Harry Potter and the Investigation
Harry awoke in the hospital wing and wondered how he’d got there. He sat up slowly, trying to tell whether he ought to be in pain. Madam Pomfrey saw him and hurried over from where she had been talking to someone. Harry scrabbled on the nightstand for his glasses.
“Now, Mr. Potter, don’t try standing up yet. Just tell me what you see.” She waved her wand and lights appeared in Harry’s vision. They looked like nonsense for a while and then resolved into the outline of a rabbit. He told her and the dots of light changed to a horse, a bumblebee and so on. She asked questions about maths and history, and checked that his joints were all working properly. Then, as Harry was starting to feel she couldn’t possibly have anything else to check, she lost her bubbly, fussy attitude.
“Mr. Potter. You’re clear to leave the hospital wing and return to the rest of the school, but first this woman,” she indicated the person in red she had been talking to when Harry awoke, “has to ask you some questions. I’m afraid it’s all very serious. Do you understand? You don’t have to talk to her, but she wants you to if you can. It’s about what happened to you and Miss Granger.”
“Is Hermione OK?” Harry asked, immediately worried. He wanted to ask about Nagara, but didn’t want to tell Madam Pomfrey about his friend.
“Miss Granger is alright. She’s spending the rest of the weekend at home with her parents.” Harry nodded. Something was going on, something about Hermione worried Madam Pomfrey. Harry wondered if it was Nagara. If Nagara was the problem, Harry was going to make sure that he, not Hermione, took the punishment for it.
The woman in red came over and introduced herself, “my name is Hestia Jones, Harry, I’m one of the Ministry of Magic’s aurors.” Harry felt his puzzlement show. “I think muggles call us pa-lice?”
“Police!” Harry gasped. So, it was about Nagara. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone-,” he began, desperately.
“Guilty conscience, eh?” Hestia Jones smiled and sat on one of the chairs Madam Pomfrey placed by Harry’s bed. “We’ll come to that in a minute. For now, I’d like you to tell me as much as you can remember about the quidditch match you went to with Miss Granger, Mr. Longbottom, and Mr. Weasley.”
Feeling more baffled than before Harry began to tell Hestia Jones about the match. He mentioned watching for the snitch, and how it had become boring, and how bad the Gryffindor seeker must be because once the snitch flew right over his hands and he didn’t even notice. Hestia Jones smiled at that. Finally, he told her how he and Hermione had felt cold and had decided to go back to the castle to get warm. He had been about to step onto the stairs down from the stands when he’d felt his foot slide out from under him and he fell.
“I just kept on falling. I kept trying to stop, but every time I thought I’d got somewhere I sort of…fell. Again.” He ended, rather lamely, he felt.
“Did you hear Miss Granger behind you at all?”
“Sort of,” Harry admitted, “I heard that she was there, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying or anything.”
“Have you quarrelled with Miss Granger recently?”
“No,” Harry was beyond baffled; did this lady think Hermione had pushed him? “Hermione couldn’t have pushed me, if that’s what you think. And she wouldn’t have. She’s my friend.”
“That’s alright. We don’t think Miss Granger pushed you. I just have a few more questions and then I’ll let you get back to Gryffindor tower, alright?”
Harry nodded, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to the tower. He wanted Hermione, he wanted Nagara, and he wanted Suku. He wanted his little room at the top of the Leaky Cauldron and a bowl of Dave’s hot fish curry. He was so caught up in thinking these things that he nearly missed Hestia Jones’s next question. “Have you ever heard Miss Granger talk about the backfiring jinx?”
Aroused from his thoughts of curry and blankets Harry screwed his face up trying to think. “No?” he said at last.
“You’re not sure?”
“Hermione knows about lots of spells. I don’t think she’s talked about that one. She might have.”
“She’s never done any spells other than for coursework?”
“Sometimes she does. She did a countercharm when Neville got caught in a leg-locker curse from Malfoy a week ago.” That incident had been laughed off by the upper years around them. Hermione had angrily countered the curse and then marched to Professor McGonagall’s study to tell her about it. Neville’s face had been so red he’d started to cry out of sheer embarrassment. Professor McGonagall had given him a biscuit and a handkerchief and told him to wait in the corridor.
