Slytherin Study Group #2.5: Ramifications

rabbit: "Awww... it's so blazing hot outside, the chocolate chips are all melty."

Jinx: "So we'll use sem in Banana Boats."

rabbit: "Banana Boats?"

Jinx: "Sure! Made 'em in scouts! Here, you scoop out the middle of a banana, so it's like a little canoe... load it up with chocolate chips and mini-marshmallows... wrap it in aluminum foil and put it on the barbeque when the coals have burned low, and check on it frequently... when it's all lovely and melty, it's ready!"

rabbit and Jinx: mmmmmmMMMMMMMMmmmsssssighhhh....

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize is not ours, and we intend no profit or fame or anything like that from this playful use of others' toys. If you make Banana Boats, please, do not leave food or fires unattended and remember that things just taken off the grill are hot (but heavenly!), so be careful!

Ramifications Chapter 6

Gradually, the hay descended from the loft.

Gravity helped.

In fact, Gravity was probably making the most consistent effort.

There was a terrific amount of hay, which seemed intent on defeating its unenthusiastic opponents by demonstrating Inertiative.

The most cooperative hay was in bales, which could be pushed to the edge of the loft and left to their fates. The less tractable hay was heaped into stacks, the looming mother of which scarcely seemed to shrink or change despite the boys' grumbling efforts. It was a moment of victory when one side of their nemesis collapsed, burying Pettigrew to the knees.

The condemned laborers would have cheered, or at least grinned, except for the omnipresence of the most contumacious hay: the aforenoted jaundiced miasma, which they had now met up close and far too personally. The dense, amber nebula was made up of wretched, free-floating, wicked and determined threads of hay which drifted along upon the slightest breezes, before plastering themselves onto sweaty, grumpy faces.

Lucius Malfoy, glowing with exertion, found the whole situation dismally... rustic. A Malfoy, reduced to lumbering about like a stablehand! Not to mention trying to work with dozens of little strands stuck all across one's face --

Lucius had an unfortunate insight into what it must be like Being Sev.

Itchy.

And maddening.

Which explained so much, really.

Sirius Black, bristling golden with chaff, staggered past with a forkful of wobbling hay. He was losing half the burden as he went, and gritting out a bitter mantra: "This. Would. Be. Much. Easier. If. We. Had. Our. Wands."

"Wingardium Leviosa," intoned Potter, waving his pitchfork hopefully. There came a loud clang, accompanied by Potter's cry of dismay. "It was a joke!"

"And it was very funny," Malfoy reassured him, leaning on his own pitchfork to fully appreciate the happy sight of Pestilential Potter in chains.

"D'you suppose that's the second or the third time?" Goyle rumbled, frowning. "He's not going to be able to help if his pitchfork's changed into manacles for good, is he?"

"Ah, but think of how he'll add to the ambience," Lucius said expansively.

He waited.

Crabbe and Goyle waited.

Lucius sighed and wondered if Snape would still think it funny six hours from now. Well, he would if Potter were still enchained... they could hang him on the wall, have a little hexing practice....

Hagrid's head appeared through the trapdoor in the center of the loft. He raised a hedgerow eyebrow. "I'm surprised at yeh, James."

"I'm surprised myself," Potter admitted, cheerful now that rescue was at hand.

"These things can't take a joke," Black complained, gingerly hoisting another forkful of hay.

"Should think not," Hagrid said, reaching one long arm over to touch the chains with his stone.

To sighs of relief, and disappointment, the pitchfork resumed its proper shape.

"Anyone else?" invited Hagrid brightly. There were no takers. He smiled approvingly and looked around the loft. "Yeh're makin' good progress," he encouraged them, ignoring the reality of the situation. "Yeh'll be able ter mop up this end, soon and get in ter muck out the upper stalls, like."

"Upper stalls?" repeated Lucius, in tones that his father would use on a prevaricating House Elf.

"Yeah, right through that door, there," Hagrid waved at a half-buried door in the far wall that Lucius had thought must lead outside. "Stalls for the pegasi, like. Don't throw any of the mess down on the clean hay, mind. There's a door fer that in the east wall of that part o' the barn."

"What clean hay?" asked Pettigrew, peeling some off his face distastefully.

"The hay yeh been workin' with. Yeh didn't think it looked like this after the horses got done with it, did yeh?"

Black stared at the Groundskeeper, indignation reddening his cheeks. "It's not as if we cooked and ate the sheep!" he protested.

"Sure y'did. Had some of 'em for supper las' night, didn't yeh?"

