Harry Potter and the Return of the Insanity

* * *

Believe it or not, December did eventually arrive, and it was one of the coldest Decembers on record. Hermione’s parents wrote to tell her Bristol had smashed the previous low temperature into pieces, bottoming out at almost twenty degrees below zero. Dean Thomas was telling anyone who would listen that La Nina was finally kicking in for good, and the Ice Age would be happening all over again if they weren’t careful.

The castle, always somewhat drafty in the winter, grew so cold that Dumbledore had to recruit extra house-elves to go around and find all the cracks, which the staff spent an entire Saturday patching up. The improvement was nothing short of remarkable, though they still had to keep roaring fires going day and night to keep the place warm. Every day, without fail, the ceiling of the Great Hall was covered with leaden clouds, so dark that the torches had to be left lit all day.

Quidditch season was cancelled early, on account of the numerous blizzards that started blasting through in the middle of November. Harry and his team were especially bitter over this, as their odd and highly unorthodox training sessions had made them good enough to flatten all the other teams in about five minutes. Ron took this especially hard, and went around snarling for days after Dumbledore’s announcement.

“Stupid weather,” he muttered, glaring out the frosted window in the Gryffindor common room. “Now what am I supposed to do with all my time?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Hermione, who was pouring over some book Harry would bet weighed half as much as she did. “How about your homework, for a change?”

“Ha-very-ha,” Ron snapped, not turning around. “Wish Fred and George were still here. This place isn’t half as interesting without them.”

At that moment, a sudden explosion burst from the fireplace, sending clouds of purple smoke billowing across the room and bouncing sparks off the walls. Half the students looked up, startled, to see Natalie McDonald and Denis Creevey, both looking extremely guilty and holding a box emblazoned with the WWW mark of Wealsey’s Wizard Wheezes.

“Oops,” muttered Denis.

“Well, at least we know it works,” Natalie whispered.

“You were saying?” laughed Harry, turning back to his Charms homework. “Cheer up, Ron, we can always go out and practice once the weather clears up.”

“Yeah, and have our noses frozen off,” said Ron, refusing to be placated. “Maybe I’ll go help Doors clean out the greenhouses.”

Yet another effect this unusual winter had was to force their only outdoor classes, Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology, inside the castle. Harry still wasn’t sure just which one had been more of a zoo to move, between Hagrid’s manic Pegusi and the Venomous Tentacula, which put up so much of a fight at being transplanted that they wound up having to take half the wall in Greenhouse Three along with it. Hagrid’s monsters were currently occupying most of the fourth floor, while Doors had started having classes in the room across from her apartments. The whole castle smelled of herbs and fertilizer, something which Snape complained about almost daily (never mind that fact that his classroom stunk far worse the whole year round.)

“I wouldn’t,” Hermione put in absently, scribbling something on a roll of parchment. “She’s down there with Lupin and Sirius, and we all know what that means.”

Harry suppressed a groan. “Oh, I hope they don’t mess with the ceiling in the Great Hall again,” he said. “It’s weird enough having it look like it’s going to snow on us, we really didn’t need to experience the real thing.” The three Marauders, as bored and restless as any of the students, had somehow enchanted the ceiling so it dumped a whole load of snow on everyone halfway through breakfast the week before, and nearly started a fist fight between Snape and Sirius. McGonagall, in an extremely uncharacteristic fit of anger, had clouted them both around the head and actually threatened them with detention, before remembering she couldn’t give detention to a teacher.

“I dunno,” snorted Ron, cheering at the thought. “It was kind of funny to see Snape fall on his ass after throwing that punch at Sirius. Wonder what his problem is, anyway?”

“Who, Snape?” Hermione asked, still not looking up from her book.

“Naw, his evil twin,” Ron retorted. “Yeah, Snape. He’s been impossible lately, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed--” he put on a foul, simpering voice “--‘All right, let’s see how many of you can get this one wrong.’ ‘Oh, soooo close, Longbottom, but that will still be forty points from Gryffindor.’ Honestly, without Quidditch, what’s going to keep him from putting us into a negative score?”

Hermione sighed. “Well, the man did find out his girlfriend was Voldemort, for crying out loud. That’s bound to make anyone go a little cracked.”

“Yeah, not to mention that Lockhart’s coming back,” added Harry, grinning. “I know it’s put me off my dinner a fair few times.”

