A Problem With the Plumbing ~ Chapter Two
Title: A Problem With the Plumbing
Author: goingbacktosquareone
Ship: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
A/N: This was the winner for "Best Adventure" in SIYE's Hogwart's Reconstruction Challenge.
Chapter Two: A Bad Job
“Mr Potter, this is Jebediah Puddinplace, our lead engineer for the Hogwarts reconstruction project,” introduced McGonagall as she ushered Harry to a very short, extremely rotund wizard wearing dark khaki robes; a yellow hard hat; knee-high, steel-toed work boots and a Muggle tool belt cinched precariously around his amazingly wide hips. In the tool belt hung a Muggle hammer, a straight-edge screwdriver, an old-fashioned corkscrew, a small cylinder of propane fuel, a tube of fireplace matches and a bottle of red nail polish bearing a label which classified its colour as I’m Not Really A Waitress.
“Yes, yes, yes,” gushed the engineer as he clapped his hands and beamed up at Harry. “Call me Jeb,” said the man as he grabbed Harry by the elbow, looking him up and down like one might size up the attributes of a dairy cow. “Y’know, you’re a wee bit smaller than I expected, but you’ll do,” he said happily, causing Harry’s jaw to drop at the wizard’s audacity.
“Charmed,” replied Harry, looking like he had just bitten into a vomit-flavoured Bertie Bott’s Bean. Harry shot an exasperated glance back to the headmistress, beseeching her once more to find a way to fix the plumbing without the use of the Elder Wand.
“Mr Puddinplace, Harry is joined by his friends Mr Ron Weasley, Miss Hermione Granger and Miss Ginny Weasley. I’m sure the four young people will work quite nicely together if you leave them to their devices,” manoeuvred the headmistress. “A word, Harry, if I may, before I return to my office?” asked McGonagall, beckoning Harry away from the group.
Harry loped over to the professor, not eager to hear what she had to say. He couldn’t believe he’d been saddled with the likes of Jeb. Scowling, he crossed his arms and shuffled his feet like a petulant child and stared at the headmistress. As he regarded the headmistress’s exhausted face, Harry immediately felt remorseful for his immaturity. The woman was clearly pushed to her limits.
“There are a few things we need to ask of you Harry, and then you’re free to return to your leisure at the Burrow. The most important is, of course, the plumbing problem. If you can’t fix that I suppose we’ll be forced to resort to chamber pots until the situation is resolved,” said Professor McGonagall, cringing.
“We also have a malfunction with the front gate. If you could please use Albus’s wand to determine the source of its problem and correct it if possible, I would be most pleased.
“If I may be so bold, I’d also like you to perform a personal favour on my behalf. I would like you to permanently seal the Chamber of Secrets,” said the headmistress sadly. “Even though the threat of the Basilisk is gone, I’m still very uncomfortable with the idea that a student may be able to gain access. Plus, the destruction in that bathroom is alarming. It’s very unsafe,” she said, shuddering.
“I can definitely do that,” promised Harry quietly, feeling horrible about his previous behaviour.
“Regarding serious matters, I have finished outlining my requirements for today,” continued McGonagall. “However, there are two more things you may wish to do for the sheer pleasure of being able to do so,” she added, cocking her eyebrow at Harry. “Every master builder who has worked on this castle has added a personal touch all his own. Some of these things have yet to be discovered. It would be a travesty if you didn’t leave your signature here today, Harry,” smiled the headmistress.
“Are you saying I can add anything I want to the castle?” asked Harry with a smirk. “And no one necessarily has to know what I added?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s your discretion whether you choose to share your addition with the Board of Governors.”
“Wicked,” replied Harry. “I know exactly what I’m going to do!” he exclaimed with unbridled glee sparkling in his eyes.