"Do you think it was Daisy and Ellie Sue?" Goyle asked in a worried tone. "We were just getting to know them!"

"rrrReally?" purred Potter. Goyle blinked at him.

Hagrid chuckled. "Come on, now," he chivvied his charges. "Jus' finish shiftin' this lot and yeh can start on the stalls and the moppin'. I'll go an' get the buckets ready." He started back down the ladder.

"Any chance Remus and Snape can come and help?" Pettigrew asked, staring at the remaining heaps of hay.

Hagrid shook his bushy head decisively. "Naw. They're better off with the tack. Some o' that stuff hasn't been polished in years, so the repeat scrubbin's are actually helpin'. Mind, they might end up polishin' some of the metal bits a bit thinner..." He shrugged and vanished downwards again.

The Disgraced recommenced their labors in low humor, manipulating the pitchforks as if performing an underwater ballet.

After several minutes' digging and hefting, Sirius Black cleared the hay away from the door Hagrid had indicated. "Let's see how bad it is, lads... 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here'," he intoned, and then stopped. "Oh, sorry, that's the motto over your dormitory room, isn't it Malfoy."

It was, actually. He'd put up a little plaque to celebrate Hugh Folderol's departure. Lucius met Black's impudent grin with serene disdain. Unfortunately, Black grinned all the wider as Goyle and Crabbe looked at each other in alarm, though, so the disdain was wasted.

Setting his pitchfork aside, Black hauled open the door and looked into the next room.

The gangly Gryffindor promptly reeled gagging to one side. A flurry of barn owls flapped past him, indignant at being disturbed. Black came up from the drift of hay coughing, with more straw in his hair and a scowl on his face as he glared at his laughing companions. "It's not funny, lads, you should get a whiff of that! It's as bad as the basin of the Owlery... if something'd died in there!" He shut the door firmly with his foot. "Died a month ago," he added tartly.

Goyle frowned. "Smells like cheese." He looked around for support of this observation, and discovered Pettigrew crouched behind a haybale, cramming bits of cheese into his mouth. "Hey! Where'd you get that?" demanded Goyle, striding over to appropriate the treat.

"Mmh!" Pettigrew protested as he was upended, and a third of Hagrid's neglected cheese round rolled to a wobbly stop beneath him.

"Look, fellows, food!" Goyle cried happily, shaking Pettigrew in celebratory emphasis.

"Careful, you're not supposed to abuse things up here," growled Black, advancing.

"Aw, but he doesn't turn into anything," said Goyle cheerfully, "except a snivelling lump!" He waited 'til Crabbe scooped up the cheese before thumping Pettigrew to the splintery floor.

"That was mine!"

"Thieving from the Groundskeeper, dear, dear... " Lucius shook his head, accepting his king's share of the spoils from Crabbe. "No wonder you've got detention. Bad element, and no mistake."

"You'll come to a bad end, someday," warned Crabbe, around a cheekful of cheddar.

Goyle was busy wolfing down his bit, but managed a supportive smirk while he chewed.

Potter came over warily and pulled his friend to his feet. "Honestly, Pete, you could've shared!"

"Hadn't had a chance yet, had I? They come over here, on our side of the loft, bullies as usual... you saw him, he took it from me... "

"Took what?" asked Hagrid from the trapdoor.

Yelps and loudish swallows greeted this query, as the Groundskeeper clambered into the loft, carrying two huge, brimming buckets and a pair of mops.

"Everything all right, up here?" Hagrid asked, peering down at his detainees.

The Slytherins all nodded angelically.

"Just fine, Hagrid," Potter reassured him, kicking Pettigrew in the ankles. "Goyle's being a nit, that's all."

"Coming over to our side of the barn," grumbled Pettigrew, nursing his shins with his opposite feet and nearly tipping over.

"There's no one got a side o' the barn," Hagrid pointed out. "Yer meant ter be cooperatin'."

"We are," soothed Malfoy. After all, Pettigrew had shared his cheese.

"Glad ter hear it. How are yeh -- oh, yeh got the doorway cleared! Well done! Now, there's four stalls in there, so four of yeh can go and muck 'em out while the other two mop in here -- "

"I'll mop," Black volunteered.

"So will I," said Lucius. Even if it meant having to work with Black to remove the eternal haystack, it would be better than mucking out stalls.

The four slower boys slumped towards the door, vanishing through it with grimaces and quickly muffled wails of dismay. "How can we clean if we can't breathe?" Pettigrew wheezed.

