Harry Potter and the Levitating Sherbet Balls

Harry Potter and the Levitating Sherbet Balls

Fads come and go. When Harry Potter had first come to Hogwarts, it had been Chocolate Frog Cards. Then for awhile it had been Peppermint Toads. Now, in Harry's final year at school, the latest fad at Hogwarts was Levitating Sherbet Balls, a creamy orange sphere of hard candy that caused one to temporarily rise off of the floor. Everyone was buying them. If you were friends with another student, you shared your sherbet balls. If you were angry with someone, you ate a bag in front of him or her and didn't offer them a piece. Students were wandering about, trading them for other things, such as dungbombs, and quills, and sucking on them between classes, so they could float through the halls, to the fury of Argus Filch.

But no one hated sherbet balls more than Severus Snape, who found them extremely irritating, and disliked the smell of them besides. He had banned them from the dungeons, and had publicly sworn to punish most severely the next person he found in possession of the silly things in his presence. The tetchy professor had, many years before, succeeded in getting love potions banned, had found a method of revealing self-correcting quills, and had done everything else one man could do to keep ahead of his students.

Children tried his patience, anyway. He'd been teaching at Hogwarts for many years, but was not fond of the profession. He did it to help Albus Dumbledore, and to cement his position as a spy both for the Order and for Voldemort. He looked upon talented Potions students with pride, but the feelings of children in general were not a top priority for him.

That particular week, his students were not doing Professor Snape the credit he felt he deserved, and he was in an especially sour mood. The first years for the most part, could not even prepare a simple potion to cure boils, and he had a Muggle-born boy in third year that was on track to break Neville Longbottom's record for melting cauldrons. No, Snape was not happy.

Harry was heading toward the dungeon that day with Ron, Neville and Hermione. He and Ron had sneaked out the night before, using Harry's invisibility cloak, to buy a new batch of sherbet balls, since it had been several weeks since a Hogsmeade visit, and everyone was running out. Harry and Ron were going to be very popular that day, unless they were both quite mistaken. Ron was especially pleased, since he knew he could double or even triple his money on the precious orange candy. They were both in high spirits, and quite forgot themselves as they tossed the bag back and forth between them. Suddenly, a student walking down the corridor in the other direction grabbed the bag. It was Luna Lovegood.

"Hey!" Harry said surprised. Luna was a good friend of his, and had been ever since the end of his fifth year, when she had comforted him after the death of his godfather. Harry enjoyed Luna's droll sense of humor, and her firm sense of self. He had asked her once, in his sixth year, if it didn't bother her that so many people seemed to be uncomfortable around her.

She had answered in a sing-song voice, "Sometimes I wonder, what I could be, if I knew the importance of believing in me."

Harry had stared at her for a moment, and she had giggled. "That's a Muggle poem, Harry. A girl named Holly Heather Jackson wrote it. I've always liked it."

"It suits you," Harry had admitted, and Luna had asked him about living with Muggles, and they had had a splendid conversation, one of many to come. Yes, Luna was a close friend of Harry's. Ron still wasn't so sure about her, though, and avoided her whenever possible.

Ron was just about to grab the bag back, when Harry realized why Luna had taken it in the first place. The whole hall stopped to stare, as Severus Snape glided up to Luna, and snatched the bag. "What are you playing with, Miss Lovegood?" He opened the bag, and the sweet, fashionable smell of sherbet ball assaulted his nose. It was like putting fire to gunpowder. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Do you have any more of these, Miss Lovegood."

"No," Luna said calmly, "and I never lie, Sir."

Snape held up his wand, held out the bag, and incinerated it. As the smell of burning paper and melted sugar wafted through the corridor, several students sighed.

Snape looked around, glaring. "I trust you all remember what I said to you a week ago! I never allow my rules to be infringed! Miss Lovegood, hold out your hand!'

"Hey, those were mine!" Harry said, furiously.

