Harry Potter: The Golden Viper

0594 Weird Situation

"Ugh..."

After a few painful groans, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the house-elves Dobby and Freodom, who were lying beside them, gradually regained consciousness. Their bodies and minds felt battered, as if they had been ripped from one place and abruptly dumped in another. The abrupt and unnatural change in location left them revolving in agony with their senses scrambled.

As the heavy fog slowly lifted from their thoughts, the strange room they found themselves in came into focus, accelerating their return to alertness out of sheer necessity to understand their predicament.

Harry was the first to open his mouth and his voice emerged as a hoarse, uncertain whisper. "Where... where are we?" His eyes were wide as saucers behind his glasses as he tried to take in the perplexing scene before them.

The chamber they now occupied was easily the size of one of Hogwarts' larger classrooms. Rich curtains, elegant wallpaper, plush carpets and splendid drapes adorned every surface, all highlighting a flashy alternating pattern of black and yellow - the colors of Hufflepuff House. Based on the furnishings and layout, they appeared to be in some kind of combined study and drawing room.

"I haven't the foggiest," Ron responded, blinking in bafflement as he pushed himself up on shaky arms. He turned his face toward the tall windows, where warm, honeyed sunlight poured in and pooled on the floor in dazzling puddles of gold.

After hours spent shivering in the castle's chilly stone corridors, the soothing rays felt like a blissful caress on their chilled skin. "Look at the weather outside, Harry. Merlin, I can't imagine how long we've been unconscious!"n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Perhaps...perhaps one of the professors found us after we passed out and brought us here to their office to recover," Hermione suggested hesitantly, pursing her lip. But even as the words left her mouth, she didn't even trust her own reasoning.

If a teacher had indeed come to their rescue, the sensible course of action would have been to escort the unconscious students to the care of Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing, not brought them away to a private study.

Hermione glanced at the floor where they had just gotten up from, which was obviously unreasonable—Even Professor Snape was unlikely to be so inconsiderate about their wellbeing as to simply dump their unconscious bodies on the floor of his office.

None of it added up.

However, Harry apparently didn't realize the problems with Hermione's speculation. He looked around, finding everything within his field of vision quite ordinary, yet giving him a strange feeling.

"You're probably right, Hermione. I bet it was Professor Sprout that found us," Harry said, spinning in place and continuing to observe his surroundings. "The kitchens we sneaked into is right near the entrance to the Hufflepuff common room and dormitories. What if she came across us and levitated us here? Have you been in Sprout's office before, Hermione?"

But Hermione's mind had already poked huge holes in that theory. Judging by the late afternoon light streaming through the windows, they had to have been unconscious for a minimum of 12 hours which was a shocking span of time.

There was simply no conceivable scenario in which the motherly Head of Hufflepuff House would find three students collapsed outside her House's common room and not immediately raise the alarm. Professors Dumbledore, Watson, McGonagall and the rest would have been notified straightaway. The notion that they would have been left here by any professor to awaken on their own, disoriented and unattended was unbelievable in itself.

"No," Hermione answered, her voice high and shaky with growing unease. Another unsettling realization struck her then - the room was eerily silent. It was as if all the familiar sounds of the bustling castle and school grounds had been completely muted, unable to penetrate the walls of this place.

"Harry Potter sir, Dobby is confused as well," Dobby said, his eyes and voice filled with bewilderment as he looked around. "In his duties, Dobby has scrubbed Professor Sprout's office many times. Dobby can say without hesitation - this is not being her office. In fact, Dobby has never once laid eyes on this particular room. It is not belonging to any Hogwarts professor Dobby knows of!"

Dobby's words caused the three of them to look shocked. The office in front of them appeared very clean and tidy, and was clearly in use. However, Dobby, as a house-elf serving the castle, had never seen this room before. So, who exactly used it?

A chill rose in their hearts.

"I don't bloody well care who it belongs to - we need to run away quickly before they get back!" Ron said out loud with barely suppressed panic. "Assuming nothing weird has happened, and that's one hell of an assumption at this point, we've already missed at least two professors' classes. McGonagall will have our heads! If we're lucky, she might let us out of detention room before Christmas."

Ron's words made Harry and Hermione realize the serious consequences of their reckless behavior. The three of them rushed to the office door, with Harry being the first to grab the handle. He grasped the slightly cold brass handle and twisted it hard, only for his heart to sink.

"It won't open," Harry said, looking at Hermione with a hint of horror in his green eyes. "The door is locked!"

"Move aside!" Hermione pulled Harry away from the door. She took out her wand, pointed it at the door handle, and resolutely shouted, "Alohomora!"

A crackle of electricity emerged as the spell hit the brass handle, but when Hermione tried to turn the doorknob, she found that her spell had no effect at all.

"There must be a powerful anti-intrusion spell on this door," Hermione said, biting her pale lips, her voice filled with frustration and regret. Their current predicament was mainly caused by her. If they were going to be put in detention by Professor McGonagall, the responsibility would be entirely hers.

