Imperio (on hold)

12: The Shrieking Shack

"Melody, hey Melody!".

Melody ignored the persistent voice again. She was sitting at the Great Hall eating breakfast and was trying to focus.

"Melody?".

Finally she looked up. It was Fred Weasley sitting at the Gryffindor table with George Weasley and Lee Jordan. Fred was beckoning for Melody to approach them.

With a sigh Melody abandoned her cornflakes and went over to the Gryffindor table. Fred was grinning like an idiot, George and Lee were trying but failing to hold in their laughter.

"Hey Melody", Fred greeted, "I've got something to show you. Our newest invention!".

"Yeah?", Melody asked, wanting to get it out of the way so she could focus again.

"Come close", said Fred, "we can't let anyone see it". Melody moved closer and Fred pulled a small box out of his robe pocket. "What is it?", Melody asked.

"Patented Daydream Charm", Fred announced proudly, "one dose and you'll experience a very realistic and virtually undetectable daydream. Of course it's not quite finished yet, it sometimes causes unconsciousness. But it'll be great once we open our joke shop-".

"Ssh!", George interrupted him. "What?", Fred said, "Melody won't tell Mum, she's not a dobber". The twins and Lee burst out laughing and George nodded.

A sick feeling was forming in Melody's stomach and she clutched it and groaned. The three boys hadn't noticed and were still laughing.

Melody slouched away to her common room, ignoring the calls from Fred "come back! We've got more stuff-".

Collapsing on the closest armchair Melody closed her eyes, images were swimming before her: Voldemort, his bright red eyes and sinister laugh. Lucius Malfoy, his horrible spite. Tiana, her friend she had lost. And Fred. Fred's soft chestnut eyes. His beautiful ginger hair. His gorgeous smile. Melody felt her body heat up and her fingertips go tingly.

Then quite suddenly nausea overtook her and she fell sideways over the armchair, vomiting all over the floor. It stunk really badly.

All the previous images and feelings gone, replaced with nothingness again, Melody waved her wand and cleaned up the mess. She had to focus. Focus on her task.

She had to kill Harry Potter. But she had to do it in a way that wouldn't make it obvious it was her.

How to do it? The Avada Kedavra Curse seemed obvious. But he had survived that before, hadn't he? As a baby?

Shaking her head, Melody heard the bell ring and got up to head for her first class of the day.

~

The day's lessons went by uneventfully. Aside from a few snide comments from Akiko, Melody did not meet any trouble. She didn't do any of the work, instead she spent the time sitting at the back of the various classrooms to think of ways to achieve her task. But nothing came to her.

That evening Melody was sitting in the common room. In the same armchair she vomited from that morning, whatever that was about.

"Put a disillusionment charm on yourself. Make sure no one sees you do it"

Melody took out a decoy detonator that Fred had given her during break and tossed it onto the floor.

It waddled quickly to the other side of the common room and blew up with a loud bang and lots of smoke.

During the chaos of the Hufflepuff's screaming and scrabbling to see what had happened, Melody cast the disillusionment charm on herself and became a human chameleon.