The American

Chapter 2

Riot and Betrayal

The next day, Harry and Hermione went first thing to see Ron before breakfast. Madam Pomfrey gave them hell for waking her so early. She said that Ron was in a coma. They were stricken. Hermione looked very sad, and Harry was quite worried. After around twenty minutes they stalked morosely to the Great Hall for breakfast.

"Has anyone seen Jake?"
"The American?"

Hermione glared at Parvati.

"Yes."

Nobody had seen him.

"I'm worried, Harry," Hermione said, "He might be lost somewhere."

"It's okay, I'll just check the map after breakfast."

"Alright, but seriously, Hogwarts isn't a good place to be lost in, you know."

After breakfast, they hurried up to Gryffindor tower and Harry grabbed the Marauders' Map out from his nightstand.

Down in the still-empty common room Harry and Hermione stretched the map over one of the tables.

"Do you see him?"

There were hundreds of dots on the map, it was hard to find one in particular, especially since they all kept moving. Harry had an idea. He pulled his wand from his pocket and touched the tip of it to the map.

"Where is Jake Traub?"

Nothing happened.

"Maybe a different approach," Hermione suggested.

"Okay, let's see," Harry said, "I, Harry James Potter, son of Prongs, requests the Marauders' help in locating Jake Traub on the map."

Suddenly four lines appeared on the map, each connecting from one corner of the aged parchment to a single point slightly northwest of the center, one line was straight, one line wavy, one with a number of small loops, and one dotted. The spot it focused on had the tiny subscript "Jacob Traub."

"Wow, it worked. He's right there, but... he's not moving."

"Oh, no."

Harry and Hermione followed the map to find Jake.

"He's right around the corner."

They were at the head of a small staircase, and about ten steps down was Jake, trapped in a trick step, and he was whimpering quietly.

"Jake!" The hurried down to him, each looping an arm through his to lift, but he shouted for them to stop.

"What?"

"My leg, I think it's broken, when I fell through the rest of my body fell forward and it made a loud cracking sound and hurt like hell. Please, be really careful."

"I'll go get help," Harry said.

"No, it's too embarrassing. Just help me out really carefully."

So they did. It was a slow chore, but easily accomplished, Jake flinching here and there.

"Okay, now let's get you to the infirmary."

In the infirmary, Madam Pomfrey had them put him on the bed next to Ron.

"How'd you do this?"
"A staircase got the better of me."

"Not the first time that's happened, I doubt it's the last."

She healed him quickly, but during the process he was looking over at Ron.

"That's your friend Ron, right?"

Hermione looked quickly at the ground and Harry told him yes.

They went down to Hagrid's for afternoon tea.

"So, there, Jake, how're ya' fittin' in?"

"Pretty good I suppose. That Parvati girl though, she seems to be begging for a slap. She's not very nice."

"Ahh, she's not all bad," Hagrid said, sounding like he didn't mean it at all.

"And I'm definitely going to have to watch for those steps. Broke my leg this morning."

"Sounds like you an' Harry'll get along just fine, broken bones and such," Hagrid said with a laugh.

"I'd say," Harry said, laughing as well.

"Hagrid," Hermione said, "Do you know if you can bring somebody out of a coma with magic?"

Jake suddenly looked up from Fang, whose ears he had been scratching vigorously, and fixed his gaze on Hermione. She looked lost in thought and he looked worried.

"Well, it's risky, I know, I was in a coma once after a nasty bout with a manticore. See, it's tricky stuff mixing magic and brainwaves, you could either end up waking 'em just fine, you might turn 'em into a vegetable, or you could outright kill 'em. So mostly, you just let 'em wake on their own."

"Oh," Hermione responded, her face falling. Jake stared at the wall for a moment, then started scratching behind Fang's ear again.

Suddenly Harry jumped to his feet. "I've just remembered, we have Quidditch practice in about five minutes!"

"Oh hell, let's go."

They ran out of the cabin urging hurried good-byes. Harry's eyes darted quickly toward the line of scarlet-clad figures making their way toward the pitch.

"Damn! They're already on their way down! I've already been late for too many practices, if I'm late again Fred and George will suspend me from the team, that's what they threatened to do last time."

"My broomstick is up in the dormitory!"

"Mine, too," Harry said grimly. He looked around wildly, as if searching for the answer, then pulled his wand from his pocket like a sword and pointed it toward the castle.

"Accio broomsticks!"

For about twenty seconds Jake stared at him like he was crazy, because it appeared as though nothing was happening.