"Shurrup!" Potter squeaked. "D'you want him to get out that hayfever stuff -- ?!"

Goyle's voice came back haltingly through the closing door. "Smells better than burnt mangos, anyway..."

"Yeah," choked Crabbe, "it does that.... "

Hagrid followed the quartet into the next room. Malfoy and Black waited a while, and then sat down to rest on opposite sides of the enormous motherstack, eyeing one another drowsily while they listened to Hagrid's cheerful burbling, the hasty banging of shutters and gradually diminishing chorus of complaints.

Lucius stifled a yawn. Perhaps sitting down had been an error. Still, one could rest, so long as one Remained Vigilant and Kept the Enemy Under Scrutiny. Lucius struggled to keep his eyes open, and forwent the pleasure of goading Black into misusing his pitchfork; Black would manage that soon enough, all on his own.

Hagrid returned, to rouse them with a thunderclap of his hands and an undaunted smile. "On yer feet, now! Jus' a li'l bit left!"

The enduring mound of hay loomed monstrously over the two boys.

"Well, go on!" Hagrid bade them cheerfully. "It'll only take a li'l bit longer."

He wasn't joking.

Reluctantly, Lucius and Black heaved themselves onto their feet and started digging and lifting. Hagrid busied himself with the buckets and mops, clattering and sloshing and humming a little tune. After a couple of minutes he turned with a jovial grin -- which faded as he blinked disappointedly at the unperturbed mountain of hay. "Oh, dear."

The boys froze, each warily eyeing his pitchfork in case it should do something new and unpleasant.

"Hadn't thought o' that.... " murmured Hagrid, causing more worried looks. He shook his bushy head dismissively. "Yeh jus' don't have the height, yet... haven't got the heft.... " The Groundskeeper strode to the far wall to collect a weatherbroken old door. "Clear the way," he advised. Standing the door on end before him, he advanced like a Roman legionary towards the massive stack of hay... which crumbled before this onslaught, the great bulk of it sliding smoothly to tumble over the edge of the loft. Four more quick sweeps with the door held lengthwise cleared the loft entirely.

"That's better," Hagrid approved. "That'll give yeh some room ter work."

Crammed into a corner refuge with Black, Lucius stared at the broad, hay-free floor, and opined quietly, "He could have done that two hours ago."

"Play nice," Black murmured, "and maybe he'll help us mop, too."

Lucius nodded curtly. Alliances of Necessity were permissible. Brief ones. One could always backstab after the blisters had healed.

Hagrid waved them over and exchanged their pitchforks for mops, mixing up the pitchforks again as he set them aside. Lucius bit back a sigh; he'd tried marking his with a pocketknife, but the wood had healed itself before he'd finished the first cut.

Hagrid handed him a bucket big enough to drown a lamb in, leaving Malfoy staggering to keep the contents from slopping onto the floor. God knew what was in there. Lucius had learned not to let anything spill.

He got it settled and cast a wary glance inside. The liquid was a reddish lavender, a color he associated with the acidic demises of a series of small Persian carpets. "What's in this, Hagrid?" he demanded suspiciously, edging back.

"Mostly water," said their warden, as he steered Black and his bucket to another section of floor. "An' a bit o' help."

Lucius, who had swabbed up many a midnight flood from Snape's unsupervised cauldronwork, swirled his mop uncertainly through the stuff. A bubble drifted upwards, containing the image of a charwoman, whose song of sweet nightingales trilled thinly into the air.

"Ella's Enchanted Everkleen?" Black moaned, swatting at another bubble to stop the descant. "Hagrid, that stuff's horrible!"

"Aw, naw it ain't, it's really good!" Hagrid assured him. "Smells nice, works great, an' gives yeh a bit o'company as well!"

The bubbles had multiplied into a rather shrill chorus, and were arranging their song into a larkish round. The scent of primroses began to hang heavy in the air. The song only had eight words. The repetitions loomed.

They were on the fifth chorus already. Black boggled at Malfoy, with the unmistakeable air of a befuddled minion. Lucius thought desperately and heard himself cry out, "We're not permitted to use magic during this detention!"

Black stared at him. Lucius glared back. Even Muggle soap had to be better than the insipid singing bubbles.

"No, yer not," Hagrid agreed, "but I didn't go stealin' sheep in the middle o' the night, an' so I can use a bit o' Ella's Enchanted Everkleen if I like. It'll get the barn clean as a whisker," he assured them. "It's workin' great on the tack."

