Harry Potter and the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus

Chapter 4:      Lunch Labours Lost

THE NEXT MORNING, Harry awoke to screams that, for once, were not his own.

"N-n-no!... They’re taking him!"  Neville’s anguished shrieks tore through the boys’ dormitory, still immersed in darkness.  Harry heard the faint shifting of bedclothes and the scraping of brass rings across curtain rails as the others stirred.

Harry joined them, sitting up groggily and pushing aside the velvet curtains of his four-poster bed.  He put on his glasses in time to see Ron’s head squinting sleepily around a bedpost.  To his left, Dean Thomas turned over irritably, dragging his pillow over his head.

"They’re taking him…" continued Neville anxiously in his corner.  His head twisted frantically from left to right.  "’Can’t run…cornered… the lion… no way out…"

"Wha-a-a-a-a’s going on?" Ron yawned, raising a long arm to scratch his spiky bed head.

Seamus, who slept opposite the screaming boy, slid off the edge of his mattress, shrugging off the bedsheet wrapped around his leg, and staggered barefoot across the room.

"Oi!  Longbottom,"  he hissed, giving the boy’s shoulder a good nudge.  "Wake up!"

Neville’s eyes screwed tightly shut and he began to struggle.  "Oh, gods, no!... Snape!  Snape!  He’s coming…"

Harry, Ron and Dean, now more alert, glanced uncertainly at each other.  The Gryffindor boys’ dorm was used to Dean’s occasional nightmares about a disembodied hand, Seamus’s snores and Ron’s nocturnal Chudley Cannons commentary.  But this was new.

Seamus shook Neville by the shoulders.

"Neville!  It’s.  Only.  A.  Dream," he bellowed loudly, as if talking down a drainpipe.  "It’s not—"

"Snape…" he murmured.  "Professor… Snape…"

"NEVILLE!" said Seamus sharply.

"Wh-wh-what…?"  The boy’s eyes snapped open, blinking rapidly in confusion.  He took in the dark room and the four faces eyeing him with both concern and just a trace of mild irritation.  Relief flooded over his face.  Followed by embarrassment.

"Oh."  Suddenly sheepish, he dropped his eyes to the floor planks.  "Sorry.  I guess it was just—"

"Yeah.  A nightmare," said Ron.  "We know."  He pulled his alarm clock up to his face and sighed.  "Holy Circe, it’s only twenty past four."

"’Sorry," muttered Neville apologetically, his voice, no more than a shaky whisper. Despite the warm breeze from the open window, he pulled his covers over his shoulders and turned away.

A nightmare.  Harry himself was no stranger to unpleasant dreams.  If he hadn’t been so drowsy, he might have asked Neville about it.  But the heavy fog in his head made his decision for him.  He yawned in a swiftly losing a battle against the weight of his eyelids.  Harry was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

**********

As it turned out, the next day’s whirlwind class schedule ensured there would be no room left in Harry’s thoughts to spare for Neville.  Professor McGonagall greeted the returning Gryffindors with the impossible assignment of transforming their pets into humans.   And true to form, the Transfiguration Mistress dismissed them with a wave of her hand and a three scroll essay on how to distinguish the enchanted animals while in disguise.  In History of Magic, Professor Binns, the only ghost professor at Hogwarts and typically its most soporific speaker, floated in somnolently through the blackboard, but wasted no time in assigning the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws a five scroll term paper: The Wizarding World’s Family Tree—Where Magic and Muggle roots converge.  Discuss, with examples from 2607 B.M. (Before Merlin) to the present.

After lunch, the fifth-year Gryffindors set out across the sprawling lawn towards Hagrid’s hut in anticipation of Care of Magical Creatures.   The boughs of the trees circling the Forest hung low, as if weighed down by the humidity.  The last vestiges of Indian summer had finally hit Hogwarts.  In the sweltering afternoon heat, Harry, Ron and Hermione dropped lazily behind, occasionally tugging where perspiration had glued their robes to their backs.  Several paces ahead, Dean and Seamus halted, shielding their eyes from the sun and pointing at two dark spots darting through the air above the Great Lake.  They sliced back and forth against the cloudless sky like Bludgers.

Bludgers heading straight for them.

"Duck!" cried Ron, as the two figures dipped and swung about 180 degrees, careening toward the clusters of Gryffindors.

