The Tale of the Rats on the Hat

He was awoken by a burst of light, which almost blinded him. He Harry felt very odd but he could not quite put his finger on it. Harry rolled over to find that he couldn't. He opened his eyes and was shocked to find two things: the first was that he was colour blind, the other that he was in a giant cardboard box. He blinked but still no colour met his eyes so he decided it was a dream and fell asleep.

He was awoken by a burst of light, which almost blinded him. He went to cover his eyes with his hand but found he could not. Instead, he found a pair of eyes looking at him. They clearly belonged to somebody old as many wrinkles surrounded the eyes.

"What do you think Neville?" The voice sounded like one you would expect of a witch. "Neville, where are you? I've woken them up now so you might as well come and have a look. Neville!" Harry's ears burned as the mouth belonging to the same person as the set of eyes shrieked.

Soon enough another pair of eyes joined the first. The eyes, Harry was sure, belonged to his fellow Hogwarts roommate, Neville Longbottom. A look of horror met the boy's eyes.

"You turned them into rats then grandma?"

"Of course I did you stupid boy! Nice fat brown ones, don't they look gorgeous?"

"Um..."stammered Neville.

"Such a shame about poor old Vultury. He really didn't stand a chance after that vicious cat had a go at it!"

"Still there was really no need to be so horrible to my friends! After all it was Crookshank's fault not theirs," argued Neville.

'They should learn to keep their animals under control! Vultery was always well behaved."

"Grandma, he was a stuffed animal! He was dead!"

"Still, much better behaved than these horrible little creatures!"

"Grandma, they are my friends. You can't just keep turning people into stuffed animals to put on your hats each time they annoy you!"

"Where else am I going to get a new animal for my hat? Nobody would ever suspect me anyway. After all Vultery was your Grandfather but nobody noticed. Once I've finished with these three nobody will have a clue who they are. That scar though is proving some trouble to remove. The rat looks quite ridiculous!"

"That's Harry potter! You can't just stuff Harry Potter!"

"I'm not going to stuff him or his two little friends, they are going to have a special charm on them which makes them looked stuffed but really they are still alive."

"They weren't rats until you turned them into them at the end of the sixth year. Now Harry can never go on to kill he-who-must-not-be-named."

"Well, I don't know about you but when the end of the Wizarding World comes I want to look my best and I can only achieve this if I have some stuffed animals on my hat which is on my beautiful head."

"But Grandma," said an exasperated Neville, "the Wizarding World can be saved by Harry Potter! Turn him back into a human or were all as good as dead!"

"Won't, I need a special occasion to try out my new hat and the end of the Wizarding World is an excellent opportunity! Now be quiet before I turn you into a stuffed animal!"

"But..."

"That's it; I've just had it with you!" she snapped. "Constantly forgetting things and now badgering on and on about how precious Potter is. Well, if you think he's so great you can join him!"

BANG!

Neville finds himself squashed between Hermione and Ron the rats except instead of being brown he is black.

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