Lucius bit his lower lip, then stiffened the upper. All right. At least the chirping chorus was less annoying than Sev's ramblings or Pettigrew's whining.

"That should be plenty fer yeh ter do the hayloft," judged Hagrid. He listened for a few moments, then smiled as he heard nary a clang and only a few rude words from the other room. "I'll be back in a bit," he promised. "Set to it, then."

Lucius sighed and plunged his mop into the primrose-scented mixture, giving it a good swirl. A flurry of bubbles rose up like a giddy opera chorus, imploring yet another sweet song from the uncooperative sweet nightingale.

"That's the trouble with this stuff," cautioned Black cheerfully, hauling a dripping mop out of his bucket and considering where to start. "The more you stir it up, the more bubbles you get. They'll drive you mad, eventually."

Lucius tried stirring more gently, incurring fewer bubbles. He wrung the mop by neatly twisting it against the side of the bucket and started over to a corner to begin.

He looked up sharply as his boots were spattered by a spray from Black's mop. The Gryffindor was sloshing water and bubbles around like he cared nothing for the consequences -- he'd be soaked to the knees, soon.

His clumsiness could be entertaining, if it weren't so noisy. Five hundred charwomen demanded another blasted song from the blasted sweet nightingale. Lucius imagined the wretched bird had been terrified into silence... or, more likely, the stupid scullions couldn't hear it over their own mewling....

Black splashed another hundred and fifty sopranos into the din.

Really, this was intolerable. And there was a lot of loft to be washed. Lucius shouted over the crescendo at Black, "You're doing that all wrong!"

Black grinned like the fool he was. "No, I'm not! You've got to get the soap onto the floor in order to get any cleaning done! Besides, since when did a Malfoy even know what a mop is, much less how to use one?"

Since January of their First Year, actually; Snape had wasted no time in setting up the self-heating traveller's cauldron Lucius had given him for Christmas... and promptly surpassing its limits.

You got so that you could hear that quiet "oops" even from the depths of a really good dream.

Lucius scowled at the Gryffindor's sloppy efforts. If you waved a sopping mop around the way Black was doing you'd lose half the carpet and some of the tapestries, not to mention pitting the windowpanes.

Idiot.

"I'll show you how to use a mop!" Lucius vowed as he advanced, spinning smoothly as a ninja, the dripping end of the mop aimed perfectly at Black's startled face. Mid-arc the mop curled itself back about its wielder's neck and wrists and transformed into a heavy oaken stock. Lucius crashed to his knees in a fit of outraged fury while Black threw his head back and howled with laughter.

Naturally, everyone came running to see the spectacle. Some of the laughter above Lucius's head sounded suspiciously like Crabbe and Goyle's.

Lucius struggled into a more upright sitting position and subsided into dignified grinding of his teeth, fuming, waiting for Hagrid. Really this wasn't fair. If Sev had been here this would have happened to him. That was how it was supposed to go. Sev excelled at being a Cautionary Example.

Goyle and Crabbe stumped over, presumably to help, and stared expectantly down at their leader. They had kerchiefs tied over their mouths and noses, and Malfoy noted with exasperation that the polka dots on them were all tiny chubby cheery sheep. "Er. All right there, Luke?" asked Crabbe hesitantly, when enough bubbles had popped to make conversation possible.

Malfoy granted him a petrifying glare.

"Whatever did that to you?" queried Goyle nervously.

"The mops," supplied Black gleefully. "They're like the pitchforks."

Groans met this revelation. "Well," sighed Potter through his harlequin kerchief, wandering over to inspect the stock, "at least we know about it, now, so hopefully we'll keep our necks free... touch wood." He grinned and knocked on Malfoy's imprisoning collar.

Lucius hissed, and spat at him.

Potter dodged neatly. "You're going to have to mop that up, you know."

Goyle and Crabbe were just starting to upend Potter over the bucket when Hagrid thumped back through the trapdoor, carrying an even larger bucket and four mops. "An' how's it goin' up -- oh, dear."

"He was choking," said Crabbe, deftly dropping begrimed crumbs of stolen cheese as he shook Potter.

"Yes... very bad, that," agreed Goyle.

Hagrid took Potter from them and gave him a thump on the back, sending his glasses flying.

Black made a handsome dive for them and slid almost to the edge of the loft in the soapy water; he came up half drenched and surrounded by chirruping bubbles, clutching the glasses in his teeth. He spat them into his hand and returned them to their owner, swatting idly at a cluster of bubbles; his grin faltered as the thin wire frames divided the bubbles in half instead of popping them, and the octave rose. "Whups."