“So, she knows more advanced spells. But you wouldn’t say she would hurt someone with them?”
“She was pretty angry at Malfoy when it happened. I thought she might have hit him. But she just went to Professor McGonagall instead. She’s like that. She thinks teachers can solve everything.”
“Do you think they can’t?”
Harry picked at a lump in the bedding. He’d never thought about going to a teacher. The ones at Greater Whinging Primary hadn’t liked him, so he’d avoided them. Here things might be different.
“Is there anyone you feel is threatening you, Harry?” Hestia Jones was speaking barely above a whisper. Harry looked into her solemn face. There was something strange in her eyes he couldn’t place. It wasn’t anger, but it was like anger. He shook his head vigorously, not wanting to get into trouble.
“Alright.” Hestia Jones sat up straight in her chair. “If that changes, if you feel threatened by anyone, remember you can always go to a teacher. Alright, Harry? Now, I expect you’re eager to be back with your friends, so if it’s alright with Madam Pomfrey here you can go.”
Harry nodded, feeling a bit blindsided. Madam Pomfrey handed him his clothes, told him to change out of the hospital gown and to head straight to Gryffindor tower.
Harry didn’t need to go to the tower to find Ron and Neville, however. They were obviously on their way to see him in the hospital wing. Once Neville had been satisfied that Harry really was alright, and Ron had handed over Nagara, who Harry then had to check for injuries, Harry asked why Hermione was spending the weekend at home, and why the auror had been so curious about her. Neville looked frightened. Ron explained in hushed tones, “Well, I dunno exactly, but Percy says they found Hermione at the bottom of the stands. She didn’t know what had happened or how she got there. But then they checked her wand, right, ‘cause they thought she’d been the one hurting you. You were all banged up. And they found that she had done it. But she didn’t remember doing it.”
“She was so scared,” Neville put in, “by the time we got there she’d started crying and said she wanted to go home. Madam Pomfrey said that was a good idea and she’d send round a healer friend to her parents’ place to check on her.”
“Hermione wouldn’t hurt me. Hermione couldn’t hurt anyone,” Harry protested.
“Evidence says she did,” Ron shrugged, “but my dad’s told me there’s spells and curses where people can be forced to do things. I told Madam Pomfrey I reckoned that’s what had happened to Hermione, and she said she’d get someone to look into it.” Ron’s chest had swollen with importance over the course of this pronouncement.
“It’s horrible,” said Neville. This, Harry felt, summarised the situation nicely. He suggested, without much enthusiasm, that they make a start on their homework. Ron and Neville had done a bit last evening but hadn’t made much progress with both Harry and Hermione missing. Now the three boys traipsed up to the library to look up the patten of stars in Virgo.
***
The following day Hermione returned as bright and bubbly as she ever had been. “The healer came to see me at home. I don’t think he’d ever been in a muggle house, and he kept asking mum and dad the oddest questions. He said someone had used a curse to make me do things, to make me hurt Harry. Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry, but I never meant any of it. I don’t even remember it, just a sort of floaty feeling. Like the world had gone all soft and pink. But it was jolly lucky, I mean, it wasn’t lucky at all because you were really hurt, Harry, but it was lucky that they’d made me use spells I didn’t know yet. So, the Healer could tell right away that it wasn’t something I’d done. Not really. Not me.”
“That must have been really scary,” Neville said, looking awed and a bit scared himself.
“Well, it was afterwards. It’s scary now, knowing that there’s a pink foggy patch in my head where Harry was falling down the stairs being cursed. But at the time it was just nice. And it wasn’t like suddenly I woke up and was standing there. I sort of slid back, like I’d been a long way away, while standing still. So, it’s only scary now. It’s scary,” and her voice suddenly became hard, “that there’s someone here who did that. Who wanted to make me hurt Harry.”
The incident seemed to have scared the whole school. Injuries at quidditch matches weren’t uncommon, but they were normally restricted to the players. Once or twice a bludger got out of hand and flew into the crowd, but never before had there been a targeted attack like this. Using one first year to hurt, possibly kill, another.