“With a look like that, Mr Potter, I’m quite sure I don’t want to know what you’re up to,” said McGonagall with an uncharacteristic grin. “Before you run off in a thither, there’s one last thing: you may make an addition from the students’ suggestion box hanging outside the Great Hall. For my sake, please choose wisely,” she finished and then shuffled him off to rejoin his friends after giving him a sheet of parchment outlining the spells necessary to repair the plumbing.
Harry returned to his friends, who were bent over the Hufflepuff house table in the Great Hall, watching as Jeb pointed and gesticulated over a large roll of parchment which Harry could only assume was a blueprint of the castle’s waterworks.
“Ah yes, Mr Potter, finally. I’ve gone over the logistics of our problem with your colleagues and identified a point of entry, here,” he said, whipping out the corkscrew and utilizing it as a makeshift pointer, causing all four teens to make an immediate step back to avoid being inadvertently jabbed. “You should be able to follow the tile until you reach this collection pit, which is the centralized dumping station for the castle. Once you’ve reached this juncture, you can wield your wand and fix us up right quick.” Jeb took the print, rolled it up and handed it over to Harry with a flourish and a bow, winking as he straightened. “If you will, please return the print to me when you’ve finished the job. Good luck.”
The engineer replaced the corkscrew in his tool belt, used the claw hammer to scratch his left shoulder blade and then took a fireplace match from the tube and began to pick his teeth, muttering under his breath about kids and non-existent work ethics. The four teenagers stared incredulously as the little round wizard in the ridiculous get-up waddled away, leaving them to repair the castle with little-to-no direction. When the engineer had passed from ear-shot, Ron immediately began crowing about their assignment.
“That little duffer! I bet he doesn’t even have a wand!”
“Ronald, language!” chided Hermione. “The Board of Governors wouldn’t have approved him for this project if he wasn’t qualified.”
“Bloody qualified, my arse,” grumbled Ron, pursing his lips as he returned his attention to his friend. “So what’s up, Harry? Did McGonagall tell you what we needed to do?”
Harry spent the next few minutes explaining the projects the headmistress had given him. When he reached the bit about the covert addition and the requests of the students; Ginny, Ron and Hermione shared his enthusiasm.
“So what are you going to do?” asked Ginny with excitement.
Harry grinned at her deviously. “That’s for me to know and you lot to find out,” he teased. “Let’s grab the suggestion box from the corridor and get this plumbing fiasco out of the way. I don’t want to save the bad job for later.”
* * *
“Ugh, no wonder that little plonker didn’t want to come down here and fix the plumbing himself!” complained Ron for the thousandth time in five very long minutes.
Thankfully Hermione had the foresight to grab several old flannels from a bin as she left the Great Hall - she’d transfigured them into rubber waders so that the four didn’t have to ruin their clothes in the sewer pipe, saying she wasn’t about to ruin the Gucci loafers she’d received as a coming-home-from-Australia present from her parents.
Before crawling into the cistern, Hermione had placed a Bubblehead Charm over each of their heads since she was clearly the best of the four at wielding the spell. Within seconds of lighting their wands and gaining their bearings in the dark, dank pipe, Ron took on a deathly pallor, becoming uncharacteristically peaky…even for Ron.
“What’s the matter, Ron?” teased Ginny. “Smell getting to you? You’re looking a little nauseated. Maybe Hermione should lift the Bubblehead so you can have a good retch,” she snickered.
“I’m fine,” mumbled Ron, looking eerily like he did when he’d been wrapped around a pail, belching slugs. “Mum didn’t mention crawling down a sewer pipe when she said we had to help Harry.”
“You big baby,” crooned Hermione mockingly. “If I can do it then you can do it. Besides, it’s not safe for Harry to be down here alone. What if something happened and he hurt himself or there was a methane explosion? Who would help him?” she reasoned as they sloshed along the pipe.
“Methane?” asked Harry with growing concern. “No one said anything about methane.”
“What’s methane?” asked Ginny curiously.
