It was the Halloween feast and Ginny was talking with Jack and some of her other new friends. Not friends like Jack and Alexa were, but she studied with them and spent some time with them so they weren’t not her friends either.
Ginny stopped mid sentence and frowned as her magic sense picked something up. Little tendrils of magic were sliding through the great hall, creeping along the floor and bunching under the tables. Each tendril of magic was no larger than a single strand of hair with a single little bulb at their ends.
Ginny traced the strings to their source with her magic sense, focusing hard now that she had spotted the thin tendrils. It took a few seconds, but she finally localized it to one half of the Gryffindor table. Then closer, then the source… She turned to look and realized she was staring straight at Eric. The boy was eating even as his eyes darted around the great hall, his lips twitching upwards slightly in between bites of the turkey drumstick he was digging into.
He spotted her staring at him and they looked at each other for a long moment, Eric frowning as he saw her intense look. Then he smiled wide and put a finger to his lips with a mocking expression and winked at her.
Before Ginny could react the hundreds of tendrils positioned under the tables surged around the lips of their tables and deposited single drops of potion into drinks and trays of food all over the entire great hall, including the Slytherin table.
Hermione and Ron who were sitting by Eric turned to look at Ginny in confusion as their staring contest between the two of them continued.
Eric smiled and took another big bite of his drumstick and turned away to respond to something that Hermione had said to him.
Ginny turned and watched in horror as Jack slowly raised one of the goblets with drops of what must be love potion in them.
“Jack, don’t!” Ginny said before slapping the cup out of his hand and spilling it all over the table. Everyone looked at her, including the stunned Jack.
“Hey! Ginny, what was that for?” Jack protested.
“Something went in your drink!” Ginny said, “It was the Mad Potioner. Check your drinks, guys!”
The people around Ginny eyed her suspiciously for a moment.
“Ha! C’mon, Ginny!” One of her roommates said, “Suspicious much? There’s no one around, how would they even get something into his drink? He’s been holding it this whole time.”
She raised her goblet to her lips and drank from it. Ginny wasn’t sure which things had been potioned and which hadn’t been and she looked around panicked as everyone kept eating and drinking and ignored her warning.
Ginny twisted around and scanned the Gryffindor table until her eyes rested on Alexa who was chatting with one of her few Gryffindor friends. Alexa was already taking a long drink from her goblet. Oh no… Eric had spiked hundreds of them at once. What was going to happen when the potions took effect in a few minutes?
She sat there nervously, eyes darting around and not sure of what to do, frozen by indecision as time slowly passed. Should she stand up and warn everybody? But why would they believe her? How would she explain after? She looked back at Eric, who was looking at her with intense interest. Eagerly waiting to see what she would do.
Ginny looked around and started noticing the dreamy expressions start to wash over many faces in the great hall. She stood up, on the cusp of saying anything. Something. But on the edge of it stopped. It was too late. Everyone was already dosed, Ginny would be exposing herself for nothing. She didn’t even have any real proof that it was Eric who did it.
Ginny noticed Neville Longbottom stood up as well, looking rather ill and started to hurry off towards the door outside.
Immediately the dreamy expressions of the students sharpened into hunger and lust as they spotted the boy. As one the great hall stood up and started scrambling towards the confused and frightened Neville.
“Neville!”
“Longbottom, I love you!”
“Out of my way!”
“I’ll hex you!”
“Ugh! He’s my soulmate! Get out of my way, bi-”
The room descended into chaos as Neville was mobbed by the lovestruck crowd, screaming from the inside of the group in fear like he was being actively murdered.
“Oh, Neville! What are you doing to him?! Get away from poor Neville!” One of the entranced seventh year boys shouted and cast a spell and the people were blown to the side with a burst of force, falling to the floor.
“SILENCE!” Dumbledore’s voice boomed from the professor’s table, now standing to his feet with a commanding presence that briefly silenced the room.
“Stand back from Neville Longbottom, all of you,” He commanded. The room paused and all the love struck students wavered between charging back to claim Neville for themselves versus defying the Headmaster who was reputed to be one of the most powerful wizards alive.
