Interrupted Dreaming, -accident 7 related-

[Albus Potter]

The previous night, Albus had been at the library after hours. Hidden under the invisibility cloak that he had inherited from his father under the strictest instructions not to lose it, apparently it was 'special', he had sat until the early hours of the morning reading about prophetic dreams and how to prevent them. One passage related to Occlumency, which he had never heard of, and he had been going to find a book explaining the term when sleep had suddenly washed over him. In a daze, he had wandered back to the Slytherin Common Room and fallen asleep on the first avalible surface, a sofa close to the fireplace.

Stirring now, Albus became vaguely aware that he wasn't in the right place. It was something about the smell, of musty books and old coffee that contrasted with the usual slightly fragrant, damp smell that occupied all of the Slytherin dungeons. He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was the back of the now bright pink sofa; presumably he had rolled over in his sleep and now had a face full of fabric. Startled, (for surely that sofa had been green when he had fallen asleep?), Al rolled back and crashed onto the floor beside him. He swore loudly as his arm hit an adjacent sofa and scrambled haphazardly to his feet. In his haste he stumbled and reached out for the nearest surface, which happened to be a floor lamp, but even as he began to put weight on it, it collaped and fell to the floor with an ear deafning smash. He hopped back a couple of steps, turning away from the damage, relieved that the lamp wasn't lit. He fumbled in his pockets for his wand and couldn't find where he'd put it, and an immediate sense of fear clamped over his heart.

Turning around to see where it had fallen, Albus got a look at the room for the first time. It took a couple of seconds before he realised where it was, it was the staff room, he knew that because he'd been in there a couple of times before, usually with queries for Professors or once returning a book. He had never gotten this far into the room before though, it was strictly off limits to students, especially in the early hours. Also, it had definately not been either this full of furniture or quite so... pink... the last time. Al checked his watch, 5.30am. He swore, again, but a little quieter this time just in case there was someone listening.

If the beginning was anything to go by, this day was not going to be a good one. He'd only had three hours sleep, and during that time he had been transported from the Slytherin Common Room to the Staff Room on a colour chaging sofa. And he'd lost his wand.

[Gerard Malloy]

Gerry was in an inexplicably excellent mood when he awoke. Perhaps it had been the lack of any major accidents in any of his classes the day before, or the fact that he'd managed to spend the evening with Sofie, ostensibly grading papers but actually exchanging shy glances and quips about students; It was easy to laugh at their students when they weren't there to defend themselves! This meant, however, that he needed to hurry and actually grade the papers he was supposedly working on last night, as he had promised his students he would return them today, and while the students couldn't do anything should he break this promise he preferred that his promises be kept -- at least, the ones that he was serious about; sometimes he said things he didn't mean, and while he never really differentiated he still expected everyone to know the difference.


He nearly skipped down the hall to the staff room, armed with papers, quill and stack of cupcakes he had filched from the kitchens. He was truly prepared to focus on grading papers! But before he could even open the door a resounding crash echoed throughout the room he was about to enter, followed by swearing and another crash. Somehow Gerry doubted this was a House Elf; his first thought was that something had escaped into the staff room and was trying to eat one of his coworkers. An image of Sofie in the talons of a Griffin, fainting with fear, entered his mind. No! He couldn't allow that to happen! Spurred to action, he burst through the doors, wand at the ready....and was blinded by pink. He squinted, shielding his eyes and surveying the now unfamiliar landscape, wondering if he had somehow got mixed up and accidentally wandered into Trelawney's bedroom.


It was several seconds later that he realized that the staff room was not unoccupied. "Potter!" He exclaimed, both surprised and annoyed. It must have been him making the crashing noises, not some wild animal -- then again, students were pretty closely related to wild animals. Still, a student from his own house wasn't the threat he had initially expected.


"Next time you decide to play interior designer could you choose something less...." He gestured helplessly at the furniture now occupying the staff room. "less pink?" He finished, pocketing his wand and placing his stack of papers on the nearest couch -- and perched the cupcakes on top of those. Surely Quirke wouldn't mind that half her answers were obscured by chocolate crumbs. He would just make up whether she got them right or not.


He didn't actually believe Albus had anything to do with the redecoration -- how one sixth year boy would have managed to move all this furniture into the staffroom, alone, was beyond the potion's master; this was most likely related to the odd accidents plaguing Hogwarts rather than a student prank -- but he couldn't help but pretend he might believe the poor boy to be guilty.

[Albus Potter]

Albus spun around as his head of house entered the room with his wand raised, regretting having made such a noise. Otherwise, he might have been able to sneak away without anyone noticing, and he wouldn't be associated with, well, whatever this was. He opened and shut his mouth a few times, trying to come up with a suitable response, but how did you explain that you went to sleep on a green sofa in the Slytherin Common Room and woke up on a bright pink one in the staff room? He couldn't figure it out, it seemed that anything could happen in Hogwarts this term. Though he hadn't really expected his teacher to curse him, it was a relief when Malloy pocketed his wand, he felt at less of a disadvantage being without one.


