Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Fanfic
Potter47 Twelve
The Night Before Book Six

'Twas the night before book six, and all through the fandom,
Not a reader was stirring, to post something random;

The fans were all dressed up, with scars and black hair,
In hope that the sixth book soon would be theirs;

The children awake, none asleep in their beds,
While visions of hippogriffs danced in their heads;

Some wore black glasses, and tall wizard hats,
While others pretended as Polyjuiced cats....

Harry awoke with a start in his bedroom at Number Four, Privet Drive after a very strange, vaguely musical dream. He looked at his clock--oh, he'd slept late. It was nearly noon. A thought ran through his mind:

What colour underwear am I wearing?

And then he remembered, and another thought ran through his mind, even faster:

What day is it?

And then he remembered--it was July 15.

Harry blinked. Something important... something was today. He couldn't quite recall...

Getting out of bed, Harry's feet slid into the stuffed-owl slippers that Luna Lovegood had sent him for some reason he couldn't understand, causing Hedwig to look at him with a very hurt expression, as though inquiring whether he thought it was some sort of sick joke.

Stretching, Harry walked over to his calendar, thinking perhaps he could remember what today was. He moved his finger along the weeks, and finally came to a stop on the fifteenth.

Nothing,

thought Harry. He could have sworn there was something... he let his hand fall to his side, and his gaze rested on the little box directly to the right--the one with a little "16" in the upper-left-hand corner and the letters "HBP!" in a very large, bright, purple print with little balloons all round.

That's not it...

thought Harry, but then he remembered: Today's Hedwig's birthday!

He walked over to Hedwig's cage, which was empty, and pulled a piece of parchment off the desk, finding his purple marker and writing: Happy 5th Birthday, Hedwig! If you were American and human, you'd be going to kindergarten this year! Good for you! PS: I'm sorry about the slippers. He folded it up into a card and stood it upright in the cage, with a grin. He breathed in, and breathed out.

And then his eyes widened. He dashed back over to the calendar.

"Tomorrow's the sixteenth!" he shouted. He was very excited now. "Half-Blood Prince is coming out tomorrow!" He very nearly bounced up and down, but didn't manage it because neither his feet nor the floor were very rubbery. And so he climbed up onto his bed and jumped up and down a couple times before he was reminded very painfully that the Dursleys had decided to put ceiling fans in all the rooms of Number Four. This, of course, was probably why.

"I CAN'T WAIT!" he shouted, rubbing his head, and then he was answered by a mystical voice from somewhere outside his room:

"STOP BLOODY SCREAMING!" said the mystical voice. "YOU'LL WAKE UP MARGE! AND SHE'S IN MAJORCA!"

Harry realised now that the voice wasn't very mystical at all, and instead was Uncle Vernon's. But Harry couldn't calm down... in less than a day, he would know who the Half-Blood Prince is!

--was!

Er...

He went down to the kitchen and explained this to his uncle, so that he would understand what Harry had been screaming about, because Harry didn't want to be inconsiderate of his uncle. Vernon's eyes lit up like little... light bulbs:

"Really?" He had an eager look in his eye, and laughed. "Good news, then! You'll be out of here the quickest yet! The author said so herself! You'll be gone by chapter two!"

And now Vernon very nearly bounced up and down, but couldn't for the same reasons as Harry, in addition to the fact that he was sitting down.

Unable to suit his bouncing needs, Vernon threw his plate up in the air in his glee, and it hit the ceiling fan in such a way that it not only managed not to break, but it ricocheted so that it hit Harry very hard off the head, knocking him out. His last thought:

Yay! Time flies when you've lost consciousness!

--|--

Harry's eyes opened and he looked round. He was... in his bedroom, at Number Four, Privet Drive, and he was lying flat on the bed. What time was it...?

Five o'clock

, said the clock on his bedside table.

Thank you,

replied Harry.

You're welcome,

said the clock on his beside table.

Harry looked up then, and saw Dumbledore leaning over him. This was something rather peculiar, as Dumbledore was not often a) in Privet Drive, and b) leaning over him.

"Wake up, Harry!" said Dumbledore urgently. "We have got to leave this house this minute!"

"Then why'd you bother coming...?"

"The Dementors are coming, the Dementors are coming!" said Dumbledore.

"But we're British," said Harry, and Dumbledore blinked.

"Hurry, Harry!"

"Why?"

"We're going to Headquarters, right now!"

"What...?" said Harry, and then everything sort of came into focus. "No! I can't!"

"Why not? We must...!"