“Well,” explained Hermione, “it’s a colourless, odourless, highly-flammable gas generated by organic matter during fermentation under anaerobic conditions,” she rattled as if the rest of the group would understand exactly what she was saying. Noticing her friends had stopped and were gaping at her stupidly, she shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes. “Good heavens,” she sighed in exasperation, “don’t you three ever read? Methane production by landfills, bogs, wastewater sludge and biodegradable feedstock is thought to be a major contributor to global warming.” Realizing she was getting nowhere, Hermione threw up her arms in disgust. “The decomposition of waste creates methane. Methane explodes. Explosions kill people. Can we move on already?”
“Hermione?” asked Ron cheekily.
“What, Ron?” huffed Hermione as she rounded on him, flourishing her bushy mane.
“I think you’re dead sexy when you rattle off meaningless, random facts like that,” he said dreamily. Hermione’s angry grimace melted into a look of sheer happiness as she blushed back at Ron.
Harry rolled his eyes as Ginny and motioned for the rest to follow. Within minutes they reached their target location and found themselves on the lip of a very large underground reservoir, in which swilled a polluted mass so disgusting Harry had to force himself not to look directly at it. Channels led in from every direction, dripping sludge and grey water into the pit with sickening, thick, plopping sounds; occasionally expelling short explosions of raw sewage into the cesspool from random directions.
“So all this has accumulated just since the Banishing Spell stopped working?” asked Ginny in disbelief, gagging slightly behind her hand.
“Could you imagine what it’d be like if school was in session?” thought Hermione out loud. “And the elves…what would it be like for the elves to have to come down here to dredge it out? We must fix this!” she exclaimed with fervour.
“Okay,” began Harry, pulling out the parchment McGonagall had given him. “Dumbledore suspects the Banishing spell was weakened and then slowly dissipated after the Elder Wand transferred its loyalty to me,” he explained as he read from the scroll by the light of his wand. “This is going to be tricky. Not only do I have to use the Elder Wand, I have to use my other wand simultaneously. I need to perform a Banishing Spell with the Elder Wand using my dominant hand while performing Disillusioning Spell on the contents of the pit with my other.”
“Have you ever used your left hand to perform a Disillusioning Spell, Harry?” asked Hermione.
“No, I don’t reckon I have. I should try it out once or twice, don’t you think?” he asked her.
Hermione pulled out several of the remaining flannels from her pocket, handing them over to Harry. “Try these,” she offered. “While you’re at it, you should try the Banishing Spell as well. You haven’t exactly had proper time to get used to using the Elder Wand.”
“Good idea, Hermione,” said Harry graciously as Ron and Ginny looked on. Harry tried the Elder Wand first, easily Banishing one of the flannels. “I reckon that’s pretty straight-forward,” he said. Then he pulled out his holly wand and waved it around a bit with his left hand, getting a feel for its movement in his hand. He cast a Disillusionment Spell on one cloth, diminishing its appearance only slightly. Frowning, he cast the spell again with a more-controlled movement and successfully removed the flannel from sight.
“I’m supposed to do those simultaneously? Blimey!” groaned Harry. Holding both wands, he practiced a bit before walking back to the edge of the tank. He looked back over his shoulder and shrugged, saying, “Wish me luck!” before brandishing the wands, sending two spells into the centre of the pit. The force of the spells sent Harry reeling as he stumbled backward and came to rest squarely on his behind.
“Wow…” breathed Ginny. “That was wicked,” she said, her eyes wide.
“Great job, Harry!” cried Hermione, pulling him up into a bone-crushing hug. “It’s gone! There’s not even anything dripping from the pipes! Even the smell is gone!”
“It is gone, isn’t it?” said Ron, whose pallor began to brighten. “You’re dead useful to have around, mate. Remind me to pull you along the next time mum wants me to de-gnome the garden,” he laughed. “It looked easy the first time with the flannels,” said Ron, “but I definitely think that wand is a major boost to your magic.”
“You don’t think?” deadpanned Harry with a look of annoyance. “Let’s get out of here before I’m tempted to push you into that hole,” he threatened.
