Sea View

Sea View

"And now as my last announcement I would like to notify you all that as a special treat for us, our newly elected Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Lockhart, kindly organized a stay for us at the Gold Coast in Australia. I hope you all packed your swimming trunks this term, so that you may enjoy the surf, sun, and sand with us when we leave tomorrow." As Dumbledore finished his sentence an almighty roar erupted in the Great Hall as students from all houses hurriedly conversed with each other.

Either that or they were staring at Professor Lockhart dreamily and musing how they could get lucky with him, or at least the entire female population were, in addition to males such as Blaise Zabini.

Dinner finished in quick succession, and when told to proceed to their dormitories students practically flew to them, in order to make sure of their possession of bathers.

The few who had forgotten, (namely Neville, who had left his entire school trunk at home) were quick to rectify their mistakes, taking out parchment and quill in order for their owls to deliver urgent messages home.

A few of the more practiced students at Hogwarts tried to use the summoning charm 'Accio', conveniently forgetting that Hogwarts had a powerful magic laid upon it to stop such things. Because of this, instead of returning to their owners hands, the bathers lay discarded at the Hogwarts gates, where the students who had tried 'Accio' ran hurriedly out to collect them.

At about 12:00 most of the students had finally settled down, save one Pansy Parkinson, who had never swum before and was now bouncing around outside corridor four, due to a charm Peeves had placed upon her.

The rest of the students were sent to their beds as they had hoped to get a good night's sleep for the following day, falling almost immediately into dreams of Professor Lockhart patrolling beaches in pink g-strings.

The next day, (as foretold in all classic Enid Blyton stories), dawned bright and early, the perfect weather for swimming, provided the weather was the same at the Gold Coast. As it turned out, the weather couldn't have been better. After spending five minutes traveling by floo powder the Hogwarts students were finally at Australia.

Upon their arrival Ron became enthralled by a passing Billywig, and skipped merrily behind it until he realized that he had lost the Hogwarts group. Sitting dolefully down he yelled for a full minute about gigantic Billywigs and how misleading they are. After several minutes the Hogwarts group found him.

Drawing back with his friends Ron carefully surveyed his surroundings. After a whole night's wait the trio was finally at the beach. All around them students and teachers alike were changing into their bathers and swimmers.

Glancing swiftly around him, Ron's eyes drank in all the different swimming costumes people had put on. In the corner he could see Padma and Parvati Patil with their identical army-styled tank bikinis. Standing next to them was Neville Longbottom in over-sized Slytherin house board shorts with a Hufflepuff tee-shirt.

Ron glanced down at his own bathers and smiled. For once he was not the most awfully dressed person. In fact, he thought, hiding a grin, he looked rather smashing in his red board shorts. Sure, they were second hand, but at least he was not as bad as Blaise Zabini. Hiding a grimace, he looked away. Ron thought he might be sick.

Blaise was gay, everyone knew it. Though Ron doubted from the stunned Muggles nearby that maybe Blaise shouldn't have been so open with it, for Blaise was wearing a girls one piece with little bows crossed everywhere, and frilly sleeves and belt.

Turning his mind from such thoughts Ron tilted his head over to where Draco was lounging in his silver striped dickey-togs. 'Draco doesn't look all that bad,' a nasty voice inside his head whispered. 'No,' Ron thought back 'he doesn't'. Realizing his thoughts, Ron shook his head clear of the image and turned his attention to Draco's cronies, Crabbe, and Goyle. The pair were dressed in matching ballerina tutu's, not at all what you would wear swimming.

Ron watched them do a few Pirouettes' over the sand, and then turned his attention to the teacher's staff table. He could see Dumbledore applying suntan lotion to his long hooked nose, and other various parts of his body. When Dumbledore started in on his nether regions, Ron quickly turned and gazed at Professor McGonagall. She was dressed as most of the elderly Muggles were, in a boring-patterned one piece with rather smallish boardies over the top. He was watching her contentedly wishing Hermione would hurry up and finish so they could hit the surf, when a certain Professor Gilderoy Lockhart strolled past her in his gold and pink-striped g-string. Ron sat in an unbreakable trance, as Lockhart strolled past the naked Dumbledore, and into the girls' toilets. Soon, many screams of delight and cheers could be heard within the block, as Ron lowered his head to puke. Hermione was in there. When he had finally finished retching he looked up to see the face of a very disgruntled Hermione peeping at him, and doing the best she could to cover herself from everybody's view. Too late, Ron had seen her in her very impressive looking bikini. It was a chocolate brown that suited her eyes well, and her figure was enhanced by the way it showed her feminine curves off. Glaring quickly at Harry, to make sure he hadn't seen his Hermione (not that she knew he liked her) Ron quickly pulled her into the surf.

Hermione landed with a painful thump next to Pansy Parkinson, who was wallowing about like a buffalo stuck in quick sand. Clearly, she had never been swimming before, as Pansy was concentrating more on a spot on the sand that looked an awful lot like Harry instead of a part in the water. Hermione followed Harry's gaze back into the water, where he had settled his eyes on Professor Snape, who happened to be wearing a floral set of boardies. The boardies were, as Hermione noted a few seconds ago, floral. However they weren't just ordinary. Any witch or wizard fool could see the magic that they possessed.

Hermione studied them carefully a bit, until she witnessed Harry clap his hands to his forehead.

With his reaction Hermione hurriedly got out of the water and sprinted towards him. When she was close to him she asked, "Harry, are you alright???"

"No, my scar is hurting from looking at Snape's psychedelic pants." Harry murmed, turning his head to point out Snape's unusual pants.

Hermione too, turned to face them. Sure enough, they had changed from floral to a swirling psychedelic pattern.

Suddenly, she understood. Snape's pants were trick ones, designed to change pattern in order to give the viewer a headache, and make them vulnerable to the confumblus hex, or to scare unsuspecting Muggles. The pants were obviously old death eater ones, once useful, but now they were just there to trick people and scare Muggles.

Now that Hermione knew Snape was not out to get them, she could relax and return to her Ron (whom she secretly liked)...