Harry Potter and the Order Of the Phoenix [127]
“The cause of this was… magical text.”
“What!?” yelled Harry, Ron, and Hermione together, quite loudly. Some of the healed students looked at them, wondering what they meant.
“As you may have noticed, some of the magical orders didn’t make it to us. The ones that didn’t fell to the floor, and appeared to disappear. They did not disappear, however. Since all of your menus are immensely complex, and we had to make hundreds of them in a short time, quickly and efficiently, we were forced to use an experimental copying spell that uses highly unstable elements, and has not been tested extensively. When the words fell to the floor, they absorbed the elements in the wood, making it explosive. The friction from the hours of having people dance all over the floor gave the giant bomb enough heat to finally go off.”
Most students stood there, looking at Dumbledore with glazed eyes. Not many of them had gone to Muggle schools, so they never took science courses. All they understood was magic. They didn’t know what friction and unstable meant. Harry, however, had been to Muggle school (and did quite well), and understood. But, he knew there had to be more to it….
“I apologize to all of you that were hurt… that would be all of you…. But, the most serious injuries were only a mild cause of a bruise, and a few faints. I’m sorry to say that you are all still expected to go on with your lives, and report to your common rooms. Since it is now past midnight, Christmas is officially over, and the house elves should be eager to clean this up. The Great Hall will be ready for your use tomorrow.”
As if by magic, at least sixty house elves popped into the Great Hall, and started cleaning up. Even after just few minutes, the Great Hall was looking much better. Seeing that everyone was alright, people then started heading back to their common rooms. Harry, however, wanted to talk to Dumbledore.
“Excuse me, Headmaster,” said Harry.
“Yes Harry? What is it?” said the old man.
“Well, I was just wondering… do you think there could be… more to what happened here tonight, like, Voldemort influenced?”
“I don’t doubt it for a second, Harry,” said Dumbledore, waling off, “but, innocent until proven guilty, so I can’t say anything yet.”
Harry took a minute to understand, and then walked back to his group. They all walked out of the Great Hall, Harry kissed Cho goodbye, and they went their separate paths to their common rooms. It took a while to get back to the Gryffindor common room for Harry, Ron, and Hermione, they had to fight their way through crowds of people all over, still confused, and talking about what had happened. When they got back to the portrait of the Fat Lady, however, they came before a disturbing sight: Malfoy kissing Ginny. As soon as they saw the three of them, they broke apart, and brushed themselves off, trying to pretend nothing had happened.
“Ahem, um… thanks for the great night, Ginny… I’ll… uh, see you later!” said Malfoy, walking off.
“See you Draco,” said Ginny, giggling.
“Ginny!” said Ron. “You showed him where our common room is!”
“Well, we know where theirs is,” whispered Harry to Ron. In their second year, they had discovered where the Slytherin Common room was.
“Well, it’s not like I told him the password,” said Ginny sternly. A question had been burning in Harry’s mind for a while, so he decided it was time to ask.
“Ginny,” he asked, “how did you and Draco meet?” Ginny blushed.
“It was quite a while ago, actually,” she said, sounding as if she were floating. “He was talking to Professor Fletcher about getting some pieces of an animal… I don’t remember exactly. Anyway, I came down to do some extra credit for potions, and he was walking up the stairs I was going down. We both weren’t looking, and we crashed into each other. He said, ‘Watch where you going you… you… beautiful person….