I'm such a bad person. Sorry to my dear, beloved reviewers and readers--homework is killing me and inspiration has all but failed. To everyone who answered that Diern Alley is the opposite of Knockturn Alley, I give you a cyber cookie. I would give you real ones, but I'm on a diet, so we don't have any in the house…ha. To anyone who didn't get it, it's diurnally (meaning awake during the day) and nocturnally (awake at night). You wouldn't believe how long it took for me to realize that Diagon Alley was really 'diagonally.'
The first five minutes of the Alpine snow war were dealt out in an every-man-for-himself type display, but teams slowly began to form as certain people ganged up on one another. The twins were the most adamant in team-forming, since they kept coming up with ingenious tactics to disarm the other, and a well-thrown snowball from Hermione aimed at Fred's ear landed her a place alongside George. He gave her a sidelong grin and began chucking snow double-time at Harry, who had recently been knocked down by Ron. Muffles bowled Ron over in retaliation for his master, and thus the war truly began.
Hermione, George, and Ron magicked snow into a ten-foot high igloo of fort goodness, and Fred and Harry threw together a hasty six-foot wall. Muffles worked on rolling huge snowballs with his nose, plopping them next to Fred and watching as the latter levitated them over to the igloo and let them wreak havoc.
Hermione made a simple catapult design that fired ammo rapidly at the opposing team. Ron worked on conveying snow into the fort through the back door, and George packed it into snowballs. The war carried on much like this, until George got bored and decided to liven things up a bit. With two simple "Reducto"s, the forts were reduced to rubble and hand-to-hand combat commenced. Wands were forgotten and hands frozen as the teenagers resorted to Muggle techniques of snowball-making.
Mini-battles broke out on both sides of the hillside. On one side of the battlefield, behind an old tree, Harry and Ron were going at it, with projectiles being thrown so fast an onlooker would have a hard time telling who was winning. There was a momentary lull in the action as Harry bent to retrieve more snow for ammo, and Ron seized his chance. Quick as a flash, he had shoved a handful of snow down the back of Harry's jeans, causing the latter to dance a jig in pain. He dug as much snow as he could out of his boxers. The great majority had already melted. He searched around for Ron, but nothing could be seen except for the great purple blot that was Muffles, sitting off to one side and watching the battles in amusement. Harry was about to laugh at his dog when he saw a flash of red a ways off under a snowbank. He pulled out his wand and formed a huge snowball the size of his head. Harry yelled the levitation spell before walking towards the snowbank, a malicious grin on his frozen face.
Muffles whuffed in boredom and turned his attention to the other raging battle. A few feet to his left, the twins were involved in a wrestling match. Hermione was acting as commentator and referee--at least, she was until Fred grabbed her foot and dragged her into the fray. She retaliated with a good, old-fashioned face-washing, grinning at her handiwork until George dumped snow all down her back. Hermione tackled George and sent them rolling down a small hill. They came to rest inches from a rather large tree, causing George to spit out a mouthful of snow and mutter, "That was close."
He looked up at her and she could feel her cheeks burn for an unknown reason. Hermione deliberately looked anywhere but his face, and her attention focused on an icicle hanging from a tree nearby. Drip….drip….drip….drip…Hermione watched each drop of melted ice fall from the tip. She became so enthralled by it, in fact, that it took George at least a minute to gain her attention.
"Hermione…" he muttered, slightly amused.
She kept staring.
"Herm."
Nothing.
"Herm!"
What the bloody hell was so fascinating about that icicle?
"HERMIONE!" he yelled, and added a poke to her side for good measure.
She jumped and looked down, finding herself again lost in George's deep cerulean eyes. "What?" she asked dumbly.
"You…you….um…" he trailed off, fidgeting with a loose thread on Hermione's jacket. Hermione never found out what she was, because at that precise moment a snowball was lobbed into the snow-laden branches of the pine tree above them, causing a waterfall of wetness to cascade onto their heads. Fred's orange head popped up from up above, yelling down at them good-naturedly, "Oh, kiss her already!"
Harry and Ron's heads came into view at Fred's proclamation. Hermione hastily shoved herself off of George, trying not to think about how firm his chest was--unsuccessfully, of course. She ran up the hill to give Fred a piece of her mind. George, however, sat under the tree in a dazed state until the tree threw more snow at him. He glared up at it and hauled himself to his feet, walking back to the rest of the group to find them fully dry and all packed up, ready to begin hiking.
The group trekked about two miles through the knee-deep snow, struggling to keep themselves from sinking into unseen snow drifts. More than one unlucky teen had been hauled from a chest-deep mound of frozen water, sputtering and shivering, during the three hours it took to reach their current location.
Ron stumbled as his foot hit an unseen rock beneath the innocent white layer of snow, causing him to fall onto his back in the powdery substance. His hair splayed out behind his head and a great cloud of disturbed snowflakes twirled around his body.
"I'm done. There's no bloody way you're getting me to move another step. Leave me if you must. I'll just stay here until I die a frozen, lonely death." he sighed dejectedly, wiping his face clean of snow.
Fred and George had extremely happy looks on their faces, probably hoping their sibling would carry through with his proposition.
"Can we get that in writing?" asked Fred, holding out a fire-engine red phoenix-feather quill and spare bit of parchment he had recently conjured.
Ron simply glared.
"Apparently not. Rude, really, not speaking to his own blood and kin." commented Fred, tucking the quill and paper away.
"Do you know, I think the bloke could use a bit of Babbling Bubblegum." agreed George, pulling out something shiny out of his pocket.
Seeing the slightly bewildered look on Hermione's face, the troublesome twins explained in one of their famous 'Dynamic Duo' acts.
"Newest invention, Hermione dear…" began Fred.
