MetaFic

Friday, September 13, 1991

Harry and the other first-year Gryffindors sat around two tables in the common room, poring over their Potions books.  In his very first lesson, Professor Tofty had given them a list of twenty-five ingredients and asked them to make a chart showing where each ingredient could be found, how long it lasted in storage, how to tell if it had gone bad, what sort of effect it had in potions, and which common potions it was used in.  Though they had an entire week to do the assignment, the first-years had realised that there was no possible way to complete the complex chart in just a few hours on Sunday evening.

“Did anyone find the shelf life of dried hellebore?” Lavender Brown asked from the girls’ table.

“Page twenty-two,” Padma Patil replied absently.  

Seamus quickly rolled his parchment down several inches and moved his finger across the boxes he had drawn.  “Bugger,” he muttered.  “I’ve got that one already.”

Harry glanced over at his Foster brother’s chart, which was half-filled in no particular order.  “There are a lot of ingredient lists in the back,” he said, pointing at a nearly empty column on Seamus’ parchment.

“This is a nightmare,” Seamus said as he flipped to the back of the textbook.  “I’m going to be bored out of my mind for the entire weekend, I can tell.”

“It’s not that bad,” Harry said.  “It’s almost interesting when you think about it.   Look . . . Bubotuber pus is good for getting rid of minor infections, and Doxy eggs generally produce heat.  So it makes sense that when you put them together with a few other things, you get Pepper-Up Potion.”

“Yeah, that’s cool in a way,” Seamus said.  “But I’ll never remember something like that for every one of these ingredients.”

“Maybe you just need the right motivation, eh?” Harry asked absently.  “We could reward ourselves with an extra dessert for learning all this stuff, you know.”

“That’s what the book’s for, Harry,” Seamus replied.  “So I don’t have to know it all.”

“We don’t actually have to memorise it, do we?” Dean Thomas interrupted.  “I thought we just had to find it and write it down.”

Neville shrugged.  “He didn’t say anything about memorising it.”

“That sounds like something Snape would do, not Tofty,” Ron said.

Lavender looked up from her book.  “I’ll take this over Snape any day.”

Harry heard someone clearing their throat behind him, and he turned around to find Fred and George Weasley looking down at him.   “Hello, Harry,” one of the twins said.

“Hello.”

“We think we might owe you a bit of gratitude,” the other twin said.  “Last week, you made a very formal-sounding complaint to Professor McGonagall.  This week, old Snape is gone for good.”

Twin-one nodded.  “A clever type might think that the two are related.”

“We’re not sure, though,” twin-two said.  “We’ve never been accused of being clever, you see.”

“Will you knock it off?” Ron said irritably.  “That got old about ten years ago.”

“Did it?” twin-two asked.  “Well, then, we’ve got a bit of time left with people we’ve only just met.”  He stuck out his hand to Harry.  “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.  I’m Fred Weasley, and this is George.”

Harry shook both twins’ hands.  “Good for you.”

“It is, actually,” Fred said.  “So we thought we’d come by and say thanks for getting Snape sacked.”

Harry decided to prod the boys a bit and see how they reacted.  He settled his face as well as he could and said, “Shouldn’t you be dancing around and chanting something?  I thought that was your style.”

The twins shrugged in unison.  “We could if you’d like,” George said, “but we don’t like to be predictable.”

Harry grinned.  “Oh, good.  Neither do I.”  He leaned back in his chair and put his quill down, well away from his chart.  “I didn’t really do anything about Snape, though.  I just told the professors about our first lesson, and they did the rest.”

“Look, George, he’s humble.  That’s so refreshing to see in a young person.”

George started to respond, but he fell silent as Percy Weasley approached the table.

“It’s a convention,” Seamus muttered.  Harry smirked at him.

“Good evening,” Percy said, his back straighter than any human’s should be.  “Fred, George, I thought you’d like to know that I’ve been made Gryffindor’s Seeker.”

“WHAT?!” Ron bellowed from across the table.

“You have?” George said, his face blank and his voice flat.

Percy nodded.  “Yes.  Captain Wood asked me to fill in for the year, and I agreed for the good of our House.  On the condition that practices do not excessively interfere with my revision, of course.”

“Of course,” Fred muttered, nodding vaguely.  Harry thought that the two boys’ brains had disengaged somehow.

“Congratulations, Percy,” Harry said politely.  “I’m glad we’ll have a Seeker after all.”

“Yes, thank you.  I’m not sure if I’ll want to continue after this year, though.  The training schedule seems very time-consuming, and Quidditch certainly isn’t my primary interest.”

The other Weasley boys were still wallowing in shock, and Harry decided to sink them a bit more.  “I think that’s pretty intelligent of you, Percy,” he said, smiling encouragingly.  “Many people don’t bother to plan for their futures, and no-one can play games forever.”

Seamus made a sound that fell somewhere between snorting and choking.  When Harry winked at him, he raised a fist to hide his grin.

“Well said, Harry,” Percy said with a genuine smile.  “I’m very pleased to have another rational student in Gryffindor.”

“Oh, you should meet Padma, then,” Harry said, waving at the black-haired girl with the purple ribbon in her hair.  “She’s at least twice as rational as I am and much more organized.   Seamus says she’s much better-looking, too.”

“Does he?” Parvati asked, turning to grin at her sister.

As Percy and Padma exchanged polite greetings – she looking slightly startled and he quite delighted – Seamus leaned over to whisper in Harry’s ear.  “I never said that!”

“You deny it?”

“’Course not.  Still, it doesn’t mean much, you know, being twice as rational as you.”

“Diverted him, didn’t it?” Harry whispered back.  “I couldn’t keep a straight face much longer.”

“Please excuse me,” Percy said to the table at large.  “I need to add a postscript for Ginevra to my letter home.  You would do well to write a letter as well, Ronald.”  After nodding to Harry and Padma, Percy strode away towards the boys’ dormitory.  

Fred and George watched his retreating back, and Fred reached up to stroke a non-existent beard.  “You know, George, that was a lot of gloating.”

“Yes, it was.  Even for Percy,” George said.

“You know what I wish I could do?”

“Do tell, dear brother.”

“I wish I could somehow make a lizard run up his trousers.  That’d be just the thing to knock him off his high-horse.”

“Excellent idea, Fred.  He’s almost too far away now, though.”  

As George spoke, Fred glanced directly at Harry, who smiled and blinked innocently.

“Ah, well,” Fred said.  “Perhaps another time.”  He and George began to walk away, but then Fred turned back.  “Thanks again, Harry.  We prefer things to be unpredictable around here.  For Snape, for us . . . for everyone, really.”

“Even you,” George added.

Harry shrugged.  “I think it’s a definite requirement.  Very entertaining, too.”

“Then we’re all in agreement,” Fred said.  “Carry on, you lot.”

When the twins were out of earshot, Seamus grinned broadly and leaned towards Harry.  “This should be fun,” he whispered.

“We need to learn how to do the spiders,” Harry whispered back.  “I bet they’d scream like girls if we got it right.”

“Spiders?” Ron asked in a tiny voice, his face white.  “Did you say something about spiders?”

“Oh, yes,” Harry said.  “Spiders.”