Lupin swayed dangerously and Snape grabbed his arm. "Restraint? I shay we kill him," said Lupin.
Snape eyed him. "We're working on it. Give me back my bottle."
"No, no, not Voldemort. Though we should kill him, too," said Lupin, "But I meant Lord Potter. Teasing his friends like that. Poor Hermione!"
"Poor Hermione? We can kill him for that? Oh, yes. Absolutely. You start." Snape laughed.
I glared up at them. "I'm still paying you people to teach me; you're not allowed to-"
"-Ahahaha! No. That's not how it works. Especially not tonight. Just ignore us. We're drunk," said Snape to me. He looked at Lupin. "Now that the old goat has karked it, do you really think we could take out What's His Face without the effing Chosen One?"
Lupin took another swig. "You're sho hasty. You could poison Harry after we've done with Voldemort."
"I tried poison once with the current Dark Lord. It just made him bald and scaly."
"That was you? Are you losing your touch?"
"It should have worked. Dark Lords react strangely. Not my fault," said Snape and he wrestled the bottle out of Lupin's hands.
Lupin let it go and whispered in Snape's ear. "He's got a bit of a pointy head. I don't know that bald and scaly would be a good look for him." And they both stared at me.
"Yes, poison's too unpredictable," said Snape and he took a drink from the bottle. "Suppose Potter tripped and fell and accidentally landed on a magic sword?"
"No one would believe that," said Lupin, "We'd have to make it look like a training accident. I know where we could get a squirrel and a five pound lodestone. Piece of cake."
Snape grinned horribly. "Oooh, nice one."
"Hit me," said Lupin, and Snape handed him the bottle again. Snape wheeled Lupin slowly around and they sauntered off towards the bonfire, which was a relief because I had been too gobsmacked to actually run myself away from professors contemplating how to kill me.
I was alone again. Except that Hermione the sniper was still out there somewhere and she had rocks and possibly her sidearm and definitely her wand and potentially a whole team of completely sober people who enjoyed working with her and there was a small chance that I had seriously ticked her off. I scarpered away around the castle.
~
I found Ron in the back castle garden making X marks in the grass with a squeeze bottle of powdered chalk. "Ron, my only friend, you would never betray me, would you?" I asked him.
"What are you on about? Oh, wait. Is it the side effects? Bill said you might go all funny in the head. More than usual, I mean." He peered into my eyes. He put his hand on my shoulder, as if he might grab me by the neck and throttle me. I took a step away from him. Constant vigilance, as they say. "Ooo, and you look terrible, too," he said. "Go see McGonagall. She'll set you right."
"I don't want to miss the Patronus mining. I'm fine-"
Ron took another step towards me and I backed up again. Ron laughed. "We have plenty enough people, Harry. Afraid McGonagall will twinkle at you, offer you sweets, and then try to play you like a bloody chesspiece? Go on. Go up and see her." Ron jerked his thumb at the tower that had been Dumbledore's office.
Everyone knew McGonagall hated that office. "Why would she be up there?" I asked, but when I looked up the lights were on at the window.
"She has to be. She's setting the keystone spell for the Patronus mines. Her office is the center of the lines. Maybe you can help her with that," Ron said and he took another look at his map, which appeared to be in Hermione's handwriting, and he took a few steps to the left and he made another mark on the ground with his chalk.
Considering what Snape and Lupin were plotting, I thought Ron overestimated the value of bought loyalties. The professors had clearly been planning my immanent, painful death. McGonagall could be in on it, too. This could be her perfect opportunity to kill me. Or to let Dumbledore possess me. Who knew what else had I missed while I was unconscious.
And then I noticed the white ferret that lay draped around Ron's neck. It wore a little iron collar. I spluttered, "That's not- You never-"
"Oh," said Ron, noticing my trembling, pointing finger. "Well, yes. He wouldn't toad; must have had some sort of talisman on him at the time, but this worked all right. He's almost as good as a rat, so-" The ferret licked Ron's ear and then blew a raspberry at me. Ron petted it and raised his eyebrow at me. "No point in getting upset about it, Harry. McGonnagall transfigured him and he's not going anywhere till this is over."
"Him. Ah," I said.
"Great woman, McGonagall," said Ron and he smiled. "Very good at getting things done. She called Bill earlier and told him she'd prepared the antidote for the Patronus mining potion. Not that this would concern you, because you're FINE-"
"-Shut it already, Ron. I'm going."
~
McGonagall sat behind her desk with her forehead pressed to the blotter and her hands over her ears. Fawkes bounced on his perch next to her desk and said, "I expected more loyalty from you."
"How do you stand it?" I asked her and she looked up from her desk. There was chalk all over the room and a big smudge of it smeared across McGonagall's cheek. I would have told her, but she wouldn't have cared.
"I take everything with a grain of salt. It counteracts many subtle mind controls, as you know. Not to mention counteracting tonight's screwy butterbeer. Here, have a crisp," she said and she pushed a bowl over the desk to me. I took a handful. Even just touching them, I could feel the salt sink into my flesh and the insane paranoia ebb.
Fawkes bobbed his head. "Awk. Disappointed. Oddment. Expected loyalty. Awk."
"Have you discovered out how much of him is in there?" I asked with my mouth full of crisps, nicely painful on my new tongue. McGonagall glanced at Fawkes and sighed. "Not very much. I think he was was quite out of his head when he Imperiused Professsor Snape into making Fawkes into his own Horcrux. It shouldn't have worked at all, and all we've got here are the very dottiest bits."
"-If only you had trusted me, all would have been revealed in good time. Awk," said Fawkes. McGonagall scowled. "Put a sock in it. Don't think I won't burn you in effigy myself," she said and Fawkes edged away from her on his perch.
"So was Dumbledore using mind control on other people?" Please let it be mind control and not that we're all just morons.
"Go, Gryffindor!" said Fawkes.
She looked embarrassed. "I go back and forth on that. I thought all sorts of things he did weren't remotely good ideas and yet somehow I got pulled in."
I sighed. "He told me that he loved me so much that he was forced to avoid me like a lurgy for a year, and I believed him. For a while. Sounds really stupid now. And then he dragged me off alone so I could watch him poison himself, even though he had at least twenty people who would have happily run back-up for him. Or even point. I mean, what the heck was that?"
McGonnagall rubbed her hands over her face. "Sugar-induced dementia?" she guessed.
"Awk. Trust me. Awk. Choices. Go, Gryffindor!" said Fawkes. McGonagall picked up a glass paperweight and tossed it at the big orange bird, which ducked adroitly. The glass paperweight shattered below Fawkes's stand, over a spikey carpet of bits and bobs and the wrecked remains of many delicate silver instruments.
"Suck," said Fawkes, "Lemondrops."
I stared down at the broken silver bits on the floor. Among them were chess pieces shaped like gnomes and goblins and house elves and centaurs... "I've just had a thought," I said. "That big fancy statue collection in the atrium at the Ministry. That'd make a great Horcrux. Let's blow it up."
"Yes, all right. I'll put it on the list." She pinched her nose. "I have to stay here for at least another hour," said McGonagall. "And I've just about emptied this desk of throwable objects. I don't suppose you've got some sort of charming student problem I can assist you with?"
I wonder if I'll ever give all those people who think I'm going to be the next Dark Lord a really good reason to kill me. "There's not near enough quidditch in my life," I said.