Even Ron had to laugh. “Listen to us; we’re defending Snape, of all things. C’mon, Harry, let’s go crash Doors’s greenhouse and find out what those loonies are up to.”

“Good luck,” said Hermione, making no move to get up. “Just don’t get lost on the way out there.”

“Why aren’t you coming along?” asked Ron.

“Oh, I’ve just got this feeling something worthwhile will happen today,” Hermione said vaguely.

Ron rolled his eyes, and he and Harry scrambled up to their dormitory in search of cloaks and boots. Someone (probably Dobby) had placed a coal heater in the middle of the room, filled with some kind of enchanted peat that never went out. The two of them rummaged around in their trunks, throwing out all sorts of oddities before laying hold of what they wanted.

“You know, for once I’m glad Mum likes to knit,” Ron said, pulling on a maroon stocking cap that clashed horribly with his hair.

“You’re not the only one,” said Harry, pulling out a thick crimson sweater with a large yellow G on the front. As soon as the cold front had moved in in November, Mrs. Weasley had sent he, Ron, and Ginny huge parcels full of warm things, to the envy of half their House. Harry had also bought a fur-lined cloak by owl-order, and some better shoes.

By the time he and Ron were clad against the cold, both looked more like walking yarn marshmallows then anything. Harry laughed out loud at Ron’s hat, which had a big maroon pompon on the top, but shut up when Ron reminded him that his new boots had Rainbow Brite shoelaces in them (he’d had to borrow some off Natalie McDonald.)

“All right, all right, we’re even,” he said. “Now let’s see if we can make it to the greenhouses without overbalancing and landing face-first in the snow.”

He had good cause to worry--by the time he and Ron had made it to the front doors, both were sweating and half ready to call it quits right there. It was only the thought of what Doors’s greenhouses must be looking like that propelled them onward, and out into the blast of bitter cold that hovered beyond the castle walls.

“Wow,” breathed Ron, his eyes widening as they spilled out into the three feet of snow that had buried the grounds. The leaden sky was heavy with impending snowfall, and the faint breeze was icier than passing through a ghost. All was immensely, almost frighteningly silent, and so still it looked like a postcard.

“Nice, eh?” muttered Ron, his breath rising in frosty clouds. “Come on, we’d better get moving before our feet freeze to the ground.”

Harry laughed, and the two of them started trampling their way through the drifts. Without the usual landmarks to guide them, they had no idea just where in all the blobs of white the greenhouses would be, and so simply floundered along until the cleared the top of a small rise and caught sight of a light in the dimness.

“Phew,” he said, adjusting his muffler. “Somehow seems a lot farther in the snow, doesn’t it?”

Ron nodded in agreement, but Harry could see he wasn’t paying attention; his eyes were trained on the sky, and his head was cocked as if listening.

“What is it?” Harry asked, following his friend’s gaze.

“I don’t know,” said Ron, still concentrating on something Harry was unaware of. “I thought I heard something, but....Wait, there it is!”

This time, Harry heard it clearly--sleigh bells, jangling faintly but very clearly in the distance. From the sound of them there had to be hundreds, but the oddest thing was that they seemed to be coming from the sky.

He and Ron glanced at one another, not sure what to make of this. The clouds were so thick they couldn’t have seen a jumbo jet if it flew right over them, but it didn’t stop them from looking.

“What the.....” he muttered.

“Oh, listen, here comes Father Christmas.”

Ron and Harry turned to see Lupin, Doors, and Sirius, who had come out of the greenhouse and were watching the sky expectantly. All three were bundled up against the chill, their faces flushed from the cold. Lupin had on the shabbiest overcoat Harry had ever seen, Sirius was all but buried in a large black furry thing that might possibly be a cloak, and Doors was wearing a long white rabbit-fur cape that looked as though she’d tried making it by hand (which, knowing her, she had.) Each was holding, wrapped in scarves and mufflers, a shivering Spineade Spudicus, none of which seemed to care one whit about noises in the sky.

Doors grinned at Harry. “You do still believe in Father Christmas, don’t you, Harry? I would hope so, but even if not, you will in a minute.”

Harry looked at her, utterly bewildered; did she know what was going on? No owls had been able to come or go for about a week now, so she couldn’t have gotten word from anyone, but knowing Doors it wouldn’t stop her from finding out.

He didn’t have tome to wonder what she meant by that, though--the jangling grew infinitely louder, and suddenly through the clouds there dove one of the most bizarre-looking things Harry had ever seen.

