Disclaimer: As I said in Racing For Freedom, aka RFF, I now own my absolutely, out of control, crazy, hectic, insane life and I’d be completely willing to trade it for the ownership of Harry Potter.
Parenting Class
Potions Equal Trouble
Very important Author’s Note at end! Make sure to read!
“Guess,” Ginny smirked, looking smugly at the others.
“That’s not fair,” pouted Hermione. “Can we have a hint?”
“Two hints. One, it’s a boy and two, he’s a kid.”
“Ron didn’t do anything, did he?” asked Harry nervously, fearing for his friend.
“No, that little imp didn’t play a part in this,” Ginny assured Harry. “He was sitting calmly next to me during lunch when it happened and was too busy throwing grapes at Terry to do anything extremely horrible.”
Hermione’s eyes widened in horror. “It was Neville, wasn’t it?”
“The one and only. He didn’t mean to though.”
“Kid really is accident prone,” snorted Draco, shaking his head. “First he made Harry a teapot and then he set the entire Great Hall on fire.”
“How exactly did he manage to set the place on fire? Surely someone must have noticed before it got that bad.”
“I ran into Pansy and she explained. He knocked over one of the candles on the table, but instead of someone just casting a jet of water on it, one of the first years put gasoline on it. It blew up and injured a lot of the Slytherins pretty badly. That’s why Neville, Pansy, and Blaise and a ton of others are in the Hospital Wing. Fortunately, no one died, although one girl has some really bad burns all over her face.”
“That’s terrible,” Hermione murmured. “Does Madam Pomfrey need any help?”
“No, both her and Professor Sprout are up there right now and they’re doing fine. But anyway, after the first explosion, it caught onto one of the banners and just spread from there. Didn’t really help either when another first year shot kerosene at the fire.”
“Are all Slytherin first years that bad with spells?” asked Hermione, turning to Draco.
“I wasn’t,” the blond declared, sticking his nose up in the air. “I was actually one of the best.”
“Uh huh,” Ginny grinned.
“I was,” Draco protested. “No one can beat a Malfoy at anything.”
“What about Quidditch?”
“And Transfiguration?”
“And Charms?”
Draco groaned. “You didn’t have to say those.”
“It’s okay,” Ginny comforted, patting Draco on the shoulder. “We still love you, right Mione?” The glance she sent at Hermione made the girl blush and mumble a yes. “Don’t you two have Potions now?” she asked, glancing at her watch.
Hermione yelped. “Oh my God! We do! We’re late! Snape is going to kill us!”
“You forget,” Draco smirked. “You’re with a Slytherin.” Bidding hurried good byes to Ginny, who had a free period this hour, the trio dashed off for the dungeons, Harry riding piggyback on Draco.
Draco calmly entered the classroom and simply made his way to an open seat, Hermione following timidly behind and looking up at Snape, waiting for him to issue a detention. But just as Draco had said, Snape merely ignored them and continued with his teaching.
“-And make sure you add the beetle wings after the dandelion. You have exactly one hour to complete the potion. Begin.”
“Hi Harry,” chirped Ron, leaving his guardians and sitting down next to Harry, while Hermione and Draco dashed about the dungeon gathering ingredients. “Guess what?” he bubbled, before Harry could say anything. “See the teacher up there?” Harry nodded. “I poked him with a fork last night,” Ron whispered.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Harry commented, looking at Snape with pity.
“But it was really funny,” the redhead beamed. “I don’t think he’s very nice anyway. He yelled at Lavender when she wasn’t taking notes.”
“He’s being nice to Draco,” Harry observed. And indeed, the Potions master was handing Draco the ingredients he needed from behind his desk with a small smile on his face.
“He probably favors Slytherins,” Ron snorted. “I hope when I get to Hogwarts I’m sorted into Gryffindor. That’s where my mum and dad both were. And two of my brothers. Hey! Charlie and Bill should be here!” Ron gave an excited squeal and ran over to Lavender.
Unfortunately, he slipped on the stone floor and plowed into the Gryffindor, the ingredients in Lavender’s hands flying into the air and breaking around the room. “Lavender!” he cried, sitting on the stunned girl’s stomach and bouncing up and down. “Can you take me to see Bill and Charlie after class? Please? Please, please, please? Please with a cherry on top?”
“Who?” she asked, sitting gingerly up, Ron sliding down to her lap.
