The Twins
The muggle books ended up being a total bust.
They were full of useful information, but nothing that could help the trio and their schemes.
They did provide Hermione and Harry an amusing few minutes while Draco attempted to threaten the pictures into moving. Other than that, it was all for naught.
The books revealed plenty of ways to sabotage Dumbledore’s administrative review. However, none of it could be done without them being caught. Dumbledore kept anything they would need in his office, and getting in there without permission was a near impossible task. Definitely not something any of the first years were up to.
Even if they did make it in, they still had the task of finding and getting to whatever they would need undetected. Then they would need to tamper with it all in a way that couldn’t be traced back to them.
It was all much too risky.
With extreme reluctance, they decided it would be best to turn their focuses elsewhere.
Where exactly elsewhere was, was beginning to be a problem.
Harry decided that elsewhere meant Professor Quirrell. He began keeping a watchful eye on the man, which proved to be just as boring as he’d expected it to be. Aside from catching the man nervously mumbling to himself and learning that Professor Snape may actually hate his colleague more than he hated Harry, there wasn’t a whole lot to see.
Initially, Draco decided to focus on sabotaging the NEWTs and OWLs at the end of the year. Between he and Hermione, the only things they could come up with meant getting all of the students to fail, and Hermione absolutely would not put up with that.
“No way!” she’d insisted. “Biological warfare is one thing, but causing so many students to fail their exams is just too far!”
After hitting that wall, Draco decided to turn his attentions to the Philosopher’s Stone. Or rather, getting the twins to get to it. Or, more specifically: the twins.
He was beginning to become obsessed. He spent the majority of his time watching them carefully, guessing what they were up to, and trying to decide what they liked enough for him to bribe them with.
“They must like sweets,” he stated one day at the Slytherin table. “I never see them eating any, but they always seem to have a ton of it. They must be trading people for them.” Draco was gazing across the Great Hall, watching as the twins collected various candies from the members of their quidditch team. “Do you think I could bribe them with some really expensive, foreign candies?”
“I don’t know,” Harry sighed boredly.
One evening in the library, Draco spotted one of them researching spellcrafting, while the other researched mostly harmless poisons. Beside them, Lee Jordan was reading up on medical magic.
“What in Merlin’s name could they be trying to do?” Draco asked.
“I don’t know,” Hermione answered blandly. “Perhaps they’re studying,” she hinted.
“No,” Draco disagreed without looking away. “They must be up to something.”
“What about the potions essay?” Harry asked.
“The third years don’t have a potions essay,” Draco argued.
“No. The first years have a potions essay. Have you written it yet?”
“Maybe they’re trying to make someone sick?” Draco barely even heard his friend talking to him.
Harry just had to roll his eyes and turn back to his own homework.
On a Hogsmeade weekend, Harry and Hermione found Draco lurking around the 3rd floor.
“What are you doing?” Harry asked. “We were looking for you.”
“The twins!” Draco replied. Harry scoffed in annoyance and barely managed to contain an eye roll.
Hermione, however, saw significance in the twins being around the 3rd floor. “Do you think they’re going after the Stone today?” she questioned, voice rushed with excitement.
“What?” Draco asked in confusion. “Oh!” he exhaled when he realized what she meant. “No! They came back from Hogsmeade early. I spotted them over here. They were bogged down with a load of toys from Zonko’s.”
“Why would they be here?” Harry was skeptic. “We’re nowhere near the entrance to the castle.”
“I don’t know,” Draco shrugged, exasperated. “But they were definitely here. Unless they got Zonko’s products from the troll, then there’s nowhere else they could have come from.”
“Well,” Hermione huffed, “if they’re not headed for the Stone, then it hardly matters.” She started to walk away with Harry and a reluctant Draco following after. “If we finish lunch quickly, we’ll have more time to practice the organizing spell from Harry’s book before we have to head to the library to study for the history quiz.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Harry replied cheerily. He was always eager to practice magic, whether it was school work or extracurricular. “I hope I can get it to organize my books in alphabetical order this time instead of just tallest to smallest.”
“I got mine to go in alphabetical order last time, but it stacked them all on their side,” Hermione admitted. “I think it’s all got to do with the wrist. I tend to do more of a sweeping motion,” she raised an invisible wand in the air and made the movement as an example. “Maybe I should do more of a swish.” She made the swishing movement. “What do you think, Draco?”
“I don’t know,” he replied distantly, mind clearly elsewhere. “Oh!” he exclaimed suddenly. “I know of a fantastic jokes shop just outside of Paris. They’ve got incredible products there. Much higher quality and way more creative than Zonko’s. I bet I could bribe the twins with those!”