"Um, Harry, what the hell?"

Then from the doors of the castle burst the two broomsticks flying side by side toward them.

"Whoa! You can do that?"

"HEY!" Harry's eyes blazed. The broomsticks had veered to the left and were flying toward the lake now. His eyes searched and the sight it found made his stomach plummet. Draco Malfoy and his lackeys were standing under a dogwood tree without shirts on. It looked as though they had been swimming in the lake.

"DAMN!" Harry exclaimed, "This is trouble. Can you duel?"

"Dueling captain, two years running."

"Excellent," they started walking toward Malfoy, "This one's worth it, the twins will understand. Now the slightly shorter boulder, oh Christ, I've never seen them without shirts, wish I could still say that. The shorter bodyguard is Vincent Crabbe and the other one is Gregory Goyle. Pureblood enthusiasts, dark wizards, they're fathers are Death Eaters. The other one is Malfoy, and the same thing goes for him. The bigger two can't use their wands any better than the tree they're standing under, but Malfoy has no problem cursing you blind."

"Okay."

Suddenly beside him ran Hermione.

"What now?"

"He's stolen our broomsticks."

"Are we going to do this?"

Jake said, "Ooooooh yeah."

"Who the hell is this," Malfoy demanded, staring at Jake.

"Oh, you must be new here," Jake said.

"Why do you say that?"

"Cause nobody talks to me like that. Now how 'bout you take your dirty hand off my damn broomstick before I break you in half like a twig."

Malfoy looked completely affronted. They had put their shirts back on and Draco had charmed them all dry.

"This is your broomstick? You still haven't answered who the hell you are."

"You mean you don't recall the sorting ceremony from just yesterday? He's an American--"

"Well obviously..."

"--who just moved here and he's our friend, and I'd recommend getting your hand off of his broom," Hermione said.

"You're a mudblood, too, aren't you?"
Jake's eyes were on fire. He grabbed his wand by the other end and extended it to Harry.

"Hold my wand," he said calmly. The second Harry took it, Jake punched Draco so hard in the face that his nose cracked. He slammed him against the narrow tree trunk and Draco fell to the ground, gasping for air and reaching for his wand. Goyle spun Jake around, ready to punch him, but Jake laced his fingers together, making a two-handed fist and swung it hard against Goyle's jaw.

"Ahh!" A searing pain shot across his shoulder. Draco's spell had been pushed off target by Hermione kicking him in the small of his back.

Crabbe and Harry were in wand-to-wand combat and it was absolutely no contest. Crabbe couldn't even stand up straight.

"Jake! Watch it!" Goyle was about to swing a fallen branch at the back of Jake's head while he punched Malfoy repeatedly. Hermione grabbed Goyle by the hair and pulled his head back very hard, holding her wand to his throat from behind.

"Drop it."

By this point a massive crowd had formed and many Slytherins were jumping in, as were the Gryffindors and the whole Gryffindor Quidditch team. It was a riot, and hardly any magic was being used.

A ripple crossed the mass. Professors were coming. Everyone stopped kicking who they were kicking or punching who they were punching and very quickly tried to clean themselves up.

"Gryffindors, quick!" Hermione said. She grabbed Jake's broomstick and pointed her wand at it. "Portus! Now grab on three. One, two, three!"

Most of the Gryffindors grabbed hold of the broom. They all felt that unpleasant but familiar jerk behind the naval as they were suddenly transported into the Common Room.

"Hermione! That was illegal!"

"It's better than getting in lots of trouble. Besides, unauthorized portkeys are a minor offense, so they don't have tabs kept on them like underage magic and unforgivable curses."

Harry and Jake ran to the window overlooking the lake to see what was happening. They were directly overhead, so Harry opened the window to hear.

"I think that's McGonagall."

"Who's responsible for all this?"

"There's Malfoy."

"We were attacked by Granger and Potter and the American."

"Oh, a likely story!" Then she scanned the crowd and bellowed, "THEY'RE NOT EVEN HERE!"

Malfoy looked around too. In the chaos of the mob nobody had noticed the Gryffindors vanishing.

"What's happening," Hemione whispered, joining them.

"Listen..."

"Well I don't know how they get away, but it's true. They'll be covered in bruises and cuts. Just go find them!"

"I will have them fetched within the hour so I can put a stop to your nonsense."

Harry quickly shut the window.

"Hermione, can you heal with magic?"

"I've tried a few times and it worked okay, but I don't remember the incantations."