“My two oldest brothers! Bill should be in second year and Charlie should be in fourth! Can you please let me see them?”
“Oh…um…”
Hermione, overhearing the problem rushed in. “Ron sweetie, both of your brothers aren’t here right now.”
“They’re not?” The child’s lower lip quivered and all could sense he was about to throw a very noisy crying session.
“They went to the ministry to work with your dad for a little while. They’ll be back in three weeks.”
“They will?” Everyone around Ron nodded. “So I can see them then?” More nodding. “Okay,” he smiled, face turning up in a smile. A large sigh of relief went around and Lavender slowly stood up and Hermione went back to her cauldron with Ron and Harry tagging after her.
Draco was adding ingredients to his and Hermione’s potion, a scowl on his face, seeing as his robes had been covered with a green slime from Lavender’s ingredients. “Anyways,” said Ron, turning to Harry after seating himself comfortably next to the warm cauldron, “how bout we make this class more fun? Everyone’s so quiet.”
“But they’re all working. We really shouldn’t disturb them.”
“We’re just going to make it a little more interesting. Let’s go get Neville, I’m sure he’ll want to help.” Harry’s energetic friend pulled him across the room to a small brown haired boy crouched fearfully next to Blaise’s feet as he stirred his potion, Pansy giving instructions. “Hey Neville,” Ron grinned. “Want to help us?”
“Help with what?” the child asked nervously, not quite liking the smile on Ron’s face.
“We’re going to liven things up a bit. It’s too quiet in here.”
“But that man is scary,” Neville trembled, pointing in the vague direction of Snape. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“He isn’t scary,” Ron laughed. “He’s probably just really grumpy because it’s so quiet in here. Don’t you think a little noise would make him feel better?”
“I don’t know…my gran likes things really quiet when she’s cranky.”
Ron pouted. “You mean you don’t want to help me and Harry?”
“I don’t really want to be a part of this either,” Harry murmured. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“Please? I promise I’ll take the blame if anything goes wrong.”
Both hesitant children looked at each before they nodded slowly. “You’ll take the full blame,” Neville repeated, clarifying the decision.
“Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a broomstick in my eye.”
“So,” said Neville, “what exactly are we going to do?”
“I haven’t quite decided yet,” Ron admitted, turning a light pink. “Do you guys have any suggestions?”
“I try not to get in trouble or make a lot of noise,” Harry said. “So I don’t know anything.”
“I normally make trouble by accident,” Neville smiled sheepishly. “Like that thing back in that trans class. I’m sorry about that Harry,” he apologized. “And the fire in the Great Hall earlier. Although Pansy told me it wasn’t entirely my fault. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the right spell had been used.”
“Go make an accident then,” grinned the redhead.
“How do you make an accident? That would be doing something on purpose and then it wouldn’t be an accident,” Harry puzzled, brow crinkled in confusion.
“It can be a purposeful accident,” Ron smirked. “Go on Neville.”
“You do something first,” the brown haired boy said stubbornly.
“Okay. Remember how the man up there said how the dandelions had to be added before the wings of something? Why don’t we go put the wings in first? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Sneaking cautiously around the room, the troublemaker and his two sidekicks slipped a set of wings they found beside each person’s cauldron into the potion that was brewing. “See,” said Ron, after every pot had the wings inside. “Nothing bad happened at all.”
But it appeared that Ron had spoken to soon. A second later, each cauldron exploded, bright orange liquid splashing over everyone in the room, except Snape who had been too far to the front of the room to get drenched. Screams sounded and large clouds of smoke rose into the air, making seeing impossible.
Harry coughed, but was surprised to hear a rather different sound. Much like a snort a horse would make. Come to think of it, he felt taller too, and a bit more unbalanced. A loud, trumpeting noise filled the room a second later, bouncing off the walls and making Harry clamp his hands over his ears.
But as soon as he raised his arms, the child fell to the floor with a thump, an odd clattering sounding when his hands hit the stone. “Ventus pulsus,” Snape called from the front of the room, the smoke clearing away in an instant. All the students almost wished it hadn’t.
Harry glanced at his reflection in some of the orange liquid on the floor, large, green eyes widening in horror. The gentle, calm face of a young deer looked up at him, a lightning bolt scar on his head and two little nubs of antlers sticking up. “What happened?” he asked, surprised to hear his own voice issuing from the animal.
