Heroic Perversions

Chapter 6

Sage or Savage?

"Have you finished it?" asked Ron, referring to the Potions essay due in thirty minutes. He was spread his attention between talking to Harry, zipping his bag, going down the stairs and anticipating breakfast. Harry was therefore not surprised when Hermione's rather shrill greeting caused Ron to jump out of his skin and nearly tumble to the bottom of the stairs at her feet.

"For Merlin's sake, woman," hissed Ron. He zipped his bag so furiously that the zip went off track and he threw his bag over his shoulder.

"Good morning to you too, Ronald," Hermione tossed at him, disgusted. She started towards the portrait hole. "Morning, Harry. I've got so much to do today. There simply aren't enough hours in a day. Don't know how many times I've said that..."

"Only about five hundr--"

"You know I was thinking--" interrupted Hermione with haughty dignity, "--I should try that thing again of sleeping first then waking up and studying later. I should do that... But a girl needs her sleep, you know..."

"And you need to get along with organizing Quidditch practice, Harry," said Ron. "Have you decided on a date for the try-outs?"

Harry thought he should expect Ron in the queue for the try-outs. "Haven't thought much on it yet," he answered shortly.

After waiting for him to continue speaking Ron nodded wanly. "Oh. Okay. So in your opinion, who do you think has a chance, though? I mean, when you saw them in action last year. I think--maybe--you could have a rough idea of the Gryffindor team or something by now...?"

Harry kept quiet and counted every alternate cobblestone sliding under him as they trooped down the corridor. Hermione made an irritated noise as she brushed past them through the huge doors of the Great Hall.

"Of course what else can boys talk about? It's not as if your whole lives don't revolve around it... I swear if Malfoy spent as much time talking Ancient Runes as he did Quidditch he'd actually outdo me for once. I can't imagine what always being in second place feels like..."

The latter half of Hermione's sentence died as a paranoid burble. With this slightest reference to Malfoy the pretence shattered and the present moment was so wildly insincere that Harry almost allowed himself to smile. As they crossed made their way to the Gryffindor table they cast so hasty a glance at the opposite side of the Great Hall due to their pulsing apprehension that they saw little more than a blur of colour and light at the Slytherin table. But this swift peek would normally have caught that outstanding sleek, platinum-blond sheet of hair - it had always been so demanding of attention. Malfoy was simply not there. They took their seats and started loading their plates and filling their glasses.

"Blimey, Snape first thing in the morning," moaned Ron. Several bones cracked in his back as he yawned and stretched. "It's like my nightmare never ended - I'm still gonna see a seven-foot bat flying at me first thing in class."

This attempt at humour had an effect on neither Harry nor Hermione; the tension between them was thicker than ever. Luckily Seamus decided to make a loud entrance at that point. Harry blushed and met his food more squarely. Thirty minutes later he was glad to walk out the Great Hall, which had grown rather small as Harry could not find enough places to look at to escape Seamus' gaze. The Irishman had been on a roll entertaining the Gryffindor table and making him hot and restless.

Minutes later they entered the Potions classroom. Harry was sure Ron's and Hermione's hearts were thundering as violently as his; he could even feel his throat throbbing.

"Quiet down and find your seats," Snape ordered the class. When the students swiftly subsided he continued, after his eyes darted to the empty seat next to Zabini, "As you should be aware, today is the due-date of your assignment." Snape did not even bother relishing the collective gulp of the classroom - he seemed to be over them. "You will send your assignment to the left of your row and keep quiet as... let's see... Potter collects them."

Harry had to shake himself to make sure he had heard properly. Hermione jabbed him and widened her eyes to prompt him into action: he jerked out of his seat. He was not careful enough and glanced uncertainly at Snape, who had just been staring at the empty seat in the first row again. Harry realized only when he was halfway up the class that Snape had chosen him to collect the papers because naturally Malfoy would have done so. But he was dead.