It looked like a giant bobsled, hollyberry-red and so thickly covered in Christmas lights it was nearly blinding. It was drawn by a brace of puffing and extremely ill-tempered looking pigeons, and as it dipped lower Harry caught sight of the drivers--

“Fred! George!” he cried, as the glowing monstrosity touched down on the snow near the greenhouses. Ron’s jaw dropped as all five of his brothers piled out of it, followed by a grinning Mr. Weasley and a rather green Mrs. Weasley.

“Surprise!” yelled Fred, cutting the braces and letting the pigeons fly full pelt for the Owlry.

“Thought you could all use a little entertainment,” added George.

“Heavens, as if that infernal sled weren’t bad enough,” said Mrs. Weasley, clutching a handkerchief to her mouth.

“Here, Molly, let me,” said Lupin. He waved his wand over her head and muttered something. Mrs. Weasley’s expression cleared at once.

“Oh, that’s better,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Mum--what are you guys doing here?” asked Ron, retrieving his jaw. “Guests aren’t due for another two weeks!”

“Somebody sure told you wrong,” said Mr. Weasley, adjusting his glasses. “Though I must say, the twins could have set us down in a better spot. We’ll have a fair walk up to the castle from here.”

“Aw, they did fine, Dad,” said one of his sons, a tall, ponytailed youth Harry identified as Bill. “Everybody else’ll be landing up on the front lawn; at least down here we’ve got room to breathe.”

Harry stopped short. “Everybody else?” he said, glancing at Ron.

Doors’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, sure,” she said. “It’s like the World Cup, Harry; they’ve got to stagger the arrivals a bit so the Muggles won’t notice.”

Ron snorted. “As if a Muggle’s not going to notice that thing,” he said, jerking his head at the sleigh. “The decorations were Dad’s idea, weren’t they?”

Mrs. Weasley shot her husband an exasperated glare, but Doors laughed.

“Well, I think it looks wonderful,” she said, surveying the brilliant object with squinted eyes. “Besides, you know those Muggles--one light in the sky and they’re screaming UFO.” She glanced up at the heavens, her breath rising up and covering her flyaway bangs in frost. “Well, it can’t be long before everyone else gets here, so let’s get all your things up to the castle before the stampede.”

She, Sirius, and Lupin set to unpacking the sleigh, while the twins pulled Ron and Harry aside. Each was carrying a very suspicious-looking knapsack.

“Our contributions,” they grinned, opening the sacks to reveal the most frightening assortment of pranks Harry had ever seen.

“We need to hide this and the rest of it in your dormitory,” said Fred.

Harry was about to ask just what the ‘rest of it’ was, but at that moment the air was filled once more with the sound of sleigh bells--about then thousand of them. Harry’s mouth fell open as a great spot of multicolored light appeared glowing through the clouds, spreading like heat on a woodstove.

“Holy.....” he started, but his voice failed him as, one by one, almost five hundred sleighs, toboggans, and bobsleds came swooping down toward Hogwarts. They dipped down through the clouds all around him, drawn by anything from owls to raccoons, and every last one was decked out in Christmas decorations (though none was half so bright as the Weasleys’.)

“Hey, Harry, look at that!” cried Ron, pointing.

Harry turned, and nearly burst out laughing at the sight of an enormous green creation, covered in flashing shamrocks and sporting a Muggle disco ball. The freckled, sandy-haired woman driving it could only be Seamus Finnigan’s mother, who, Harry remembered, had a Muggle husband. She zipped aggressively past a man who looked astoundingly like Pansy Parkinson, who shook his fist at her and earned himself a shamrock in the face.

By this time, half the windows in the castle were filled with gawking students, who obviously hadn’t been expecting this any more than Ron and Harry. Several people recognizing their parents shouted and waved, while others searched the sky for some sign of ‘their’ sleigh. The leaden, twilit sky was filled with little flashing lights and the clangor of bells, and more kept appearing through the clouds.

“See, I told you so,” said Bill, as the professors and the Weasleys started floating their luggage up to the castle. Harry had to admit he’d had a point when they crested the small ridge, and found themselves faced with a traffic jam that made Muggle highways look calm and simple. It was plain these witches and wizards weren’t used to parking in a crowd, for already there had been several collisions, and Hagrid could be seen breaking up a potential duel.

“No, you cursed idiot, left! Your OTHER left!”