"I- I-" he began, before trailing off and looking around the room as if looking for some kind of inspiration. In doing so he spotted his wand, which had rolled under a nearby table. Taking the opportunity to escape Professor Malloy's eyes, he dived after it, knocking his head on the table in the process so as he grabbed the wand with his right hand he rubbed his forehead with his left. He withdrew to usual height and looked at the wand fondly before stowing it sheepishly in his own pocket. He was still wearing the clothes and robes he had worn yesterday and suddenly felt self conscious, like he needed to jump in the shower as soon as possible. First, though, there was this mess to sort out, least of which was trying to explain how he'd gotten here in the first place. "I don't know how it happened, I fell asleep over there," he indicated somewhere over to his left, which may or may nat have been in the direction of the Slytherin common room, "and then I woke up there!" He pointed to the sofa he had woken up on, which was behind him, then turned back to his head of house and shrugged, honestly confused.

"I don't know how all this other stuff got here, same way as me I guess." He took a moment to glance down at his robes, "at least whatever is was didn't turn me pink, or..." he checked his hands, they were okay, but he had no way of seeing his face. Self-consciously he touched his fingertips to his cheeks, "I'm not, am I?"

((I'll leave it up to you to decide if he's got a rasperry for a face or not...))

[Gerard Malloy]

Gerry was not inclined to believe students about very much, as he remembered very well what he'd been like as a student -- what he was like now, if truth be told -- but he had to admit that Albus' story seemed completely true. If he was lying, he would have had something more convincing to say than I don't know. Also, he seemed to genuinely not realize that his face was the same color as the couch, which was a pretty good indication that he was telling the truth at this particular moment. This was unfortunate, as he would have liked to have been able to blame this on someone, and Albus Potter was the only other person in the vicinity. Still, if this was one of those random, bizarre circumstances that had been plaguing Hogwarts all semester then he supposed he just wasn't going to find out how this had happened. Drats.

"I see," He scrutinized the pink couch suspiciously, as though it might contain some clues as to how exactly the staff room had been redecorated, but alas the couch was keeping any secrets to itself. "So you're saying you didn't turn your face pink on purpose?" He raised an eyebrow, "Not some spell that went awry?" No, it was obvious Albus was confused, and he was a Slytherin, which meant Gerry had somewhat of a responsibility towards the poor boy. "Then, we're going to have to find a way to fix that." Great, now he was going to have to go through all his potions to find one that would change someone back to their original coloring. That wasn't something he had much use for, unfortunately, but maybe somewhere in his books there was something? Or maybe Aisha would have some ideas.

However, this was more troublesome than just a case of rearranged furniture and children showing up in places they weren't welcome! This incident had interrupted him before he'd gotten around to grading anything! He sighed and glared at the stack of papers, then waved a hand over to the cupcakes he'd set on top of them. "Have one, while I think." He ordered, pacing the newly pink room. He did not want to ask Minerva for help, because he wanted to prove he was more capable than she was. So that meant he'd need to fix things before she even found out anything was wrong. Which meant...fixing things before any of the rest of the staff made it down to the staff room. There didn't seem to be much hope of this, however. "You really don't remember being transported?" He asked wistfully, not really expecting a helpful answer.

[Albus Potter]

As Malloy mentioned the colour of his face, Albus felt his cheeks burn slightly with embarrasment, though he did note that it probably wouldn't show up, so he decided to go along with the offer of a cupcake. They looked pretty good, and Albus took a moment or two to choose, he didn't want to take the biggest one because, well, he would feel bad about it, but he also didn't want to look pathetically under his Professor's thumb by picking out the smallest. Choosing a middlish sized one with a fair amount of topping, Albus murmured some thanks, before peeling back the case and taking a bite, watching with interest as Professor Malloy inspected the sofa.

"You really don't remember being transported?"

Albus shook his head enthusiastically, his mouth still full of cupcake, which he swallowed painfully. "Nope," he said brightly, sort of aware that this wasn't very helpful and wanting to make the most of the fact that for once, an answer probably wasn't expected of him. As he said it, he was reminded of his pink face, and realised he was depending on his head of house to fix it before he went back to class, and figured he should probably be, well, more helpful. Would this be the perfect opportunity to bring up the... dreams? Twice, Albus opened his mouth then closed it again, unsure of how to begin. He wasn't a big fan of coming to people for advice on anything, especially not something as big as this, the little laugh that would always listen to him rant about people who would later wind up hurt. Now he thought about them, he'd had a new one, and there had been a hell of a lot of pink involved.