As Dean and Seamus flattened themselves against the ground, Hermione, Harry and Ron dove out of their trajectory and into the safety of nearby bushes.  A loud cry, followed by hoots of malevolent laughter, pierced the air as the projectiles flew past.  Those… are not Bludgers, thought Harry, wincing as he rubbed the sore spot where his forehead collided with a sturdy branch.  Bludgers don’t fly in concert.  Harry clocked them as they turned back swiftly for another pass.  He frowned and heard Hermione gasp beside him as they zoomed into view.  And… neither do they have white-blond hair. 

This time, none of them missed Malfoy’s sneering face as his Nimbus Two Thousand and One screamed past them, the bristles of the racing broom closely clipping at Harry’s head.  Pulling the twigs from his hair, Harry glared angrily at Malfoy.  Who did he think he was?  And what the hell was that strapped to his broom? 

Harry squinted through his smudged lenses.  To the left of the Nimbus, attached by a short golden cord, trailed a passenger broom cradling a dark-haired girl he did not recognise.  Probably due to the pair of hands she had clamped over her eyes.   The passenger broom, the Nimbus XS Luxury Sidesaddle, sported heavy-looking gilded bristles complementing its gold rigging and the stripes on Malfoy’s Nimbus Two Thousand and One.  Harry recalled the model he’d seen on display in Diagon Alley, along with its five hundred galleon price tag. 

"’Thinks he’s so bloody impressive, the little showoff," muttered Ron bitterly, brushing the grass from his robes.  "’Wonder how many owls his parents hired to haul that thing here."

The rest of Ron’s commentary drowned in excited shrieks from the lakeside.  From a great height, Malfoy and his companion arced into a steep dive, grinning at the thrilled screams of their audience: two girls sitting on the banks, flanked by two large boulders.  Closer inspection revealed that the boulders were none other than the Slytherin’s cronies Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle.   Draco and the girl (now recognisable as Valentina Rupp, the Durmstrang transfer student) descended lightly onto the sandy banks of the Great Lake.  Pansy, Millicent Bulstrode and a breathless Valentina, huddled around Malfoy, fanning him with long eyelashes.  Harry spotted Hermione’s eye roll, as Pansy flicked back a lock of chemically-tired blonde hair and giggled for Malfoy’s benefit.  Behind half-closed lids, Draco’s stare drifted insolently toward Harry as he propped himself up on one arm on the grass, expelling a bit of smoke from something between his fingers. 

"Hey, Potter," he called, sharing a conspiratory smirk with Crabbe and Goyle.  "Better prepare yourself for a beating next week.  Oooooh, wait," he paused, grinning maliciously.  "You’re probably used to beating… yourself, now and again."

Harry’s face set into a scowl.  After four years, he’d grown accustomed to Malfoy’s occasionally-lewd and always-juvenile taunting.  He walked on without wasting a look on the Slytherin Seeker, knowing better than to rise to the bait.

But Malfoy, after four years, hadn’t yet learned when to quit.  "Potter, my advice is, you’d do well to have someone else… grease your broomstick, if you know what I mean.  Maybe Granger over there can do for you… what she’s done for Viktor Krum…" he sniggered suggestively.

"What’s he mean by that?" whispered Hermione in Harry’s ear.  Beside them, Ron froze in mid-step.

"Ooooh, good girl, Granger.  That’s right," taunted Malfoy.  "Oh, she’s good, Potter, starting with the erogenous zones at the top."

"Shut it, Malfoy!" yelled Ron over the Slytherin group’s cackles.

Draco rested a hand on his chest, manufacturing melodramatic shock.  "Don’t tell me she’s riding your broom, too, Weasley!  Or I should say more accurately, your uh… quill."

The flood of colour in Ron’s face reached the tips of his ears.  His lips calcified into a thin line, an angry pulse beating above his left jaw as his teeth clenched.  Harry and Hermione shared a quick glance.  They knew the warning signs. 

"Ron, walk away.  Malfoy’s not worth it," coaxed Harry in a steady voice.  "He’s just trying to get a rise out of you."

Hermione rested a hand on Ron’s arm as a caution.  "Just ignore him, Ron." 

But Malfoy’s insolent drawl persisted.   "But even if she were riding you, Weasley, I’d be surprised.  After Krum, I’d have thought that even a Mudblood like Granger would only have an appetite for hotrods with… class."