Some of the love potioned students seemed to realize what was happening and took halting steps away from the press of bodies, looking thoroughly intimidated by the Headmaster even as they shot longing glances behind them back towards Neville.
Ginny could only stand there, body tensed as everyone waited for what was going to happen. The rest of the unpotioned student body staring at their drugged friends in confusion.
“He just wants Neville for himself!” One of the girls near the center of the drugged crowd screamed, “Don’t listen to him!”
“Yeah!”
“Get away from him, old man!”
The tension that had been draining from the room immediately flooded back through the room, all the drugged students getting ugly expressions on their faces as their addled minds processed the ‘revelation’.
Dumbledore looked rather taken back, “No, I-” He began before a Slytherin seventh year with a dopey expression stood on top of the end of the Ravenclaw table. He stared at Dumbledore with hatred.
“You’ve taken our wizarding traditions, our very wizarding heritage from this school Muggle-lover, I won’t let you take Neville from us too!” The boy shouted before flourishing his wand.
“Avada Kedavra!”
A green bolt blasted out of his wand towards Dumbledore. The headmaster’s eyes widened and he ducked, the green beam sailing just over his head and hitting the wall behind him.
A red beam came from Professor Snape in an instant, striking the attacker and sending him slumping unconscious to the surface of the table.
There was a moment where nothing happened, all the Professors standing together at the head table with their wands drawn, despite their shock at the situation.
“They’re working together!” A drugged girl shouted from the center of the crowd hysterically, “They’re trying to hurt Neville!”
Another drugged student near the edge of the crowd started saying a spell incantation and moving his wand, facing towards the professors with a comically angry expression. Before he could finish McGonagall cast another red beam and sent the student slumping to the ground unconscious.
“GET THEM!” The same hysterical girl from before screamed, and then the room immediately descended into a chaos blur of flashing spells and crackling magic. The teachers were shouting and wading into the chaos even as the drugged students assaulted them with waves and waves of their spells. The drugged group didn’t fight as one, infighting with each other nearly as much as they targeted the teachers with their spells.
The students that had escaped drinking the love potion droplets were running every which way in a confused mess as the drugged students and the teachers went to war around them.
McGonagall and Snape lead the charge, each battling more than ten students at once. McGonagall was transfiguring the food on the tables into a flock of tiny birds that were divebombing the drugged students and throwing off their wandwork and disrupting their spells.
Snape stood slightly behind her and was launching a barrage of spells and curses to pierce the defenses of the older years who had shield charms and were able to push back somewhat against the teachers assault with their sheer numbers. It was only their own inability to work together in their addled state that stopped the sheer of quantity of spells being thrown out from overwhelming the teachers' defenses.
Flitwick was the last on the frontline, standing just behind Snape and McGonagall. The short teacher looked focused, furiously casting and creating a series of shields and defensive spells to deflect the waves of incoming spells targeting his two more offensive allies. He looked like he was sweating, his eyes darting around as he summoned barrier after shimmering barrier and even deflected the occasional spell by striking it with a charm of his own that caused the opposing spell to unravel in mid-air.
The other teachers moved on the flanks, picking off and stunning any of the obviously drugged students that separated from the main mass closer to the doors at the exit of the great hall. They also levitated the unconscious students and moved them to the sides of the room where they wouldn't be trampled by the raging mob.
The three teachers pushed towards the writhing center of the crowd towards where Ginny knew Neville must be based on the high pitched screams and shouts coming from inside of there.
Dumbledore remained at his headmaster’s chair standing, pointing his wand toward the mass of drugged students chanting and drawing deeply on his magic. Wind began to swirl around him and his eyes began to slightly glow as his body became practically a blinding sun in Ginny’s magic senses. Whatever spells the drugged students sent at the headmaster one of the other teachers deflected or blocked before quickly pouncing and stunning the offender with a barrage of counter spells.
