Summary: With Dumbledore gone and Umbridge in charge of the school, Harry believes that he won't last very long. So, he decides to rebel by pranking her and Snape.
*=* Chapter 1 - Rebellious *=*
Rebellion
*=*
The students in the Gryffindor common room were all chatting happily, despite the fact that Dumbledore had been ousted as headmaster and their second most hated professor was the new head. Spirits were still strong in Hogwarts, especially with the fireworks that the Weasley twins had set off.
Harry and Ron were sitting at a table on the outskirts of the excited crowd and they looked up as Hermione returned from talking with the twins with a smile on her face. The look was so different than how she would normally react to the two troublemakers and she further upset the balance by waving off doing homework. “After all, the Easter holidays start on Friday and we’ll have plenty of time then…”
“Are you feeling all right?” Ron asked, staring at her in disbelief. Harry was also watching her a bit worriedly, although something else kept distracting him. An idea that he was fondly turning about in his head, as he had been doing ever since school started.
“Now that you mention it,” said Hermione happily, “d’you know... I think I’m feeling a bit... rebellious.”
“How about we really be rebellious?” Harry said as he came to a sudden decision.
“What do you mean?” Ron asked.
“I’ll be back!” Harry leapt up from his seat and ran up the dormitory stairs. He raced over to his trunk, opened it and took out a folded piece of parchment. He didn’t bother to clean up the mess that he just made of his trunk as he headed back down to the common room.
“Here,” Harry handed Ron the parchment, since Ron was the closest to him.
“What on earth is this, mate?” Ron asked, glancing at it.
“I came up with the ones for Snape when I was stuck at the Dursleys’ for the summer and I made the ones for Umbridge after that first class,” Harry said.
“Made what up?” Hermione asked before taking the parchment.
“Hey, I wasn’t done reading that!” Ron protested when she stole it.
“Are you actually planning on doing these?” Hermione asked as she handed the parchment back to Ron, finished reading it already.
“Why not? Umbridge is probably going to expel me first chance she gets, probably for something I didn’t even do. Anyway, most of these can be done anonymously, at least the ones for Umbridge,” Harry answered.
“I think these are bloody wicked,” Ron said as he practically devoured the list.
“You don’t have to be a part of this, Hermione,” Harry said. “Though, it’d be nice if you joined in for some of them, but I think that Ron and I can handle most of these.”
“Yeah, we can do these easily,” Ron chimed in.
“Oh, all right, you two can try this plan out, but if you get expelled I won’t talk to either of you ever again,” Hermione relented.
“Wicked,” Ron exclaimed.
“Don’t worry, Hermione, we won’t get caught,” Harry said with a grin.
“Oh?” Hermione raised her eyebrow. “And how are you going to do something that not even Fred and George can do?”
“Well, okay, maybe we will get caught, but I have a plan that will mean that nothing will happen if we do mess up,” Harry answered.
“What is it?” Ron asked as he opened up a random chocolate frog.
“Oh, I’ll just pretend that I’m insane,” Harry said in dismissal.
“What?” Hermione snapped. She and Ron stared at Harry, not even noticing the stares that they were now getting from the students near them over Hermione’s sudden exclamation. “A prank war I get, but acting as though you are insane? That does not sound good, Harry.”
“We all knew that Harry was insane, Hermione,” Ron dismissed as he opened up another chocolate frog. He held the card up, “See, even his card says so.”
“Give me that,” Hermione exclaimed as she snatched the card out of Ron’s hands. She glanced at it to find that the card was of Harry, but it didn’t mention anything about his sanity. She rolled her eyes and tossed the card back to Ron. “I still think that this is all one big, bad idea.”
“We need to do something, Hermione, even if it is insane,” Harry said. He took the parchment back from Ron and spread it out. “I’m going to do this, starting with my potions assignment.”
“What are you going to do with your potions assignment?” Hermione asked with a faint tone of horror in her voice.
“He’s going to sign his potions assignment with different names,” Ron read the prank idea off of the list. He squinted at the spell included next to the idea. “Where’d you learn that spell, Harry?”
Harry shrugged. “It was in this year’s text books. I kind of read ahead out of boredom and that just added more fuel to the fire.”
“What spell is it?” Hermione asked, curious despite her vow to stay out of the endeavor.
“Oh, it’s a spell for copying bits of writing,” Harry answered as he scribbled the incantation out onto a scrap piece of parchment and handed over to Hermione.
“You do know that Snape will mark your essay wrong if you submit it with the wrong name,” Hermione pointed out as she glanced at the copying spell. It was one that she already knew about, so she tucked it into the pages of her book.
“Of course he will,” Harry answered as he nodded his head. “But, I want to see if he can correctly guess which essay belongs to whom.”