* * *
After crawling out of the sewer pipe and Scourgifying themselves, the foursome proceeded to the front gate to assess its problem.
“The gate seems to have locked itself down,” said Harry, scrunching his face in thought. Turning to the walls and noticing the heavy spell damage they’d taken as a result of Death Eaters storming the castle, Harry narrowed his eyes and examined the area within thirty metres on either side of the gate. Waving the Elder Wand around a bit, the way he’d seen Dumbledore do in the cave, he was surprised when he felt several cold areas that seemed to emanate an aura of negativity.
“This is it,” deduced Harry. “The Death Eaters’ curses damaged the wall. The gate has completely stopped functioning in an attempt to protect the castle. If I can remove these areas of Dark Magic, I should be able to reset the wards around the gate, thus removing its confusion.”
“Confusion?” asked Ron.
“The school protects itself, Ron. I keep telling you to read Hogwarts, A History. When are you ever going to listen? It’s like a short in a wire. The Light Magic and the Dark Magic collided, locking down the gate,” explained Hermione.
“Short in a wire?”
“Never mind,” said Hermione as she rolled her eyes. “It’s a Muggle thing. I’m not going to spend all day explaining electricity to you. Ask your dad,” she sighed. Ron just cocked his eyebrow at her and gave her a typical sneer. “That expression is not going to get you what you want later tonight,” Hermione threatened icily.
Harry chuckled as his two best friends continued arguing and went about removing the areas of Dark Magic from the wall around the gate, pulling his girlfriend along with him with a conspiratorial wink. While he was at it, he pointed out the broken blocks and spots of crumbled foundation he found along the way to Ginny, who repaired them happily, grateful for time alone with Harry. Making their way back to the gate, he smiled when he realized it had unlocked itself, allowing the couple to open it and resume repairing the wall from the outside. When they’d finished their work and were satisfied the wall was sound, they re-entered the grounds and Harry reset the wards.
“Two down, three to go,” he grinned, and motioned everyone back toward the castle.
Author: goingbacktosquareone
Ship: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
A/N: This was the winner for "Best Adventure" in SIYE's Hogwart's Reconstruction Challenge.
Chapter Two: A Bad Job
“Mr Potter, this is Jebediah Puddinplace, our lead engineer for the Hogwarts reconstruction project,” introduced McGonagall as she ushered Harry to a very short, extremely rotund wizard wearing dark khaki robes; a yellow hard hat; knee-high, steel-toed work boots and a Muggle tool belt cinched precariously around his amazingly wide hips. In the tool belt hung a Muggle hammer, a straight-edge screwdriver, an old-fashioned corkscrew, a small cylinder of propane fuel, a tube of fireplace matches and a bottle of red nail polish bearing a label which classified its colour as I’m Not Really A Waitress.
“Yes, yes, yes,” gushed the engineer as he clapped his hands and beamed up at Harry. “Call me Jeb,” said the man as he grabbed Harry by the elbow, looking him up and down like one might size up the attributes of a dairy cow. “Y’know, you’re a wee bit smaller than I expected, but you’ll do,” he said happily, causing Harry’s jaw to drop at the wizard’s audacity.
“Charmed,” replied Harry, looking like he had just bitten into a vomit-flavoured Bertie Bott’s Bean. Harry shot an exasperated glance back to the headmistress, beseeching her once more to find a way to fix the plumbing without the use of the Elder Wand.
“Mr Puddinplace, Harry is joined by his friends Mr Ron Weasley, Miss Hermione Granger and Miss Ginny Weasley. I’m sure the four young people will work quite nicely together if you leave them to their devices,” manoeuvred the headmistress. “A word, Harry, if I may, before I return to my office?” asked McGonagall, beckoning Harry away from the group.