The level of suspicion in the school took some time to go down again as everyone asked themselves who could have been the real culprit. Eventually, however, a new event took place which reminded everyone of happier thoughts: it snowed.
The snow came down in big feathery clumps that settled on the castle and grounds like icing sugar. Harry had never seen snow like it. He had a dim memory of brushing the pavement at number four when he was little, but that was nothing to this. The snow piled up on windowsills and began to cut off what little daylight the castle got. Fires were lit in all the grates, and extra candles floated in the hallways to provide illumination.
With the snow everyone seemed, as with one mind, to think about Christmas. Hermione talked of going skiing with her parents in France. Neville spoke longingly of his greenhouse and his hopes that everything had survived his absence. Ron talked about seeing his brother Bill again until a letter came informing him, and the three other Weasley boys, that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were planning to visit Charlie in Romania and the boys would have to stay at school for the holidays.
Harry cheered up at this. Malfoy had learned that Harry had put his name down to stay at Hogwarts over the holidays. He had wondered about going to the Leaky Cauldron, but thought he’d better not spend the money. And anyway, Tom and Dave might have someone else staying in that room. The thought of someone else in the room Harry had started to think of as his made him miserable, and more susceptible to Malfoy’s words about being unwanted at home and having to stay at Hogwarts because he had no one who loved him. Well, Ron, Percy and the Twins did have someone who loved them, and they were staying at Hogwarts too.
Harry did worry about how Nagara would cope in the castle. The snake had gone rigid during an outdoor herbology lesson and had then spent the rest of the day under its heat lamp on Harry’s bedside table. He asked it whether it would like to go with Neville for Christmas, but the reply he had got, somewhat muffled by the layers of fabric between them, was that the snake was quite happy to stay with Harry, provided Harry stayed warm.
Nagara moved from Harry’s shoulders to wrapping around his waist during the cold weather, and Harry took to wearing an extra shirt just in case. It meant that he was slightly too warm, but Nagara found it pleasant.
On the first day of the Christmas holidays Nagara again announced that it was going to shed in a few days. Harry told Ron and the two of them set up a nest on Seamus’s bed for Nagara to sleep in while the itching happened. Ron’s rat, Scabbers, who had initially been very wary of Nagara, was now sufficiently unafraid to investigate the nest, only to be snapped at by Nagara who said it would “get rid of the wrong-smelling-food-person”. Scabbers seemed impressed by the nest, though, and Ron made one up for the rat on his own bed while Harry soothed Nagara.
The snake’s dislike of the chubby rat was proving hard to shift. Harry had hastened to assure Ron, when it had first come to light, that Nagara didn’t want to kill Scabbers, but it was upset by the rat’s smell. Harry found this hard to understand, as smell didn’t seem to matter as much to him as it did to the snake. As far as Harry could understand pets smelled a bit like their owner, and that was how Nagara distinguished between pets and non-pets. Humans smelled of humans. Scabbers apparently didn’t smell of Ron, which, as Ron’s pet, he should. This seemed unfair to Nagara. Ron had confessed that Scabbers was second-hand, and had once belonged to one of his brothers, and both humans had decided that this was the cause of the rat’s strange smell.
Harry hoped that Nagara was content to let sleeping rats lie, because if the snake continued at its current rate of growth, then it’d be big enough to eat Scabbers by the end of the year. He didn’t feel he could explain to Ron that one pet had eaten the other. As much as Ron complained about Scabbers, Harry could tell that the boy was quite fond of him.
With time on their hands and the castle grounds painfully cold Harry and Ron took advantage of the empty corridors to fully explore the castle. They got lost several times, and were found once by the caretaker, Filch, trying to get into the forbidden corridor on the third floor. Filch didn’t seem to want to listen to their protests that they were merely lost and delivered them to Professor McGonagall with a greasy pleasure in his voice. Professor McGonagall waited for him to depart before admonishing Harry and Ron to be more careful.
The boys fell to wondering what was behind the door, and were eagerly joined by Fred and George, Ron’s twin brothers, in their discussion. Ron was surprised that the twins hadn’t already tried to find out, but one of them (Harry thought it was Fred) said that there was no point risking getting killed just for a bit of a laugh.