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The Mystery in the Attic | ||||||
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Category: SIYE Challenges new Characters:Harry/Ginny, Ron Weasley Genres: General, Humor, Romance Warnings: None Story is Complete Rating: PG-13 Reviews: 9 Summary: Harry is spending the summer at the Burrow after the tragic events at the Ministry in OotP. His late-night foray into the kitchen for a snack is interrupted by a sound from the attic. Is it the ghoul or is there something more mysterious at work? Written for the SIYE "Summer at the Burrow" challenge. Hitcount: Story Total: 9397; Chapter Total: 1560 Awards: View Trophy Room |
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Harry didn’t think there were many available options for what the mysterious potion could be, but none of them were heartening. There was a chance that it was some sort of contraceptive potion, but as much as he didn’t want to contemplate what Ginny might be doing with Dean, that wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable. He admitted to himself that Mrs. Weasley’s overprotectiveness, which extended most to her youngest and only daughter, might be worth avoiding by attempting to brew something away from prying eyes. Though he hadn’t been able to read anything except the title of the book, Potions of the Heart seemed like the kind of book that might provide instructions for a contraceptive. Yet a nagging question kept running through Harry’s mind unbidden: what other kinds of potions might be in a book like that? As a student raised by muggles, Harry had been shocked to learn early in his time at Hogwarts that love potions were real. Whispers and tall tales about them persisted despite the school’s firm stance against their use. He had heard from some older students that none of the potions actually recreated love but instead imbued an intense obsession. Even though Harry didn’t truly believe Ginny would stoop to such a level, the idea that the hidden book (and maybe the cauldron) contained a love potion was difficult to shake. On the one hand, Harry didn’t feel especially great about spying on Ginny. He had enjoyed spending time with her in the DA and liked flying with her and Ron in the back garden. She had risked a lot by following him to the Ministry and had trusted his instincts when few others would have. He also remembered her being staunchly opposed to any attempt he had made to apologize for roping her into a dangerous situation. Spying on her seemed like a betrayal of that trust. On the other hand, love potions were supposedly quite dangerous and could lead to some really bad side effects. If there was a chance that she was planning to use one on Dean, Harry thought he owed his friend to at least investigate further. If it was a contraceptive potion, he could always try to simply ignore it and not think about the implications. It wasn’t his place to police her choices. He had a hard time deciding what to do, especially since Ginny sat right next to him at dinner and suggested practicing quidditch once they’d cleaned up after the meal. They flew around the makeshift quidditch pitch as the evening light faded. Harry’s eyes were drawn to her more often than he thought reasonable as he tried to determine the best course of action. Her mischievous smirk and musical laughter didn’t strike Harry as those of someone plotting to use a love potion, but he reminded himself that he didn’t really know Ginny all that well. By the time he crawled into his bed, he had formulated a plan. Ron unknowingly cooperated by falling soundly asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow, which allowed Harry to stealthily crack open the door to their room, giving him an unobstructed view of the hallway leading up to the attic. Even if Ginny was able to silently sneak by, he’d be able to see her move past while hidden in the darkness of the bedroom. Unfortunately for Harry, his plan had a fatal flaw: pretending to sleep in one’s bed for hours while very tired often leads to actually falling asleep. With a sudden jerk, Harry awoke with a start. The bedroom remained dark and Ron’s snores continued to fill the night air. Harry whispered a curse under his breath as he pulled the invisibility cloak from its hiding place under his sheet and tiptoed out of the room. Not worrying about being seen allowed him to focus on avoiding the loudest of the creaking stairs, which were burned in his memory by his recent overly loud retreats. He made almost no noise as he ascended to the attic. The door was closed, but traces of light squeezed through the outer edge of the door frame. There was a chance that the light had merely been left on since his foray into the attic, but Harry suspected that he had simply slept through Ginny sneaking past. With the door closed, he had no way to see what was happening in the next room. Though he was nervous about approaching too close to the door, the cloak granted him a little more boldness than he would have shown while visible. Harry eased his ear as close to the door as he could without making a sound, listening for any hint of what was happening beyond. There was a faint gurgling that he figured to be the potions, a quiet rustling, and- With a sudden whoosh of movement, the door whipped open. Harry froze instinctively as light flooded into his eyes. Ginny peered out into the hallway questioningly, looking right past him and into the darkness at the end of the corridor. Standing two steps beneath her, his face was level with her red hair that had been swept into a messy ponytail. He fought against his lungs, which suddenly felt a nearly irrepressible need to breathe, heightened by the presence of a sweet-smelling floral scent. After a few moments of terrible certainty that she would step forward into him, she released a longsuffering sigh before turning around and returning to her spot. She didn’t close the door behind her, allowing Harry to watch as she covered the cauldron with the empty box and slid the book under some old clothes. She wore an unreadable expression as she turned out the light and moved back toward the door. Harry pressed himself against the wall and did everything he could to melt into it; the cloak could do nothing to prevent him from taking up space that could lead to Ginny bumping into him. As she went to close the door behind her, she whispered something to the ghoul that nearly made Harry gasp in shock. “As