Harry heaved a sigh in exasperation. “Always with those twins…” he muttered. Hearing about them so much was really getting on his nerves. “Draco, do you even know what you’re trying to bribe them for?”
“Of course!” Draco snapped. “I’m bribing them for…” he hesitated. “Um, for… information? Yes! That’s right! Information!”
Harry scoffed. “What information? What information do they currently know, that we don’t?” Harry clearly had Draco there.
“It doesn’t matter!” Draco argued. “What are you insinuating?”
“I don’t know!” Harry rolled his eyes. “You just seem to think about them a lot, lately. It’s like you’re obsessed or something.”
“I am not!” Draco squawked in outrage.
“Yes you are!” Harry accused. “They’re the only thing you’ve been talking about for weeks now. Weeks! Tell him Hermione!”
“Oh no!” Hermione raised her arms in front of her defensively. “I’m not in this one!” She sped up her walking so she’d arrive at the Great Hall faster and avoid the impending argument.
“I am not obsessed!” Draco insisted. “You’re being dramatic!”
“Oh, yes you are!” disputed Harry. “I think this whole bribery thing is just an excuse for you to get to know them better. It’s like you fancy them, or something!”
“Fancy them?” Draco gasped. “That’s preposterous! Like a Malfoy could ever fancy a Weasley.” He grimaced as he said it. As if the very name were in insult in itself.
“Seems like one could to me! You’re always talking about them! ‘I wonder what they’re doing!’” Harry put on an exaggerated posh accent as he mocked the boy. “‘What kind of expensive candy do you think they’ll like?’ ‘I wonder if they’ll like this book.’ ‘They’re so clever. They should have been Slytherins.’ ‘Oh no! They’re coming! I need to fix my hair!’”
“That was one time!”
“One time you said it out loud! Don’t think I haven’t noticed you checking your reflection in every surface you can find when they’re around!”
“Oh please! I do that anyways! A Malfoy can’t be caught looking less than his best.” He popped his collar then smoothed it back down, brushing imaginary dirt off his shoulder. In Draco’s defense, that was actually true. “Besides!” he continued. “So what if I do fancy one of them! What’s it to you?”
“Hah!” Harry pointed at him accusingly. “So you do fancy them!”
Draco turned red in the face once he realized his slip.
Harry’s smug look of satisfaction morphed into one of absolute shock as he realized the implications of his words. “Wait!” he frowned. “So you do fancy them?”
Draco pouted his bottom lip defiantly, but refused to respond. His silence was answer enough.
“But…” Harry was completely astonished. “I was just teasing you. I didn’t think you really…”
Draco fancied the twins? How was that possible? Harry couldn’t wrap his head around it.
“But…” he stammered. “But… they’re… they’re boys!”
“And what difference does that make?” Draco challenged.
That was a good question. What difference did it make?
Harry had only very briefly been faced with the way homosexuality was considered in the wizarding world. Aunt Wally had mentioned in one of her letters having attended a wedding between 2 witches. Aside from saying that it was boring, she had nothing else to say about it. In fact, she’d only mentioned it in passing at all.
If the most racist woman in the wizarding world had no qualms about homosexuality, then it must not have been a big deal, the way it was in the muggle world. Harry wasn’t used to the mentality.
He honestly never thought of it much himself, but the obvious prejudice was always around him. He heard the emasculating jibes and taunts. He’d been subject to a few of them at the hands of Dudley and his goons on occasions. He knew it to be considered something shameful. Something dirty and wrong that should be hidden at all costs. It’s just not something he’d ever been confronted with in a way to make him actually stop and think about it.
The idea of it being something widely acknowledged and openly accepted was completely foreign to Harry. He didn’t know what to make of it.
“Well…” he tilted his head to the side pensively for a moment. “I guess it doesn’t?” he shrugged, not confident in his answer.
It didn’t really change anything. Draco was still Draco. And he was still obsessed with the twins, whether it was because he fancied them or just admired them. So, it really didn’t make a difference.
“Yeah,” he nodded to himself, certain this time. “It really doesn’t matter.” After a moment of thinking on it, he let out a teasing chuckle and smirked at Draco.
“What?” Draco snapped. Harry only laughed a little harder.
“You fancy a couple of Gryffindors,” he snorted. “Wait until I tell Pansy. She’s going to flip.”
“You will not tell Pansy!” Draco panicked. “The whole school will know by the end of the day if you tell her!”