“And you’re planning on handing in more than one copy?” Hermione asked as she turned back to her book.
“If I’m going to be annoying him then I might as well go big.” Harry shrugged as he dug out his potion’s essay. It was already signed with his real name, but he had no trouble in erasing the dried ink; this time it was a spell that he had already known for a couple of years. He created five copies of his essay and then carefully labeled each essay with a different name.
Ron read each name as Harry put the essays aside to dry and snorted. “See, here’s proof if you ever need it that Harry’s insane, Hermione. How else would he come up with names like ‘Bloodcharm Chuck Junior?’”
“Bloodcharm Chuck Junior is a perfectly ordinary name,” Harry mock sniffed as he stuck his nose up in the air.
“If you’re insane.” Ron laughed. He turned back to the list of pranks, preferring to read it over again rather than finding his own essay. “So, which one are you going to do next?”
“Some of these can be done whenever without any preparation. Most of them are all attitudes and, yes, a bit of insanity.” Harry grinned at Ron. He pointed to a Snape section later on in the list. “I have Occlumency with Snape on tomorrow and I’ll be putting those into effect at that point.”
“Picture rubber ducks?” Ron read a random thought from the list.
“See, I figure that Snape can access my thoughts with Occlumency, so, while I can’t actually protect my mind, I should be able to partially control what he sees.” Harry shrugged. “I figure that it’s worth a try.”
“You really should research Occlumency,” Hermione absently suggested.
“Maybe,” Harry replied.
“What are you going to do with Umbridge?” Ron asked, drawing Harry’s attention back to the list.
“I think Umbridge is busy enough at the moment,” Harry glanced out of the window at the flying fireworks, “besides, I’ve got to build up my crazy reputation before I can really do anything to Umbridge.”
“If you say so.” Ron gave him a look before moving on to exclaim over another idea on Harry’s list.
They spent the rest of the evening like that, planning out their method of rebellion. When they finally went to bed Harry practiced his Occlumency before falling asleep. He was going to be letting Snape in his mind while trying to drive the man crazy; he needed to be able to shield his mind enough to get away with it and he could only do that through Occlumency. That night he had the same dream of the corridor that he usually did, but the dream mutated halfway through – ending in Snape cackling over shelves of rubber ducks.
*=*
Everything continued on as usual on Wednesday. Harry acted like his normal self, giving no sign that he was even planning a rebellion. Ron was quite impatient for the fun to start, but Hermione was glad that Harry was acting very sensibly for once. As Harry explained it to Ron after dinner had ended and before he went down to his Occlumency lessons, “We don’t usually see Umbridge on Wednesday and I don’t want to bring myself to her attention. It will be a lot more believable and less like I’m the one pranking her if I do so.”
“Fine, fine,” Ron sighed as he slumped over the Gryffindor table, “ruin my fun.”
“You’d better get going, Harry, you wouldn’t want to be late,” Hermione said as she glanced at her watch.
“Right, thanks, Hermione,” Harry said. He grabbed his bag and headed out of the Great Hall. As he made his way to the dungeons, Cho intercepted him halfway across the entrance hall. Harry raised his hand, cutting her off before she could say anything. “I don’t have time for this right now, Cho. There are many things afoot and I have places to be.”
“But, I need to talk to you,” Cho said, blinking at Harry’s bluntness.
“Maybe later, then,” Harry answered, already moving once more towards the dungeons. “But, I’m really not interested in listening to you defend your friend. She did something wrong and that is all there is to it. Bye.”
Harry left Cho behind as he made his way down to Snape’s office. He lightly practiced Occlumency on his way down, shoving all thoughts about Cho and her traitor friend out of his head, but not daring at all to think of his plans for the lesson. Instead, Harry focused on picturing Dudley’s favorite rubber duck: the one that Harry had buried under his aunt’s precious rose bush when he had first planted it.
Harry knocked on Snape’s door and entered the office as soon as he heard confirmation from inside. He quietly closed the door behind himself and watched as Snape continued to remove his thoughts, placing all of the silvery strands into Dumbledore’s Pensieve. He absently wondered what would happen if he put a rubber duck in the basin; would it float on the memories or would it sink into the memory?
“You’re late, Potter,” Snape coldly said after he had finished with removing his thoughts. Snape set the Pensieve aside and turned to regard Harry. “Have you been practicing?”
“I have been practicing and if you would care to take my hand, you will see just how much I have improved in the art of handshaking,” Harry said, starting his Rebellion off. He stuck out his hand and ignored Snape’s glare.
“Idiotic as ever, Potter. Shall I assume that you haven’t practiced at all and start the lesson?” Snape didn’t appear to want an answer to his question as he pointed his wand towards Harry. “Wand out, Potter.”