"Thanks, Sirius." Potter took his glasses back, restored them to a semblance of their former shape, wiped them on his shirt, and set them into place so he could glare at his assailants. "I wasn't choking."

"Well, I thought so," blustered Crabbe. "You were all red in the face, like... "

"Because you were holding me upside down," Potter reminded him.

Lucius cleared his throat. "Ahem."

Goyle, who was leaning on the stock, glanced down idly and then startled, quickly distancing himself a couple of paces. "I say," he called, "I say, could we let Lucius loose?"

Hagrid clumped over and rummaged through his pockets to produce a twig, which he touched to the stocks to change them back into a mop.

"Thank you," Malfoy clipped, regaining his feet and his dignity. He gazed darkly up from hooded eyes at the Groundskeeper, which was uncomfortable but intimidating. "How many times do the mops transform, before the stocks become permanent?"

Hagrid matched his cool stare. "Keep at it, I expect yeh'll find out."

Malfoy scowled at him, then wisely transferred his wrath to Black, who was a manageable target. Perhaps he could drown him in the bucket.

What could a bucket turn into?

Probably some combination of covered bath and iron maiden, like the one in the green parlor at home.

Too messy. And Black would go into his I've-Been-Wronged act.

"If yeh can't mop properly, switch with one o' yer friends," said Hagrid. "No point ter draggin' the work out."

"I slipped." Lucius reclaimed his mop.

Crabbe and Goyle sighed resignedly, tightening their kerchiefs.

Potter did likewise. "So, Hagrid," he inquired casually, "when's the last time those stalls got cleaned?" He nodded towards the other room, which had been airing out during this diversion.

"We-ell... it has been awhile," admitted the Groundskeeper.

"Yeah -- centuries!" piped Pettigrew, retying his striped kerchief as he glared back through the door.

"Naw, jus' long enough to ripen, like. Woulda dried out if it'd been centuries. I'd've mucked them out meself, but I had some things to tend ter in the Forest," he said, eyeing the Slytherins. The Gryffindors snickered and Hagrid waggled a remonstrative finger at them. "And then I had ter help calm down all those sheep yeh frightened... one of the poor lambs wouldn't stop cryin' till we fetched it a footstool ter settle up against, poor li'l mite." Hagrid sniffled and pulled out a handkerchief the size of a young flag, blowing his nose noisily before glaring at the miscreants. "Go on, then. Back to work," he said firmly, shooing the stall cleaners like chickens towards the door.

"An' you two," warned the Groundskeeper, returning his attention to the swabbers. "Mop properly, unnerstand? This oughtn't take all day!" Plucking Black's mop from his hands, Hagrid gave each bucket a really good swirl. "That's better... gotta mix it up," he approved, through a cacophony of bubbles. "Go on, now!" he ordered and left.

All right for him. Lucius and Black mopped quickly, hoping to speed their escape from the incessant tune.

During the two hundred eightieth chorus, Black trudged over to Malfoy's side, leaned on his mop, stared blearily at his companion and shouted, "This must be working after all!"

"Why's that?!" asked Lucius guardedly, wishing that leftover cheddar crumbs made better earplugs.

"Because they're trying to get us to agree, and I'll bet you will: next nightingale I hear, I'm going to hunt it down and have it for supper!"

Lucius nodded. "I know just the recipe!" he offered. The nightingale would look well en sarcophage. Then he smiled, not nicely. "But I'd poison yours!"

"All right then!" Reassured, Black went back to mopping.

*****

At some point, Lucius realized that he had been mopping in his sleep.

He'd acquired the talent thanks to his roommate's overflowing curiosity, yes, but it was still disconcerting to discover that someone had piled bales of hay along the brink of the loft to keep him from mopping off the edge.

This was bad. One was supposed to Maintain Vigilance.

That meant noticing things. Everything.

Lucius noticed that he was humming along with the bubbles.

With an effort he stopped, and looked around to discover the floor quite clean. Excellent. And it was almost quiet. Except for the shouting.

"No! Absolutely not!" Black was over at the door to the upper stalls, facing off with Crabbe and Goyle, who looked overheated and cross. "I tell you, no!" Black insisted. "You're not going to come traipsing through here with that bucket of slop when we've finally got the place clean! Don't swing it about, it's full to the brim, you'll spill it! Dump it out the side window where you dumped the rest!"