“Fine,” Harry agreed. “But I’m definitely telling Hermione. She’ll get a kick out of the fact you’re a lion lover.” Harry pursed his lips and made obnoxious kissy noises toward Draco.
“Shut up!” Draco complained, shoving Harry out of his way. He brushed past him and rushed to catch up with Hermione.
April 4th came and went, but not much progress had been made at all.
The twins had gone after the Stone two more times, but still couldn’t make it past the chessboard. Draco noticed that Fred had been missing for a few days after the second attempt, and George was sporting a bruise under his left eye. That certainly didn’t bode well for their success rate.
“How can you even tell them apart?” Harry asked.
“Because Fred is the bossy one-”
“They’re both bossy,” Hermione scoffed over a plate of toast.
“And he’s almost always the one who talks first.” Draco continued as if she hadn’t even spoken. “George will finish his sentences, but rarely starts them on his own. He’s a lot quieter when Fred’s not around. Whereas Fred is always pretty much the same. Fred comes up with all the ideas, but George is the one who figures out how to do them. George is obviously the smarter twin. Also, George can write with both hands, which I’m sure he must have taught himself, because Fred is only right-handed.”
“I don’t know how you manage to see all of that,” Harry sighed in disbelief. “They both seem exactly the same to me.”
“That’s just because you aren’t looking.”
“No, I’m looking,” Harry disagreed with a smirk. “I’m just not paying quiet as much attention as you are.”
Hermione chuckled knowingly, and Draco stuck his tongue out at both of them.
Professor Quirrell didn’t seem to be acting any fishier than usual. Though Harry did notice he attempted to avoid Professor Snape as much as possible. Considering their seats at the Head Table were right beside each other, that wasn’t nearly as much as the Defense professor would have liked.
Knowing how clearly Snape disliked the man, Harry could also perfectly understand his reluctance to be near him. The potions master still vehemently pretended that Harry didn’t exist, so he was never at the receiving end of the man’s wrath. But baring witness to it directed at others was enough not to question it.
The only thing Harry couldn’t figure out was why Professor Snape hated Quirrell so much.
Of course, Quirrell was a rather infuriating man, and Snape hadn’t a drop of patience to spare. So it made sense that they wouldn’t get along. However, Snape’s distaste for the man seemed to be too severe for that to have been the only reason behind it. Quirrell seemed to be so stressed about it that he was growing pale and appeared to be losing weight.
There had to have been something else behind it that Harry wasn’t aware of. He knew better than to think either man would tell him, but he wasn’t sure who else to ask. It would require more snooping, and hopefully another opportunity to use his father’s invisibility cloak.
On an unrelated note, Harry was beginning to get headaches. They weren’t like ordinary headaches, though.
At first, they weren’t really bothersome. More like the occasional tingle right behind his scar. He would brush it off and not think of it again, until the next one. After a while, the occasional tingle grew into a constant tingle with the occasional stinging, or sharp burning pain.
As April was heading to a close and impending exams overtook the majority of the school’s minds, being in near constant pain was becoming very problematic for Harry.
After a Saturday morning of rubbing his forehead while failing to study in the library, Draco came up with an idea to help.
“We should make a potion to relieve your headaches,” he offered. “There’s one in this book I’ve been reading that doesn’t look too hard to manage. We should even have most of the ingredients.”
Hermione wasn’t so sure. “It’s against the rules to brew outside of the classroom.”
“No,” Draco disputed, “it’s against the rules to get caught brewing outside of the classroom.” Hermione arched an unimpressed eyebrow at him, and he shot her his most innocent smile. “Besides, that’s not what I meant, anyways.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“We could ask Professor Snape to let us do it in his classroom. He does it for the upper grades all the time. He’d be there to make sure we get it right, and it’s above first year level. So if – I’m sorry, when we get it right, he’ll probably reward us with extra points or something for being so far ahead. And it would be great practice for the practical potions exam at the end of the year. Besides, we need a cast iron cauldron for it, but we all have pewter.”
“That’s actually pretty brilliant,” Harry agreed. “But one of you have to ask him. He’d probably just ignore us if we said it was to help me.”
As much as the others hated to admit it, Harry did have a point. No one had any idea why Snape hated Harry so much, but there was certainly no denying it.
“I’ll ask,” Hermione promised.
Thus, the following afternoon found the trio situated around a borrowed cast iron cauldron in the potions lab and under the watchful—and somewhat bitter—eye of Severus Snape.
“Surely,” he drawled, “I won’t need to remind you of the consequences of ruining one of my own personal cauldrons…”
“No, sir,” the trio intoned in unison.