Harry waved his hand at Snape before taking out his wand. He got into the stance that he usually used when facing an opponent and concentrated on yellow rubber as he waited for the spell to hit him.
“On the count of three, then,” Snape said and he started counting. But, before he could reach three, his door slammed open and Draco Malfoy entered the room. Snape quickly put his wand away, but Harry took the time to spell Draco’s shoes a dark red. The blond Slytherin never noticed as he informed Snape that Montague had been found.
Draco blinked when he finally noticed that Harry was there. “What’s Potter here for?”
“Remedial potions lessons, which we will resume tomorrow evening, Potter,” Snape answered. Before Harry could say anything, Snape and Draco left the office.
“But, I wanted to tell Draco that Snape was teaching me how to sneer properly.” Harry pouted before blinking when he realized that Snape had left him alone in his office. He had full run of the office of the professor he was planning to prank. “Wicked.”
For a minute Harry just stood there, marveling over his turn of luck, then he came to his senses and started working. First he charmed Snape’s desk to turn pink when someone sat in the visitor’s chair; it wouldn’t due to have Snape come back to a pink desk after leaving Harry alone in the room. Of course, Harry did have to do something obvious for Snape to blame him for, so Harry took a minute to outright charm Snape’s chair a brilliant red.
A spell on the ceiling insured that it would start raining bubbles at dawn. As his last act, knowing that Snape could return at any moment, Harry transfigured a broken quill tip from his bag into a rubber duck. McGonagall would be proud, Harry decided as he poked the rubber duck into the space between two jars of eyeballs from one kind of creature or another.
Harry grinned as he glanced around the office once more. Beyond Snape’s new chair color, his office looked to be untouched, which was exactly the way Harry wanted it to be. Harry gathered up his bag and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind himself.
A part of him regretted the fact that he didn’t take his curiosity up and look in the Pensieve at Snape’s memories. There could have been something in there that neither Snape nor Dumbledore were telling him, something to do with the corridor that he kept seeing in his dreams. Of course, it could just be filled with something he really didn’t care about. Harry wrinkled his nose at the idea that Snape had any kind of personal life that he didn’t want to know about. All in all, considering what he had been able to do to Snape’s office, it was a good thing that he didn’t poke his nose into the Pensieve.
Ron and Hermione were startled when Harry returned to the common room earlier than they thought he would be back. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Hermione worriedly asked.
“Is Snape dead? Did you accidently kill him?” Ron asked.
“Nah, Montague finally showed up and Malfoy fetched Snape before we could start our lesson, but get this,” Harry grinned as he sat down and leaned forward. He waited until both Hermione and Ron had also leaned forward before he continued, “Snape left me alone in his office.”
“Really?” Ron blurted out, a wide grin spreading across his face.
“That really is quite unusual; Snape must have been worried about Montague to leave you alone like that,” Hermione said as she leaned back in shock.
“So, tell us what you did; you did do something, didn’t you?” Ron demanded, rubbing his hands together.
“Of course I did something.” Harry’s grin widened. “First, I charmed Draco’s shoes red and then I did the same thing to Professor Snape’s chair.”
“Red is always good for pranking,” Ron murmured.
“Then I charmed his desk pink, only I tied it to his second chair so that I wouldn’t get blamed for it.” Hermione perked up at this point, and Harry could already see the questions she had for him. “I’ll explain the spells I used later, but I also charmed his ceiling to rain bubbles in the morning, at least I hoped the spell went right.” Harry sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “I’ve only read about some of these spells, so I have no idea if they will really work or not. But, I think the best spell was when I transfigured a rubber duck.”
“What did you do with the rubber duck?” Ron asked, blinking in confusion.
“I left it in between those jars of eyeballs that he has on the shelves. I figure he probably won’t find it for a while, judging by the dust on those things.” Harry absently wiped his hand on his robe, even though he had already gotten all of the cobwebs off of his hand.
“You do realize that he will take points or give you a detention for charming his chair? And possibly the other things, even if you didn’t really leave any proof it was you?” Hermione asked.
“Of course, but then I’ll just have more time to enact my plans.” Harry grinned.
“But what about your Occlumency lesson?” Hermione turned to another line of questioning.
“We’re going to do that tomorrow, so I’ll have a bit more time to build up the picture I want to show him.” Harry stretched and then relaxed in his chair. “Now I’ve got to figure out if I want to be really evil and show him an eight year old Dudley in the tub.”
Ron burst into laughter. “Do it, Harry, I dare you!”
“Ron,” Hermione scolded, fighting to keep from breaking into laughter herself.
“This will be fun,” Harry said before joining in with the laughter.
) But, I like how you alternated the story. Nice job!
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