"This one's got the Bubble Stuff in it!" protested Crabbe. "Toss it all that way down onto the dungheap, and we'll wind up completely surrounded by miniature musical muckmaidens!"

Goyle blinked at him. "Oh my God," he moaned, "now it's happening to you. I told you, never drink anything Sev offers, even if he does take a swig first!"

"Let us through, Black," threatened Crabbe tiredly. "Anything spills, you'll just have to mop it again. Keep in practice, like." He nodded to Goyle and they braced to bull forward.

Lucius appeared at Black's side, remembering just in time not to raise his mop like a katana. "We've mopped enough," he said flatly. "You only had one bucket of Bubble Stuff in there. Take it the other way."

"But, Luke," started Crabbe unwisely, absently nodding towards Black, "he can just mop up the spills -- "

"I don't want to listen to the bubbles!" snarled Lucius, in a high, aggrieved tone that startled even himself.

" 'S'alright," Potter stumbled out of the nearest stall, glasses and kerchief askew, as if he were just recovering from an involuntary nap. "S'alright... The bubbles stop, once the water's dirty enough. Girls don't like it."

"Really?" Goyle gave the water a bit of a swish with the end of his mop. Half a dozen bubbles appeared, but their resident songsters intoned their chant like a dirge, and the tiny, begrimed charwomen were quick to push elbows or feet through the transparent skin of the bubbles and vanish. The last and littlest one looked up at the boys and blew a raspberry at them before extracting a hairpin from under her scarf and popping herself out of existence.

"At least they don't sing as long," offered Potter.

"Outside," directed Lucius. "That way. Now."

"Come on, Gav." The two blocky Slytherins retreated back down the aisle, being very careful not to spill on the floor they had been cleaning.

"And then you'll have to clean those footprints you've left," Lucius added peevishly. "There aren't any house elves up here to do it for you."

"Do house elves work in barns?" asked Pettigrew, sleepily. He started to rub at his eyes and stopped just in time, inspecting his hayflecked knuckles with a sigh.

"No, that'd be barn elves, wouldn't it?" Black said.

"There's no such thing as barn elves," Potter scoffed.

"Damn shame, really," muttered Black.

"Aren't there, though?" Lucius frowned. "I assure you, I don't muck out the stables at Malfoy Manor." His frown deepened, and he shook his head distractedly. "So they'd be, what, stable elves? But one never says, 'manor elves'... "

"What did he give you?" yelped Goyle, dropping the emptied bucket as he hurried over to check on Lucius. "What did you drink?"

Lucius ignored him. One should not encourage Panicked Minions, unless one had incited the panic.

"It's all right, Gav," Crabbe said wearily, nursing the foot the bucket had landed on. "Lucius always gets magniloquent when he's tired."

"Malevolent, you mean," Goyle replied.

"No, he starts that first thing in the morning," Crabbe told him.

"Well, all right, supposing they're domestic elves," muttered Potter thoughtfully.

"Domesticated, you mean," Malfoy corrected. "Someone must have tamed them, obviously -- "

"Look out, it's a wild elf!" cried Black, leaping forward to menace Potter, who screamed on cue and scurried away, leaving a trail of footprints.

"Boots!" shouted Lucius. And when Potter and Black didn't stop, "On the clean floor! Leads to footprints, leads to mopping, leads to BUBBLES--" Angrily he charged after Potter, swinging like a samurai -- His mop transformed again. He went down in a whirl of invective.

Black immediately came bounding over, all sympathy and grins. "Is you being stuck, Mr. Malefactor, sir? Does you not know how to be using a mop?"

"Get him," directed Lucius.

Crabbe and Goyle carefully set aside their mops, and advanced.

"Now, what's all this, then?" boomed a voice from the trapdoor, and the miscreants froze as Hagrid lumbered towards their less than innocuous tableau.

"Boots," Lucius snapped. "On the clean floor." He nodded towards the evidence.

"Oh... well, those'll come clean," Hagrid stated soothingly.

"I was defending my clean floor. I think I have every right to defend my clean floor."

"It's not your clean floor," corrected Black. "It's half mine."

"Fine. Clean your floor, then."

"Fine. I shall," returned Black, retrieving his mop.

Hagrid cleared his throat. "Sounds t'me like yer all gettin' jus' a mite touchy," he observed.

"Oh, they're just getting warmed up," said Potter, who with Pettigrew had taken a ringside seat upon a haybale.

