"soaring part 3" by gingerbred
May. 30th, 2023 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
christmasspiritchapter 03 administration
Characters: Harry Potter / Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall, the Fat Lady, Ron Weasley
12 September, 1998. Harry tells Hermione what happened. Naturally she doesn't feel they can leave things at that.
Originally Published: 2023-05-30 on LJ / DW
Words: 2.6 k
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Characters: Harry Potter (8G, Captain, Seeker), Hermione Granger (8G, Head Girl), Minerva McGonagall (Headmistress), the Fat Lady (Gryffindor's guardian portrait), Ron Weasley (8G, Prefect, Keeper)
Mentioned: Neville Longbottom (newly minted Herbology Apprentice and Head of Gryffindor), Draco Malfoy (8S, Prefect, Captain, Seeker), Pansy Parkinson (8S, Prefect), Severus Snape (Head of Slytherin and Deputy Headmaster), portraits in the Headmistress' office
Previously:
The previouslies are very robust. If you've recently read the Christmas Spirit stories, skip them, if not, no worries, I've got you covered. You can find links to the individual stories / chapters in the "christmas spirit index" (LJ / DW / AO3).
Summer 1998. As it's considered crucial to have as many of the posts at the school as possible in trusted hands, and those prove in much shorter supply than one might hope, Neville finds himself with a largely unanticipated promotion when he begins his Herbology apprenticeship in the autumn. CS
12 September, 1998. A group of masked individuals attack Draco and Pansy, the 8th year Slytherin Prefects, as they make their rounds. Harry and Ron, coincidentally in the vicinity as they've snuck out for some late night flying, come to their rescue. A Spell of Malfoy's seems to indicate eight of the attackers were Turkeys, one a 'Puff, and the last was one of the Gryffindors. S 02
24 December, 1998. When Ron is determined to have deployed dangerous contraband in the Hogwarts corridors, Neville gives him an entire term's worth of detentions. CS
Saturday, 12 September 1998
Gryffindor common room and Hogwarts corridorsWhen they reach their dorm, Harry sends his Patronus to retrieve Hermione before Ron has even disappeared from sight. Ron pretends not to hear - there had to be some advantages to no longer dating her after all - and proceeds to their room, hoping to get some kip. Harry'd been spot on, taking action had helped set him right - more the fighting than the flying, naturally - but the adrenaline crash leaves Ron exhausted, bone tired, and he can't imagine anything good will come of alerting 'Mione to this mess.
An instantly alert Hermione - the past year had left its mark on them all - Summons her clothes and is still throwing them on even as she follows the stag back to where Harry waits in their common room. It hadn't dissipated; it would seem he'd felt she'd required an escort, as if the Patronus would be of any help if flick came to swish.
He doesn't really want to talk about it, any of it, but oddly he trusts Malfoy's Spell implicitly, and if they have a - potential - predator in the House, a sex pest, she needs to know. Soonest. The story is nearly as much a mess as the incident itself, but Hermione sits listening attentively - albeit paling - as he tries to explain things in a remotely coherent fashion, and when he finally finishes, she nods, determined, jaw stubbornly set... And then the first thing she does is take an absolute fuck ton of points. "Four hundred points from Ravenclaw. Fifty points from Hufflepuff. Fifty points from Gryffindor." That last would hurt, except Harry is too busy panicking, he can just picture what Ron will have to say about this, and then he nearly laughs - so inappropriately - when she turns and says, "I could award points for you and Ron coming to their aid, but that would rather undo the punishment for the attack. You don't mind if I don't give you any, do you?" He just shakes his head in wonderment.
When he recovers sufficiently, he hisses, "McGonagall!" his panic returning in force at the very thought of her reaction, but Hermione only grabs his arm and tugs him towards the portrait hole. He has a sinking feeling that Ron might have had the better plan here.
"We'll need to talk to her anyway," 'Mione breaks it to him matter-of-factly; as he's still in denial, it was probably necessary.
When they reach the entrance to their dorms, Hermione pauses to ask the Fat Lady who had entered before Harry and Ron. The portrait, clearly a bit put out, points out that she couldn't even say it had been Harry and Ron who'd entered, could she?, and when Hermione looks to him in query, he just pats his pocket, where she now assumes a Reducioed Cloak could be found. Right.
"Seemed wisest," he shrugs. Technically it complicates things a little as the Headmistress is likely to have the same questions, and optimally the answer probably shouldn't reveal that little bit of inherited contraband. The differences between her management style and Dumbledore's are non-trivial. Well it can't be helped now, but perhaps Hermione can head off the Headmistress' interrogation.