“You have until three o clock, at which time you will be dismissed from the room, regardless of the state of your potion.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that, Harry, Draco, and Hermione set about measuring and combining ingredients. Occasionally, they would take a moment to discuss each step and consult their reference books to be sure they were brewing it to the maximum effect.
With over an hour and a half to spare, their potion was cooled, bottled into 10 individual doses, and ready for inspection.
Snape popped the lid off one of the vials and examined the light blue liquid inside. “Proper color,” he acknowledged. He waved it under his nose a few times. “Proper smell.” He held the bottle level with his eyes and swiveled it around in the vial. “Proper consistency. No sediment.” Finally, he dabbed a single drop onto his fingertip, then stuck it into his mouth. “Proper taste. Congratulations. You have brewed your potion to perfection.” He recapped it, then handed it back to Hermione. “High praise from me, which is not given lightly.”
“Thank you so much, Professor!” Hermione smiled at their Head of House widely.
“Ten points to Hermione for properly multiplying the ingredients to double the recipe.” Hermione practically squealed at that. She had been adamant that merely doubling the ingredients wasn’t the proper way to make a larger batch. It actually involved a small bit of arithmancy to calculate exactly how to change the measurements.
“And, another ten points to Draco for using the proper stirring pattern needed for the larger potion.” Draco grinned smugly at that. He’d been reading lots of extra potions books in his free time, so he was rather well versed in the subtle nuances of stirring potions. The original recipe called for figure 8s, but the increase of certain ingredients meant it needed to alternate between vertical figure 8s and horizontal ones.
Harry had taken special care to keep the cauldron temperature ascending by a single degree a minute to maintain perfect brewing temperature the whole time. Then, he made sure it decreased by 2 degrees per minute to maintain proper cooling temperature before removing the potion from the cauldron.
Of course, Professor Snape made no notice of that, and dismissed the trio without further ado, returning to his desk. Harry wasn’t the least bit surprised, but he couldn’t help but to be a little disappointed.
As Draco and Hermione began cleaning up, Harry drained a vial, in the hopes that his headache would go away. He gave it a minute. Then two. Then three, but nothing happened. The pain was still there. He rubbed his forehead again, frowning in frustration as he helped straighten up their station.
“Why are you rubbing your head?” Professor Snape asked suddenly.
It wasn’t until Draco elbowed Harry in the ribs that he realized the professor was talking to him. Those were the first words he’d ever said to the boy.
“Well,” Harry stammered, so surprised to be speaking to the man that he nearly forgot how. “I uh… I have a headache.”
“It should be gone now,” Snape disagreed. “I saw you take the potion. You brewed it perfectly. It should take immediate effect.”
“I’m not sure what’s wrong then,” Harry shrugged. “My scar still hurts.”
“Your scar?” the professor snapped, standing up out of his chair.
Harry was confused by the reaction, but he nodded. “Yeah, it’s been hurting on and off for the past few weeks,” he explained. “Lately it’s been more on than off.”
“Is there any pattern to the way it hurts?” Snape asked frantically, stepping around his desk and storming over to Harry. “Are there times when it hurts more than others?”
“I guess?” Harry was really confused. Professor Snape was acting so strangely. “I mean, it always hurts pretty bad at meal times, or if I’m in the Great Hall. I just figure it’s because it’s so loud in there. Often in Defense too. Probably because Professor Quirrell is so boring. Other than that, it’s kind of just random. Mostly it stays the same.”
“Listen to me, Potter,” Snape took on a grave tone. He put his hands on Harry’s shoulders and bent forward a little to look him directly in the eyes. “The next time you feel your scar hurting particularly bad, I need you to come and tell me immediately.”
“Even if it’s in the middle of the night?” Harry asked carefully.
“Especially if it’s in the middle of the night. You come right to my office, even if you have to wake me up.”
“Professor, I don’t understand. Is there something going on? Is there something wrong with my scar?”
Snape removed his hands from Harry’s shoulders and stood upright. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
“I’m sorry Professor, but considering it’s my own head, I think it is.”
Snape sighed. Snark aside, Harry did have a point. “I’m not sure that it’s anything,” he said cryptically, “but in the event that it is, I’ll need to know.” His face returned to its usual bland but stern expression, and Harry knew he wouldn’t hear a word else on the matter.
“Yes sir.”
The professor returned to his desk and the trio gathered their things and left the classroom.
“What do you think that was about?” Draco asked as soon as they were a good distance away.
“I have no idea.” Harry shrugged.
“Don’t worry,” Hermione insisted. “We’ll figure it out.”