Came up with this scene, but couldn't use it and liked it too much to throw away. Anyone wanting to use it and run with it, feel free as long as you send me a link. ^_^
- -
I went up to where Harry and his friends were sitting in the hall, not having to feign my excitement.
"Professor?" asked Harry Potter.
"I figured it out," I said, clapping my hands in excitement. "Fascinating. All sorts of new information all from an evening of broom-closet checking."
"Uhm," said a suddenly red Harry.
Hermione simply raised a book so that she was completely concealed behind it.
"Seriously?" asked Ron.
"It wasn't like that," said Harry.
"You got Hermione to put a book down for any length of time?" asked Ron.
"It was an accident," said Harry.
"In a broom closet?" asked Ron.
"Oh, don't jump to conclusions," I said to their friend. "Someone apparently shoved them in and used a locking charm. Five points to whoever did it. Very good work."
A hand shot up.
"Mister Malfoy," said Severus Snape at the head table, facepalming. "How many times must I remind you that Slytherin is supposed to be the House of the cunning?"
"In any case, I just managed to see that wisp of smoke coming from your scar. I did four diagnostic spells and was puzzling over the results until it all suddenly made sense," I told him. Also the rest of the Feasting Hall since everyone was listening at this point, but who cares about such details?
"Uhm, right," said Harry, looking nervously about.
"When Dark Lord You-No-Screw," I began.
"That's 'You-Know-Who'," automatically corrected half the table.
I waved it off. "When the Dark Loaf cast that killing curse and left that scar on your head - there was a magical link formed."
"Professor," began Albus Dumbledore, apparently concerned about some minor trivia.
"Your scar is directly connected via a curse to the Dork Lore," I continued. "However, I had some ideas and it turns out that he can send you pain and unpleasantness - whereas when you feel things like pleasure and affection and genuinely loved - that will go back and hit the You-Know-Hosed right in the nadgers!"
Dead silence, punctuated only when Dumbledore abruptly sat down.
"What, so someone kisses me and Voldemort feels it?" asked Harry.
"No, well, yes, sort of. Except he'd get burned every time you do that," I told him. "Love protection remember?"
"Wait!" said Ron Weasley. "So every time a girl kisses Harry, they basically hit the git with a bludger?"
"More like a small Crucio," I said, beaming at the redhead. He usually wasn't half so clever. Tempted to toss a few points his way as a way of encouraging him.
"Harry, you lucky dog," said Ron. "Every girl who's lost a family member is gonna want to claim yer lips."
"And their fathers will probably want to kill me," bemoaned Harry.
"And if kissing would do such a thing," I continued. "Just imagine next year when you're old enough to start finding broom closets on your own! Why, a full-blown snogging session would be like dipping His-Nose-Butt in boil-causing potion or maybe hitting the Dank Lorry with a Crucio himself. Hell, if you ended up with a makeout session you could probably burn out whatever protection he was using to keep himself tethered in this life."
Harry had already buried his head in his hands. "This can only turn out horribly, I just know it."
"'Tether'?" asked Professor McGonagall.
"Near as I can tell it's the Sorcerer's Hidden Heart gambit," I told her, my enthusiasm for the subject and love of teaching carrying me through. "Snip off some of your life-force and put it in a safe location. Lots of problems with that though. Insanity, lowering competence, less of yourself left behind until you become a fairly two-dimensional cariacture of yourself, and inherently unstable - just to name a few. Dark magic, powerful, but the sort of thing that eventually causes more problems than it solves."
"I'm not familiar with that one," said Minerva McGonagall, looking distasteful about something.
"Oh, it's something in a lot of legends and myths," I explained. "In fact - there's a muggle film that has it in there. One of the 'Sinbad' films from the 1960s or so I think. Don't recall the name off-hand. I think it was the 1960s. Might have been a decade on either side, lot going on then."
"Wait. So, when Hermione kissed Harry she was basically putting a bludger straight into You-Know-Who's privates?" asked Ron, eyes wide as he looked at the book now completely covering the witch's head in question. "You suspected, didn't you? That's why you did it."
There was a vague noise that might have been agreement.
Another brief silence, briefly broken by Minerva McGonagall getting up and stating that Hermione had just gotten Gryffindor another twenty points because if anything could be said to be Gryffindorish behavior - finding a way to remotely kick a Dark Lord between the goal posts was definitely in that category.
And oddly enough, this would be one of the cases where not a person in the Great Hall even token-protested a point-award.