Daisy Potter and the Love Triangle at Hogwarts (Book 1, Harry Potter ff)

Chapter 15 - I Show Not Your Face But Your Heart's Desire

"It was Snape," Ron was explaining to Harry, Fred, George, and I, "Hermione and I saw him. He was cursing your broomstick, muttering, he wouldn't take his eyes off you. He mustn't've been able to curse Harry's at the same time he was cursing yours."

"Rubbish." Hagrid said, who had come up to the hospital wing about five minutes after my group had came. "Why would Snape do somethin' like that?"

I was sitting on a hospital bed, my foot slowly healing due to a potion Madam Pomfrey had made me take. The group were all around me. Harry was sitting beside me with his arm around my shoulders. Fred and George were perching on the edge of the bed on the other side of me. Terry had collapsed into a chair beside the bed. Hagrid was standing at the foot of it. Ron and Hermione were leaning against the wall, and Draco was still here, oddly, as he had never got on with my group. He was leaning against the wall with Ron and Hermione, and had been talking quietly to them before Ron had spoke up. He was shooting me worried - and admiring? What? - glances every now and then.

Ron, Hermione, Harry and I did a four way glance at each other.

Then Harry spoke up.

"I found out something about him." He told Hagrid. "He tried to get past that three headed dog at Halloween. It bit him. We think he was trying to steal whatever it's guarding."

Harry had gone to get a book off Snape that he had took off him earlier that day, only to find that Filch was taking care of a wound on Snape's leg, and that he was saying, 'how are you supposed to keep your eyes on all three heads at once?'.

"How do you know about Fluffy?" Hagrid sounded shocked.

"FLUFFY?" The four of us chorused. Terry, Fred and George looked up momentarily, before going back into a hushed discussion.

"Yeah - he's mine - bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub las' year - I lent him to Dumbledore to guard the -"

"Yes?" Harry said eagerly.

"Now, don't ask me any more." Hagrid said gruffly. "That's top secret, that is."

"But the greasy slimeball's trying to STEAL it." I said.

"Rubbish." Hagrid said again. "Snape's a Hogwarts teacher, he'd do nothin' of the sort. An' you shouldn' call him a slimeball, Daisy." Though I saw his beard twitch when he said that.

"So why did he just try and kill Daisy?" Draco cried. "If what Weas- uh, Ron- said was true, then ...?"

"I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid, I've read all about them! You've got to keep eye contact, and Snape wasn't blinking at all, I saw him!" Hermione exclaimed.

"I'm tellin' yeh, yer wrong!" Hagrid said hotly. "I don' know why Daisy's broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn' try an' kill a student! Now, listen to me, all four of yeh - yer meddlin' in things that don' concern yeh. It's dangerous. You forget that dog, an' you forget what it's guardin', that's between Professor Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel -"

"Aha!" I grinned. "So there's someone called Nicholas Flamel involved, is there?"

Hagrid looked furious with himself.

~~~

One morning in mid-December, I woke up to several feet of snow. I saw it through the window in my dormitory.

I leapt up, and piled on layer upon layer of school clothes to keep me warm, and charged down to the common room. Fred and George were already there, bundled up like me. They grinned at me as I came up to them.

"Let's go!" They chorused, and they marched on either side of me as we made our way down to the Entrance Hall.

We scurried outside. I spotted Professor Quirrell taking a stroll, with his turban still on. He hadn't taken it off all year, the weirdo.