"But I've pre-ordered Half-Blood Prince! I won't get it if I'm at Grimmauld Place--"

"Oh, don't worry about that, Harry," said Dumbledore. "We've got plenty of copies reserved ourselves. Don't you think we want to know who the Half-Blood Prince is just as much as you do?"

"Oh," said Harry. "Right then. Let's go!"

And they went, leaving the Dursleys to deal with the Dementors themselves.

Arriving in Grimmauld Place, Harry asked Dumbledore: "Who do you think the HBP is?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Dumbledore. "It could be me, couldn't it? Or my brother, Aberforth? I just don't know... go find your friends, Harry."

Harry walked up to the room he had stayed in the previous summer and found the rather unpleasant sight of Ron and Hermione snogging on his bed.

"Hey!" said Harry. "Stop snogging on my bed!"

They jumped away from each other, smoothing down their robes (their own robes, not each other's, silly).

"Sorry, mate," said Ron sheepishly. "We wanted to get some last-minute snogging in before book six comes out and disproves the 'ship."

"Oh, I guess that's all right then," said Harry thoughtfully. "This will be your last chance, after all..."

"Thanks mate," said Ron, and he looked round awkwardly. "Would you mind...?"

"Don't be stupid, Ron," said Hermione. "Harry's here now, snogging's over."

"It is?" said Ron, and then he looked very worried: "You're not going to snog him now, are you? I mean, that was disproved ages ago, I thought--"

"Of course not!" said Hermione indignantly. "I'd never snog against canon, I thought you knew that! Why do you think I haven't gone after Snape yet?"

Ron blinked. "Actually, I hadn't thought about that at all, either way--"

"So, Harry," said Hermione eagerly, "who do you think the Half-Blood Prince is going to be?"

Harry shrugged. "I dunno. Seamus maybe?"

"No, that would seem contrived," said Hermione surely. "I think it's Snape--after all, we don't know if he's pureblood, we all just assume--"

"What's with you and Snape today?" said Ron, and Hermione quite pointedly did not answer. "I think it's You-Know-Who--"

"Don't you even read JKR's website?" said Hermione incredulously. "She said right out that it wasn't You-Know-Who--"

"Neville, then. He's getting important, isn't he?"

"But he's pureblood!"

"So?"

"So? What do you mean so?"

Crack!

"You guys talking about the HBP?" said Fred, stepping down off of Ron's legs; perhaps he did landed there on purpose nowadays, as it seems rather unlikely that he hasn't improved at all at Apparating.

"Yeah," said Harry. "Who do you think it is--"

"Oh, we're not taking it too seriously," said George, popping up on the other bed. "It could be anyone, couldn't it? But we're betting on Po Turforti-Seén," he said with a smirk.

"Who?" said Harry.

"A new character," said George.

"YOU KNOW ABOUT NEW CHARACTERS?" said Hermione incredulously.

"'Course not," said Fred. "He just represents a new character."

"Huh?" said Ron.

"Here, read this." George flicked his wand at Ron, who winced, but all that happened was a stack of papers.

How can a stack of papers happen?

thought Harry. And then he noticed that they had appeared on Ron's lap.

"What's this?" said Ron.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," said Hermione with bated breath. "You have the manuscript? How did you get it?"

"It's not the manuscript," said Fred. "It's a fanfiction."

"But the title--"

"--is misleading. The author changed it later on, to ...the Half-Blood Fanfic," said George.

"But what is it?" said Harry.

"It's... a theory, basically," said Fred. "Each chapter is another guess at the HBP. The first one, Po Turforti-Seén, represents an original character. The second, Madam Pince--"

"Pince?" said Hermione. "But how could--"

"You have to read it. But Pince represents someone that no one would ever guess. The third, Mrs Norris, represents non-humans. Then it's Hagrid--"

"Who did he represent?" said Ron.

The twins blinked. "Hagrid, he represented Hagrid, obviously--" said George.

Fred continued: "Then Lupin, Finnegan, You-Know-Who--but he wasn't really the HBP--and then Dumbledore, Snape, and Neville's toad--"

"But Trevor's a non-human as well," pointed out Hermione.

"But Trevor was actually a guess. You know, the Muggle frog-prince thing--"

"But he's a toad."

Fred rolled his eyes at her, and continued once again: "Just read it. It's very illuminating. Sort of brings the whole debate into perspective at well..."

They popped out of the room, and Hermione grabbed the papers from Ron. "I'll read it first," she said, and began to, right then. "On the fourteenth of October..."

--|--

"So, what's tonight's meeting about?" said Tonks, breaking the silence in the crowded basement kitchen.

"The Half-Blood Prince," said Dumbledore gravely.

"But shouldn't we talk about the Dementors that are attacking Privet Drive?" suggested Molly.