Hagrid hesitated, then shook his head. "Well, listen, lunch is on the way out from the castle -- "

"Lunch!" cried Goyle and Crabbe and Pettigrew joyously.

"Jus' let me check an' see if everythin's all finished up," Hagrid said happily, striding past Malfoy.

Lucius settled into a mildly less uncomfortable position and hoped that Hagrid wasn't just assuming that the stocks wouldn't transform back. It was going to be bloody difficult eating lunch like this.

His stomach growled. It didn't even have the grace to sound predatory.

Crabbe and Goyle took up positions guarding Lucius, but Potter and Pettigrew were content to sit on their haybale, watching Black reluctantly try to coax a few more bubbles out of his bucket to clean the floor.

"Very nice work in there as well, boys!" Hagrid lauded, smiling proudly down at his grubby crew when he returned. "Really well done! That Ella's Enchanted Everkleen is first rate stuff!" He produced the twig and liberated Lucius.

"Yes, if you enjoy the sounds of opera singers being tortured," mumbled Potter.

Lucius frowned. "No, it sounds nothing like," he said, getting stiffly to his feet.

Hagrid leaned down and pulled Pettigrew up from the haybale where he'd curled up to sleep. "C'mon, now, Peter, on yer feet!"

"Izzit lunch?" the chunky Gryffindor blinked hopefully up at their warden.

"Yeh, it's on its way up from the castle," Hagrid assured him, earning another round of weary cheers. "Yeh should have jus' enough time ter clean up in the tub outside before it gets here. I'll take these," he said, collecting the pitchforks from the corner and starting back down through the trapdoor. "Yeh'll be usin' 'em after lunch ter pitch the clean hay back up into the loft.

Lucius halted in his tracks, envisioning coaxing the fallen motherstack back up into its lair. Forkful by forkful. "You know," he said loudly, "I thought we were here at Hogwarts to learn to be wizards, not... drudges!" But Hagrid was already gone.

"Hey," said Black, who had finished up near the edge of the loft. "Watch this!" With a wide grin he set his mop aside, dashed at the haybale wall and did a somersault over it, diving down into the stack of hay below. "Come on in!" came the muffled invitation a moment later. "The water's fine!"

Crabbe looked at Goyle. Goyle looked at Crabbe. "Aim for him," Crabbe said, and they hurtled over the edge together.

"Wha--ouph!"

Lucius strolled over to survey the damage. Crabbe and Goyle were sprawled on the hay, laughing. Black was completely buried. A lovely thought, that.

"Come on, Pete!" Potter launched himself backwards into space, executing a double somersault and completely missing the previous divers.

Pettigrew landed atop Goyle. Black, who had nearly fought his way up to daylight, vanished beneath the hay again.

Lucius looked down upon them. They had hay in their hair, and by the way that Gav was scratching, in their clothes as well.

"Well, look at that!" Potter reclined cheerfully on his patch of straw, grinning up at Lucius. "We've been remiss. There's still a chicken in the loft."

Pettigrew supplied a medley of nervous chicken sounds.

Lucius launched himself, boots first, straight at Potter's supercilious smirk.

Potter rolled out of the way.

Lucius sank like a dagger into the loose hay. In a trice, he was buried all the way up to his chest, and hay had forced itself all the way up his trouser legs. He hadn't a hope of dodging the handful of hay that Potter jammed down his collar.

****

The battle was brief. The hay won.

****

When Hagrid had fished everyone out of the haystack, he marched the six itchy scarecrows outside, leading them around the barn.

"This way," the Groundskeeper directed, leading them toward an exultant froth of euphonious bubbles.

"Oh, no," moaned Black, speaking for everyone.

Haplessly they waded into the pink fog of bubbles, instinctively gripping one another's cloaks so no one would be left behind in the disorienting din.

They were all together to confront the horror at the cacophonous cloud's core: a giant tub overfoaming with syrupy sirens. Marooned amid a panoply of gleaming tack were the two other boys. Four hours of incessant pleas to the bedamned nightingale had clearly taken its toll. Lupin had tried to save himself, using a pair of horse blinders as earmuffs, but now he was simply howling along desperately with the relentless round. Snape wore a strange smile as he sang along, unable to find the bucket in which to carry the tune.

"Hello, lads!" Hagrid boomed. Lupin jumped. Snape kept singing. "Time ter wash up fer lunch! Now, where's that bottle o' Ella's Enchanted Everkleen got to?"

Lupin presented him with a fixed grin and an empty bottle. "It spilled!"