"Ron!" Harry and Hermione lunged forward to grab him.  But it was too late.  They turned in time to see him take a flying leap into the little Slytherin group, tackling Malfoy and pinning him to the ground.   Soon, without the aid of a wand, Ron’s fists were already making substantial dents in the Slytherin’s chest.  Crabbe and Goyle, taken aback, stood rooted to the spot, blinking round uncertainly.  Pansy and the other squealing girls backed away to goad Malfoy from a safer distance. The brawl had also arrested the attention of other Gryffindors and Slytherins on the way to class.  Before long, a throng of onlookers had collected on the path like rainwater in a stopped drain.

Much as they loathed Malfoy, Harry and Hermione tugged at Ron to pry him off the boy.  Beating up the little sod wasn’t even worth a detention, Harry told himself unconvincingly.  He flashed the Slytherin a thunderous glare.  Malfoy grimaced unpleasantly in return, gasping for breath, his nose trickling blood.  His slicked platinum hair stuck up at odd angles as he wheezed. 

But no sooner had they taken hold of Ron, than Malfoy sprang forward.  Quick as a Billywig, the Slytherin pitched headfirst at Ron’s waist, propelling them both into the lake.  After some frenzied thrashing, Harry thought he spotted Ron grip Malfoy by a tuft of silvery-white hair as both boys sank into the murky water.  Harry knew, from last year’s Triwizard Tournament, what lay in wait in the depths and wouldn’t have wished that experience on anyone.  Well, all right, except maybe Malfoy.  The milling crowd stared expectantly at the still surface, yielding nothing but the odd bubble or two.

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!" 

The familiar growl made even the Slytherins jump.  Harry spun round to find Snape marching straight for himself and Hermione.  It was an unlikely sight, as unlikely as a bat skimming a sunlit beach.  The bright afternoon rays seemed to shy away from the anemic pallor of his face and the black of his robes.  His dark eyes raked the pair of them, resting for an uncomfortable moment on Harry.  In the clay-cold vise of Snape’s eyes, Harry’s blood froze.  At his side, Hermione’s breathing seemed to cease altogether under the Potions Master’s gaze.  But to her credit, she kept her composure.

"Miss… Granger," hissed Snape, pointing a long finger at her throat.  "You will give me an explan—"

But before he could finish, shouts rose from the crowd. Malfoy’s—and then Ron’s—head, sputtering and choking, popped free of the lake surface.  Entwined around each boy, pinning his arms to his sides, was a thick purple tentacle dappled with gelatinous suction cups.  The Giant Squid of the Great Lake had no doubt found the pair trespassing in its personal space and was propelling them back onto the shore.  Both boys landed unceremoniously amid a shower of lake water as the squid retreated to its lair.

"WEASLEY!" barked Snape, tearing his fiery gaze from Hermione.  "I should have known.  Twenty points from Gryffindor for attacking a fellow student and disturbing the hibernation of a rare species." 

Despite his hacking coughs, Ron managed a weak glare at the Potions Master.  And despite his own coughing fit, a gleeful sneer played upon Malfoy’s face.  But it was Draco’s turn for surprise as the Potions Master blasted him next with the full heat of his fury.  "And you, Malfoy!  Wipe that smirk off your face, boy.  You will see me after class… is that clear?"

Malfoy nodded, colouring slightly and looking uncharacteristically alarmed.  He shifted uncomfortably on his sodden patch of turf.  It wasn’t at all normal for Snape to find fault with a student in his own house.

"As for you," Snape’s stormy eyes narrowed at Harry and Hermione.  "Ten points for failing to restrain Weasley in his"—again, the sneer—"less-than-gentlemanly behaviour."

"But, Professor Sn—" protested Hermione.

"EACH!  Miss Granger.  Hold your tongue, or I shall double it!"  He turned abruptly, striding briskly toward the school.

**********

Hermione and Harry lagged behind to tend to Ron, as the Gryffindors and Slytherins reluctantly resumed the walk to Hagrid’s hut.  Ron was soaked to his freckled skin, his robes clinging awkwardly to his long limbs.

"Secculum."  Hermione pointed her wand, directing a puff of warm air at Ron’s soggy robes, which immediately dried up.  He flushed, smiling at her gratefully.  They lingered until Ron, apart from being slightly bruised in the ego, had caught back enough breath to undertake the walk back to the infirmary.

"Gosh, I wonder what Snape’s going to do with Malfoy," mused Hermione, tucking away her wand. 

"Dunno."  Harry frowned cynically.  "Probably nominate him for the Order of Merlin, that git."

 "Git?"  Hermione threw him a sideways glance.  "Snape or Malfoy?"

"Either," he laughed.  "Both."