By the time he had bundled up every essay in the classroom and presented them to Snape - who had sneered at him and gestured towards his desk - he had survived loud catcalls, jeers, a few blatant insults and even a finger running through the crack between his bum cheeks (Snape had done well to ignore this of course). His pulse had nearly frozen when he had arrived at Zabini's desk. But he had collected the essay - its thickness second only to Hermione's - and moved along.

"I see Mr Malfoy's not with us," enquired Snape, his voice icy and soft at once. He spoke dispassionately, enquiring as far as his capacity of teacher allowed, as though there was no love lost between him and Malfoy. "I wonder if you have arranged to hand in his assignment and take notes for him, Mr Zabini, while he enjoys a few more hours of sleep after a hard night's partying?"

"He isn't feeling too well, Professor," replied Blaise Zabini, who smirked and crossed his ankles under his table. The other Slytherins stared at Zabini as though asking themselves why he was even bothering to answer their Head of House.

"I see," said Snape after a moment before he declared, "He will see receive no grade." Harry thought Snape was thinking he was getting one back at Malfoy for his many acts of open disrespect. Snape did not realise that whatever he did now could not hurt Malfoy in the slightest.

"He was complaining about his head, sir," said Zabini, his smirk perhaps wry. "Don't know what got into it."

Harry stared at the cascade and curls of dark Italian hair, taken aback. What he had mistaken as a voluminous, rambling essay had been in fact two essays. But it was only fitting, for Zabini was no overachiever who could have written such a long essay. (Snape of course had the greatest enjoyment in reading their marks aloud). Zabini was covering up Malfoy's murder.

From this point on Ron, Harry and Hermione stared at Malfoy's empty seat as though demanding his appearance there while Snape went on about the invention and development of the Draught of Living Death.

"...But of course one cannot play dead forever. It is up to you to create a potion that will challenge precisely this. Brew Living Death - or attempt to do so at least without losing another cauldron, Longbottom and Weasley - in the next hour and a quarter with the recipe I provide on the board. Note the modifications that are not in your Naelblume textbook. Given the potion's notorious difficulty I will permit you to work in groups of two or three. Begin."

It seemed to finally sink in for Ron and Hermione. Ron looked over his shoulder and cast a frown at the front end of the classroom, the Slytherins' haunt and where they sat to absorb more intimately their House leader and his disparaging remarks at the Gryffindors behind them. As Harry watched him, he thought he could hear the whistling steam, the whirrs and the cogs turning in Ron's head. He was quite certain that a new glamour for Slytherins had just been fashioned and fitted onto them. Harry, too, looked to the Slytherins. The boundaries had suddenly snapped apart at the potential of what they could do. They were now not merely teenage students attending a magical school. They were discrete, calculating entities, each with a startling potential for murder. Behind the bored and rude expressions was hidden a capability to kill. They had no right to sit amongst students and act as them.

Harry suddenly felt as though he were not in a school anymore - those boundaries which defined and made possible a school had been burst through. They had murderers in their midst. And yet here Harry sat, with a gaze towards the green-and-silver knotted ties - another perfect day of classes...

"It was Blaise," he told Ron with the aim that he wanted Ron to have a specific person at which to look and on which to pin the murder instead of a general, faceless mass of Slytherins and bring the gravity of the issue to clearer focus. Ron nodded and looked at Zabini. They did not speak and worked quietly on their potion until Neville melted his fifth cauldron, by which accident he received his loudest and most embarrassing dressing down by Snape, who was perhaps always looking for every opportunity to stamp his authority after his own House had turned on him. After Snape replaced the cauldron, lit Neville's flame for good measure and called Hermione to partner with him, he stormed off, greasy hair flying. At the loss of their best brewer Harry sloshed some of their potion in his own cauldron before Ron could destroy it.

"He's always been a shady character, that one, hasn't he, though?" observed Ron, one eye on Zabini and the other on his own potion, which did not help: the inside of his cauldron still looked like a marsh. "Can't sort of figure him out yet after all these years. He was chummy with Malfoy for one thing."

Harry noticed that Ron had stopped using derogatory names by which to refer to Malfoy after Sunday.

