The Screechsnout
After the lesson, Hermione caught up with Harry and began bombarding him with questions. The potion the woman had given him for his headache wasn’t having much effect, and her persistence certainly wasn’t helping. Why had he left the classroom? Why was his scar hurting? Was You-Know-Who nearby? Could he feel him trying to invade his thoughts? Was he working to push him out of his mind? Was something happening at the Ministry? Was there something that...
“STOP IT!” Harry exploded. “I don’t know, okay? It just started hurting, and you’re not helping! The bickering between you and Ron, always putting me in the middle, isn’t helping. If you want to argue all the time, at least have the decency to do it when I'm not around.”
She was about to retort when he silenced her “listen, why don’t you focus on figuring out why this bloody potion didn’t work, okay?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, you think it’s my fault??!”
“I didn’t say that,” he said, exasperated.
“Of course you did. I’m always the one who has to fix all your messes!”
“Our messes?! It was your idea!!” At that point, they were standing face to face and very close.
Both were panting with anger, and Harry was sure he had never been this angry in his life. He was about to yell all his frustration at her when Ron entered the room, making them turn.
He was about to speak but fell silent too, looking at them first with a frown, then his eyes darkened and his lips thinned.
“What were you doing?” he asked slowly.
He had a strange tone that neither Harry nor Hermione liked at all.
“Nothing,” she quickly said with a sigh, stepping away from Harry "we were… talking.”
“Talking,” Ron echoed with the same tone.
“Yes, talking,” she snapped again, feeling heated.
“And why were you so close?” he asked with an exasperating slowness.
Hermione and Harry exchanged an embarrassed glance.
“We…” Hermione began.
“We were arguing,” Harry sighed, and he sat back down on the bed.
Ron narrowed his gaze even further and made a face that didn't suit him at all. “Sure, without me. What a coincidence.”
“Excuse me, what?” the other asked.
“Nothing, never mind.”
Ron crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t move from the threshold.
“No, Ron, I’m not letting it go. Spit it out instead of making strange allusions."
He started to flush with anger, his face going beet red. He groaned before speaking, a high-pitched sound.Then he launched into it.
“You two are always there talking about things when I’m not around, right?! Curiously, when I show up, suddenly you go quiet! And then, explain to me, please, how come you’re talking so close?! Is there really a need to be within kissing distance?!”
Hermione flinched, but Harry started to laugh.
The laughter was bitter as poison, and he struggled to stop. “Within kissing distance?!” he exclaimed, stepping menacingly toward Ron, who didn’t back down.
The girl tried to stop him by grabbing his arm, but he violently shrugged her off and making her flinch “You’re an idiot, Ron!”
“Of course, as always, right?! I’m an idiot, aren’t I? Bloody hell, why didn’t I realize sooner how you two are so... so…”
“So?” Harry pressed.
“That’s enough!” Hermione yelled, and right after, another shriek escaped her lips, surprising even herself.
It was enough to freeze them all in place. She assumed an embarrassed expression, then seemed to drift into her thoughts.
“Are you going mad now?” Ron asked her with an acid smile.
“Shut up,” Harry told him.
“Oh so now what, are you defending her?”
“I said that’s enough!” Hermione’s voice filled the room with such a sharp sound that Madam Pomfrey rushed in.
“Where is it??” the woman asked breathlessly, looking at them and scanning the room with a scrutinizing gaze.
“Where is what?” Harry asked in surprise, expecting a scolding for the noise they were making instead.
The woman didn’t reply and signaled for him to be quiet. She began to inspect the room alertly while the trio stared at her, mouths agape.
At the end of the inspection, she looked at them critically. “So, are you going to tell me where it is?”
“What?!” Harry exclaimed, letting part of his accumulated frustration slip through.
The woman glared at him, "You know perfectly well what I’m talking about."
“We don’t know,” Hermione said hesitantly stepping forward, “What are you looking for?”
The other huffed, and it was clear she didn’t believe them. “The Screechsnout, obviously.”
Ron and Harry looked at her, not understanding. Hermione also appeared confused, but then, slowly, very slowly, her expression changed, edging ever closer to horror.
Meanwhile, Ron whispered something in Harry's ear “hey, doesn’t that name sound familiar to you?”
Harry shook his head, keeping his attention on the expression of the bushy-haired girl, who was now bringing a hand to her mouth, shocked.
“Well??” the nurse insisted, her hands on her hips.
None of them spoke. Harry, in particular, hadn’t even understood what the woman was talking about.
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, bringing a hand to his head.
Madam Pomfrey approached him with a grim expression.
“But I’ve heard it,” she said, handing him another bit of healing potion.
“Heard what??” he spat, pushing the spoon away.
“I told you,” she said, continuing to try to shove the spoon into his mouth, “the Screechsnout.”
“We haven't seen it. Can we go?” Hermione asked quickly, looking like someone who wanted to be anywhere else.
