Chapter 20: Harry drank dat dum-fuck juice

Harry was walking down winding corridors lined with paintings towards the Hufflepuff common room, thinking about the fact that if Quirrell and Dumbledore were having a meeting right now, that left two less teachers to come after him if he tried to sneak into the restricted section. The issue of course was that while he was invisible and quiet, the wards that were likely on that part of the library were also invisible. The only way he could imagine getting in there was if he learned more about the subject of wards or enchantments, or if he slipped in there with someone. But who had access? Harry didn't know any older years with a pass. He didn't know any older years other than Tonks period and he doubted a professor would trust that girl with more than a wooden stick.

No… she would burn that. A rock, maybe.

A sturdy one.

"Doesn't hurt to check!" Harry said happily and headed towards the library, remembering that in the first book, Harry had managed to sneak in until he'd picked up a screaming tome, at which point Filch had heard him, or something. Now it had been a while since he'd read the Harry Potter books, actually, it had been two lifetimes and twenty years ago. So he could be forgiven for forgetting about the fact that the Potter invisibility cloak, which was a deathly hallow, supposedly protected one from all sorts of magic.

Of course, he remembered eventually, eventually being after he'd already entered the open library. He was surprised to find the doors open, but perhaps the logic had been that only students should not be allowed into the library after curfew, but since students had a curfew, they could by definition not enter the library. It was a logical fallacy that authority figures often committed, believing people acted by the law, not by their interests. Mostly because teachers considered the rules to be in the interest of the students, but failed to see that the students disagreed.

Well, anyway, there he was, smack dab in the middle of the very dark library, again in the corner from which he could glower at the two books that his spell managed to highlight when that bitch of a DADA professor walked in.

Harry was shook, appalled, baffled, that an adult occasionally also disobeyed the rules. He thought that he was the only rebel here, but it turned out that he was just a stupid conformist following the lead of one very thin and cold hoe. Nevertheless, all personal dislike for Twix aside, Harry glued his eyes on the woman as if he were a hawk trying to catch a mouse that had grown fat from too many TV dinners. That's why he saw exactly how Twix passed into the restricted section. A down-wards twist of the wand created a pale-blue string which she then slashed at the doorway leading to the restricted section. When the string touched the entrance, a shimmering cascade of silver light opened a hole into the restricted section that Twix promptly stepped through. It was only by sheer reflex that Harry jumped in after her and he immediately regretted the decision when he turned around and saw the silver light spread over the doorway once again, essentially, for all intents and purposes, trapping him in here until Twix did what she was here to do.

Although… Harry thought as he turned around to where the woman had disappeared. Now would be a good time to figure out what the woman was actually doing. Going as quietly as possible down the corridor where he'd seen her disappear, Harry followed the footsteps that the professor wasn't bothering to mask. A horrid feeling of regret at his impulsive decision started spreading through his stomach as he walked past hissing books and tomes illustrated with people and animals seemingly experiencing sheer agony. It was dark, but perhaps unluckily the moon was bright and the sky didn't have a single cloud in it. The restricted section also had windows and due to these and because he'd gotten used to the low-light environment from standing around in the library for a while before Twix had come, Harry could read some of the titles.

He grimaced as he walked past a particularly large tome on 'The Secrets of Disembowelment; Constipation as a Dark Creation'. He didn't know if the book was supposed to teach someone how to give someone constipation, or if it attempted to heal constipation by gutting someone. He decided that he didn't want to know and continued following the sound of the footsteps, which stopped just as he decided to focus only on that. Rounding a corner he saw Twix pacing in front of a wall manically. The woman was swaying like a drunkard with a platinum express card after one hour at the Oktoberfest.

The restricted section wasn't overly big, Harry noted. The corner that the professor was walking in front of led into the last corridor of this part of the library. Three corridors stacked on both sides with books is all that the restricted section was, apparently. Definitely not an endless pool of dark and forbidden knowledge. At the end of the day, Hogwarts was a sch-.

"Reveal yourself!" Twix suddenly screamed, brandishing her wand at the section of the wall she was pacing in front of and almost giving Harry a heart attack in the process. He barely managed to not fall over in an aborted jump backwards, which his flight-focused mind probably thought was an elegant beginning of a chase sequence in which Harry would come out the winner.

As Harry calmed down from his fear-induced jitters, Twix continued poking the section of the wall with her wand muttering things in a variety of languages that Harry did not understand. Not only Latin but also what was probably ancient Greek and something that he couldn't place at all. All of this was occasionally interrupted by angry mutters about the 'blasted chamber', the 'bloody curse' and last but not least 'fucking antlered chuckle-fuck'.