Harry loped over to the professor, not eager to hear what she had to say. He couldn’t believe he’d been saddled with the likes of Jeb. Scowling, he crossed his arms and shuffled his feet like a petulant child and stared at the headmistress. As he regarded the headmistress’s exhausted face, Harry immediately felt remorseful for his immaturity. The woman was clearly pushed to her limits.
“There are a few things we need to ask of you Harry, and then you’re free to return to your leisure at the Burrow. The most important is, of course, the plumbing problem. If you can’t fix that I suppose we’ll be forced to resort to chamber pots until the situation is resolved,” said Professor McGonagall, cringing.
“We also have a malfunction with the front gate. If you could please use Albus’s wand to determine the source of its problem and correct it if possible, I would be most pleased.
“If I may be so bold, I’d also like you to perform a personal favour on my behalf. I would like you to permanently seal the Chamber of Secrets,” said the headmistress sadly. “Even though the threat of the Basilisk is gone, I’m still very uncomfortable with the idea that a student may be able to gain access. Plus, the destruction in that bathroom is alarming. It’s very unsafe,” she said, shuddering.
“I can definitely do that,” promised Harry quietly, feeling horrible about his previous behaviour.
“Regarding serious matters, I have finished outlining my requirements for today,” continued McGonagall. “However, there are two more things you may wish to do for the sheer pleasure of being able to do so,” she added, cocking her eyebrow at Harry. “Every master builder who has worked on this castle has added a personal touch all his own. Some of these things have yet to be discovered. It would be a travesty if you didn’t leave your signature here today, Harry,” smiled the headmistress.
“Are you saying I can add anything I want to the castle?” asked Harry with a smirk. “And no one necessarily has to know what I added?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s your discretion whether you choose to share your addition with the Board of Governors.”
“Wicked,” replied Harry. “I know exactly what I’m going to do!” he exclaimed with unbridled glee sparkling in his eyes.
“With a look like that, Mr Potter, I’m quite sure I don’t want to know what you’re up to,” said McGonagall with an uncharacteristic grin. “Before you run off in a thither, there’s one last thing: you may make an addition from the students’ suggestion box hanging outside the Great Hall. For my sake, please choose wisely,” she finished and then shuffled him off to rejoin his friends after giving him a sheet of parchment outlining the spells necessary to repair the plumbing.
Harry returned to his friends, who were bent over the Hufflepuff house table in the Great Hall, watching as Jeb pointed and gesticulated over a large roll of parchment which Harry could only assume was a blueprint of the castle’s waterworks.
“Ah yes, Mr Potter, finally. I’ve gone over the logistics of our problem with your colleagues and identified a point of entry, here,” he said, whipping out the corkscrew and utilizing it as a makeshift pointer, causing all four teens to make an immediate step back to avoid being inadvertently jabbed. “You should be able to follow the tile until you reach this collection pit, which is the centralized dumping station for the castle. Once you’ve reached this juncture, you can wield your wand and fix us up right quick.” Jeb took the print, rolled it up and handed it over to Harry with a flourish and a bow, winking as he straightened. “If you will, please return the print to me when you’ve finished the job. Good luck.”
The engineer replaced the corkscrew in his tool belt, used the claw hammer to scratch his left shoulder blade and then took a fireplace match from the tube and began to pick his teeth, muttering under his breath about kids and non-existent work ethics. The four teenagers stared incredulously as the little round wizard in the ridiculous get-up waddled away, leaving them to repair the castle with little-to-no direction. When the engineer had passed from ear-shot, Ron immediately began crowing about their assignment.
“That little duffer! I bet he doesn’t even have a wand!”
“Ronald, language!” chided Hermione. “The Board of Governors wouldn’t have approved him for this project if he wasn’t qualified.”
“Bloody qualified, my arse,” grumbled Ron, pursing his lips as he returned his attention to his friend. “So what’s up, Harry? Did McGonagall tell you what we needed to do?”
Harry spent the next few minutes explaining the projects the headmistress had given him. When he reached the bit about the covert addition and the requests of the students; Ginny, Ron and Hermione shared his enthusiasm.