Snape looked at him, coolly. "Ah, Mr. Potter is trying to save the day again. You'll have to hang onto your fondness for heroism until another day."

"He's right, Sir," said Draco Malfoy, from the back of the crowd. "I saw him with them!"

"Mr. Malfoy," Snape said with a hiss, "I know how much you like getting Mr. Potter in trouble, but I assure you he's quite capable of finding it on his own. Now be quiet, or I'll be taking points from my own house! Your hand, Miss Lovegood!"

Luna started, and put both hands behind her back. She gave Snape a wide-eyed, imploring look, which pleaded for her better than anyone's words could have done. The Ravenclaw girl was cleverer than she looked, and Snape was very much aware of the torment she endured at the hands of other students. No stranger to persecution himself, he might have relented, if someone in the corridor had not taken that moment to snicker. That snicker, faint as it was sealed the pale girl's fate.

"Your hand!" Snape snarled. Luna set her teeth, and stood stone-like as Snape's wand swung through the air, leaving several massive red welts cross the back of her hand.

"You will stand in the hall until lunch time!" He snarled, "and you will stand her in a manner that will remind you of your rule-breaking! Of course, it probably won't bother you too much, since you have so little dress sense to begin with!" With another wave of his wand, Luna's robes turned bright sherbet ball orange, causing several people in the hall to burst into laughter.

"Get on with the rest of you!" Snape snarled, and the other students began to back away. Luna's few friends looking shocked, and her many enemies looking quite satisfied. Snape swept into his dungeon. Harry stared open-mouthed at the motionless, pale figure standing by the door, and winced as a single tear slid down Luna's cheek.

"C'mon, Harry," Ron said, tugging on his arm. "Let's go."

Harry let himself be led away, but all through History of Magic, the pathetic little figure of Luna haunted him, and he felt a bitter sense of shame. Luna had no reason to get involved in his problems, but she had done so over and over. She was loyal and loving, and he had once again managed to hurt someone who cared about him.

When the class was mercifully over, Harry ran away from the happily chattering students on their way to lunch, down to the dungeon. Looking around the corner, he saw Luna still standing outside Snape's door. He ducked back as the Potions master came out of the classroom, his black robes billowing behind him.

Snape waved his wand, turning Luna's robes back to black, and figuring he might as well do the thing completely, said, "That will be five points from Ravenclaw! Now get out of my sight!" He swept back into his office without a backward glance, and Luna, trembling, picked her bookbag up from the floor and started forlornly toward Harry's hiding place.

Harry stepped out, and his anguished green eyes met her wide silver ones. "Luna, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. This was my fault! All of it! I can't believe he actually hit you! Lu, I don't know what to say."

He grabbed her, and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. Luna stood still for a moment, then gently wrapped her arms around his back, patting it lightly. "You needn't say anything. It comforted me that you tried to tell him, but it's okay, Harry. I didn't mind. I wanted him to take it out on me. You've been through so much. You didn't need anymore."

"What about you?" Harry asked fiercely. "What about all you've been through?"

She tilted her head to look at him, and to Harry's surprise she smiled. "We're quite a pair, aren't we?"

Harry looked at her for a long moment, then smiled back. "I think we are. I hope we are. Are we really?"

"Yes, Harry, if you want us to be."

"I can't think of anything I want more," Harry said honestly, and leaning down he kissed her.

The proprietor of Honeydukes was very puzzled that December, by one order in particular.

"Is this right?" he asked his wife.

"Of course it is," she said, adjusting the ribbon on the basket. "I've got the order form right here."

"But why would anyone want this large of a basket of Levitating Sherbet Balls as a Christmas present? There's enough here to last a normal person until next Christmas!"

"We're not dealing with normal people here, my love. Really we're not." And she turned to the waiting owl with a smile. "Are you sure you can manage this, dear?"

Hedwig gave a reassuring sort of hoot, and with a flutter of her long, white wings, carried the basket away into the cold night.

THE END.