Follow the Butterflies

Additions to Disclaimer: This chapter was inspired loosely by the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds."

Chapter 9: The Butterfly Excursion

By kazooband with help from heartdamoose. Cookies to whoever guesses where.

Ron opened his eyes and stared quizzically at the canopy of his four poster bed, wondering what had woken him. After all, the early morning light was just sifting through the curtains. He couldn't have gotten more than two hours of sleep. The stinging in his paper cut hands and stiffness in his back were highly suspect, but when he went to scratch an itch on his forehead he discovered the true reason: a butterfly had been flitting around his head. Ron lunged for it, closing his hands around the butterfly just as he fell out of his bed.

"Wassamatter?" someone asked groggily.

"Nothing, sorry," Ron replied, trapping the insect under a book and rubbing his shoulder where it had connected with the nightstand on the way down.

The delusion that nothing was wrong persisted until Ron left the common room for breakfast with Harry and Hermione. Ron slipped out of the portrait hole, but hadn't quite managed to straighten up when a most horrifying sight met his eyes. Several silver butterflies were flying around the hallway, much to the wonder of the nearby girls and the confusion of the boys. Simply going back to bed now and staying there until tomorrow sounded like an excellent idea.

"What's all this?" Harry asked, bewilderment etched on his face.

"One of Fred and George's experiments gone awry?" Hermione suggested.

"If one of their experiments went bad we'd be in much worse trouble right now," Ron said stealthily.

"Besides, butterflies don't really seem like Fred and George's style," Harry pointed out. Ron narrowly resisted giving his friend a dirty look.

"That's funny," Hermione said as one of the butterflies danced by, "they look just like the butterfly that was in the potions classroom a few days ago. I think they're patronuses."

"Let's go," Ron said, struggling not to stutter. "We're going to be late to class."

Their walk downstairs to the Great Hall was far more interesting than usual. Along with dozens of butterflies and a multitude of awestruck students, they passed Filch, armed with a flyswatter and a mop, muttering something about whoever created these menaces and expulsion. Mrs. Norris was nearby, also attempting to catch the butterflies, but her motives seemed entirely different, although the end result might have been the same. Further on, they passed Flitwick, who had a butterfly captured in a jar. He was experimenting merrily with it, but seemed to be making no progress in his attempts to inspire it to disperse.

As they were walking, Ron spotted Malfoy coming towards him from some distance down the hallway. He was looking perfectly livid and glaring at the butterflies as though they were insulting him.

While their two groups approached, Malfoy positioned himself so that he would pass right by Ron. However, Ron, in an act of foresight borne of endless Quidditch practices, saw what was about to happen and slipped out of the way just as Malfoy was about to ram their shoulders together.

Not expecting to miss at such close range, Malfoy's momentum carried him forward and he fell, sprawled out on the floor. A chorus of laughter rose up all around him. Angrily, Malfoy jumped back to his feet, brushed himself off, and stormed away.

"What was that about?" Harry asked, scratching at a patch of hair behind his ear only to discover that a butterfly had been tugging at it.

"I have no idea," Ron replied gleefully.

At least a hundred butterflies had taken up residence in the Great Hall, where most of them were making hopeful bids for the enchanted ceiling only to hit the solid surface with stunning force and come floating, paper like, back down, where they had to be rescued from bowls of porridge or the floor.

With all their silver brilliance, the butterflies seemed to blend in with the cloudy sky above, creating masses that looked like nothing so much as extensions of the sky, a number of small, pulsing clouds. For the life of him, Ron couldn't remember making that many butterflies.

Some people seemed to be losing patience with the pests. The Slytherins had taken to blasting approaching butterflies away, which, of course, only made the insects more persistent in their attempts to get nearer to the group. The teachers, too, were becoming fed up with the unexpected visitors, all except Dumbledore, who had coaxed a butterfly on to his wrist and was admiring it as one might regard a piece of fine jewelry.

Ron had some trouble convincing his legs to carry him to the table to join Harry and Hermione. He'd expected the butterflies to flock to him, but instead a sole insect alighted on his shoulder and remained that way until he sheepishly brushed it off. After that, the three of them were left more or less alone.

Just as Harry, Ron, and Hermione were about to leave for class, there was a disturbance from the Ravenclaw table. A group of butterflies had gotten hold of Michael Corner's book bag and lifted it out of his reach. It took the combined efforts of ten people with stunning spells and summoning charms to bring it back to Earth.

"Butterflies don't usually act like that, do they?" someone asked as he walked past Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

"Not that I've seen," his companion replied.

"That's because it's the end of the world!" Seamus exclaimed grimly before turning back to his pancakes with a wide smirk on his face.

The passersby paused long enough to give Seamus a strange look, then one said, "I'll see you later then, assuming the world hasn't ended by then."

"We wouldn't have to turn in our potions homework, at least," the other replied with a shrug. "Have you had a look at it yet? I've never even heard..."

But the eavesdroppers never got to hear what the student had never heard of, for at that moment a butterfly flew very close to Seamus' head ("Ow! Get off me you bloody insect!"). It was too close, in fact, for when Seamus gingerly touched the spot the butterfly had been closest to, his finger came back spotted with blood.