"But where did he come from?" asked Hermione, suddenly serious.  "Snape, I mean.  He couldn’t have come from the school, we’d have seen him."

"He must have been in the Forest."  Harry turned to her, pushing up at his glasses.  "It’s the only place he could have come from, unless he Apparated from somewhere."

"But you can’t Apparate into Hogwarts. Honestly, we’ve been here how many years already and you still can’t remember that? Hogwarts: A History, page 17." 

He rolled his eyes, grinning at her exasperated tone.  The girl was the most pedantic person he knew, but he appreciated her friendship all the same.

"Okay."  He shrugged.  "So, the Forest, then."  Harry absently wiped his glasses on his robes and furrowed his brows, his green eyes darkening.  "What would Snape be doing outside the dungeons and in the Forest in the middle of the day?"

**********

Severus Snape stalked fiercely through the entrance hall, a sea of first year post-lunch stragglers parting to clear his path.  His robes whipped furiously behind him, jarring the stillness of the dungeon.  He flung back the door to his office with a satisfying bang.  Intensifying a blue flame under a beaker on his desk, Snape wrinkled his nose at the thought of the students.  Still, those children, annoying as they could be, weren’t nearly half as disturbing as the events of the morning. 

Sinking into a weather-beaten armchair by the cold, stone hearth, he began to feel marginally at peace.  He cast his dark eyes about the dimly-lit chamber, noting absently that the house-elves had taken care to refill the bottles, suspended in midair, with the monkshood, caterpillar antennae and root of asphodel that he had ordered.  They knew better, however, than to touch the towering pile of books and parchment, overflowing from his desk and onto the dark limestone floor.  The result of ten years of work on his antidote for the Imperious Curse.  Still incomplete. 

Despite the Ministry of Magic’s public denial of the Dark Lord’s return, the Ministry persisted in owling him with urgent messages requesting updates on his progress.  With Voldemort’s army taking shape and skirmishes having already taken place over the summer, the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, was even more uptight than his normal self.  In the last weeks, reports of small-scale massacres in Muggle and magical communities all over the country cast a pall over the Daily Prophet’s front page.  And this morning he’d read about the raid on Amos Diggory’s farm.  Despite being back from exile, Voldemort would have been sending emissaries, sometimes unsuspecting innocents under Imperious, to do his dirty work.  Soiling his hands with menial murders wasn’t the Dark Lord’s style.  He liked to save the biggest kills for himself.

Still more infuriating was that he had been contacted by Wormtail the night before with instructions from the Dark Lord.  That weak, sniveling, spineless excuse for a man.  Snape had detested Peter Pettigrew as a Hogwarts student, the least impressive part of James Potter’s little circle.  But in joining the Death Eaters, Pettigrew had sunk even lower in Snape’s estimation than he could ever have expected.  Snape flinched, cursing the Dark Mark on the inside of his arm.  The leering black skull reminded him that he was bound to accept the orders, even from that weasel of a messenger.  But worse still, the skull reminded him of the unspeakable.  The sins he had committed for the glory of the Dark Lord, sins too great for several lifetimes of penitence.  Despite reassurances from Dumbledore, Snape feared that penance was somehow not possible.  But at least I can try, he told himself.  As long as Voldemort held no suspicion of his change of heart, Snape was prepared to die trying.

The Verivue Elixir was only the smallest component of his research into a cure for the Unforgivable Curses.  At least the discovery of an antidote or other counteragent would strip the Dark Lord’s forces of one of its most powerful weapons, the Imperius Curse.  And he was close.  Earlier in the day, he had vaguely recalled having had the feeling of being on the verge of an epiphany, but something… something had distracted him.  What? 

Leaping to his feet, he rifled through the pages on his desk, dislodging reams of parchment, a candlestick and several books that landed heavily at his feet.  Where was that damn scroll!

He raked the fingers of a long-boned hand through the tangles in his hair, scowling blankly at the grey embers in the hearth.

Then, a flash.  Like a momentary flame that ignited and, just as quickly, vanished.  In the late morning, he had been bent over his desk.  By the light of a single candle, his eyes had lingered over a passage by Remedian.  The key was something simple, so elementary.  He had been reading about muskbeetle eyes, Glumbumble honey and neural receptors, but… there was something else.  He had almost put his finger on it…  Then… what?  A noise?  A voice?  Something had distracted him. 

