Voices (HP Fanfic)

Chapter 14: Sibling versus Sibling

"Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth." -Menachem Begin

Chapter 14: Sibling versus Sibling

Third Person POV:

Harry had Herbology first thing the following morning. He had been unable to tell Ron and Hermione about his lesson with Dumbledore over breakfast for fear of being overheard, but he filled them in as they walked across the vegetable patch toward the greenhouses. The weekend's brutal wind had died out at last; the weird mist had returned and it took them a little longer than usual to find the correct greenhouse.

"Wow, scary thought, the boy You-Know-Who," said Ron quietly, as they took their places around one of the gnarled Snargaluff stumps that formed this term's project, and began pulling on their protective gloves. "But I still don't get why Dumbledore's showing you all this. I mean, it's really interesting and everything, but what's the point?"

"Dunno," said Harry, inserting a gum shield. "But he says it's all important and it'll help me survive."

"I think it's fascinating," said Hermione earnestly. "It makes absolute sense to know as much about Voldemort as possible. How else will you find out his weaknesses?"

Penelope's POV:

"So you and Harry meet You-Know-Who?" Cho questioned. I nodded.

"Though he did not know we were there." I added. "It was rather interesting really."

"Learn anything you did not already know?" Luna asked.

"No not really." I shook my head.

Third Person POV:

"So how was Slughorn's latest party?" Harry asked her thickly through the gum shield.

"Oh, it was quite fun, really," Hermione explained, now putting on protective goggles. "I mean, he drones on about famous ex-pupils a bit, and he absolutely fawns on McLaggen because he's so wellconnected, but he gave us some really nice food and he introduced us to Gwenog Jones."

"Gwenog Jones?" Ron repeated, his eyes widening under his own goggles. "The Gwenog Jones? Captain of the Holyhead Harpies?"

"That's right," Hermione said. "Personally, I thought she was a bit full of herself, but —"

"Quite enough chat over here!" Professor Sprout said briskly, bustling over and looking stern. "You're lagging behind, everybody else has started, and Penelope's already got his first pod!"

They looked around; sure enough, there sat Penelope with a bloody lip and several nasty scratches along the side of her face, but clutching an unpleasantly pulsating green object about the size of a grapefruit.

"Okay, Professor, we're starting now!" Ron said, adding quietly, when she had turned away again, "should've used Muffliato, Harry."

"No, we shouldn't!" Hermione said at once, looking, as she always did, intensely cross at the thought of the Half-Blood Prince and his spells. "Well, come on . . . we'd better get going. . . ."

She gave the other two an apprehensive look; they all took deep breaths and then dived at the gnarled stump between them. It sprang to life at once; long, prickly, bramblelike vines flew out of the top and whipped through the air. One tangled itself in Hermione's hair, and Ron beat it back with a pair of secateurs; Harry succeeded in trapping a couple of vines and knotting them together; a hole opened in the middle of all the tentaclelike branches; Hermione plunged her arm bravely into this hole, which closed like a trap around her elbow; Harry and Ron tugged and wrenched at the vines, forcing the hole to open again, and Hermione snatched her arm free, clutching in her fingers a pod just like Penelope's. At once, the prickly vines shot back inside, and the gnarled stump sat there looking like an innocently dead lump of wood.