“I’d bloody well like to know,” snarled the voice of a very angry Slytherin. Looking to the right, Harry came face to face with a very mad silver colored wolf, eyes flashing in fury.
“Calm down,” soothed Hermione, patting Draco awkwardly on top of his head with one of her paws. The girl had been transformed into a sleek, brown otter and was quite a bit shorter then the wolf.
Every single student in the classroom had been changed into an animal, some of them really rather amusing. Pansy was a very dark golden colored giraffe and was currently kneeling on the ground with her neck bent towards the floor so she wouldn’t bump it on the ceiling. Blaise was a beagle and was sitting calmly on the floor, attempting to calm down the semi-hysterical giraffe.
Lavender had turned into a pure white Arabian horse with a brown mane that matched her hair perfectly. Terry was sitting by the front hoof of Lavender as a green crocodile, his jaw wide open with the teeth glimmering maliciously.
Neville cowered beneath Harry, the soft gray bunny rabbit completely terrified. “What did we do?” he whispered, trembling in fear.
“Who knows,” Ron growled, in the form of a small orange tiger cub. “But someone had better be able to fix this.”
Crabbe was sitting in the corner of the room as a baby grizzly bear and Goyle, one of his guardians, was sitting next to him as a hippopotamus. Their partner, Susan Bones (poor girl), was lying on the counter, her animal shape a Persian cat.
Other animals dotting the room included a penguin, a rather excited monkey (currently swinging from one of the candle brackets on the wall), a full grown lion that was looking at a pig, who in turn was squealing loudly and hiding behind a large mountain goat.
“Who,” said Snape, voice as smooth as silk, “did this?” No one spoke, all the animals ceasing in their movements and watching the only current human in the room.
Ron broke down a second later. “It was them!” he cried, pointing a paw at the bunny and deer. “They did it!”
“You said you’d take the blame if anything happened,” Neville sobbed, hopping off Harry’s back and running to Blaise, wanting to be protected by his guardians. Harry gave a rather frightened look at Snape and trotted over to Hermione and Draco.
“Ronald Weasley,” Snape said softly, looking at the tiger cub. “It looks like I’ve found the owner of who this belongs to.” The Potions teacher held up the fork Ron had used on him at dinner. The tiger blushed and backed up a step as Snape came closer.
“Don’t hurt him!” whinnied Lavender, dashing out in front of the tiger. “He didn’t mean any harm…really.” Turning to Ron she whispered, “You really didn’t mean to do this, did you?”
“I wanted to liven things up,” Ron grinned, Lavender glaring at him now.
“You can count on being grounded when we get out of this,” she hissed.
“Professor? Can you turn us back?” Hermione asked worriedly, looking up at Snape with concern in her honey colored eyes.
“I should be able to, Miss Granger,” Snape muttered. “But I’ll need to know exactly what you did, Mr. Weasley,” he said, his attention switching back to Ron.
“Ummm…well…Harry, Neville, and me…we all put the beetle wings in the potion before anyone put the dandelion in…”
Snape turned red with anger. “Specifically after I told you the dandelion specifically had to go in before?” he hissed, eyes flashing dangerously.
“Uncle Sev?” Draco nudged Snape with his nose and looked up innocently at the professor. “You’re being a bit hard on them…they’re just kids after all.”
The class stared in shock. Had Draco just reprimanded Snape? The reaction from the teacher was completely unexpected.
“You’re right,” Snape agreed, patting Draco on his head, the wolf grinning in pleasure. “But that still doesn’t mean detentions can’t be given.”
“Would you have given me a detention if I’d done this?” asked Draco, a smirk forming on the wolf’s face.
Snape sighed. Trust his godson to figure out a way to get everyone out of trouble. “Listen up, all of you,” he snapped, striding up to the front of the room. “It should only take a few minutes to get a cure figured out. Unfortunately, this class ends in four minutes and I have a bunch of second years coming in. Also, if you haven’t yet noticed, your robes are no longer on you.”
The students looked around, quite surprised to see their clothing on the floor around them. “Once I finish brewing the antidote, each of you will take a vial to the bathroom and change back there. For those of you who are quite large, I suggest going very carefully.” He looked pointedly at Pansy and Goyle. “Gather up your clothes and wait by the door in a single file line.”