Harry whirled around, a sudden damper stomped on his high spirits--that voice could only belong to one person.

Lucius Malfoy sat atop an enormous, ornate, Slytherin-green bobsled, shouting furiously at his harassed-looking driver. His wife, a slender, aristocratic blonde woman, was turning up her nose at the commotion.

Lucius’s temper was definitely not improved by Mrs. Finnigan, who went speeding by and sent a wave of snow over his sled, knocking the driver clear off and into the drifts.

“You stupid woman, look what you’ve done to my sleigh!” he thundered, quite forgetting his dignity. Mrs. Finnigan responded by backing her sled up and starting a terrific row with Mr. Malfoy, her thick Irish brogue ringing out over the din. Both their spouses looked downright alarmed, and it looked like Mr. Malfoy was about to pull out his wand and curse Mrs. Finnigan when Doors’s voice rang out and cut them off short.

“Lucius! Shivon! Long time, no see!”

Both turned, their quarrel forgotten at once, and gawked at her for a full minute before Mrs. Finnigan hopped down and threw her arms around Doors’s neck.

“Lorna! Faith, Seamus told me ye’d died, ye scoundrel! What d’ye mean by pullin’ a joke like that?”

Doors caught Harry’s eye and smirked in a way that said, “Here we go again.”

Lucius had helped his wife out of the sleigh and sent her off with their butler. He was looking from Doors to Harry with an extremely odd expression on his face. Harry tensed, thinking he might decide to get curse-happy after all, when he did something so vastly out of character that Harry nearly choked--shoving Mrs. Finnigan aside, he caught Doors in a rib-crushing hug, looking as though Christmas had just come early.

“Don’t you EVER scare me like that again!” he snarled, pulling away from her and shaking her shoulders. “Letting us all believe you’d died, really--”

He seemed to notice Harry’s mouth hanging open wide enough to catch flies, for he laughed his usual cold laugh and said, “Don’t gawk so, Potter; surely you knew there was scarcely a person in school Lorna didn’t get along with. Only Gryffindor I didn’t hate,” he added, shooting Sirius and Lupin a sneer that was much more like his old self. “Remember that.” He hurried to join his wife in the entrance hall, leaving Harry and Ron to continue gaping.

“Well, that was.....interesting,” said Ron, as Mr. Finnigan hopped nervously off his sled and joined them. His face was so pale as he stared after Mr. Malfoy that Hermione, who had come out wrapped up in a bright red cloak, burst out laughing.

“You....you....you knew about this, didn’t you?” Ron burst out, as Hermione doubled over and fairly howled. “When you said you had a feeling something worthwhile would happen today--why didn’t you tell us? For crying out loud, how’d you even find out in the first place?”

Hermione wiped her streaming eyes, hiccoughing clouds into the frozen air. “I overheard Professor McGonagall at lunch the other day,” she gasped, ducking as a stray owl flew overhead. “And--well--oh, you should have seen the looks on your faces!”

“Regular Kodak moment, eh, Hermione?” said Doors, adjusting her scraggy cloak. Ron stared blankly, but Harry snickered a bit. “Come on, you people, let’s get inside before we all freeze to death.” Doors grabbed Harry and Lupin’s hands and swung them both through the snow, closely followed by Ron and Sirius. Hermione, still hiccoughing, made her way through the snow beside them, and (with no small difficulty) the little group fought a path back to the castle.

The chaos within the school was even greater than that outside. The entrance hall was far more crowded than it ever was at the start of term, with grown-ups milling about in confusion and children scrambling to find their parents.

“Good Lord,” said Harry, fighting back a laugh as he spotted Neville’s grandmother through the fray, whacking the Malfoy’s butler with her handbag.

“Harry, you get the feeling we’re in for it now?” asked Ron, as Mrs. Longbottom rounded on Mr. Malfoy and proceeded to give him what for, her vulture-topped hat flopping back and forth.

“Well, Lucius certainly is,” snorted Sirius, as Mrs. Malfoy dragged her husband away from the fuming Mrs. Longbottom.

“Shouldn’t you teachers be doing something about that?” asked Hermione, now recovered enough to speak properly.

Lupin chuckled. “Hermione, we went to school with most of these people,” he said. “You think they’re going to listen to us? No, it’s going to take someone with authority.....”

He trailed off, for no sooner had he said this than McGonagall appeared at the head of the marble staircase, a look of such sternness on her face Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if she had turned to stone herself.