The whole room was still in chaos, a cacophony of noise and battle. Ginny looked around to look for Alexa, the sheer amount of magic being thrown around interfering with her magic senses ability to find her.
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As Ginny moved, she saw a boy in Gryffindor robes with heavily dilated eyes staring at her and Jack, shouting something incoherent as he started waving his wand at them. She turned around and pulled the stunned Jack to the side to avoid the spell that sent a spray of food splattering upwards as the spell let out a bang that Ginny could barely hear through all the other noise of battle around her.
Professor Lupin launched a red beam from the side and struck the Gryffindor, sending him slumping to the ground unconscious, his wand dropped from limp fingers.
Many of the confused non-drugged students seemed to understand somewhat that they should help the teachers, so started joining the fight to take down the love-struck students as best as they could.
Ginny turned her head, and froze when she saw Eric. His lips were extended and pulled upwards as far as they could go as somebody had put hooks on the corners of his lips and pulled upwards. He was pressing forward into the drugged crowd. The crowd that he had drugged. He launched spells with his wand against his opponents and laughing with a crazed look in his eyes. Ginny could sense that poking out of Eric’s form was a cloud of thin magic tendrils that struck out as he pushed forward, nudging arms and striking fingers to cause the people battling him to drop their wands or trip into each other without him even using his wand to attack them.
He whirled and spun, swaying from side to side as he moved like a dance through the battle. He moved smoothly, like every move was planned as he dodged most of the spells purely with his body. He launched more spells even as ducked down and spun in a circle, launching a series of five spells in quick succession to strike at five drugged students nearby that had been engaging in a fierce spell battle amongst themselves and against Eric both.
Hermione and Ron trailed behind, not nearly as effective as Eric but also shooting a hex or curse occasionally into the crowd of drugged students that was fighting Eric.
Ginny finally spotted Alexa, standing with her wand held out and looking lost as her head snapped from place to place in the chaos of the great hall. No one seemed to be targeting her, the main battle ground having moved away from her by now.
“Jack!”
Ginny shouted and pointed,
“Alexa!”
The boy seemed to hear her and nodded. The two of them ran over to Alexa, ignoring the chaos behind them. The girl spotted them and she startled out of her shock and ran towards them too.
They met in the middle and tried to all shout at each other at once, but none could hear the others. Dumbledore kept chanting, the wind swirling around him beginning to grow more powerful and tug on Ginny’s robes slightly even at this distance. His eyes glowed like a pair of flashlights as his wand remained pointed at the center of the drugged crowd of students even as he kept chanting, his booming voice reverberating with magic.
Suddenly from the mass of students, Ginny saw Draco Malfoy burst out of the chaos. He had the characteristic dilated eyes and comically angry expression showing that he had been drugged. His head immediately focused on the trio of them and his face twisted even further into anger if that was even possible.
He raised his wand and prepared to cast at them, at Alexa who was just in front of Ginny and would be hit first.
Ginny shoved Alexa to the side and in desperation shot five tendrils of her magic towards Malfoy as quickly as she could. They pierced into his skin like spears, and Draco shuddered and his spell faltered. His wand raised again as he recovered from Ginny’s blow, and in a panic she pulsed her magic and pushed him away with all of her might.
He went flying backwards as if hit by a massive hammer, thrown at high speed into the mass of fighting drugged students and knocking down at least five of them as he crashed into one after another and barely even slowing each time he impacted them. Finally he hit the floor and rolled limply across it, already unconscious before he even hit the ground. The rioting crowd closed around him and Ginny lost sight of his unconscious body.
The teacher’s progress in the battle was being slowed by the fact that they had to maneuver around the unconscious bodies of the fallen students to advance farther forward. But the number of battling drugged students was steadily dropping, some of them seeming to come to their senses and realizing that something was wrong with them as soon as they were no longer swept up with the emotions of the crowd.
