"Why -" said Daphne. Her heart was in her throat. If I try to change it, if anyone tries to change it, really terrible, awful, no good, extremely bad things will happen. And then it'll come to pass anyway... "Why are you doing this?"
"It's not like me," said Susan. "I know. But -" Susan shrugged. "People don't always behave like themselves, you know."
They pleaded.
They begged.
Susan didn't even say anything anymore, she just kept watching, waiting.
Daphne was nearly crying, she kept wondering if she'd caused this, if trying to change Fate was making this happen worse -
"Daphne," said Hermione, her voice sounding much higher than usual, "go get a teacher. Run."
Daphne spun on her heels and started to pelt down the other direction of the stony corridor, and then she realized, and she turned back to where all the other girls except Susan were watching her go, and Daphne, feeling like she was about to throw up, said, "I can't..."
"What?" said Hermione.
"I think it gets worse every time you try to fight it," said Daphne. That was how it worked in plays, sometimes.
Hermione stared at her, and then Hermione said, "Padma."
The other Ravenclaw girl just tore right out of there without arguing. Daphne watched her go, knowing that Padma wasn't as good a runner as her, and now wondering if maybe that would turn out to be the only reason why help would come too late...
"Bullies are here," Susan said laconically. "Huh, they've got a hostage."
They all whirled, and looked, and saw -
Three older bullies, Daphne's eyes recognized Reese Belka who was a top lieutenant in one of the seventh-year armies, and Randolph Lee who was number two in the Hogwarts dueling club, and worst of all, Robert Jugson III, in his sixth year, whose father was almost certainly a Death Eater.
All three were surrounded by Shielding Charms, blue hazes that glowed beneath the surface in ribbons of other color and showed occasional faceting above, multi-layered shields like the three of them thought they were fighting serious duelists and had expended energy accordingly.
And behind them, bound and supported by glowing ropes, was Hannah Abbott. Her eyes were wide and panicked and her mouth was moving, though they couldn't hear anything through the Quietus they'd put up earlier.
Then Jugson made an offhand gesture with his wand, and the glowing ropes flung Hannah at them, there was a small pop as Hannah's body blew through the Quieting barrier, Susan's wand was instantly pointing at Hannah and Susan's voice muttered "Wingardium Leviosa" -
"Run!" screamed Hannah, as she was gently lowered to the ground.
But the corridor behind them and in front of them was now blocked with a glowing gray field, a barrier spell that Daphne didn't recognize.
"Do I need to explain what this is about?" Lee said with false joviality. The seventh-year duelist was sporting a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Well, just in case, you little inconveniences, and that includes you Miss Greengrass, you've been quite enough trouble and you've told quite enough lies. We brought your little friend just to make sure everyone knew we got all of you - though I suppose the other Ravenclaw girl is hiding around a corner or clinging to the ceiling somewhere? Well, no matter. This is your -"
"Enough talk," said Robert Jugson III, "time for pain," and raised his wand. "Cluthe!"
Simultaneously Susan pointed her wand and said "Prismatis!" and a small rainbow sphere formed in midair almost instantly, the miniature barrier so condensed and bright that it stayed intact even as Jugson's hex hit it and bounced off toward Belka, whose wand flashed to swat away the dark bolt; and then a moment later the many-colored blaze was gone.
Daphne's eyes went wide for a moment; she'd never thought of using a Prismatic Sphere like that -
"Jugsy, honey?" said Belka. Her lips widened in a vicious smile. "I thought we discussed this. First we beat them, then we play."
"P-please," said Hermione Granger in a faltering voice, "let them go - I, I, I promise I'll -"
"Oh, really," said Lee in an annoyed tone. "Are you about to offer to turn yourself over if we let the others go? We've got all of you, now."
Jugson smiled, then. "It could be funny," said the sixth-year junior Death Eater, softly and with menace. "How about if you lick my shoes, mudblood, and one of your friends can go? Pick whichever one you like best, leave the others to get hurt."