Pausing to listen, and hearing nothing but a low hiss from the simmering cauldron in the next room, Snape had frowned and rubbed his temples.  He led his eyes back to the scroll, unfurled on his desk, to find his place in the ancient medical text.  There was something… something particularly relevant, which he couldn’t for the moment place.  It was no use.  He slumped back in his chair with a leaden sigh.  It was then that his mind had gone blank.  It was a vaguely restful, if unfamiliar, feeling, he discovered, having a mind devoid of troubles.  Devoid of much of anything. 

It was… delicious, really, this pleasant floating.

The next thing he recalled was a sharp staccato pain in the ribs.  He had opened his eyes, peering up into a dense umbrella of green foliage.  The clammy ground under his right elbow squished beneath him.  He was lying on the muddy banks of a pool, he assumed, somewhere within the Forbidden Forest.  Another insistent kick struck his chest and he squinted up again to meet a large man’s head with red hair and wide, dark eyes.  His blurry gaze took in a torso that branched still further into ginger-coloured horse’s flanks and hooves.  The Potions Master recognised Firenze, Dumbledore’s foremost ally in the ranks of the centaurs of the Forest.

"Professor."  The voice, deep and sonorous, reminded Snape, oddly, of his grandfather.

"Yes," he croaked.  It was all Snape could muster as he struggled to sit up.  But the pain flooded into his head, and he tumbled backwards against a patch of grimy moss.

After some moments in silence, Snape was surprised to hear the voice again.  The Potions Master had almost forgotten he was there.  "Severus Snape, you must try to rise.  You must go.  It is not safe for you here."

Snape managed to crack open one eye.  "What—aaarrgh!"  He winced, bracing his head with his hand.

"Do not tire yourself with unnecessary speech.  The pain you feel will abate shortly.  But you must return to Hogwarts."  The centaur bent down to offer an arm for support.  "Now."

Snape thought of several acerbic comments, all of which died on his lips as the throbbing in his head returned.  He allowed Firenze to help him stand and then turned gingerly to glance at his rescuer.  The centaur’s feral features set into a concerned expression.  A flotilla of questions raced painfully through Snape’s mind.  But without the strength to voice them, and, it seemed, without the choice, he staggered along the path.  He thought he heard the centaur sigh, "Friend, trust not their song." 

Snape turned round swiftly, but the creature had vanished into the wood, the drumming of his hoofs already fading in the distance.

After what seemed like half a day, but was probably no more than half an hour, Snape reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest.  As he stopped to steady himself against the moss-covered bark of a tree, the angry voices of screaming youths reached his ears.  That was when he spied the Weasley boy charging at Lucius Malfoy’s son.  He sneered, despite himself.  Knowing Malfoy, he had likely provoked the entire episode and, no doubt, deserved what he was getting. But Snape’s arrangement with Malfoy senior was nothing to be taken lightly.  Malfoy.  Young Malfoy. Of course.  He became vaguely aware of a tugging at his mind, very faint, as if from a half-forgotten dream.  Drawing himself up, he stormed down toward the Lake.

**********

Bethany White recoiled slightly from the heat of the fire, one arm resting on the black marble mantelpiece in her office, as she heard a door slam in the dimly lit dungeon corridor.  The evidence of Snape’s fury reverberated across the cold stone, rattling a few torch brackets in the process.  Not daring to draw breath, she listened to the scraping of a chair and the frantic rustling of books and parchment.  When at last she heard oaths and swearing unbecoming of a Hogwarts master, her lips curled slowly at the corners.  Her slender fingers unfurled the scroll she had taken from her robes.  Remedian.  How clever of Snape to have deduced that the unraveling of the Unforgiveable Curses lay in the grey area between magic and Muggle science.  Nearly deduced, she added to herself. 

A cloud flickered across her brow and she hesitated for a moment, thinking of the dark, penetrating eyes that had trailed her through the Great Hall, a stare like a weight against her robes.  There was power there, ambiguous though it seemed.  She had sensed it.  Palpable.  She had studiously avoided meeting Snape’s glance, but she sensed it.  If she had a weakness for anything, it was the mystery of power. 

But at the recollection of the eyes of another—that calculating vermilion stare that she knew would flash redder still if she failed in any part of her task—she shuddered back from her selfish reflections.  In one definitive movement, her fingers curled around the parchment and deftly flung it into the grate.  The flames licked the sides of the scroll, traveling along its edges, charring the entire length of the parchment until even the embers sank into the logs.  One hope, no more than so much dust. 

To Be Continued…