've grabbed the ends of their brooms and hung on or something. . . . Yeah, it'll be all my fault . . ."
"Well, if she does say that it'll be very unfair, you couldn't have done anything! But I'm sure she won't, I mean, if it's really true they've got premises in Diagon Alley now, they must have been planning this for ages . . ." Hermione said reassuringly. "Yeah, but that's another thing, how did they get premises?" said Ron, hitting his teacup so hard with his wand that its legs collapsed again and it lay twitching before him. "It's a bit dodgy, isn't it? They'll need loads of Galleons to afford the rent on a place in Diagon Alley, she'll want to know what they've been up to, to get their hands on that sort of gold . . ."
"Well, yes, that occurred to me too," said Hermione, allowing her teacup to jog in neat little circles around Harriet's, whose stubby little legs were still unable to touch the desktop. "I've been wondering whether Mundungus has persuaded them to sell stolen goods or something awful . . ." Immediately dawning the look Harriet associated with her being deep in thought. "He hasn't," said Harriet curtly. "How do you know?" said Ron and Hermione together. "Because —" Harriet hesitated, but the moment to confess finally seemed to have come. There was no good to be gained in keeping silent if it meant anyone suspected that Fred and George were criminals. "Because they got the gold from me. I gave them my Triwizard winnings last June."
There was a shocked silence, then Hermione's teacup jogged right over the edge of the desk and smashed on the floor. "Oh, Harriet, you didn't!" she said. "Yes, I did," said Harriet mutinously. "And I don't regret it either — I didn't need the gold, and they'll be great at a joke shop . . ." Confident her and Lily could survive the remaining two years of learning at Hogwarts off of the contents of her vault at Gringotts. "But this is excellent!" said Ron, looking thrilled. "It's all your fault, Harry — Mum can't blame me at all! Can I tell her?"
"Yeah, I suppose you'd better," said Harriet dully. "'Specially if she thinks they're receiving stolen cauldrons or something . . ." Hermione said nothing at all for the rest of the lesson, but Harriet had a shrewd suspicion that her self-restraint was bound to crack before long. Sure enough, once they had left the castle for break and were standing around in the weak May sunshine, she fixed Harriet with a beady eye and opened her mouth with a determined air. Harriet interrupted her before she had even started. "It's no good nagging me, it's done," she said firmly with a look at a yawning Lily who was just waking up. "Fred and George have got the gold — spent a good bit of it too, by the sounds of it — and I can't get it back from them and I don't want to. So save your breath, Hermione."
"I wasn't going to say anything about Fred and George!" she said in an injured voice. Ron snorted disbelievingly and Hermione threw him a very dirty look. "No, I wasn't!" she said angrily. "As a matter of fact, I was going to ask Harriet when she's going to go back to Snape and ask for advanced Occlumency lessons again!" As she watched Harriet check Lily's nappy. Harriet's heart sank. Once they had exhausted the subject of Fred and George's dramatic departure, which admittedly had taken many hours, Ron and Hermione had wanted to hear news of Sirius. As Harriet had not confided in them the reason she had wanted to talk to Sirius in the first place, it had been hard to think of things to tell them. She had ended up saying to them truthfully that Sirius wanted Harriet to resume advanced Occlumency lessons. She had been regretting this ever since; Hermione would not let the subject drop and kept reverting to it when Harriet least expected it.
"You can't tell me you've stopped having funny dreams," Hermione said now, "because Ron told me last night you were muttering in your sleep again . . ." Harriet threw Ron a furious look. Ron had the grace to look ashamed of himself. She'd been sleeping in the Room of Requirement with Lily as her roommates — aside from Hermione — had gotten shirty with her over being woken up every three hours by Lily's crying. Thus Ron and Hermione had taken it upon themselves to take turns sleeping in there with her as a show of support. And last night was Ron's turn to stay with her and Lily who was currently playing with Harriet's hair. "You were only muttering a bit," he mumbled apologetically. "Something about 'just a bit farther.'"
"I dreamed I was watching you lot play Quidditch," Harriet lied brutally. "I was trying to get you to stretch out a bit farther to grab the Quaffle." Ron's ears went red. Harriet felt a kind of vindictive pleasure: She had not, of course, dreamed anything of the sort.
Last night she had once again made the journey along the Department of Mysteries corridor. She had passed through the circular room, then the room full of clicking and dancing light, until she found herself again inside that cavernous room full of shelves on which were ranged dusty glass spheres. . . . She had hurried straight toward row number ninety-seven, turned left, and ran along it. . . . It had probably been then that she had spoken aloud. . . . Just a bit farther . . . for she could feel her conscious self struggling to wake as Lily had begun crying . . . and before she had reached the end of the row, she had found herself lying in bed again, gazing up at the canopy of her Room of Requirement four-poster before getting up and feeding Lily. "You are trying to block your mind, aren't you?" said Hermione, looking beadily at Harriet. "You are keeping going with your advanced Occlumency?"
"Of course I am," said Harriet, trying to sound as though this question was insulting, but not quite meeting her eye. The truth was that she was so intensely curious about what was hidden in that room full of dusty orbs that she was quite keen for the dreams to continue. It didn't help that, though her emotions were stabilizing now that she wasn't pregnant, she was still hormonal and was lacking sleep as a new single teenage mum. The problem was compounded by the fact that with just under a month to go until the exams and every free moment devoted to studying and taking care of Lily, her mind seemed saturated with information when she went to bed so that she found it very difficult to get to sleep at all. When she did, her overwrought brain presented her most nights with stupid dreams about the exams. She also suspected that part of her mind — the part that often spoke in Hermione's voice — now felt guilty on the occasions it strayed down that corridor ending in the black door, and sought to wake her before she could reach journey's end.
"You know," said Ron, whose ears were still flaming red, "if Montague doesn't recover before Slytherin play Hufflepuff, we might be in with a chance of winning the Cup." He sounded hopeful. "Yeah, I s'pose so," said Harriet, glad of a change of subject. Gently bouncing Lily on her hip, very aware she was being watched and judged by her classmates. "I mean, we've won one, lost one — if Slytherin lose to Hufflepuff next Saturday —" Ron said brightly. "Yeah, that's right," said Harriet, losing track of what she was agreeing to: Cho Chang had just walked across the courtyard, determinedly not looking at her or the baby in her arms.