The class did as instructed, although Lavender allowed Hermione to ride on top of her. A few minutes later, the bell sounded and students began to pass outside the Potions classroom door.
“Here you all are,” Snape said, looping a bottle of the antidote around Hermione’s neck and one around Blaise’s. “Go to your respective bathrooms and take those. Then get to your next class.”
It was a strange procession that made its way to the bathrooms as students stopped and stared at the animals. “Out of the way,” Draco growled, pushing through one small group that stopped to stare.
“Draco?” Ginny asked incredulously, recognizing the voice anywhere. “What happened?”
“Your bloody brother,” he snapped softly so no one else would overhear.
“Ron?” she repeated, absolutely flabbergasted. “He turned you all into animals?”
“What do you think? He convinced Harry and Neville to tamper with all of the potions and this is the result.”
“Where is Ron? And Hermione and Harry?”
“Ron’s the tiger, Harry’s the deer, and Hermione’s the otter on top of Lavender.”
“Wow. Why do you think you all transformed into those animals?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Though I suspect it has something to do with our patronus form. I know Hermione’s is an otter, so that’s got to mean something.”
“Harry’s patronus is a stag after his father,” Ginny mused. “And a deer is pretty close to a stag. Maybe you’re right. Though some of you have very odd ones then. A giraffe and a penguin?” She shook her head, very amused. “I’ll let you get going. You don’t want to be late to your next class.”
“Yeah,” Draco muttered. “Divination, yay.” Ginny giggled and disappeared into the throng of students, leaving Draco walking by himself until he caught up with Blaise. “Hey,” he barked, nudging the beagle.
“Nice animal,” Blaise commented, admiring the wolf. “I’m glad we at least both good an average sized one. Poor Pansy.”
Draco nodded and looked up at the giraffe that was very carefully following Lavender, trying not to bump her head on the ceiling.
“I wanted to say thanks for getting Neville out of trouble,” Blaise continued. “You’re the only one who could ever manage to pull something like that off with Snape.”
“No problem,” Draco grinned. “It really is great to be his godson.”
Harry, meanwhile, was walking quite subdued next to Ron. “I can’t believe this happened,” Harry moaned.
“Cheer up,” comforted Ron. “Draco got us out of any trouble. And we really did liven up the class! I can’t wait until Fred and George hear about this! They’ll be so excited!”
“But now that poor man has to clean up the mess,” Harry murmured sympathetically.
“He’s a wizard,” Ron replied. “He’ll probably have the whole place neat again in a matter of seconds.”
A few minutes later, the animals had gone into their bathrooms and downed the potion, all transforming back to their human forms with little pops. Hermione, as soon as she’d gotten dressed and retrieved her book bag from Lavender (the girl had been kind enough to also put that around her neck) she stood waiting impatiently outside the boy’s bathroom for Draco and Harry.
It wasn’t like she wanted to go Divination, but it was a class and she was running late. Plus the hike up the stairs to the North Tower would probably take a good ten minutes so it would be best to get up there as soon as possible. On the other hand, if Trelawney predicted Harry’s death, she was sure the child would be terrified so much he probably would never leave his bedroom. Perhaps going to class wasn’t such a good idea.
“We’re ready,” announced Draco, exiting from the bathroom with Harry by the hand. “Time to head up to the tower.”
“Do you think it’s safe?” Hermione questioned.
“That old bat is crazy,” Draco grinned. “Come on, we’ve got a hike waiting.”
Halfway up the stairs, Harry began to tire and found himself riding Draco the rest of the way up. When they entered the classroom, they saw that no one was there, all of them still getting dressed. But much to their surprise, a kindly, grandmotherly looking lady was sitting behind Trelawney’s globe.
“Oh good,” the woman smiled, a sigh of relief issuing from her. “I was beginning to think I’d come to the wrong room when no one came. Professor Trelawney is out sick today, something about the aligning of Neptune’s moons, so I’m filling in today. Treat it as a free period, since I haven’t a clue of how to do this mumbo jumbo. Oh, I’m Professor Isis by the way.”
“You,” said Hermione, grinning at the teacher, “are the best thing that has ever happened to Divination.” The period passed in a relative calm, with Hermione reading from her Transfiguration book and Draco and Harry both doodling on spare bits of parchment.
Little did they know, that the next day would be far from peaceful. Very, very far.
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