It was with a sudden and startling realisation that Harry came to discover two shocking facts. First, that Twix was completely off her rockers and secondly, that he was trapped in the restricted section of the library until this mad-woman decided to leave.

'Nice fucking mess you got us into there, mate,' Harry thought to himself, clutching the books on the Mind Arts that he'd subconsciously taken at some point to his chest, silently cursing at them that they better be fucking worth the effort. He didn't dare cast his word-searching spell again to look for more lest Twix somehow notice him and in her less-than-content state of mind, try to eviscerate him. He really hoped she hadn't had the time to read the constipation book.

So there he was, standing somewhere where he shouldn't be, watching his crazy defence professor throw curses, literal and metaphorical, flashing lights and screams of rage at a corner of all things. He didn't know how long he stood there, just like in his past life he'd lost track of the amount of time that he'd been strapped to the table at the dentist when they'd been removing his wisdom teeth. The horribleness of the situation transcended time. When Twix finally decided to leave, Harry didn't know if he'd been in there with her for five minutes or for five hours. All he knew was that he needed to go to the toilet and that he was going to fall over from magical exhaustion any second now from upkeeping the disillusionment spell for however long he'd been doing so.

Of course, that was the moment, as they were crossing the boundary to exit the restricted section, that a loud wailing suddenly broke out. Loud enough to rattle Harry's teeth and to make Twix, who had been walking in front of him jump up almost a meter in fright. The woman looked around, for the first time in a while more afraid than manic and fearfully pointed her wand outwards as she spun, her gaze panning over where Harry was twice.

"I didn't take a book, I didn't, I didn't," Harry heard the woman mutter before narrowing her eyes and hissing. "Dumbledore, an additional ward on the door for when someone leaves, not enters, bloody fuck, fuck…" the woman began cursing as she quickly turned towards the library exit and ran as fast as her twig-like legs could carry her. Harry followed and exited the library just in time to see a flash of red light from the corridor to his right, followed quickly by a silver gleam and a desperate "Protego!"

Suffice it to say Harry ran in the other direction, not looking back to see what fate would befall Twix. No matter how tired he was, he still had something to do after all. Running with energy he didn't have he somehow made it to the seventh floor where he paced in front of the room of requirement.

"I need a place I can hide something so that the professors can't find it, I need a place I can hide something so that the professors can't find it, I need a place I can hide something so that the professors can't find it, I need a place I can hide something so that the professors can't find it," he said in a pace as rapid as the one that his legs were shivering from exertion, and as soon as the door appeared Harry ripped it open and threw the two books he'd taken from the restricted section inside before shutting the door.

He began pacing again, running, really, but this time he asked for a path to his dormitory back in Hufflepuff, several floors down, which he was thankfully granted. An uncomfortable slide out of stone deposited him quickly and snugly behind the tapestry of a badger hanging in the dorm room of the male first years. Thankfully the muffliato was still in effect, allowing him to sneak by his sleeping dorm mates, undress and slip into bed. Casting a quick tempus he saw that it was three in the morning. A good time to go to sleep, considering that he'd been awake for almost 24 hours and his young body was literally screaming for rest. There was just one issue. He was much too nervous to fall asleep and the only thing he could do was lie in bed with his eyes closed as images of a frantic professor ran through his mind. What had happened to her? What had she been looking for? Who had confronted her, in that corridor that he'd fastidiously avoided?

The questions kept him awake until sunrise and it was only when his dorm mates left, naturally after laughing at him for still being asleep, that he was able to finally close his eyes.

A dream about a library started unfolding and just as he was about to open his first book he was shaken awake.

"Mate you're not gonna believe what happened!" Cedric theatrically whispered as he shook Harry by his shoulder, loosening the cocoon of yellow and black covers that Harry had taken great effort to sink into.

Harry extended a hand to bat Cedric away and turned to glare at him with eyes that were probably as red as his hair and an expression only a university student who'd at one point had six dead-lines they were consecutively missing could pull off. It didn't gain him any reprieve, Cedric seemed immune to the threat of physical violence that Harry was trying to communicate with eye contact alone.

And that's how Harry found out about how Professor Twix had apparently been found casting dark magic in the library, supposedly to curse any student reading up on the topic of grindylows. Upon being discovered by Professor Flitwick she'd then had a running battle through the entirety of Hogwarts, something that Dumbledore had had to get involved in to stop in the end.

"Why would she want to curse anyone interested in Grindylows?" Harry muttered.

Cedric shrugged and Harry stood up with a groan. He had a Potions lesson to get to.