"We would've liked to call it 'Bouncing Blue Babbling Bubblegum,'…" continued George.
"But it wouldn't fit on the label." the twins commented in unison.
"It turns the person blue…"
"Makes them bounce like a kangaroo…"
"And makes them talk a thousand and one words per minute." Fred and George said in perfect harmony, grinning like maniacs.
"Good for parties…"
"Great for kids…"
"And even better for…"
"Annoyingly silent people." they finished, and George brandished the blue cube in Ron's direction, only to find him with both hands clamped firmly over his mouth.
The two advanced on Ron, but their attention was averted to Harry, who was spread-eagled in the snow a hundred meters up the slope. Various obscenities traveled down the slope as he struggled fruitlessly to right himself, much to the amusement of the twins.
"First day with your new feet, Harry?" yelled George, laughing uproariously when Harry retaliated with a badly-thrown snowball.
"It wasn't my bloody fault! There's a barrier or something here…" he yelled back, obviously annoyed, and began pushing at the air in front of him.
"Sure there is, Harry!" laughed George.
"Whatever you say, Harry!" guffawed Fred.
It wasn't until Harry disappeared from view did they stop laughing.
"Harry?" asked Ron, bewildered.
Nothing. Harry Potter had totally and completely vanished into thin air.
Muffles gave a soulful howl and trotted up the slope, sniffing dejectedly for any trace of his missing master. He prodded his nose into the place where Harry's footprints stopped and looked up, looking slightly confused. His violet snout pushed on the air, sniffing, sniffing, and then…Muffles' head vanished.
Hermione gasped. It was a little disturbing to see a fully-living, headless purple dog. Muffles' great purple tail began to wag in a happy way, and he seemed completely unaware that he was missing part of his anatomy. A few seconds later, however, a head came into view--granted, it was black-haired, not purple.
Fred raised an eyebrow in amusement. A headless dog standing next to a bodiless human. If only I could find a way to put the two together… he thought, throwing a covert glance at his partner in crime. George grinned in return, and Fred knew immediately what their next WWW product would be.
Before they could begin planning out the details to this new scheme, the raven-haired head yelled down to them, "Get up here! You've got to see this!"
It was a perfect incentive for the rest to sprint up the slope to where Harry's head floated. Hermione and Ron ended up racing the last few meters, laughing and stumbling in their haste to reach their friend first.
Hermione glanced in front of her to make sure she was headed in the right direction, then looked to the right to check on Ron's progress. Her smile slowly dropped into a frown as she realized she was now running alone, and whipped her head backwards as she continued to run. She could vaguely see Ron a few feet behind her, although his image was fuzzy. He looked slightly blue and seemed to be holding his nose, which was bleeding freely. Hermione came to an abrupt halt, turning her body completely around and watching all three Weasleys gaze about stupidly.
"Should we help them, or should we leave them?" asked the voice of Harry from her left. Hermione let out a muffled squeak of surprise, staring at Harry as though she had never seen him before.
"You're….you're…full again. I mean…you got your body back…" she stammered.
Harry smirked, then looked back towards the three brothers, his eyes dancing with barely contained laughter as he watched Fred hurl himself against what Hermione now knew to be a barrier.
"Should we tell them?" reiterated Harry.
"Hmm…" replied Hermione, feigning an inner debate.
Muffles barked in annoyance.
"Ah, c'mere, you great stupid dog…" said Harry, walking over to his stuck pet. He grabbed onto his collar and tugged him to the left, as opposed to dragging him all the way through. Harry had pulled Muffles no more than ten feet when he stopped, dropped the collar, and stepped back, calling his dog as he went. Muffles gave a happy yip and bounded the rest of the way through. As his legs and trunk came into view, Hermione caught the faint shimmer of a rectangular outline in the blue barrier. Her quick-thinking brain came to the conclusion that it must be a door, and the very place she had been lucky enough to run through while racing Ron.
Taking pity on the twins and Ron, who were now rotating in circles calling out their lost friends' names, Hermione walked up to the scintillating doorway and stuck her upper body through it.
Her head appeared twenty centimeters from Fred's face. His face contorted into a look of pure shock and he clutched at his chest, gasping out, "Merlin, Hermione! You almost gave me a heart attack."
She simply laughed and stuck out her hand, telling Ron to hold onto it. He obliged, then held out his free hand for George to link onto. Fred caught George's arm in a death grip, taking deep breaths and glaring at Hermione fiercely.
Hermione pulled them through the doorway and turned to face Harry. She stopped, however, before she could get her eyes to him, and goggled at the sight in front of her.
A tiny village made completely of ice loomed before her, with a two-story palace standing majestically in the very center. Groups of opaque igloos stood around it, with crisscrossing roads meandering from one mound to the next. As Hermione continued to watch, she noticed a small figure making its way towards them, skipping down one of the crystalline roads and singing a happy tune.
The figure kept getting closer, but it didn't get a great deal larger. Ron was under the impression that it was still standing about fifty meters away when it stopped in front of them, a toothy grin on its rosy-cheeked visage. Its violet eyes lit up as it looked at the towering humans above it.
"Hullo, chaps, and welcome to Schneeburg." it boomed, taking them all aback. The creature before them stood a mere three feet off the ground, and yet its voice was deeper than any of the males present.
He snapped his fingers and five other similar creatures came scurrying out from behind other igloos, all a different color of the rainbow. George watched in fascination as a yellow midget grabbed his pack from his back, lifted it high above his head as though it were a feather, and sprinted off down the street, chuckling merrily.
"Follow me, follow me." commanded the original violet critter, turning on his heel and skipping back down the road. The teens looked at eachother. As one, they shrugged and hopped onto the icy path, staring around them as snowflakes began to fall.
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