"No," said Dumbledore. "The Half-Blood Prince."

"What about him?" said Bill Weasley. Although rather impertinent to this tale, Bill was very thankful to be safe in Order headquarters, because every time he stepped foot outside its magically protected interior, he was attacked by Muggle fan-girls. He never understood it--he had only appeared a very few times in the whole series; why were people so obsessed with him?

"We're going to have a pool," said Dumbledore.

"A pool? Where would we have a pool? There's no room for a pool--"

"Sorry, a poll," clarified Dumbledore. "We're going to have a poll. We're going to see who everybody thinks the Half-Blood Prince is, so that we can eliminate him for being too obvious. Severus, you first."

Bill turned to look at Snape, and furrowed his brow. At least Snape had a proper reason for his legions of screaming fan-girls--he'd been in the damn book, for god's sake, he'd been in all the books. And he'd been in the films as well, and all Bill had been was a moving picture in Egypt--

"I believe that it will be someone no one can guess," said Snape, "thus making this whole poll thing vastly unnecessary to the point that we should cease it this instant."

Yes, Snape had a reason, and it didn't hurt that the nonsense he always went on about seemed to flow like the liquids in his potions... Bill didn't have a clue what he was saying, half the time, but it certainly sounded good.

"Nice try, Severus," said Dumbledore, marking a piece of parchment with Snape's guess. "Minerva?"

"I think it'll be you, Albus," said McGonagall.

Why didn't McGonagall have any obsessed fans, anyway? She could turn into a cat, for crying out loud, and she was such a more developed character than Bill anyway... though he did suppose that seventy year old women didn't have many fan-girls....

"Remus?"

"I think it's going to be a new character," said Lupin.

And HIM! Why didn't Lupin have nearly the number of fan-girls as Bill? But...everybody loved Lupin, come on, he was so cool... Bill didn't understand it at all.

"Molly?"

"I have to agree with Severus. We're never going to guess it. I mean, I was quite sure I was going to be killed off last time, and she pulled Sirius out of the blue--"

Now Sirius, he was a fan-girl force to be reckoned with... but Bill still didn't understand. Why was Sirius so popular? Did girls love grey eyes so much that they would obsess over a character that might turn out to have them (and eventually did, posthumously)? Or did people love dogs that much?

Everything was backwards, as far as fan-girls were concerned, as far as Bill was concerned. It just didn't make sense, none of it. Biting his lip, Bill wondered if, perhaps, he were to cut off the ponytail, it would help--

"Arthur?"

The discussion continued rather in this same fashion, and does not need to be described in further detail.

--|--

Harry was walking to the loo when he spotted Ginny walking towards the stairs.

"Gin!" he said. "Hang on!"

"What?" said Ginny, turning round.

"Who do you think the Half-Blood Prince is?" said Harry.

"Bill," she said.

"Bill?" said Harry. "But he's pureblood, isn't he?"

"So?"

"You'd better not let Hermione hear you talking like that--"

"I mean, so what if we think he's pureblood? How are we to know that he really is?"

Harry blinked. "Are you saying Bill's not your brother?"

"Am I?" said Ginny mysteriously.

"You sound like Luna," said Harry, and Ginny giggled.

"Yeah, I know, I've been practicing, it's rather fun actually--"

--|--

"There!" said Dumbledore. "That's everybody! I'll go tally the votes!"

He did so, and pronounced with a very final and booming voice: "The person with the most votes is... 'someone no one would ever think of.' Thus, we have successfully eliminated this possibility, and therefore the Half-Blood Prince is someone we would think of!"

"Oh, that's wonderful," muttered Snape. "That accomplished so very much...."

"Perhaps we should go again?" said Tonks. "I mean, now that we know it'll be someone we expect, we all probably have different ideas--we need to vote again."

"Good idea, Nymphadora! Let's do that! Severus?"

"I still believe it will be someone we don't expect--"

"Ah, but we've already proved that wrong--"

"No, we haven't. You can't prove it wrong--"

"But we just did--"

"I'm leaving," said Snape angrily.

"Wait!" said Bill urgently, and he looked round a minute before saying, "Fan-girls," in a frightened voice.

"Oh," said Snape. "Right." He sat back down, deflated.

"Minerva?"

"I still think it's you--"

--|--

Hermione knocked twice on the twins' door, and it opened.

"This is all complete nonsense!" said Hermione, throwing the papers at the twins.

"What is?" said Fred.

"The story we gave you?"

"No, the paper it was printed on--" Hermione began sarcastically, but then hesitated. "Yeah, that too! Where'd you get Muggle printer paper, anyway? Or a Muggle printer, for that matter?"