"Oh, dear!" Hagrid fretted. "That was meant to last yeh the rest o' the afternoon! I'll have ter find yer somethin' else ter use!"

"That'd be fine!" screamed Lupin.

"You do that!" shouted Potter, clapping Lupin on the back as if the little Gryffindor had caught the Snitch.

Hagrid waded away through the harmonious haze.

"Get them," bellowed Lucius.

Malfoy, Black, Potter and Pettigrew began zealously popping bubbles. Crabbe and Goyle grabbed Lupin and Snape and cast expectant looks at Lucius.

"The bubbles, you cretins!" yelled Black.

Crabbe and Goyle verified this with a glance at Lucius, and hastily changed targets. Lupin scrambled up to help break bubbles. Snape kept singing contentedly, in the key of skeleton.

The bubbles, perhaps realizing their peril, began to drift away in droves, moderating their tones as handfuls of dirt and well-aimed swats obliterated swaths of chamber singers at a go.

"Seven at one blow!" cried Pettigrew exultantly, wreaking general havoc.

"Going to make a commemorative belt?" shouted Potter, grinning.

"The belts!" Black and Malfoy nearly knocked heads grabbing up pieces of tack; they came up back to back, swinging with purpose.

"It's working!" There was a general round of vigorous bubble-belting.

When the froth had cleared, one lone ragged voice remained: "Hiiiiiiigh above meeee... "

Lucius wasn't close enough to hit Snape; he nodded to Goyle, who seized their roommate and shook him. "Sev! Stop it!"

"When I'm calling eweee," wailed Snape, bewildered.

"STOP IT!" screamed the Marauders.

Lucius laughed. Goyle flipped Snape's cape over his head, the way one might quiet a budgie.

"Sun ain't gonna shine any more," sang Snape through the cloth, "moon ain't gonna -- "

"Oh, no," said Crabbe. He intercepted Snape with a large fist, "SHURRUP! D'you want Keele to hear?"

Snape spat out mud. "Blue-green circle on the violet diagonal," he lilted thoughtfully from the ground.

Crabbe stood on him.

"Di-ag-ag-ag-ag-ag-o-nal-nal..."

Lucius strode over to loom above Snape. This was pointless, so he crouched down In A Companionable Manner and said very precisely into Snape's ear, "Sev. I'm growing vexed."

Snape boggled up at him, then broke into a grin of recognition. "Even louder! We'll shout it! Worse than those widows and orphans you drowned? Oh, Rat --"

"Drown him," commanded Lucius coolly.

Crabbe and Goyle were lifting Snape into the tub when Lupin intervened. "See, Sev?" he cried anxiously. "It's gone rose, just like you said it would! Is it time to add the minced snails?"

Snape hushed and studied the water inches beneath his nose. "That's not rose," he averred. "That's cerise. It won't be rose for hours yet."

"Oh, right, right," Lupin said hastily. "And the minced snails?"

"Mint snails," Snape echoed.

"Are we drowning him or not?" asked Crabbe.

"Gingersnapes."

Goyle's stomach rumbled. "Maybe after lunch?" he suggested. "You're not supposed to eat for an hour after drowning someone." He cast an imploring look at their leader. "And I'd like to get the hay out of -- all the places it's got into."

"Seconded," said several voices.

Lucius Magnanimously Relented. "Very well." Snape didn't need a bath, he hadn't been in the hay. And once that hair touched the water, there'd be a rainbow film of oil ruining the water for everyone else.

Snape clung to the side of the tub, mesmerized by the water as the others scrubbed the worst of the barn off themselves. Lucius hoped the scent of primroses would wear off before too long. Then again, he'd hoped the same for Up-All-Night Potion. Wearily, he watched his incoherent lieutenant study the floating bits of straw.

"Oh," Sev intoned softly, "klahoma..."

Lucius decided it wasn't worth the effort of drowning Sev when he wouldn't even notice. At least he was focusing on real things now. Give him an hour and he might even be coherent. Lunch might revive him --

Lucius paled. Food didn't always help.

The Haggis Incident.

Lucius steadied himself resolutely. Nothing could be as bad as The Haggis Incident. Nothing could rival chasing haggis off the ceiling of the Great Hall at midnight, with the constellations wheeling all about and Sev clinging stubbornly to the rafters. Even this miserable ordeal of a detention didn't stand much chance of getting that bad....

"Hello, the barn!" a far too cheerful voice rang out across the barnyard.

...unless, of course, some idiot had sent Loudmouth Lockhart out with their lunches.

**********