"So the second to last person to enter the dorms..."
"I couldn't see them either," the Fat Lady sniffles again, affectedly. "It would seem a good number of students are in possession of things they ought rather not have." Harry begins to see the problem here.
"But they knew the password," Hermione checks.
"If I let them in, you may rest assured, they did. The things I endure..." She heaves the very weariest of sighs.
"Right. Well thank you." Adding as a quick afterthought, "I never doubted you for a moment," which seems at least a little at odds with her question, but it never hurts to try to keep the portraits onside, especially if they may be asked to testify against your best friends. And with that she pulls Harry through the portrait hole and sets off briskly towards the stairs.
"We could go see Neville," Harry offers a little desperately. Neville, as bizarre as that had seemed, had become the new Head of Gryffindor when he started his Herbology apprenticeship this year. The Headmistress could hardly be expected to continue in a dual role, and Harry should have expected... well, something, but you could have knocked him over with one of Flitwick's feathers when he'd first heard the news. Ron had just started laughing hysterically when he was told and hadn't stopped until Neville had finally had to give him detention, because he can apparently do that now. Harry figures it was shock more than anything else that finally put an end to Ron's laughter. As a whole, Harry prefers not to think about that bit of absurdity - Neville, Head of House - but just now it isn't unwelcome. It's clearly preferable to the alternative.
The look Hermione shoots him is pitying. She has a point. Neville isn't going to be of any help here, Harry knows that, he's just reluctant, really reluctant, to go see the Headmistress.
"I got the feeling that Parkinson didn't want anyone to know..." he tries next, as Hermione leads the way relentlessly to Professor McGonagall's new quarters.
"Do you even know if you got there on time, before anything happened to her?" she asks him directly.
Which...
Fuck.
That nauseous sensation from earlier returns tenfold, because that thought hadn't occurred to him. Cheers. He's unlikely to forget it now. He doesn't answer, and Hermione just seems determined to make things worse. "It may not even matter that much, because the damage was very likely done just by the attack itself. At some point the increments of harm become less relevant than the completely rational fear that accompanied it." Harry's not okay with that thought either. Of course Parkinson is obviously far worse off... His stomach rebels again.
"As much as I'd like to respect her wishes for privacy in this," Hermione at least manages to sound sincere, "if you're right about what was really about to take place..." Harry looks pretty damn sure, and of course she'd been equally sure he was. She wouldn't have taken four hundred points from another House just as a lark.
"Why did you want me to know about it?" She asks him more kindly, taking a different tack.
She's blinkered. "For fuck's sake, 'Mione, it's a potential threat... Someone like that. In our own House..."
"But then that's true for all the women and girls here, though, isn't it? Everyone needs to be safe."
He swallows, because of course she's right. Sometimes he hates that, now being a prime example. He does not want to have this conversation with the Headmistress.
It goes much better than he expects.
Hermione makes all the difference, though.
Saturday 12 - Sunday 13 September 1998
Headmistress' officeThere's the obvious question as to what Harry was even doing there in the first place, Ron was right, and of course Professor McGonagall leads with that. He doesn't mention his roommate, no sense landing him in it too, just that he'd desperately needed to get out, couldn't take being inside anymore, the walls were closing in on him...
Well clearly that isn't safe, which makes it a dreadful idea in addition to being against the rules.
"Ten points from Gryffindor," the Headmistress proclaims, without even so much as a twinge.
"Well I did just rescue the Slytherin Prefects," he objects, struggling to understand how he'd gone from Hermione offering him points for said rescue to this.
"And that's why it's only ten, Mr. Potter." Really, he can see why Hermione and Professor McGonagall get on so well. Peas in a pod, those two.
Somehow - in a leap of logic that has him wondering if he'd been hit by a hex after all and is simply imagining things - that leads to Hermione making it clear that the eighth years were all very much of age, and all this artificial curtailing of what should be their inalienable human rights... (She actually used the rule breaking as a segue - utterly mental - because she insists it shouldn't be a rule in the first place. Apparently. Harry finds her timing exceedingly counterintuitive.) But it seems that was on her list of issues in need of reform, in the middle of the night no less. Bold choice. Harry just goes very quiet, hoping whatever punishment McGonagall metes out next won't include him as well. 'Mione is on her own with this... But it was irrational, she maintains obstinately - clearly devoid of all common sense and self preservation instincts herself; there were reasons she was sorted into their House - to expect them to accept being treated as little children when they were clearly adults, never mind veterans of a terrible war...