"Nope," said the young voice of Susan Bones, "not going to happen," and with a blindingly fast motion the Hufflepuff girl leapt leftward just as a red stunbolt erupted from Belka's wand, Daphne could hardly see the movement as Susan seemed to hit the corridor wall and then bounce off it like she was a rubber ball and her legs smashed into Jugson's face, it didn't go through the shield but the sixth-year went sprawling backward with the impact and Susan followed him downward and her foot stamped down on the boy's wand arm, again being repelled by the shield, "Elmekia!" shouted Lee and Parvati shouted "Prismatis!" and the rainbow wall formed but the fiery blue blast passed right through it like it wasn't even there, the bolt missed Susan by inches, there was a whirlwind of motion that Daphne couldn't follow during which Belka had her feet knocked out from under her, but the older witch just rolled back to a stand and then -
Daphne saw it coming, and her lips started to mouth "Pris-" but it was already too late.
Three blasts of brilliance slammed into Susan at once, she had her wand raised as though she could counter them and there was a white flash as the hexes struck the magical wood, but then Susan's legs convulsed and sent her flying into a corridor wall. Her head hit with a strange cracking sound, and then Susan fell down and lay motionless with her head at an odd-seeming angle, her wand still clutched in one outstretched hand.
There was a moment of frozen silence.
Parvati scrambled over to where Susan lay, pressed a thumb over the pulse point on Susan's wrist, and then - then slowly, tremblingly, Parvati rose to her feet, her eyes huge -
"Vitalis revelio," said Lee just as Parvati opened her mouth, and Susan's body was surrounded by a warm red glow. Now the seventh-year boy really was grinning. "Probably just a broken collarbone, I'd say. Nice try, though."
"Merlin, they are tricky," said Jugson.
"You had me going for a second there, dearies." The seventh-year girl wasn't smiling at all.
"Tonare!" screamed Daphne, raising her wand above her head and focusing harder than she ever had in her life. "Rava calvaria! Lucis -"
She didn't even see the hex that got her.
Hermione felt the jolt of Innervation bringing her awake, and out of some intuitive strategism she didn't roll to her feet right away; it had been a completely hopeless battle and she didn't know what she could do but some instinct told her that leaping to her feet wasn't it.
Just a crack, Hermione opened her eyes, and the thin rays of light that entered them showed Parvati backing away from all three bullies, the last girl standing that Hermione could see.
And her eyes also showed Tracey fallen not far away from her, and Hermione's wand was still in her hand; and so, desperately hoping the Slytherin girl would show more sense than she usually did, Hermione made the wand movements as subtly as she could, and hardly moving her lips, whispered, "Innervate."
Hermione felt the spell working, but Tracey didn't move. Hermione hoped it was because Tracey was being cunning, and waiting to...
What could they do?
Hermione didn't know, and the panic that had waited through the moments of fighting was starting to eat her up inside now that she was still, now that she was trying to think, now that she could see that it was all absolutely hopeless.
That was when Hermione heard a thud, and though it was out of her field of vision now, she knew that Parvati had fallen.
A moment of silence came, and passed.
"Now what?" said the voice of the scary-soft boy.
"Now we wake up the mudblood," said the precise voice of the scary-formal boy, "and find out who's really
behind them, not Salazar Slytherin's ghost."
"No, dears," said the voice of the scary-sweet girl, "first we bind them all very securely -"
And then there was a sound like lightning and thunder and Hermione's eyes widened in shock before she could stop herself, and in her widened field of vision she saw the scary-soft boy convulsing as yellow arcs of energy crawled over him like giant blazing worms. His wand flew out of his hand as he collapsed to the ground, twitching, and then a moment later he lay still.
"Is everyone else asleep now?" said a voice. "Good."
Susan Bones rose from the floor near where the scary-soft boy had stood, neck still oddly bent. Then she rolled her head around her shoulders, a casual loose motion, and her head was straight again.
The round-faced first-year girl stood facing the remaining two bullies with one hand cocked on her hip.
Grinning.
And surrounded by faceted blue haze.
"Polyjuice!" spat the bully-girl.
"Polyfluis Reverso!" roared the remaining boy bully.