Without Ron's notice the sludgy goo in his cauldron gobbled up his wooden spoon, effectively leaving him with the end of a smart-looking twig but nevertheless an object of scarce use. Quite nonchalantly he withdrew it, walked over to the rubbish bin, dumped it and took a new one from the general cupboard as though losing a spoon to a potion was as daily and trivial a hazard as tripping over a crack on a pavement.

Before Hermione came over to them they heard her instruct Neville, "Just leave it to simmer and don't do anything to it... Why've you got separate cauldrons?" she asked them. But when she glanced into Ron's cauldron she seemed to have answered herself. "Right. We'll use Harry's." They spilled out Ron's disaster of a potion and worked on Harry's.

"We have to tell someone," said Hermione quietly after some time. Her arm shook as she stirred the potion, the colour of which was turning from a velvety gridelin to a thickening black. "Or we have to do something."

Harry took a minute to steady himself and let his breath out calmly and leant on the table. The reality had struck him all over again.

"When's Dumbledore coming back?" asked Ron. Dumbledore was something of a hero to him.

The mention of this name lent Harry enough strength to stand back straight and say, "He can't help us now - he's useless."

"Don't say that, Harry," chided Hermione. She went on in a whisper, indignant on Dumbledore's behalf, "You can't judge Dumbledore on this one thing after--and when you know he always believes you no matter what you say! You should be ashamed of yourself!"

There was an element of truth in what she said, but Harry was not in the mood to expend a scruple to appreciate it fairly. "We have to do something. Besides, Dumbledore's busy, wherever he is."

Hermione glared at him for several seconds before she turned her attention back to the potion. "I think I have something," she said softly after a moment. "A plan."

The enormous relief that enveloped Harry all but overwhelmed him. A plan - any plan - was something of a start to begin to deal with the issue. Harry did not know the details yet but he could not express his gratitude at Hermione.

"What is it?" rapped Ron, his blue eyes sparkling at her.

Hermione tipped in a teaspoon of moon dust in the now greyish potion, and finally it turned a stagnant, darkest black.

Unfortunately Hermione being with Ron and Harry meant Neville was left to his own woeful devices. In quick time the students working around him had given him a wide berth after he melted and burnt a couple more cauldrons even after Hermione's instruction, and the potions fumes coming from them were awful and ominous.

"Hermione!" Harry urged.

"I need to go to the library!" she hissed.

Harry threw his arms up, making ferocious strangled noises. Curse Hermione to Hades for lifting his spirits like this only to stifle them!

"You really need to stop doing that," Ron told her frankly as they emerged from the dungeons. "Really, really need to. You have no idea how irritating it is."

"What are you on about?" muttered Hermione mutinously, knowing exactly what Ron was referring to.

"This thing you do that you say something short and then leave us hanging. It's inhumane, really - a crime against humanity."

"Oh don't be ridiculous, Ron! Listen to yourself!"

"It is! Malfoy's dead, isn't he?"

"That was unfair!" breathed Hermione in shock. Ron looked away still looking satisfied of himself.

"Settle down, settle down," ordered McGonagall and the rustle of the students fell. "We have much to cover today." McGonagall proceeded to introduce the next section of Transfiguration work. Thereafter it was time for the practical application of what they learnt.

Harry was just in the middle of turning a teapot into a pincushion when Hermione shouted, "Professor McGonagall, there's someone at the door!"

McGonagall frowned towards the door at a short boy. The Transfiguration practice had been so loud that his rapping had been inaudible. McGonagall beckoned the boy over, who crossed the classroom as though it were a battlefield as pouffes and schoolbags came careening past him. After a body roll on the floor he came to his feet and whispered in McGonagall's ear. McGonagall yelled, "What?" The boy whispered again, this time for vigorously. She straightened and shouted for silence.

"Thank you! What was that, Mr Wheelock?"

"They're calling for Harry Potter, ma'am."

When Harry saw the boy at first he thought he was hallucinating again. But the fact that McGonagall was interacting with the boy meant Wheelock was as real to him as he was to anyone else.