"Well," he began uncertainly, rubbing the back of his raspberry coloured neck self consciously. "I don't know if it counts, but I did have this dream last night; I only just remembered. I was flying through the air, it was a game of Quidditch but suddenly I noticed I didn't have a broomstick. Then I began to fall, but I landed on something soft, and pink, and suddenly everyone was wearing pink, all my team who flew down to look at me on the sofa, and everyone was pointing at me. Then there was this really creepy laugh..." he trailed off. There was always the laugh. Albus found he had been staring at the carpet as he spoke, and forced himself to look up. "That's it, I woke up after that with a faceful of pink sofa. I don't know if it's helpful at all, or, um, anything..."

[Gerard Malloy]

If only Gerard had known that this dream of Albus’ was more than a subconscious realization that the furniture had been turned pink, he might not have waved this tidbit away with a dismissive gesture. However, he couldn’t see any reason why a dream would be at all helpful, and thus managed to miss the most important clue about the accidents that had thus far appeared – or at least, it was the most important clue that had presented itself to him, but he was determined to ignore it, because it couldn’t possibly have any actual bearing on the situation at hand.

“What a bizarre coincidence,” He commented, rubbing his chin. Apparently a random dream was the best he was going to get out of Potter, which was rather unfortunate because the idea of randomly self-rearranging furniture was less than appealing. If he woke up one morning to find himself transported to, say, Johnson’s room, he was going to be quite distraught. Or what if all of the furnishings in the Divination tower wound up in his bedroom? He needed to discover just how this switch had come about, so he could prevent it in the future – although, he had to admit that the incidents had never been the same twice, so trying to prevent something that had already happened was nothing more than an exercise in futility. What they needed to do was figure out what would happen next and prevent that, but as far as he could see there was no real pattern.

This inquiry was going nowhere fast; he might as well concentrate on returning Potter to his natural skin color. “Very well,” He sighed, deciding to leave both papers and cupcakes on the couch, “Let’s see if we can’t fix you.” He glowered around the staff room, which showed no signs of reverting to its natural form; how irksome! He wanted things to right themselves, because he hadn’t the foggiest notion how to fix them himself – including Albus’ newly pink face.

This is not what I signed on for when I applied to teach, he griped mentally, but had to immediately take that back. He’d had to deal with explosions and melt-downs and outbreaks of boils and unnatural growths sprouting from his students, a little off-colored skin shouldn’t be a problem; however, he’d always just sent them up to the infirmary, because he had to keep teaching class. Would Madame Moss appreciate it if he even sent students up to her when he wasn’t teaching? Oh, hi, Aisha, I didn’t know what to do, here, you deal with it! Yep, that would go over really well.

“Back to my office, Potter,” He ordered; at least there he’d be able to look through his books. Surely one of them would have a suggestion for how to fix Albus?

[Albus Potter]

“What a bizarre coincidence,”

Albus took a while to mull this over. Over the past few weeks he had become so convinced that somehow it was he that was causing the accidents, in his dreams, while posessed, or something, it had fallen by the wayside the very idea that it might all have been a fluke. Just one of those things. A bizarre coincidence. But then another part of him felt miffed. For the first time he'd actually worked himself up to telling someone about the dreams, and surely he had told the right person, was that not what a head of house was meant to be for? Pastoral care or whatever it was they called it. He felt like his concerns had been brushed aside. Nobody was going to believe him, what was the point in telling anyone?

As he was ordered to the office, Albus balked slightly, and he shrank into the room. The previous snub forgotten slightly in favour of this new one, his eyes darted to the door and back to his Professor's. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, before coming up with the words.

"But..." he indicated helplessly to the door. "What if I see someone I know, or what if I see someone I don't know and they tell someone I do know? Everyone in the school knows my name, pretty much, I have to be normal all the time!" he burst suddenly, words coming quickly. He checked himself then, wondering what was coming over him today; presumably it was the severe lack of sleep that suddenly had him confessing all manner of personal matters. Albus felt himself redden again, though again it was invisible under the bizarre colour of his skin. "Er..." he started, "by which I mean, can't you just fix it here? A spell or something?"

It was true though, what he had said. His was a face that people knew, he was the child of two very famous people and he had those eyes. Lily's eyes, not his sister Lily but his grandmother. Lily mark one. Apparently they were special in some way, or that what he tended to infer from the reaction he got when people saw them. It was difficult, constantly living in a world where people knew his name, it was like being a celebrity but with none of the perks. Albus could never work out why this affected him so much, either, when he had a dozen or so cousins, all of whom seemed to be coping fine with everything that got thrown at them.