“So what are you going to do?” asked Ginny with excitement.
Harry grinned at her deviously. “That’s for me to know and you lot to find out,” he teased. “Let’s grab the suggestion box from the corridor and get this plumbing fiasco out of the way. I don’t want to save the bad job for later.”
* * *
“Ugh, no wonder that little plonker didn’t want to come down here and fix the plumbing himself!” complained Ron for the thousandth time in five very long minutes.
Thankfully Hermione had the foresight to grab several old flannels from a bin as she left the Great Hall - she’d transfigured them into rubber waders so that the four didn’t have to ruin their clothes in the sewer pipe, saying she wasn’t about to ruin the Gucci loafers she’d received as a coming-home-from-Australia present from her parents.
Before crawling into the cistern, Hermione had placed a Bubblehead Charm over each of their heads since she was clearly the best of the four at wielding the spell. Within seconds of lighting their wands and gaining their bearings in the dark, dank pipe, Ron took on a deathly pallor, becoming uncharacteristically peaky…even for Ron.
“What’s the matter, Ron?” teased Ginny. “Smell getting to you? You’re looking a little nauseated. Maybe Hermione should lift the Bubblehead so you can have a good retch,” she snickered.
“I’m fine,” mumbled Ron, looking eerily like he did when he’d been wrapped around a pail, belching slugs. “Mum didn’t mention crawling down a sewer pipe when she said we had to help Harry.”
“You big baby,” crooned Hermione mockingly. “If I can do it then you can do it. Besides, it’s not safe for Harry to be down here alone. What if something happened and he hurt himself or there was a methane explosion? Who would help him?” she reasoned as they sloshed along the pipe.
“Methane?” asked Harry with growing concern. “No one said anything about methane.”
“What’s methane?” asked Ginny curiously.
“Well,” explained Hermione, “it’s a colourless, odourless, highly-flammable gas generated by organic matter during fermentation under anaerobic conditions,” she rattled as if the rest of the group would understand exactly what she was saying. Noticing her friends had stopped and were gaping at her stupidly, she shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes. “Good heavens,” she sighed in exasperation, “don’t you three ever read? Methane production by landfills, bogs, wastewater sludge and biodegradable feedstock is thought to be a major contributor to global warming.” Realizing she was getting nowhere, Hermione threw up her arms in disgust. “The decomposition of waste creates methane. Methane explodes. Explosions kill people. Can we move on already?”
“Hermione?” asked Ron cheekily.
“What, Ron?” huffed Hermione as she rounded on him, flourishing her bushy mane.
“I think you’re dead sexy when you rattle off meaningless, random facts like that,” he said dreamily. Hermione’s angry grimace melted into a look of sheer happiness as she blushed back at Ron.
Harry rolled his eyes as Ginny and motioned for the rest to follow. Within minutes they reached their target location and found themselves on the lip of a very large underground reservoir, in which swilled a polluted mass so disgusting Harry had to force himself not to look directly at it. Channels led in from every direction, dripping sludge and grey water into the pit with sickening, thick, plopping sounds; occasionally expelling short explosions of raw sewage into the cesspool from random directions.
“So all this has accumulated just since the Banishing Spell stopped working?” asked Ginny in disbelief, gagging slightly behind her hand.
“Could you imagine what it’d be like if school was in session?” thought Hermione out loud. “And the elves…what would it be like for the elves to have to come down here to dredge it out? We must fix this!” she exclaimed with fervour.
“Okay,” began Harry, pulling out the parchment McGonagall had given him. “Dumbledore suspects the Banishing spell was weakened and then slowly dissipated after the Elder Wand transferred its loyalty to me,” he explained as he read from the scroll by the light of his wand. “This is going to be tricky. Not only do I have to use the Elder Wand, I have to use my other wand simultaneously. I need to perform a Banishing Spell with the Elder Wand using my dominant hand while performing Disillusioning Spell on the contents of the pit with my other.”