"Can you hurry to the library?"

"Yes, but I'll need your cloak, if they see me all battered, they'll know."

Harry and Hermione slipped up the boys' staircase unnoticed and Harry gave her the invisibility cloak. She was gone and back before he knew it, with a massive tome under her arm.

"Okay, index... bruises, here we are."

"Sanosubtusus!" The bruise on Harry's cheek gradually faded back to his flesh tone.

Hermione in turn found the cure for scrapes and cuts and healed all of their afflictions.

"Anybody else?"

Nobody called out. Hermione healed herself.

"Okay, now everybody act nonchalant. This never happened."

Harry, Jake and Hermione left the common room and walked casually down to one of the courtyards. Hermione read her book, a magical romance novel called Star-Crossed, and Jake told Harry about his old school.

"It wasn't a castle, it was this massive mansion, looked kind of Tudor, and we had this cobblestone village and all. The girls there, good lord, you couldn't believe. We had most of the same classes, but we also had a few others, like Foreign Magic, where we learned about voodoo, Native American forms of magic, African witchdoctors, druids, stuff like that. Pretty interesting. The chanting was so insanely boring though. We also had a music program. Don't you have a music program?"

"No, I don't think so."

"I was in a band."

"Really? What do you play?"

"Guitar and piano."

"Cool! Do you have a guitar?"

"Yeah, it's in my trunk."

"Could you teach me? I've always wanted to learn the guitar."

"Yeah, I guess, I'm not great, but I love playing."

"What was your band called?"

"Apollo One."

"That's a good name for a band. I'm glad you didn't try to work anything magic in there, it gets so stupid when you keep doing that. Kind of cheesy."

"Yeah, we thought so, too. But I had to leave and they didn't take it very well."

"I'd imagine not."

"Not well at all. They blamed it on me. So did my girlfriend. She was pissed. They didn't make it any easier on me really. I guess it's for the better."

"There they are!" Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape were walking through the courtyard with Draco Malfoy in tow.

"Potter, Granger, Weasl-- pardon me, Mister...."

"Traub."

Hermione shot a vicious glance at Professor McGonagall. At that moment Harry noticed that the spot on Jake's shoulder where Draco had hit him with the curse was healed, but the shirt was scorched. He nonchalantly placed his hand over it, pulling himself to his feet and then resting his arm over it, which was quite uncomfortable and probably suspicious since Jake was around four inches taller than he was.

"Where were you during this morning's terrible riot?"

"Riot!" Hermione said, acting perfectly as though she weren't there. "There was a riot?"

"Yes, Miss Granger. By the lake. You weren't there?"

"No, of course not!"

"And the two of you?"

"We've all been here. Who was involved?"

"Mostly Slytherin house," Professor Snape's lips pursed sourly, "but there were a good number of Hufflepuffs, some Ravenclaws, and a few Gryffindors. Onlookers, many of them. I've never seen such madness."

"So the three of you had nothing to do with it," Professor Dumbledore inquired, eyebrows raised.

"Heavens, no," Hermione said, and Harry would have laughed were the situation not so dire.

"Good. Mr. Malfoy, come, we must see about your detentions, points from Slytherin, and suspension."

They left, and Harry and Jake waited about twenty seconds before they laughed. Very hard. Hermione looked stony faced.

"This is going to come back around and bite us on the ass someday. I know it is."

"Yeah, probably."

"It's too bad, though, Ron would really be enjoying this right now."

Harry laughed more, "Oh gosh, remember the ferret? 'Don't talk to me, I want to fix that in my memory...' He hates Malfoy more than me."

Jake forced a laugh and stared at his feet.

A month or so went by and Ron didn't wake. Molly and Arthur Weasley came every few days to see Ron. Fred and George lost the co-captain positions and were replaced by Angelina Johnson, and they also received detentions. Harry noticed Hermione going to see Ron less and less and that she was spending a little more time with Ron. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, especially since he wasn't sure what he felt about Ron and Hermione's prospective relationship.

"Jake," Harry said one day as they walked back from Quidditch practice, "You like Hermione don't you."

"Well, no, I mean, I guess. But she's Ron's girlfriend, so..."

"She's not Ron's girlfriend."

"Yes, she-- she's not?"

"No. I mean, unless they were keeping it a secret, which I don't think they'd do."

"Well, it doesn't matter anyway, she's still in love with him."

"I don't know..."

Jake didn't talk anymore, he seemed to be thinking very hard, and Harry felt as though he'd just betrayed his best friend.