long as I can get what I need from Harry, I’ll see you tomorrow night!” In the dim moonlight that kept the attic from being entirely pitch black, he watched Ginny blow a kiss at the ghoul before quietly sweeping past, avoiding brushing against Harry by barely a hairsbreadth. He stood against the wall for long minutes after she disappeared down the stairs, waiting an extra ten minutes after he felt confident she must be back in her bed before painstakingly creeping back to Ron’s room. Harry barely slept at all that night. ~tMitA~ At breakfast the next morning, Harry looked only slightly better than dead, causing Mrs. Weasley to fuss over him incessantly. Before he realized what was happening, he had been sent back up to Ron’s room to rest up for the remainder of the morning while Ron and Ginny were dispatched to tend to a variety of chores. Gazing at the ceiling from his bed, Harry considered the circumstances. His best mate’s younger sister, whom he’d considered a friend until the previous evening, was secretly brewing some sort of potion that he alone knew about. She was consulting a book called Potions of the Heart and apparently needed something from him to complete the concoction. Ginny definitely had a crush on him in the past, though Harry had thought she’d put it behind her over the last few years. Now, however, that seemed less and less likely. From the window overlooking the back garden, he heard a squabble breaking out between Ginny and Ron. It didn’t seem like anything major, but it alerted Harry that both of them had been assigned outdoor tasks. Knowing Mrs. Weasley, that was probably purposeful to keep them from bothering Harry while he rested. With a furtive glance at their retreating figures, Harry stuffed two pillows and some of the dirty laundry from the floor under the sheet to make it look like he was snuggled under the covers napping. He grabbed the invisibility cloak and, without thinking more about the decision, stealthily made his way up the stairs to the attic. He cracked the door open and slid inside, closing it behind him quietly. The ghoul moaned at his intrusion, but he shushed it and focused on his goal. Instead of moving toward the box hiding the cauldron, he made a beeline straight to the pile of old clothes laid atop the book. He pulled it out and positioned himself so that a small beam of light illuminated the book as he began to leaf through the pages. Sure enough, the entire first section of the book contained almost a dozen love potion recipes. Harry grimaced at the loopy writing and flowery illustrations as his eyes raked up and down the pages. Now that he had the book in his hands, he felt confident he needed to determine exactly what she was brewing. Some of the potions had to be ingested directly, but others could be used as a perfume or through other means to make their effects take hold. Harry wanted to know exactly what he was up against. Harry didn’t remember the exact coloration of the potion when he’d first seen it, but he couldn’t find anything that matched his hazy memory. He thought it had been grey or silver when he first saw it with a blue mist rising out of it. After she added something to it, it flashed purple and seemed to be belching green smoke that fell to the floor. Harry skimmed every potential love potion for a match, but either Ginny was a worse potioneer than Neville or she was making something that wasn’t listed in the love potion section. With a nervous feeling in his gut, he flipped to the chapters about contraception. Again, he found nothing that matched what he’d seen the previous night, much less anything that would involve taking something from someone else. Harry breathed a sigh of relief as he began perusing the rest of the book, eyes watchful, while worrying that someone might check up on his unoccupied bed. Near the end of the book, the late stages of a recipe looked similar enough to warrant a closer inspection. He turned back a few pages and found its heading: Love Scrubbing Potion For one seeking to remove any traces of affection, attraction, obsession, lust, or love. If brewed properly, this potion will cause its drinker to lose all romantic feelings for a subject whose hair is used as an ingredient. Caution! The effects of this potion are permanent. Do not use unless certain that one desires these effects. Once scrubbed of all infatuation for a subject, the drinker may become neutral or even antagonistic toward the former object of their desire. Potion must be ingested willingly or the potion has no effect. The long and complicated process of brewing the potion began beneath the explanation, but after seeing that it required hair from the one the brewer wished to remove feelings for, Harry stopped reading. He closed the book and carefully slid it back under the clothes where it had been hidden before quietly pulling the string and leaving the attic behind. He didn’t pay much attention to the sound of his footsteps as he made his way back to Ron’s room, but he didn’t run into a soul. He pushed the dirty clothes off his bed and flopped down, his mind swimming with more thoughts than he could keep up with. Harry felt a keen sense of shame at having mentally accused Ginny of brewing a potion meant to ensnare someone else’s feelings. Sure, the evidence may have pointed in that direction, but Harry morosely admitted to himself that such a scheme was well outside what he knew of her. It had been unkind and mistrustful to spy on her, and Harry felt lousy for having done it. Now he was saddled with information that he didn’t want. His presence in Ginny’s life and within the Weasley’s home had become such a burden to her that she had secretly brewed a convoluted and potentially dangerous potion in hopes of ridding herself of the feelings she obviously wanted nothing to do with. Ideas flashed through his mind, each more unpleasant than the last. Should he try to avoid Ginny where possible? Give her extra space in the common room? Would being on the same quidditch team make things too awkward for her? She had performed well after he’d been banned by Umbridge last season, maybe he should step aside to let her continue with the team. Was visiting the Burrow making her own home a place she couldn’t be comfortable? Harry groaned in frustration and covered his face with a pillow. In response, he heard Ginny’s voice from the hallway. “You alright in there?” |
| Reviews 9 |
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