Harry Potter and the Brotherhood of the Besotted

Chapter 8: A Night Full of Surprises

While the other boys in Ron and Harry's room bemoaned the tight security placed on them that night, Ron found the situation very reassuring. Fifth year students had been escorted to the doors of their dormitories and, even though those doors had not been locked (Ron supposed access to the bathrooms during the night was still necessary) all students had been warned that they were not permitted to leave their rooms without a prefect's permission. Prefects had been posted down in the common room to stand watch all night. It would be impossible for a fifth year student to leave Gryffindor Tower that evening. To Ron's relief, whatever Hermione had in store for Snape would have to wait until the morning.

Harry was already asleep in bed when Ron returned from dinner. Ron thought guiltily that maybe he had hit him with the Sleepwalker Jinx rather hard. He really oughtn't to use his wand when he was so angry. Harry had been tightly tucked in and his Quidditch robes were lying on his bedspread, folded in a perfect square. This strongly suggested that Winky had helped Harry from his chair in the common room to his dormitory four-poster bed.

With nothing else to do, the rest of the roommates all opted to go to bed relatively early. "At least I can dream of her," Dean Thomas sighed disconsolately, before nodding off. Ron insisted that Neville take his "bloomin' heather" into his bed with him and close the curtains. It was the only way that Ron was able to stop sneezing.

In the middle of the night, the wind moaned loudly between the towers of Hogwarts Castle. Snow was falling in vast drifts. At first Ron thought he was being deafened by the wind - he dreamt he was back on the cloisters, his face being stung by the ice in the air. Then the hand of Harry Potter slapped him across the face again, wrenching Ron to consciousness.

"What have you done with it?" wailed Harry.

"Whazza, what's up?" Ron asked sleepily, peering into the darkness to see where his friend had gone. Harry was now bending over the trunk at the foot of his own bed, rummaging through his belongings.

"You know," he said accusingly to Ron. Ron saw something glinting in Harry's hand by the illumination of a wand, something shining and rectangular. Harry had placed his drawing of McGonagall in a silver frame.

"What are you up to?" Ron asked.

"Not nearly enough, thanks to you. How can I get close enough to give this to her, if I can't find it?" Harry complained.

"Find what? Get close to what? Whatever it is, I don't have it, Harry. Good night." Ron rolled over. He'd had enough of Harry's lunacy. But instead of drifting off to sleep, Ron's mind snapped back into alertness. What if Harry was looking for his Invisibility Cloak? What if Hermione had taken it? Ron grabbed his wand and bolted from the room, shouting, "Barley Water," all the way down to the portrait hole. He didn't even notice when an overweight orange cat made the jump through the portrait with him.

Ron had made not the slightest pretence at stealth in his flight from the Gryffindor Tower. Luckily he caught the two prefects who had dozed off in the common room's armchairs by surprise. He was not so lucky when he leapt through the portrait hole into the corridor. Cho Chang was on sentinel duty there and Ron had to knock her over to make his way down the Gryffindor Tower staircase. Soon Cho and her two fellow prefects were chasing him.

Ron's first instinct was to run directly to Snape. That must be where Hermione was heading. So Snape's apartments in the Slytherin dungeons would be where the night's calamity was going to unfold. Ron ran down dark staircases and through narrow, dank tunnels, trying desperately to remember the way Draco Malfoy had once, unwittingly, guided him to the Slytherins' rooms. However, as he ran he realised that he would need a password to enter the Slytherins' lair. Even worse, the Slytherin fifth years were more than likely to be under house arrest too. The three prefects chasing him would probably have three more prefects to help them if he went directly to Professor Snape. The chance of anybody believing his story about Invisibility Cloaks, which were very rare and valuable, would be slim. Ron changed his direction suddenly and darted back up a long, steep staircase, through an anteroom, and along a wide passageway which he hoped led towards Dumbledore's rooms.

Professor McGonagall had recently moved out of Gryffindor Tower, a fact that made Ron's quest to find her considerably more difficult. Over the Christmas holidays she had decided that, since Professor Dumbledore would be unlikely to return to the school before the end of the academic year, and since the job of acting headmistress required her to entertain the Board of Governors and various benefactors all too frequently in the state rooms adjoining Dumbledore's private chambers, it would be sensible to relocate her own Spartan furnishings and few belongings to one of the unused bedrooms in Dumbledore's suite. Ron ran back to the main entrance of the castle and soon found himself at the entrance to the Headmaster's rooms.

