A Joke is not a Joke

Ch. 4

The three followed the teachers into the office, worried at being accused of the girl's injury. Sitting at the desk, folding her hands in front of her, Professor McGonagall said, "Now, explain yourselves."

Hermione began by telling them about the monster she and Ginny had seen in the hallway, and what it looked like. Professor Sprout looked around at the three of them and said, "Well, what do you know about Hannah? The girl who was attacked?"

Harry said, "We heard her scream and followed the sound. I think this monster the girls saw attacked Hannah."

McGonagall said, "Well, it sounds like a beast called Red Rum. Why I don't know, but it gathers strength each time he injures. He can only Petrify with his eyes, but with his tail he can maim and kill. He can kill after he's gotten enough victims. He only obeys certain people, but I don't know who."

Now Dumbledore asked the question that George had known he was going to ask, and his heart and stomach sank into each other as he asked it. "Do any of you know anything about this monster? If so, it's very important that you speak up."

George blurted out, "It's partly my fault. I didn't discourage him, and I did help. I'm sorry, I didn't know."

Leaning forward in his chair, Flitwick asked, "What do you mean?"

"Didn't discourage whom?" asked McGonagall, sinking into her chair.

George took a deep breath. "Fred came up with the idea of making this potion that he found in his joke book. We figured it was, well, a joke--that it would turn us blue or something. We've been working on it forever. Nothing happened when we finished it this morning, so we figured it was a dud. If we'd known... well, we wouldn't have done it. But we did, and-well, I'm really sorry."

Their reaction surprised all three Gryffindors. They had expected the teachers to fly into a rage and give both Fred and George detentions for a year. However, they just seemed concerned and a little shocked. Snape leaned forward and said, "Do you have the recipe to this potion?"

George searched his pockets and shook his head. "No, but I can get it. It's really close." With that, he walked outside and headed down the secret passage, which was truly not that close. He climbed three flights of stairs to the fourth floor, whispered the password at the mirror, and slipped in. The place was caved in--completely blocked--but he could still get far enough in to the potion. He noticed a set of hoofprints on the ground. Having no desire to meet this monster, he retrieved the recipe, exited the passage, and gave the recipe to Snape. Snape studied the recipe, and his eyes widened. "This is the recipe for resurrecting Red Rum, all right. This is definitely bad."

Dumbledore looked at the three of them. "Thank you for telling us. We'll have to try to kill it. I wonder why it's called Red Rum."

"That's what it says," said Hermione.

"And Red Rum spelled backwards is murder," added Harry.

McGonagall looked slightly panicked, but said, "You'd better go back to Gryffindor Tower. Thank you again."

Upon arriving at the tower, the Gryffindors crowded around them. Looking panicked, Ron said, "Well? What did they say?"

Hermione told them--the monster was Red Rum, and it was going to maim until it had the strength to kill.

Shaking like blancmange, Ginny asked, "Do-do you know where it came from?"

George spoke up. "Actually, Fred and I created it by mistake."

Fred gasped. "What?"

"What do you mean?" asked Colin Creevey, one of Ginny's classmates.

"Well, we made a potion that Fred found in a joke book--we thought it was a joke. It turned out it was the potion to resurrect Red Rum, and now it's on a killing spree. McGonagall said that it only obeys certain people, and we're not sure who."

Oddly enough, no one seemed to feel any resentment towards Fred and George for creating it. Amazingly, they seemed to understand that the twins had paid their due with the girl being attacked, and there was no need to make them suffer. Also, it was clear that they hadn't known what they were doing.

Fear settled like a dark, stifling blanket over the stillness of the castle. Students moved about the halls and classrooms in packs, as though afraid they'd be attacked if they ventured out alone. Fred and George were getting a tough time from the Slytherins, but everyone else stood up for them. Of course, everyone thought the Slytherins were safe-they usually were when something was attacking students.

There were more attacks, frequently, but with blocks of time in between. Besides the first girl, a Hufflepuff, there were three Gryffindors (Colin, a boy called Neville, and a girl called Parvati), two Ravenclaws (a girl called Mariah and a girl called Cho), and another Hufflepuff (a boy called Justin). Not to mention Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor Ghost, and the Fat Friar, the Hufflepuff ghost. The students of the affected houses were terrified, of course, but a few Slytherins were a little worried too. They thought that, maybe, they would be attacked, since there seemed to be no distinction between Muggle-born wizards and pureblood wizards, and Neville was almost a Squib, which meant that he was almost not magical at all--a wizard-born Muggle. There were no Muggle-borns or Almost Squibs in Slytherin, but there were plenty of purebloods. There were fears that they would be attacked, but that was all in the first years, and older students told them that there was no chance of that.

Until one day, when a Slytherin boy called Draco Malfoy was waiting outside the bathroom for his friends. A scream rang through the halls, louder than that of any other student that had been attacked yet. The teachers ran into the hall and found Malfoy lying, badly wounded and Petrified in the hall.

Students were talking a lot that night. How could they get rid of the beast? It appeared to maim, then disappeared. At the Gryffindor table, George had a sudden realization. "The certain people that can control it--they must be the people that resurrected it! Fred-we're the only ones that can stop this." He stood up. "Come on, Fred! We've got to go now!"

The two boys ran down the hall. Suddenly, from around the corner, came a horrific beast, exactly as Hermione and Ginny had described. It began to attack a young girl walking down the corridor. "Stop!" shouted Fred. "Leave her alone!"

To their complete and utter amazement, the beast released the girl and crept forward, head lowered, exactly like a large, alien dog greeting its owner. George decided to try something else.

"Now listen, you," he said. "I want you to go back to--to wherever you came from before we summoned you. I want you to stay there, no matter what anyone else does."

"Red Rum?" asked the creature.

"No," said George. "Go home!"

"Red Rum," said the beast contentedly, and evaporated in a puff of smoke.

Fred and George were the heroes of the year, both for saving the girl and for getting rid of the beast. But the lesson they learned that year, more important than any in the classroom? When you find ANYTHING you can make out of a joke book, make sure you know the consequences before you start anything you can't stop.