"Be that as it may, Miss Granger, I repeat, it's quite demonstratively unsafe to have students wandering the school at night. We should hardly wish to increase their number."
Ultimately they aren't sure what had or would have happened, the witches eventually can agree, other than ten boys had apparently felt it was wise to lie in wait and ambush the two Slytherin Prefects. Harry, the only one of them who'd actually been present, finds that an overly clinical way to view it. If not thoroughly inaccurate, it comes damn close; he's smart enough to keep that to himself.
To be fair, the Headmistress feels pressed to explain, there had been issues the previous year when Malfoy and Parkinson were Head Boy and Head Girl respectively. As he and Hermione hadn't been there, she thinks they may not be aware of it. As if he'd never met Malfoy. Harry bites his tongue once more. "This very likely, almost definitely, shouldn't be viewed as a random attack on the school or its students, but more probably was a very targeted act of revenge..."
"Why did you permit them back as Prefects then?" Harry hears himself asking. He's overtired and needs to not be here.
"We discussed it at length," the Headmistress replies. So strangely, Harry registers that that 'we' somehow seems to include Hermione and he finds himself wondering what all she'd gotten up to at the school last summer. 'Rebuilding' indeed. "Ultimately we agreed taking that away would have made Mr. Malfoy's legal situation needlessly worse, and at any rate, despite his alliances last year, it would have been unwarranted based solely on his actions, which is all that should matter." Yeah, good luck with that. "Certainly nothing of this nature ever occurred," apparently meaning this evening's attack. "Professor Snape wouldn't have permitted it," she adds with a pang, as so often of late forced to recognise the fine line he'd balanced last year while they'd doubted his every move and greeted him with nothing shy of loathing and resistance where best they could. Malicious compliance, thy name is 'McGonagall'. She has much to atone for, rescuing Severus and the Malfoy boy from the Wizengamot and rehabilitating them in the eyes of the wizarding world will be two of her first achievements to at least begin balancing the scales even if they prove the very last things she does in her role as Headmistress.
"Stripping them of their Prefecthoods, particularly the ones who weren't even associated with the Death Eaters, sends altogether the wrong message. In light of the restrictions the disciplinary board placed on them, it hardly seemed wise to make the situation worse."
"Restrictions? What restrictions?" Harry asks, a niggling idea that this was one of the many things that had so infuriated Hermione over the summer. But as Ron had refused to listen after a point, and Harry was splitting his time between them... Well he'd missed the odd thing or another, now hadn't he?
"The majority of the Slytherin boys, certainly the older ones, have Traces on their wands, some of the young women as well..." she begins, and suddenly Malfoy's bizarre spell casting behaviour made a lot more sense. He wouldn't be able to use his wand for much of anything save maybe a Protego. Wingardium Leviosa is hardly of use in a fight. Bloody hell.
"How are they supposed to defend themselves?" He asks somewhat plaintively. He could swear one of the portraits sputters and coughs a faint, 'Hear, hear!' in approval.
"Mr. Potter, this is a school. Ideally they shouldn't be required to defend themselves."
Harry can't help thinking that they obviously can't be talking about Hogwarts, 'demonstratively unsafe' and all that, and he's about to say so, too, but Hermione gives him a good swift kick to the shins that even he can't misunderstand, and he again keeps it to himself. Trying, as self restraint really isn't his strong suit.
With the obvious signs of a great deal of practice, Hermione takes up the debate again, and the women resume where they'd left off before his interruption, leaving Harry feeling rather surplus to requirements. Rubbing his shin from time to time, eventually more for something to do than to assuage any residual pain, he sits there now, silently watching them in some puzzlement, and finally gains some insight into how 'Mione must have spent much of her summer. The two witches discuss the eighth year privileges issue, and several more, with gusto, failing completely to note when exhaustion eventually leads Harry to take refuge on the room's little loveseat for a nap. He sleeps fitfully there for the night, waking periodically in confusion to the latest point of contention and potential solutions. Very obviously this isn't their first such session, and, bloody hell, Hermione does actually have a list in hand, which she's waving around without any trepidation. There's no way they get out of here without detention. Probably a string of them. Possibly for the rest of the year.
Nah, he can't imagine they'd ever do anything that extreme.
At least he hopes not.
Written with oodles of love for
lostangelsoul3.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-03 08:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-06-03 10:05 pm (UTC)Harry, bless, can be an entitled little muppet. lol
Thanks. I like my Moggie Management team, I'm glad you did too.