There was no prefect guard outside these chambers. There didn't need to be. Dumbledore's rooms were protected by a portrait hole, which it would be impossible to enter without the proper password. Ron was a little confused to see that a portrait of a kindly and wise wizard in a tam-o'shanter had replaced the stone gargoyle that had stood its ground outside Dumbledore's office last year. "Cockroach cluster," said Ron breathlessly to the venerable wizard in the portrait.

"Young man," he replied, "you are behind the times. I cannot let you pass."

Ron stood perplexed. Harry had told him, after the Triwizard Tournament, that "cockroach cluster" was Dumbledore's password. Obviously, the password had been changed, perhaps by Dumbledore, but more likely by McGonagall. What could it be? "Merlin's beard!" exclaimed Ron under his breath. Then he began to rattle off phrases as rapidly as he could manage. "Gryffindor House, Quidditch, Scotch Thistle, Scottish Reel, Lads and Lassies, Transfigurations, Cat-nip, Kitty Litter oh bugger, bugger, BUGGER!" He could hear feet pounding on the stone floors in the distance. The prefects were about to catch up with him.

Ron was too overwrought, or his heart was thumping too loudly, to hear far more dainty and nimble feet running towards him as well. From out of the darkness, Crookshanks appeared. Stopping purposefully in front of the painting, Crookshanks looked up and announced, "Meow."

"Thank you, step right this way," the venerable wizard said obligingly, as cat and boy walked through the gap in the wall together. Moments later, the prefects arrived to find the corridor empty and the venerable wizard feigning sleep.

Entering Dumbledore's reception chamber via the moving spiral staircase, Ron was overcome by an inexplicable fit of sneezing. This caused a sleepy Professor McGonagall to call from her bedroom, "Who is that?"

Ron walked through the darkness in the direction of the professor's call as he spoke. "Professor, it's me, Ron Weasley. I need you to come with me to the Slytherin dungeons. I think Snape's in danger, or maybe Hermione is, any way, it's bound to be dangerous so we'd better go at once."

Professor McGonagall looked surprised to find an intruder in her bedroom. However, luckily for Ron, she appeared to be more amused than annoyed as she sat up in her bed, her green nightcap tied in a bow under her chin. Putting on her spectacles, she gently admonished Ron. "Mr Weasley, you'll need more than a fanciful story like that to whisk me away."

Ron was on the verge of grabbing her and forcibly taking her back to the Slytherin dungeons with him, when Crookshanks jumped up onto the bed and let out a strangled yowl. McGonagall's smile immediately left her, as she looked the cat directly in the eyes, saying, "Oh my, that is serious." She took up her wand, threw on a dressing gown and collected Crookshanks up under one arm, before commanding, "Quickly boy, you'd better come with us."

If the prefects of Slytherin house were taken aback by a midnight visit from their acting headmistress, they were positively affronted by the appearance of Ron Weasley and his threadbare, maroon pyjamas. "His kind can't come in here, Professor," one seventh year girl tried to explain. "It's not his house." McGonagall strode past the girl, sniffing with distaste as the girl said the password, "Basilisk's Revenge." The professor signalled to Ron for him to follow her through the long, narrow underground common room. Down a spiral staircase at the end of the hall, a panelled oak door stood on a landing. Minerva McGonagall opened the door to reveal a windowless but meticulously neat and strangely characterless sitting room, illuminated only by a clump of phosphorescent toadstools growing in a corner. She walked to the door on the far side of this room and touched the keyhole with her wand while she whispered, "Alohomora." The instant the door opened Crookshanks jumped from Professor McGonagall's arms.

As the door opened slowly, the first thing Ron saw was a rumpled bed. Somebody had spilt a goblet of something brown on one of the pillows and there was a maroon velvet cloth draped over the bed head. The next thing Ron could see was Professor Snape, standing next to the bed with his back to the door. Snape was barefoot and wearing an alarming long dark green nightshirt with a silver snake motif. A few of the buttons of the night shirt had come undone, so that one of Snape's pale, bony shoulder blades could be seen protruding from the neckline of the shirt. A large orange cat was digging its claws mercilessly into Snape's right calf, a fact that seemed not to trouble Severus Snape in the least.

The next thing Ron noticed was that someone was on the other side of Professor Snape - someone had their arms around him, and one of that person's hands was holding two wands. Stepping into the room Ron realised that Snape was holding and lovingly kissing a young witch in periwinkle blue dress robes, whose normally bushy brown hair had been tied back in a sleek bun.