“Have you ever used your left hand to perform a Disillusioning Spell, Harry?” asked Hermione.
“No, I don’t reckon I have. I should try it out once or twice, don’t you think?” he asked her.
Hermione pulled out several of the remaining flannels from her pocket, handing them over to Harry. “Try these,” she offered. “While you’re at it, you should try the Banishing Spell as well. You haven’t exactly had proper time to get used to using the Elder Wand.”
“Good idea, Hermione,” said Harry graciously as Ron and Ginny looked on. Harry tried the Elder Wand first, easily Banishing one of the flannels. “I reckon that’s pretty straight-forward,” he said. Then he pulled out his holly wand and waved it around a bit with his left hand, getting a feel for its movement in his hand. He cast a Disillusionment Spell on one cloth, diminishing its appearance only slightly. Frowning, he cast the spell again with a more-controlled movement and successfully removed the flannel from sight.
“I’m supposed to do those simultaneously? Blimey!” groaned Harry. Holding both wands, he practiced a bit before walking back to the edge of the tank. He looked back over his shoulder and shrugged, saying, “Wish me luck!” before brandishing the wands, sending two spells into the centre of the pit. The force of the spells sent Harry reeling as he stumbled backward and came to rest squarely on his behind.
“Wow…” breathed Ginny. “That was wicked,” she said, her eyes wide.
“Great job, Harry!” cried Hermione, pulling him up into a bone-crushing hug. “It’s gone! There’s not even anything dripping from the pipes! Even the smell is gone!”
“It is gone, isn’t it?” said Ron, whose pallor began to brighten. “You’re dead useful to have around, mate. Remind me to pull you along the next time mum wants me to de-gnome the garden,” he laughed. “It looked easy the first time with the flannels,” said Ron, “but I definitely think that wand is a major boost to your magic.”
“You don’t think?” deadpanned Harry with a look of annoyance. “Let’s get out of here before I’m tempted to push you into that hole,” he threatened.
* * *
After crawling out of the sewer pipe and Scourgifying themselves, the foursome proceeded to the front gate to assess its problem.
“The gate seems to have locked itself down,” said Harry, scrunching his face in thought. Turning to the walls and noticing the heavy spell damage they’d taken as a result of Death Eaters storming the castle, Harry narrowed his eyes and examined the area within thirty metres on either side of the gate. Waving the Elder Wand around a bit, the way he’d seen Dumbledore do in the cave, he was surprised when he felt several cold areas that seemed to emanate an aura of negativity.
“This is it,” deduced Harry. “The Death Eaters’ curses damaged the wall. The gate has completely stopped functioning in an attempt to protect the castle. If I can remove these areas of Dark Magic, I should be able to reset the wards around the gate, thus removing its confusion.”
“Confusion?” asked Ron.
“The school protects itself, Ron. I keep telling you to read Hogwarts, A History. When are you ever going to listen? It’s like a short in a wire. The Light Magic and the Dark Magic collided, locking down the gate,” explained Hermione.
“Short in a wire?”
“Never mind,” said Hermione as she rolled her eyes. “It’s a Muggle thing. I’m not going to spend all day explaining electricity to you. Ask your dad,” she sighed. Ron just cocked his eyebrow at her and gave her a typical sneer. “That expression is not going to get you what you want later tonight,” Hermione threatened icily.
Harry chuckled as his two best friends continued arguing and went about removing the areas of Dark Magic from the wall around the gate, pulling his girlfriend along with him with a conspiratorial wink. While he was at it, he pointed out the broken blocks and spots of crumbled foundation he found along the way to Ginny, who repaired them happily, grateful for time alone with Harry. Making their way back to the gate, he smiled when he realized it had unlocked itself, allowing the couple to open it and resume repairing the wall from the outside. When they’d finished their work and were satisfied the wall was sound, they re-entered the grounds and Harry reset the wards.
“Two down, three to go,” he grinned, and motioned everyone back toward the castle.