"From Dad," said George. "But the story--"

"It's not nonsense," said Fred. "If you want nonsense, read The Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter. THAT'S nonsense...."

"Crikey, look at the time!" said George, then, pointing at the clock.

Eleven-thirteen

, said the clock.

"Goodness!" said Hermione. "It's almost midnight!"

She ran from the room, wondering where the time had gone, and poked her head into Ginny's room on the way, to let her know--but Ginny was...er...busy.

"Ginny?" said Hermione incredulously. "Harry? What are you doing?"

"Snogging," said Ginny after a moment. "What does it look like?"

"But you don't think JKR's going to prove your ship wrong, do you? I've thought that this book was when it was actually going to happen--"

"Why does JKR need to be disproving our ship for us to snog, Hermione?" said Ginny. "Now go away."

"Oh, sorry," said Hermione, and she left.

Hermione ran and ran and ran some more, and then tripped and fell down a flight of stairs, but she got up and kept going because Half-Blood Prince was almost here, and such trivial things like pain and broken limbs didn't mean anything anymore.

She charged into the basement kitchen, because another thing that didn't matter anymore were Locking and Imperturbable Charms.

"It's almost here!" she shouted, and all the faces of the room turned towards her.

"Really?" said Dumbledore. "Wow, time flies when you're debating the identity of a mysterious character...."

--|--

They were all, somehow, smushed into the front room of Grimmauld place. Smushed, of course, is not a word, but it should be, shouldn't it? And if you wanted it to be, it could be, couldn't it? What did it matter what other people and dictionaries said? If you want smushed in your language, you can damn well put it there--

As they were smushed into a rather small place, it was no surprise when someone brushed up against Mrs Black's portrait, and she began to scream, the noise of which could not drown out the hushed murmurings of the rest of the room, despite those murmurings being 'hushed.'

"BLOODY HALF-BLOODS!" shouted the portrait. "BESMIRKING THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS EVEN THOUGH "BESMIRKING" IS NOT A WORD, BUT SHOULD BE!"

"No, it is," Hermione told the portrait. "You just spelt it wrong--"

"QUIET, EVERYONE!" shouted Dumbledore then. He was looking out the window by the door. "IT'S MIDNIGHT! THE BOOKS SHOULD BE HERE ANY MINUTE!"

"YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SPEAK THAT WAY IN MY CHAMBERS!" shouted Mrs Black's portrait. "I DEMAND THAT YOU DE-CAPITALISE THIS INSTANT!"

"NO!" said Dumbledore. "I CAN BE CAPITALISED IF I WANT TO, THIS IS A SPECIAL OCCASION--"

"SHHH!" said the portrait.

"NO!"

This went on for some time--longer than expected, actually, as the crowded occupants of that front room were not aware that the book would be coming by Muggle post in the morning. And so, they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And then, when there were no more tables to serve, they walked around and asked if everyone was enjoying their meal.

And when someone said no, they smiled and kept walking.

And then it came, at eight fifty-six in the morning. A truck drove slowly up the street, and Dumbledore, who was still playing look-out, said, "POSTMAN AHOY!"

And then the postman drove slowly by the house, and then, in reverse, slowly past it again. Dumbledore could not understand it, and he was beginning to sweat with anticipation.

"COME ON, DAMMIT!" he said. "BRING US OUR BOOKS!"

"Hang on!" said Hermione. "Isn't the house charmed? They can't even see it--"

And Dumbledore, realising she was correct, swung open the door and made for the postman himself. The postman, alarmed by robed, bearded figure jumping out of midair, began to drive away very quickly.

"OH NO YOU DON'T!" shouted Dumbledore. "ACCIO POST-TRUCK!" A pause. "Oh, damn that was a mistake."

The post truck spiralled through the air towards Dumbledore, who managed to deflect it with his hand because of his magical powerfulness which is ACTUALLY A WORD.

Deflected, the truck crashed into Number Twelve, which was, to any passing Muggles, quite the sight, as you might imagine. The postman fell out and was lucky to be caught by the mob of Order members standing below.

"ACCIO HALF-BLOOD PRINCE!" said Dumbledore, and when nothing happened, as though it were taking a very long time for the summoned thing to be summoned, he realised his mistake and said, "ACCIO HALF-BLOOD PRINCE BOOKS!"

Dozens of blue-and-orange books flew threw the air to Dumbledore, along with two black and purple ones, which he handed to Snape and Hermione. He passed the rest of them among the group, and once everyone had them, everyone sat down, in the middle of Grimmauld Place, and began to read.

THE END