Something like the form of a mirrored scarf spat out of his wand -
Passed without resistance through the haze surrounding Susan -
For an instant, she glowed in a strange mirror-color, like a reflection of herself -
And then the glow faded.
The young girl still stood there, hand on her hip.
"Wrong," said Susan.
"And this is the truth," said Susan. "In case nobody ever told you -"
In her small hand a wand rose up, blurred by the blue haze surrounding it.
"You don't mess with the 'Puffs," said Susan, and with a grey flash so bright it hurt Hermione's half-closed eyes, the real battle started.
It went on for a while.
Some of the ceiling got melted.
The girl-bully tried to cry a truce, that they would leave and take Jugson with them, and Susan roared out the syllables of a curse Hermione recognized as Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting which was illegal in seven countries.
Eventually the girl-bully lay unconscious and unawakenable on the ground, and the last boy-bully had fled leaving his companions' bodies behind, and Susan was leaned over against one wall, covered in sweat and her scorched robes soaked through with wet spots, gasping for breath, and clutching at her right shoulder using her left hand.
After a while Susan straightened up, and turned to look back at where her fellow witches were sleeping on the floor.
Well, they should've been sleeping on the floor.
Lavender was already sitting up with eyes as wide as watermelons.
"That..." said Lavender.
"Was..." said Tracey.
"What?" said Hermione.
"I mean, what?" said Parvati.
"Cool!" said Lavender.
"Oh, hell," said Susan Bones. Her face had already looked a little pale beneath the sweat, and now it was getting paler, looking almost frighteningly white. "Ah... could I convince you that you hallucinated all that?"
There was a rapid exchange of glances. Hermione looked at Parvati, Parvati looked at Lavender, Lavender briefly locked gazes with Tracey.
The four of them looked back at Susan and shook their heads.
"Oh, hell," said Susan again. "Look I'll be back in a few minutes but I've really got to go now please don't say anything bye!"
And Susan ran out into the hallway, moving surprisingly fast, before anyone could say another word.
"No, seriously, what?" said Parvati.
"Innervate," said Hermione, pointing her wand at Daphne, whose body she hadn't been able to see before; and Lavender pointed her wand at Hannah's body and said the same.
Hannah's eyes opened and she tried frantically to roll to her feet, but collapsed to the ground halfway through.
"It's okay, Hannah!" said Lavender. "We won."
"We what?" said Hannah from her little heap on the floor.
Daphne hadn't stirred, but Hermione could see her chest rising and falling, and the breathing rhythm looked normal enough. "I think she's okay," said Hermione, "but -" She took a moment to swallow, her mouth was still dry. This had all gotten way, way, way out of hand. "I think we ought to take Daphne to Madam Pomfrey's..."
"Sure, sure, just give me a second here and I'll probably be fine," said Parvati.
"Excuse me," Hannah said in a tone that was polite, but firm. "How did we win? And why does the ceiling look all melty?"
There was a pause.
"Susan did it," said Tracey.
"Yeah," said Parvati, voice only slightly shaky as she stood up and started to brush off her red-trimmed robes, "it turns out that Susan Bones is the Heir of Hufflepuff and she's opened up the long-lost entrance to Helga Hufflepuff's Chamber of Hard Work and Practice."
"Huh?" said Hannah, who was feeling over herself as if to make sure all her body parts were still there. "I thought that was just something Professor Sprout says to teach us an Important Moral Lesson - Susan is?"
Slowly, Hermione was beginning to feel a bit more together. It hadn't really been more than thirty seconds of extreme terror, at least not the parts she'd been conscious for. "Actually," Hermione said carefully, as her mind started to work again, "I'm pretty sure that is just something Professor Sprout says, it wasn't in Hogwarts: A History or anywhere else I've read -"
"She's a double witch!" shouted Tracey, her voice so high it cracked. "She is! She's one of them! She's been this whole time!"
"What?" yelled Parvati, twisting around to look at Tracey. "That is the looniest thing -"
"Of course!" said Lavender, now all the way on her feet and starting to bounce up and down with excitement. "I should've realized!"
"Susan's a what?" said Hermione.