"Expelliramus!" commanded a stern voice, and both wands flew out of Hermione Granger's hand into Minerva McGonagall's waiting grasp.

"Er, Corpus Petronius," said Ron in a panic. Snape instantly stopped what he was doing and uttered an inarticulate cry of surprise. Hermione's arms were still wrapped around Snape's back. They turned to stone so that, as she crashed onto the bed behind her, she brought Snape down too. Severus Snape squealed in horror, and then wriggled free from Hermione's stony embrace. He crawled into a corner of the room and crouched on the floor with his arms gripped around his knees. Crookshanks hissed at him as he sat, cowering and shaking, with blood running down his right ankle.

Professor McGonagall surveyed the damage on the bed matter-of-factly. "Even if you believed that the Professor was acting under an Imperius Curse, Mr Weasley, a simple stupefying spell would have counteracted the effect just as easily," she scolded. The Transfiguration teacher also picked up the reddish brown cloth and looked at it intently. "How very unusual," she said. Then she sniffed the goblet, recoiling from the smell. "Oh dear, Severus, that can't have been good for you. I think we'd better get you to the hospital wing at once."

* * * * * * *

Poppy Pomfrey was singularly unimpressed by the ring of the nurse's bell in the wee small hours of Sunday morning. For the last sixteen hours she had tended the injuries of lovesick students, some self-inflicted and some inflicted by jealous rivals. Most of these afflictions had been minor - even Pansy Parkinson had been discharged to her dormitory by the end of the day. Gregory Goyle had been more seriously hurt, but now he lay sedated and spreadeagled on a hospital bed, leaving no passer-by in any doubt as to what a Slytherin wears under his kilt.

Poppy was used to treating maladies of a physical or magical nature, and would not have minded if these were all that the day had brought. However, the thing that had really made her lose her patience as Saturday afternoon wore on was the number of perfectly healthy students coming to her to seek medi-wizarding aid for purely cosmetic reasons. Several boys wished to be taller, or more muscular. One small boy even came in looking for a charm for facial hair. Girls invariably wanted to be thinner. Nobody seemed to like his or her nose anymore. And some of the engorgement charms she had been asked to perform (which she had always flatly refused) didn't bear thinking about.

Madam Pomfrey had eventually retired exhausted to her quarters to sleep. The sound of the nurse's bell was about as welcome as a mountain troll at a dinner party. She came, yawning, back into the infirmary ready to severely reprimand whoever dared disturb her rest, but thought better of it when she realised the bell ringer was her employer.

"We've had a spot of bother, Poppy," said Minerva McGonagall. "This one's petrified," she indicated Hermione Granger, whose grey stone form was floating alongside Madam Pomfrey's desk. "And Professor Snape still appears to be confunded, perhaps due to this," she said as she handed the goblet to the medi-witch. Professor Snape had been led by the arm all the way from the dungeons and was now staring at the ceiling and humming.

Madam Pomfrey sniffed the cup with distaste before placing it on her desk "I think I might need to look that one up," she said. "Let's see about this little girl first."

She made a quick examination of Hermione, tapping her gently in several places with a small rock hammer. "Oh dear, Miss Granger," she said to her patient, "petrified again, I see. I won't be able to fetch the Mandrakes from the greenhouses in this weather. You might just have to stay like for a little while." She floated Hermione over to a corner of the room, standing her upright so that she looked like a statue.

Professor Snape picked up the rock hammer from the desk and held it within inches of his face, examining it from every angle. Then he hit himself in the nose with it. Professor McGonagall gently took the hammer away from him, talking to him in the sort of tone people usually reserve for very small children. "Severus, can I have that please? Thank you, that's a good boy," she said.

Madam Pomfrey had taken an enormous book from her shelf, entitled Moste Potente Potions. "Let's see what this is then," she said as she swirled the dregs of the malodorous brown potion around in the goblet and dipped her wand tentatively into the residue. Turning the pages of the book, she came upon a description that sounded promising and began to read aloud.

"Bellamy's Brown Befuddling Brew," Poppy read, "will confound the clearest mind. However, it is difficult to administer to a victim because the overpowering stench makes it almost impossible to drink."

"I think she might have poured it down the professor's throat while he was sleeping," volunteered Professor McGonagall.

"Who did?" asked Madam Pomfrey, genuinely surprised. "Minerva, are you telling me that Miss Granger administered this foul stuff to the professor?"

"That is certainly how things appear to me," said Professor McGonagall crossly.

