For the rest of her life, Hermione would regret the evening she offered to make dinner for the surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix.
They had been working long hours in the aftermath of the second war, and pasta with tinned sauce had seemed foolproof enough. It had tasted fine, too. Half an hour after the meal, while she and Ron were doing the dishes and most of the others had scattered to separate corners of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, it became apparent that something was very wrong. The house had vanished, and they found themselves on a wide, sunlit savanna.
She turned to Ron and tried to speak, but she could only manage a strange chittering sound, something between a chirp and a yelp. Ron couldn't have replied, anyway, because he had turned into a strange deer-like beast, with a striped rump and a handsome, curving pair of horns.
There were more beasts like that all around them. She was one, too. She remembered the package of pasta, labeled Serengeti Spaghetti, and thought, Oh no... She'd taken it for a wizarding brand, but apparently it was one of George's test products for the new shop.
Beside her, Ron gave a snort and attempted to charge two of the other members of the herd, who were all too clearly mating. The female was a lovely shade of red in the evening light, and the male had markings about his eyes that looked a lot like glasses.
Ron, she tried to communicate telepathically, it is okay for Harry and Ginny to be having sex. They've been together for quite a while, and they're both of age. Granted, it was a little weird for them to be having sex in front of the rest of the herd, but they were, after all, wild animals now, and they'd probably been taken by surprise when the walls of Grimmauld Place had vanished.
Ron was still charging, his head down and his horns pointing straight at the unfortunate couple. They looked alarmingly sharp. Hermione ran and leapt in front of Ron -- her slender legs and hooves were delightfully swift -- and all four animals went down in a tangle of limbs and horns. And then the spell broke, and everyone transformed back into a human.
Oh no. It wasn't Harry and Ginny. It was Arthur and Molly.
"We are," said Hermione firmly, "never ever going to talk about this again."
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They had been working long hours in the aftermath of the second war, and pasta with tinned sauce had seemed foolproof enough. It had tasted fine, too. Half an hour after the meal, while she and Ron were doing the dishes and most of the others had scattered to separate corners of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, it became apparent that something was very wrong. The house had vanished, and they found themselves on a wide, sunlit savanna.
She turned to Ron and tried to speak, but she could only manage a strange chittering sound, something between a chirp and a yelp. Ron couldn't have replied, anyway, because he had turned into a strange deer-like beast, with a striped rump and a handsome, curving pair of horns.
There were more beasts like that all around them. She was one, too. She remembered the package of pasta, labeled Serengeti Spaghetti, and thought, Oh no... She'd taken it for a wizarding brand, but apparently it was one of George's test products for the new shop.
Beside her, Ron gave a snort and attempted to charge two of the other members of the herd, who were all too clearly mating. The female was a lovely shade of red in the evening light, and the male had markings about his eyes that looked a lot like glasses.
Ron, she tried to communicate telepathically, it is okay for Harry and Ginny to be having sex. They've been together for quite a while, and they're both of age. Granted, it was a little weird for them to be having sex in front of the rest of the herd, but they were, after all, wild animals now, and they'd probably been taken by surprise when the walls of Grimmauld Place had vanished.
Ron was still charging, his head down and his horns pointing straight at the unfortunate couple. They looked alarmingly sharp. Hermione ran and leapt in front of Ron -- her slender legs and hooves were delightfully swift -- and all four animals went down in a tangle of limbs and horns. And then the spell broke, and everyone transformed back into a human.
Oh no. It wasn't Harry and Ginny. It was Arthur and Molly.
"We are," said Hermione firmly, "never ever going to talk about this again."