"A double witch!" said Tracey.
"You see," said Lavender, speaking very rapidly, "There've always been stories, about these children who are born as super magicians who can cast spells no one else can, and there's a whole secret school hidden inside Hogwarts with classes that only they can see and go to -"
"Those are just stories!" yelled Parvati. "That's not how real life works! I mean, sure, I read those books too -"
"Just a minute, please," said Hermione. Maybe her mind was feeling a little slow after all. "You mean even though you already get to go to a magical school and everything, you still want to go to a double magical school?"
Lavender looked at her, puzzled. "What?" said Lavender. "Who wouldn't want to have super extra magical powers? It would be like this whole amazing destiny and everything! It'd mean you were special!"
Hannah nodded to that, looking up from where she'd crawled to Daphne's side and was checking the girl for broken bones. "I wish I was a double witch," Hannah said, and then, sounding a little sadder, "though I don't believe there is any such thing, really... what did you see Susan do, exactly? I mean, are you sure you weren't just seeing things after getting stunned?"
Hermione truly, truly couldn't find any words at this point.
"Oh, no," said Tracey. The Slytherin girl spun around to look at the entrance to the corridor, her robes fluttering around her. "Oh no! We've got to get out of here! We've got to get away before Susan comes back with someone who can Super-Memory-Charm us!"
"Susan wouldn't do that!" said Parvati. "I mean, if there even was -"
"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?" roared a high-pitched squeaky voice, as Professor Flitwick stormed into the partially melted corridor like a small, dangerously compressed package of pure academic fury, an ashen-faced Padma gasping along behind him.
"What happened?" Susan blurted to the girl who looked exactly like her, except for the scorched robes damp with sweat.
"Ooh, great question!" said the other Susan Bones as she rapidly skinned off what was left of her borrowed clothes. A moment later the girl began to Metamorphose back into her more accustomed form of Nymphadora Tonks. "Sorry but I couldn't think of anything myself so you've got about three minutes to decide on an answer to that -"
As Daphne Greengr
ass observed afterward with some acidity, the flaw in Hermione's cunning plan to make sure that House points were taken evenly from all four Houses if they got caught, was that it didn't work on detentions.
They'd all agreed to keep their mouths shut about Susan's mysterious powers - even Tracey, after Susan threatened to have her Super-Memory-Charmed if she didn't promise. Unfortunately, they discovered at dinnertime that someone had forgotten to tell the bullies about their agreement, and also that Susan Bones had sacrificed her soul to dreadful forbidden powers which now inhabited the hulk of her body and that was why they'd all gotten detention.
"Hermione?" Harry Potter said to her from beside her at the dinner table, his voice very tentative. "Please don't take offense, and I'll understand if you say it's none of my business, but I think all this is starting to spin out of control."
Hermione went on mashing the slice of chocolate cake on her plate into a seamless mush of cake and icing. "Yes," Hermione said, her voice might have been a little acerbic, "that was what I said to Professor Flitwick while I was apologizing to him, that I knew things had gotten out of hand, and he yelled: Really, Miss Granger? Do you think? in a squeak so loud that my ears caught on fire. I mean my ears actually caught on fire. Professor Flitwick had to put them out again."
Harry had put his hand to his forehead. "Excuse me," Harry said. His face was perfectly straight. "Sometimes I still have a little trouble getting used to that sort of thing. Hey, Hermione, remember when we were young and naive and we still thought the world was a relatively understandable place?"
Hermione put her fork down and looked at him for a moment. "Do you sometimes wish you were a Muggle, Harry?"
"Huh?" said Harry. "Well, of course not! I mean, even if I was a Muggle, I'd probably have tried someday to take over the worrrrlllll-" as Hermione gave him a look and the boy hastily swallowed the word and said, "I mean optimize of course, you know that's what I really mean, Hermione! My point is, it's not like my goals would change one way or another. But with magic it's going to be a lot easier to get things done than if I had to do stuff using only the Muggle capability set. If you think about it logically, that's why I'm going to Hogwarts instead of just ignoring all this and studying for a career in nanotechnology."
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Page 118