Ginny looked at Eric and saw that he had paused in his erratic dance, his face a picture of genuine shock as he stared at her. His eyes darted to the direction she had flung Draco before back to her hands. Her empty hands, which had not been holding her wand. His distraction cost him, and he was blasted by no less than four curses before he could dodge. He fell to the floor, and only Ron and Hermione taking up his slack and casting a few extra spells at their attackers seemed to stop them from cursing the groaning Eric on the floor even more.
Dumbledore’s voice suddenly changed and Ginny looked at him while huddling together defensively with her friends.
Dumbledore’s head was now shrouded in a blinding white light that she knew must be coming from his eyes. But they were so bright that the two sources had blended together into one single bright beam turning his head into a massive lightbulb putting all the shadows in the room in sharp relief.
“SOMNUM TURBAE MAXIMA!”
Dumbledore chanted in his booming voice and a wave of magic blasted out of his form and a massive ball of magic shot down the great hall towards the exit where most of the drugged students had gathered.
The magic contained in the spell was so great that Ginny could see the air twist and warp with her eyes as the magic sought to escape the bounds of the theoretically invisible spell that contained it.
The spell landed in the center of the mob of students and then detonated, releasing a pulse of magic in all directions. Everybody at the site of impact immediately fell limp like puppets with their strings cut, all of them falling unconscious without fail as the wave of magic washed over them.
Within a second the wave of magic was right in front of Ginny. She tackled her friends to the ground so they wouldn’t fall and hit their heads when they were knocked out. The two of them shouted and squirmed as Ginny lay on top of both of them, but before Ginny could do anything else the wave of magic washed over them and all three of them were put to sleep immediately by the overwhelming force of Dumbledore’s magic.
— — —
Dumbledore staggered and started sweating and breathing heavily as soon as the massive spell left the tip of his wand. The spell landed and washed over the great hall, knocking out everyone present in a single spell. Dumbledore braced himself and felt his own spell wash over him and attempt to put him to sleep. But he was the most powerful wizard in this room by far, and despite his own spell's efforts it failed in its efforts and passed by him.
He stumbled to the side and braced himself against the headmaster’s chair for a moment, feeling suddenly weak. No matter how weak, every person here was magical. And the more magic somebody had the easier it was for them to resist sleeping spells like the one that Dumbledore had just cast on a grand scale.
After a moment to catch his breath, Dumbledore pushed himself off the arm rest and stood under his own power again. He looked over the eerily silent hall, every single person asleep, students and teachers alike. Minerva and Severus were the most magically powerful of those present and may have stayed awake if they had been at Dumbledore’s side when he cast the spell. But they had been in the thick of it and received a full blast, and so their magical defenses had been overwhelmed.
Dumbledore looked around at the shattered windows, scarred and scorched stone, and piles of unconscious students snoring and haphazardly strewn around the great hall.
Too tired to keep standing, Dumbledore sank back into his headmaster’s chair and summoned his patronus. He quickly stated the situation as clearly as he could and requested as many healers as were available from the ministry and St.Mungo’s. The glowing blue form of the conjured Phoenix patronus flew off at high speed to the Ministry. It would get there and deliver the words he had spoken to it.
He spent the next five minutes wrestling with the Hogwarts wards to allow apparition within the great hall. Hogwarts did not like lowering her defenses for even an instant, and it took many attempts before he managed the wards to be lowered and to stay lowered for more than a single instant.
But finally he managed it. As soon as they were lowered, healers and ministry officials began apparating in. All of them goggled at the scene for a few moments. The entire student body and teachers of Hogwarts unconscious on the floor while Dumbledore sat wearily at his headmaster’s chair surveying it all.
Then the healers recovered and began springing into action and bossing around the milling Aurors to clear some space and begin levitating students to where the healers had begun treating the worst cases they could see.
None approached Dumbledore, all apparently too intimidated at seeing what he had been able to do.
The healers carefully checked the student's health over the next few minutes, and he let out a sigh of relief as it was pronounced that somehow in all of that chaos none of the students had been killed. However, several were severely injured including Neville Longbottom himself and many had been immediately apparated away to St. Mungo’s for more specialized treatment.