The woman studied them again, suspiciously. Then she shrugged and nodded, “I must have misheard,” she concluded, and then dismissed them.
Once back in the corridors, Ron grabbed the girl’s arm with little ceremony to make her turn around. “So, can you tell me what she was talking about?”
“Not now,” she said, trying to reclaim her arm and quickly heading down the hall.
“Hermione…” Harry started, irritated by her attitude.
“Stop it!” she said “don’t talk until we’re back in the study room.”
“I’ll talk as much as I want,” stubbornly replied Harry.
But it only took one murderous glare from his friend to silence him.
Damn, that look really seemed deadly.
They had to change their path several times at the last minute to avoid the patrols loyal to Umbridge, who had now taken to wandering without rest.
One of these patrols was led by Malfoy, and it certainly wasn’t a good time to run into him given how tense the trio felt.
They finally arrived at the study room, where the smell had become decidedly nauseating. They closed the door behind them.
At that point, Hermione grabbed the cauldron and pointed her wand at it. With a spell that the two boys didn’t know, she began checking the ingredients present in the potion.
“I knew it!” she suddenly screamed. Then she turned to them. “You were sure it was Veela hair, huh?” she trilled, extremely angry.
“What are you talking about?” Ron asked, approaching the mixture with a grimace of disgust.
“I’m talking about the fact that there’s no Veela hair in here,” she replied.
“Of course there is,” Harry growled, “we put it in!”
“And there isn’t!” she shouted, then took a few deep breaths to compose herself. “I told you it seemed strange, they were effing black! There are hairs in it, indeed".
Harry and Ron exchanged glances and were about to speak, but Hermione continued. “Screechsnout hairs.”
In her tone, besides the anger, there was also something else, a sense of victory.
“Are you going to explain yourself, or do you want to keep going like this until tomorrow morning?” Ron shouted, and a high-pitched sound escaped him, forcing them to cover their ears.
“See, do you hear it?!” Hermione yelled at the peak of her frustration. “I should have figured it out earlier! The Screechsnout is a magical creature that makes very high-pitched sounds. And you brought me its hairs instead of Veela hair. It messed up the potion, and ever since we started drinking it… we’ve been getting angry with each other for no reason.”
With that, she began fiddling with the ingredients, using a spell to empty the cauldron, thus clearing the air almost immediately of the horrendous smell.
She managed to explain to them that it was the reason for the weird sounds they have been producing the whole morning.
Harry turned suddenly toward Ron and pointed an accusatory finger at him:
“You did it on purpose!”
“What?? And why on earth would I do that??”
“I have no idea, but…”
“Look, you rushed me; I must have grabbed the wrong vial. They were probably close together and…”
“I didn’t rush you for no reason, did I! Snape was approaching. Or did you want us to get caught rummaging through his stuff??”
“You’re always the same egocentr…”
“ENOUGH!” Hermione seemed even angrier than they were. “It’s the potion talking, so stop it. And go get me some sage. And make sure you don’t mess up this ingredient too!”
Harry and Ron stormed out, grumbling and angry.
---
The sun was now gently setting behind the clouds, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione reached the rippling lake, surrounded by the silence that followed the turmoil of the past hours. The antidote prepared by Hermione had finally taken effect, and with it, their true selves had returned.
“I… I’m sorry, I should never have said such awful things” Harry began, looking at his friends with a sincere expression of remorse.
Ron, trying to break the awkwardness, scratched the back of his neck “Yeah, well… I overreacted too. I shouldn’t have accused you of such stupid things. This potion was a real chaos…”
Hermione, who was in the meantime trying to regain her usual composure, couldn’t help but smile weakly. “We were all a bit… thoughtless. But in the end it was just the potion talking, right?”
“Of course!” Ron said quickly, blushing.
A silence filled with understanding fell between them. They looked at each other and smiled awkwardly.
Then, as if an invisible hand had finally released the tension, they began to laugh.
They had many things and problems to think about, and this would soon become nothing more than a distant memory.
They would forget it quickly, as if such an episode had never happened.
They never tried to brew the potion again, and Hermione never revealed that the wrong ingredient hadn’t merely caused anger.
She had read about the risks of using such an unpredictable ingredient, the consequences of carelessly incorporating it into a potion, and she felt stung by that revelation.
The potion had, in fact, fueled their insecurities, which were already present in each of them. It had violently brought them to the surface all at once, creating an unpleasant mix.
However, the girl had no intention of revealing this, fearing it would only embarrass everyone further, but mainly to avoid showing them how truly insecure she was, deep down.
No, it definitely wasn’t the right thing to do.
That secret, she would keep closely guarded.
And after all, their friendship had won that battle too, just as it would in the future.
Nothing could truly harm them, and they could be sure they would always be there for each other despite the difficulties.
Always.