Madam Pomfrey found this hard to accept, not only because Hermione was something of a favourite of hers, but because the authors of Moste Potente Potions stated categorically that Bellamy's Brown Befuddling Brew was a Class 4 potion. Sale of such a potion to a minor child was against the law. "No, no, no, that can't be," Madam Pomfrey began to say, but her voice trailed away as she read the next paragraph of her book. The authors mentioned that it was possible to synthesise the brew, given a couple of ingredients and a few hours stewing time. Poppy was alarmed to read that Percepto-Brite could be used to make the brown potion, because she knew that many of the students routinely used Percepto-Brite, especially around examination time. The second ingredient required to concoct Bellamy's Brown Befuddling Brew was Gribble Weed.

"How odd," murmured Madam Pomfrey to herself. She had always thought that Gribble Weed was only good for hiccups.

"What's that, Poppy?" asked McGonagall in an exasperated voice. The acting headmistress was now trying to prevent the Potions Master from crawling under the hospital beds.

"Nothing, nothing," said Madam Pomfrey. She didn't want Professor McGonagall to know that she had handed a student the ingredients to make a Class 4 potion. "I'll just whip up the antidote. Perhaps you'd better put Professor Snape in here while I do," she said, leading both professors to the hospital bed closest to the window and drawing the curtains around them.

* * * * * * *

Ron Weasley stood by the door to the infirmary, feeling every bit as confunded as Severus Snape. He had said hardly a word on his way up from the dungeons and had been standing so quietly that Madam Pomfrey might not have even noticed he was there at all. Crookshanks had been sitting on the ground next to Ron, but now padded over to the corner where Hermione stood. The cat began to rub his furry head against the skirt of Hermione's petrified robes and to purr reassuringly. Ron followed the cat and stared at Hermione.

He had seen his friend petrified before, when a Basilisk had attacked her in second year. That time, her face had been frozen in terror. This time, she looked like the statue of a ballroom dancer, with her arms raised to hold an invisible partner. Ron was nearly the same height as Professor Snape and, standing in front of Hermione, it almost seemed to him like her arms were inviting him to dance. Her eyes were closed but it was the smile on her face that fascinated Ron. She was happier than he had ever seen her - rapturously happy. Ron was just beginning to convince himself that, if he ever chose to think of Hermione Granger as a girl, which he didn't, that he would probably think of her as an uncommonly pretty girl. But then Ron remembered. She had been kissing Snape. The reason that Hermione was the happiest of witches was because she had been kissing Snape. "EEEEwwww," said Ron.

The curtains of the hospital bed flicked open and Professor Snape, confunded no more, strode out. He stared at Ron with open malevolence. "Mister Weasley," he hissed, "you will now explain what you knew about this." His bony fingers pointed at Hermione.

"Really, Severus," Professor McGonagall said calmly as she too appeared from behind the curtains, "Mr Weasley was the student who came to fetch me. He was the one who saved you." Her mouth twitched into a tiny smile as she said these last words.

"Well, we shall see," said Severus Snape, reaching for a phial of Veritaserum. It was the last thing that Ron recalled for quite a while.

The stone floor seemed to be lurching and swaying underneath Ron as he walked back to Gryffindor Tower. Professor McGonagall walked with him as far as the portrait hole. Ron hadn't noticed it before, but the professor was still carrying the maroon velvet fabric she had taken from Snape's bedroom. When they reached the fat lady, McGonagall handed the cloth to Ron, saying, "The name tag on this shows that it belongs to you."

Ron took the fabric uncertainly and realised with surprise that he was holding his old dress robes. His surprise turned to astonishment when he draped the robes over his arm. His arm immediately vanished.

* * * * * * *

Returning to her own rooms, the dawn light starting to appear on the horizon, Minerva McGonagall mused that it had truly been a night full of surprises. She had burst in on a monkish colleague while he was in a passionate embrace with her most conscientious student. She had heard a young man admit to things under Veritaserum that she had never heard any man say to her in almost sixty years. And then there was the little mystery of the perfume in her rooms.

Mewling and stepping through the portrait hole, she smelt it again. Immediately memories of her happy childhood in the highlands came flooding back; of riding on a broom behind her father high above purple heath. She was a little perplexed to notice James Potter's Invisibility Cloak draped over her reception room settee. But she was utterly amazed when she walked into her bedroom, to find her bed totally covered in heather. Asleep in the middle of it, contentedly snoring, was Neville Longbottom.