Amelia Bones approached as they exited the danger zone, all the most severely injured students apparated for treatment and the rest being seen to by the healers, and Madame Pomfrey who had appeared and began to help at one point. She had slipped his mind in the chaos. Perhaps a sign that he was even more tired from the spell than he had thought.
“What’s this, Dumbledore?” She asked warily, “What happened?”
He explained the events from start to finish, ending with the spell that he cast while the teaching staff worked to defend him and stun those that had begun to fling out more dangerous spells.
“A student actually cast a killing curse at you?!” Amelia said with her voice cracking slightly at the end. Her eyes were wide as she scanned the hall of sleeping students and bustling and firm voices of the healers.
“Yes, it seems so. But I do not blame them necessarily,” Dumbledore said, “They were not themselves. They were clearly spelled, or… no. Too many. It must be drugs. Based on their comments… Love potion? But that…”
Dumbledore straightened as he realized that this issue was of his own doing. He had ignored the reports from his teachers of this ‘Mad Potioner’ for the last two years. After all the Weasley twins did much the same, didn’t they, if much more obvious in their antics. He had been reassured when the person started targeting bullies rather than the indiscriminate action they had taken in the beginning.
But this… this was something else entirely. This wasn’t spiking a drink or even a dozen. This was spiking the drink of nearly every student in the hall simultaneously. It was the only way the students would have descended into love potion induced madness so quickly.
“I think our Mad Potioner has struck again…” He said heavily to Amelia Bones.
She looked around the hall again, “You think… But who could it be? Who could do this? Why would they do this? This is more than some little pranks and possible revenge against bullies like it was before.”
“I suppose we’ll find out.”
Dumbledore fixed his gaze on the unconscious form of Eric Potter. He was the prime suspect. But during the previous incidents they had checked his wand and there wasn’t anything nearly out of the ordinary. He was ordinary, a bit below average in skill in potions if Severus were to be believed. And while skilled on the practicals, he hardly seemed the type to sit back and meticulously plan to the extent an operation like this would require. Or at least that's what Dumbledore had observed of the boy so far.
He pondered. He was starting to doubt himself. Perhaps this was not the Mad Potioner after all.
“Perhaps the house elves…” He muttered. The house elves manned the Hogwarts kitchens and cooked and sent up the food with their magic for the great feast.
“Yes,” He said with more strength to Madame Bones who was looking at him curiously, “After the students are healed we must check with the house elves. It’s the only way I can think of that would allow this person to drug so many students at once. They'd have the house elves distribute it and put their potion in the food before it even arrives up here. And… I’m leaning away from this being a student. It’s just too different from the rest of the Mad Potioner's stunts.”
Madame Bones licked her dry lips. “Pettigrew…” She said hesitantly.
Dumbledore thought about it long and hard before giving an answer.
“Perhaps,” he eventually said, “He may just be erratic enough to do something like this for seemingly no purpose. His motives are still opaque even now for the attack on the Weasleys.”
Dumbledore turned to see Ginny Weasley sprawled on top of her two friends, her arms wrapped protectively around them, even as they all breathed in and out slowly with their eyes shut. He felt his heart twinge at the potent image.
He regretted pushing to keep Fawkes from her until she was older and responsible enough to understand the danger if Fawkes ever turned his powers on her in anger. Dumbledore had truly believed it to be for the best, but he now saw that their bond was deeper than just the surface. It was something far more potent than his relationship with Fawkes had ever been.
Perhaps that was his fault. It seems that Fawkes was a good judge of character to pick to become the familiar of a girl willing to go so far for her friends.
“If it’s Pettigrew, then we’ll catch him this time,” Amelia promised, interrupting his thoughts.
“Yes, yes,” He replied, “But the students come first. We must make sure they are well before worrying about things we can not control. The ministry teams are already searching the castle. I don’t believe there is anything more to be done, is there?”
“No,” Amelia admitted reluctantly, “We can only wait for news.”
“We can only wait for news.” He confirmed, “Hopefully the good kind. We’ll need some after dealing with this mess.”