"Don't worry, Miss Granger. Dobby is here to help!" Dobby volunteered brightly, clearly thrilled at the prospect of being useful to Harry Potter and his friends. Freodom, refusing to be outdone, pushed forward eagerly. "Freodom can also help the noble Mistress Granger in escaping this worrisome place!"

"Of course!" Hermione gasped and her eyes lit up with renewed hope as she immediately realized. "Hogwarts protective enchantments that prevent apparition don't apply to house elves! You can still disapparate within the castle walls!" 

"Then what in the name of Merlin's left—sock—are we waiting for?!" Ron blurted out, shooting a sheepish look at Hermione's glare. "Get us out of here before we miss even Flitwick's lecture and McGonagall turns us into garden gnomes!"

Without further ado, at Dobby and Freodom's prompting, Harry, Ron, and Hermione linked hands and crouched down to clutch at their tiny saviors - Hermione clasping Freodom's little arm and Harry capturing Dobby's fingers in his own. The elves mustered their magic, furrowed their brows in concentration, and willed the lot of them to dematerialize on the spot - but the results were far from what any of them expected.

BANG! THUD! THWACK!

Several impact sounds rang out as three bodies collided with walls and tumbled to the thickly carpeted floor in a graceless tangle of flapping limbs.

Anguished cries came from three throats as the dazed trio clutched their abused heads, spinning from the fresh shock of pain and disorientation.

"Bloody hell!" Ron yelped, rubbing the rapidly swelling lump on his forehead. "What just happened?! Did someone put a jinx on this place?"

As Harry and Hermione pushed themselves up and dusted off their robes, they turned to comfort the distraught elves. Dobby was nearly weeping with apology for the failure of his magic, and soaked his own ears in distress.

And Freodom was gearing up to bash her skull against the nearest pillar in atonement until Hermione snatched her out of harm's way.

After calming down those watering eyes, Hermione was face to face with a towering wall of books. As a bibliophile, Hermione felt her mind automatically categorizing the collection's contents, but as she scanned the elaborately stamped spines, confusion swiftly overtook over her initial curiosity.

Only a Booklover as careful and conscientious as Hermione would hesitate to pluck books that did not belong to her from their shelves to examine them without direct permission from its owner, even in their current predicament - but the titles imprinted upon the old leather bindings alone were enough to give her a serious stop. She had originally thought that the books on the shelf would all be magic-related, but the reality was not as she had imagined.

"What is it?" Harry inquired, alerted by her unusual stillness and deepening frown. He hurried to Hermione's side, craning his neck to get a better look at the shelves' contents for himself. His eyes grew as round as saucers looking at the text on the spines in bewilderment. "Are those - cookbooks?!"

"Not all of them," Hermione confirmed solemnly with a slow shake of her head, lifting a finger to point out a distinctive blue and gold spine on the middle shelf. "There's a copy of 'Hogwarts: A History' right there." Her voice was oddly tense, almost disbelieving.

Ron, tiptoeing up behind them, squinted at the indicated book, and following Hermione's guidance, he saw the book. Then, he understood the reason behind Hermione's unusual tone.

Thanks to her tireless enthusiastic recitations, selected passages of 'Hogwarts: A History' were seared into Harry and Ron's brains. It was easily the most massive, intimidatingly dense book they had ever laid eyes on - but the version tucked away on this shelf was shockingly slender. Unrecognizably so, completely different from what they remembered.

Fed up with the endless parade of perplexing irregularities and determined to get some answers, Ron threw caution to the wind.

"Right then, let's have a proper look, shall we?" He said impatiently, reaching out to grab the book without further ado, before Hermione could stop him. But the instant his fingers brushed the leather spine, his whole body spasmed as if he'd been shocked by a live wire.

Ron snatched his hand back with a yelp, cuddling it protectively against his chest as he stared at the book in outraged bafflement.

Under Harry and Hermione's confused gazes, Ron said blankly, "Something's not right. I can't touch this book."

Seeing that Harry and Hermione couldn't understand what he meant, Ron simply pointed at the bookshelf and said, "You can try it for yourselves!"

"Honestly Ron," Hermione huffed, hesitance fighting with the burning need to know bubbling in her chest, "Putting our hands all over someone's private things without permission is terribly impolite and inappropriate-"

Her halfhearted scolding was cut off with a squeak as Ron grabbed her wrist and brought her hand into contact with the book spines. Simultaneously, Harry reached out and brushed cautious fingertips over the leather. As one, the trio froze with three pair of eyes flying wide open in shared shock as they processed the uncanny sensation.

'Hogwarts: A History' and the other books on the shelf appeared to be placed there, but when they actually tried to touch them, the sensation at their fingertips felt like touching posters stuck on the wall. They couldn't take these books off the shelf at all!

The three of them turned their heads to observe the ordinary room again, each with a chill in their hearts. At this moment, Dobby, who was also wandering around the room and had come to the desk in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, jumped onto the table. He glanced at the newspaper-like sheets of paper spread out on the corner of the desk and his huge eyes showed confusion.

"Harry Potter sir," Dobby squeaked raising his head to look at Harry. "Does the noble wizard knowed anything about an 'Royal Wizarding Association'? Dobby is never having heard of such a thing!"

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