“Really now,” she said, sounding for all the world as though she were admonishing a class, “How old are you all? Your children are able to get settled every year without incident, and I would certainly hope you’d be capable of doing the same.”

And to Harry’s amazement, the hall filled with fully-grown witches and wizards grew as subdued as a group of abashed first-years. He almost laughed at the hold McGonagall still had on them all, but at that moment Dumbledore appeared in the doorway to the Great Hall.

“Ah, memoirs of the good old days,” he said, after surveying the scene for a moment. “Minerva, if you’ll allow me to take over, I’d like to welcome our guests properly.” His eyes twinkled merrily..

McGonagall looked somewhat embarrassed, but complied, and soon a whole throng of parents and students were trooping into the Great Hall.

Whatever forewarning the students might have lacked, the teachers had evidently been preparing for their visitors--alongside each of the four long House tables stood a second, decked out in its respective color and set for a banquet. The adults, getting the general idea, filed over to the spare tables and stood waiting for the staff.

Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen an odder spectacle. Somehow the sight of all those parents, all those friends and enemies and comrades of all different ages, gathered (fairly) peacefully together in the place all had in common, struck him as a bizarre and singularly wonderful thing. No matter what they’d gone on to do in their later lives (and several of the people he could see had done some real doozies), all of them owed life, livelihood, and education to this one stone building in the middle of Scottish nowhere.

He shook his head. As fascinating as it was to watch Mrs. Finnigan chatting with Lavender Brown’s mother like old friends (which, Harry reminded himself, they doubtless were), he soon found his eyes wandering. Mr. Malfoy and Draco were both smirking, while Crabbe and Goyle, whose parents looked like larger carbon copies of them, stared with dim greed at the empty plates.

The staff table was a good deal more animated even than usual, as McGonagall attempted to live down her little ‘lapse’ and the three Marauders held a discreet silverware fight behind one of the centerpieces. The table seemed somehow fuller than normal, but Harry couldn’t place how--

“Oh, how corking,” he muttered, elbowing Ron in the ribs. “Look who descended from the bat cave.”

Professor Trelawney, wearing a red sequined dress and more jewelry than Harry would have thought possible, had seated herself near the far end of the table. She had sat next to Snape, who, Harry noticed, was eying her like something that had just crawled out of a storm drain.

“And this isn’t even everybody?” gawked Ron, staring about the crowded hall.

“Not by half,” said Hermione, straightening her cloak.

“Where are they all going to sleep?” Ron demanded weakly.

“Ron, you prat,” said George, wedging in between he and Hermione. “Are we wizards or not? Dumbledore’ll work something out.”

The Hall was now largely settled, and silence fell as Dumbledore stood and raised his arms.

“Welcome,” he said, beaming out at them all. “First off, I must apologize to the students for the lack of forewarning and shock I believe we’ve given them--you probably should have been in on this, but we staff members felt you could use the surprise.

“Now, you all know why we’re gathered here, and why more of our alumni will be joining us shortly. We’ll be celebrating a wedding at the end of this month--” Harry could see him suppressing a grin; this one was the money shot “--the wedding of former professor Gilderoy Lockhart to Miss Marjorie Dursley.”

From the reaction in the Hall, the adults had been caught just as off-guard as the students had. Several witches (who had clearly once been Lockhart fans) gave little shrieks, and Harry heard Mr. Finnigan muttering to his wife, “Lockhart? Isn’t he that idiot who erased his own memory?”

Dumbledore raised his hands once more. “If you’ll allow me,” he said, and the babble died down. “I wish to welcome you all back to Hogwarts, and advise you to tuck in on this feast before it gets stone cold. Sleeping arrangements have already been made, and your luggage is being settled as we speak.”

He sat down, and the plates before them filled.

 

 

The feast went on for hours, well into the night and a bit of the next morning, as old friends caught up and banded together to embarrass their children. At one point Mrs. Finnigan remarked to Mrs. Brown, “Ye know, Seamus often writes of your daughter,” followed by a knowing wink that made both Lavender and Seamus go eight shades of scarlet, and Hermione snort into her goulash.

At long last they trooped up to bed, collapsing in contented apathy to sleep until noon.

“Well, one thing’s for sure,” yawned Ron, crawling into his four-poster. “We keep having feasts like this, I’m going to need bigger dress robes.”