"Is that so?" said McGonagall in a false and dangerous simper, her eyebrow rising slowly. "Well I'm sure whatever he's needed for is not as paramount as his need to successfully Transfigure a teacup into a pincushion; Mr Potter is writing his OWLs this year. Tell whoever's requesting him that he is busy at the moment and will only be available in an hour's time."

Wheelock had grown pink in the face. He seemed terrified to look anywhere beyond McGonagall's face. Harry noticed that he stood extremely straight. Harry adjusted his posture slightly, clearing his throat.

"But, Professor McGonagall, it's Professor Dumbledore," Wheelock murmured so softly no one heard him. His fringe conveniently hung over his eyes as would Harry's.

"I beg your pardon?" said McGonagall.

"It's Professor Dumbledore who wants Harry, ma'am," he repeated a little louder.

"Well you could have just said so, boy, instead of wasting our time!" chided McGonagall. "There he is. Mr Potter, you've been called for. Class, continue with practice."

The cacophony of incantations and spells surged. Harry felt Ron's and Hermione's inquisitive stares on his back. After putting his table in order he nodded at them before accompanying Wheelock outside.

While it felt to Harry like everything had spiralled since Malfoy's murder, one of those things being his relationship with Dumbledore, he thought at least one positive thing that had come out of all of it was he had stopped seeing visions of Wheelock. Now, however, he was walking alongside that same vision at the moment.

Harry shook his head to clear it: no, it was the real Wheelock walking alongside, their hair equally jet-black, their height almost the same; Wheelock was slightly taller where Harry had thought they had been equals. He wanted to ask Wheelock why he had been, effectively, stalking him just about since school reopened. And he wanted to assure him that he and Ginny were separated so there were no bad feelings. His mind had worked on this issue a little hysterically to come to the insane conclusion that Wheelock was stalking him to gain some of his behavioural traits to impress Ginny and reclaim her; Malfoy's murder was indeed playing havoc on his mind.

He eventually never mustered the courage to open his mouth. Wheelock trotted alongside him for two corridors before disappearing into another classroom. He had not spoken anything to Harry, who travelled briskly to the headmaster's office. He wondered along the way why he had been summoned. Was Dumbledore going to apologize for his fatally inconsiderate actions?

"Lemon Drops," said Harry and the gargoyle promptly jumped to the side. He revolved upwards, climbed off the stairs and knocked on the double doors.

"Come in."

Harry entered and saw Professor Dumbledore standing with his hands behind his back in front of his window.

"Good afternoon, Harry," said Dumbledore after he turned to face Harry.

"Afternoon, sir," returned Harry.

Dumbledore studied him for some few seconds before he spoke again. "I have just returned from the Ministry. But you're probably wondering why I called you here during your lessons."

Harry was not in the mood for guessing games.

"Harry, I brought you here both to extent an apology and find out more about what you were talking about before I left. You say Mr Malfoy was murdered."

"He was."

"And you witnessed this?"

"Yes."

"Have you told anyone else?"

Harry swallowed. "Just--just my friends."

"Why just your friends?"

"I--I--" said Harry, swallowing again. "It just was like that... I... Ron and Hermione wanted to--they wanted to make sure... And I trusted you - I came first to you."

Dumbledore lost all his momentum with these words. "Forgive me, Harry. I had to attend to a serious matter with the Minister of Magic. There was a mass breakout in Azkaban prison. Certain measures had to be put in place."

"But you still just left!" shouted Harry unreasonably, suddenly. "There was a student in your school that died but you left! I thought you cared about every one of them!"

"That is true and will never change," assured Dumbledore strictly. "But, Harry, consider this clearly. I think you would agree that the escape of twelve Death Eaters with various crimes against humanity attached to their names, though it should not be any more concerning than Mr Malfoy's death, was more urgent."

"You of all people!" said Harry loudly, accusation burning in his eyes. "I can't believe you said that!"

"Harry, listen to me." Dumbledore sounded to have reached the end of his tether. Despite himself, Harry stopped pacing quite abruptly. "I realize how dire this situation is and how devastated you must feel--" Harry just barely stopped himself from snorting ferociously. "--having witnessed the murder first hand. But I urge you to exercise reason. Should I not have rushed to handle the crisis at Azkaban but stayed here to console you and deal with the aftermath of your fellow schoolmate's murder? Hold in mind, eleven men, and a woman, capable of the most malevolent acts conceivable, loose on the streets of Wizarding Britain, no doubt flying to their master's side, ready to kill once more at his word?"