When Harry, Ron, and Hermione arrived in transfiguration there was a butterfly circling the light and several stowaways joined it when the rest of the students trickled in, but McGonagall ignored them and admonished the class to do the same. This became more difficult as the hours wore on and the butterflies became bored with the lack of mayhem. Before long they started landing on the students' parchments, smearing the ink and otherwise interfering with note taking. After that, they progressed to tugging people's hair, then stealing book bags and shuffling around their contents. At this point McGonagall gave in and tried to force the butterflies out of the room, but this only seemed to anger them. By the time class was dismissed, most people sported a multitude of red welts, souvenirs of the last few minutes of class, when the butterflies took to dive bombing the students.

"What was that about?" Harry asked, rubbing his temple, where a butterfly had just hit him.

"If the teachers could get rid of them, I'm sure they would have by now," Hermione said, grimacing as she picked the butterfly's crushed body off his shoulder. "Except for Dumbledore, I suppose, he seems to like them."

"Where'd they all come from?" Harry replied.

"Maybe we'll never know," Ron offered guiltily.

However, they had yet to witness a fraction of the destruction these butterflies could perpetrate. Reeling over recent events, Ron felt his way over to the nearest banister, but drew his hand back abruptly when he discovered it to be covered with butterflies. In fact, it seemed that every inch of solid surface between the Transfiguration classroom and the Entrance Hall was swarming with butterflies. The insects were merely flapping their wings serenely, but the passing students held a careful silence and seemed to be walking on tenterhooks as they crossed the area.

This eerie calm ended when there was a startled yelp from the opposite end of the hallway. It was quickly stifled, but it seemed to be too late. In a wave, the butterflies took to the air. Most students dropped to the ground in an attempt to stay out of the bulk of the foray and scarcely dared to breathe for fear of inhaling a butterfly. However, it seemed that the insect had a destination in mind and Harry, Ron, and Hermione chose to follow them and find out what it was. They reached the balcony overlooking the Entrance Hall but stopped before going downstairs, choosing not to add themselves to the scene of mass chaos below.

Packs of butterflies were swarming around people, forcing them to flee, their arms shielding their faces. A few people were cowering in corners.

"This is starting to look more and more like Fred and George's work," Harry said.

"Isn't it, though?" someone said behind them.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione turned around to see the twins surveying the scene along with them.

"Pity we didn't come up with it first," George continued.

"So this wasn't you?" Hermione asked.

"Wish it was, mate," Fred replied.

"Whoever it was must be brilliant," George added. "Who would have thought that these butterflies were capable of something like that?"

Ron beamed, but forced his face into a blank expression when he noticed Harry was looking at him, but he was spared form the impending interrogation by Hermione, who grabbed his arm and said, "We should get out of here."

She was right, of course. With the Entrance Hall now deserted, the butterflies were expanding their territory, and places like the balcony were no longer safe. Soon, butterflies were swarming around the group, scratching and pinching whenever they got the chance. However, Ron had only to wave his arms and they left him alone in favor of tormenting his friends. He was about to see what he could do to help them when he heard a piercing shriek. Whoever it was, she sounded like she needed much more help than the rest of his group, who had already slipped into the nearest secret passageway.

Ron backed into the nearest wall and watched as Umbridge approached from around the corner, attempting to fight off a horde of fifty silver butterflies. She tripped over one particularly clever butterfly and fell with a crash onto a conveniently placed axe, which cut off her arms in a scientifically impossible way. The outcome of such a violent catastrophe knocked her into a bucket of boiling oil. Now, Umbridge just happened to be allergic to oil. She began to swell to umproportional sizes. Since the bucket of oil could not contain her form, it cracked and violently exploded. Umbridge choked on one of the bucket chunks as she attempted to stand up. Another attacking butterfly got pierced by a bucket chunk and flew into Umbridge's face. Now since Umbridge had lepidopterophobia (The very famous fear of butterflies), she screamed and tried to scratch it off...well she would have if she had arms. So she tried to swat it off with the flopping sleeves of her robes. But instead of shaking off the butterfly, she gouged out her eyeballs by the sharp sequins and jewels sewn into her robes. Unable to see, and having a butterfly on her face, made her fall over the ledge with an echoing thump below. Extremities stuck out of her body in ways that they usually don't.

As Umbridge fell, the butterflies finally dissipated in a hundred puffs of silver smoke. Everywhere students emerged from their hiding places to come and see.

Fred came up beside Ron, looked over the banister, and said, "So falls Dolores, last tyrant of Hogwarts."

"Is she dead?" Hermione asked, coming up on Ron's other side.

"Well, she's not looking very lively down there, is she?" George replied.

"Brilliant," Fred breathed. Ron was inclined to agree. Suddenly, a butterfly didn't seem like a bad patronus at all.

Dumbledore emerged from a nearby hallway and glanced over the banister to the scene below. As he brushed past the group on the way to the staircase they thought they heard him mutter something about paperwork.