Harry did not want to argue anymore. As he breathed slightly laboriously in front of Dumbledore he still felt disgusted beyond exhaustion. He knew he was being irrational a long while back, but there was still something in Dumbledore's actions that smacked of cold disregard. How can one weigh a life against a multitude of others like potion ingredients on a brass scale?

He turned his back on Dumbledore and whispered feebly yet defiantly, "A life is a life."

"Harry, I still need to deal with the situation. I need to know who murdered him, where, how, when. This is a serious issue. His parents need to be--"

"Oh now you take it seriously?" raged Harry, spinning around to face Dumbledore again. "Leave it. We have a plan."

"Though I have absolute confidence in this plan of yours a murder in my school is my business," said Dumbledore strictly. "I am surprised at you. You don't seem nearly as wrecked as I would have imagined; I'm beginning to suspect you're not telling me the entire truth. Harry, was Mr Malfoy really murdered? Should I summon him?"

Harry stared at Dumbledore. "You don't believe me..."

"I find it hard to," corrected Dumbledore. "Given that you've told me no one but your closest friends know and that Snape - Malfoy's Head of House - has spoken not a single word of it to me, and you are hardly in a similar state in which you were following your return from the graveyard where Cedric Diggory was murdered. Forgive me my incredulity, Harry, but at the moment the evidence of this murder is effectively non-existent."

"I--I--I only didn't tell anyone because Ron and Hermione wouldn't believe me until they didn't see Malfoy in class or in the Great Hall on Monday. He wasn't anywhere because he's dead!"

Dumbledore stared at him deeply for a moment. Then he seemed decided on something. He went over to one of the portraits lining the top of his office and said, "Gordon, won't you call in Professor Snape for me."

"I have a class to get back to," Harry told Dumbledore.

"That can be rearranged," replied Dumbledore brusquely. "Harry, understand that I am not trying to make you out to be a liar. I just need the facts at hand. If indeed there was a murder in Hogwarts several processes must be put in motion. For one, the body needs to be located."

"'If'?" squawked Harry, who could not believe Dumbledore still did not believe him. "I'd like to leave."

"You may not."

Harry nevertheless swept out of the office. Dumbledore sighed shortly.

Harry walked back to the Charms classroom. Somehow he was not well-disposed to the idea of Dumbledore's involvement anymore. The issue seemed to have appropriated him and his Ron and Hermione rather than the other way around. But now that he had alluded to Hermione's plan to Dumbledore, the need - the pressure - for it to be solid and doable was enormous. The plan was simply necessary.

"We need that plan," he said quietly to Ron and Hermione as they worked at their table again in Transfiguration.

"What did Dumbledore say?" enquired Hermione. She waved her wand at the stuffed gerbil and Transfigured it back and forth into a furry quill.

"Screw Dumbledore," Harry replied. "We need the plan."

"Harry--" began Ron.

"Drop it. We need to do the plan as in now, before Dumbledore starts interfering."

For the first time ever Hermione bunked a lesson. When Harry realized where she was headed after they managed to escape beneath the spell-light in the Charms class, he moaned, "We so haven't got time to look through the library! Dumbledore's gonna call his parents and Snape and tell everyone at breakfast tomorrow if you haven't guessed the pattern! If we can somehow save Malfoy or reverse his death we wouldn't have of all that!"

Hermione stopped walking and sulked, seeming offended on behalf of the library. But her face quickly straightened and assumed the expression she wore when she had experienced a stroke of brilliance.

"What?" said Ron almost hungrily, recognizing the expression.

"I've got it," she said. "It's so simple I don't why it came to me now. You vaguely alluded to it just now, Harry."

Ron and Harry stared at her. "You're doing that annoying thing again," Ron pointed out to her.

Hermione grew scarlet.

"A Time-Turner."