[Gerard Malloy]

Gerry furrowed his brow at Albus, who was pointedly refusing to do as he was requested. Disobedience was not something Gerry actively encouraged in his students -- unless they were disobeying someone who wasn't him, in which case he cared somewhat less. In this instance, however, he expected the boy to follow along without complaint, unless he wanted to have a bright pink face for eternity. Clearly, however, Albus wished for no such thing, as his objection stemmed from a fear others might see him. He listened to his student babbling on about having to be normal.


"Have to be normal?" He repeated, glancing to the door and wondering if he ought to even give Albus a choice about going to his office. If they stayed in the teacher's lounge he would have to admit he didn't know how to turn the boy back to his proper color, but at the same time it was apparent even to the occasionally dense Potions' Master that his student was in more distress than a pink face warranted. "Fine, sit," He sighed, gesturing vaguely at the couches that had until recently furnished the Slytherin common room. "Have another brownie," He ordered, deciding that Potter needed them more than he did.


He pondered how best to answer the questions regarding his ability to return the boy to a normal skin tone, and decided that sarcasm was the best policy. "Oh, sure, I routinely change my skin color, so I've memorized the appropriate spell to reverse the effects." Was he supposed to be some sort of spell encyclopedia or something?! He kept spell books around for a reason; he was too lazy to memorize anything he didn't use on a regular basis. Then he realized that he generally expected those of higher rank than he to be a fount of arcane knowledge; for instance, he supposed that McGonagall knew everything. Drats! If he was going to convince everyone he should replace her then he really ought to get on that omniscient thing, he wasn't doing so well right now.


He checked the clock hanging crookedly on one wall, and added, "Most students should still be asleep, anyone we run into'll get detention before they can even think about you." He promised, in what was intended to be a reassuring voice. Why did students have to be insecure and recalcitrant?! Why couldn't they just do what they were supposed to do instead of fixating on insecurities and getting into trouble? Still, he was supposed to be the head of Slytherin house, so he supposed he ought to attempt to reassure his charge. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure where to start. "So let's get back to that normal thing," He decided, settling himself beside his papers and fixing Albus with what he hoped would be perceived as a penetrating stare. "What definition are you working with here? Because I'm not sure why normal is something you're striving for." His own definition of normal could essentially be summed up by the word boring, and frankly he couldn't understand why Albus would wish to be any such thing.

[Albus Potter]

Albus squirmed at the question, sitting down but not taking another brownie. He hadn't brushed his teeth the night before and that furry coating was creeping up on him, a cake would just make things worse. The sofa was pink, and he felt distinctly unstable where he was as though he were going to develop a lifetime mistrust of pink sofas, just in case he suddenly woke up in someone else's common room, or a girls dormitory (that would definately provoke some interesting questions), or the lawns or something. The problem was that the pink sofas were the only ones left. He also felt guilty in that he had kind of caught his professor's bluff, it wasn't just that Malloy wanted to use a potion, it was that he didn't know the spell. The next big clincher was that Al was fairly sure that they learnt that this year in transfiguration, and by all ironics a seventh year could probably help him.

He could ask James or Adrian, both were family members, and both were pretty responsible. Heck, James was head boy. But neither did he want to wake them up, or let this into the general student body. He was also majorly regretting bringing up any of his insecurities (which usually he kept very well under wraps), because now it looked like he was going to have to talk about them. And to Professor Malloy of all people, who wasn't especially famed among the student body as being the kind of guy you went to with your troubles. He was nice enough and a good teacher, but even at sixteen Albus still found him that little bit scary, just as he had when he was eleven. He mulled it over in his head, though, anyway, why he hadn't wanted to go to his head of house's office, it was certainly less scary than the staff room as he was actually allowed in, it was just the two storey descent that went past not only his own common room but roughly where the Hifflepuff common room was rumoured to come out.

"Er..." he began, looking around for inspiration, scratching the back of his neck. He could feel Malloy's eyes boring into his and found that he couldn't return the gaze, and looked at the floor, then the window, before looking back, giving his eyes a break. "I dunno, it's just, growing up with my family, and Lily and everyone, and you just get teased for everything that you do. It bugs me, I don't want a rumour going round that I got cursed by Scorpius, or that-" he waved his hand around as if casting for inspiration, "-I dunno, Lily strangled me to death, though after last week's Quidditch match it should be the other way round." Oops, he hadn't meant to sound quite so much like a psychopath, hopefully Malloy would know that he was joking. "So I dunno, just not looking like a raspberry would be my definition of normal. I don't mess around enough for people to think I was, er, messing around, so I'd just look stupid."

He'd had a thought though, he could wear the invisibility cloak. Then he stopped, that cloak was his one little bit of protection from the watchful eyes of staff when he wandered around late at night, and he didn't really want them finding out about it. But it would be his saving grace at this point, and he wondered if there was a way to convince his Professor to go oh ahead without him and let him make his own way. He glanced over at the sofa he had arrived on, wondering what had happened to the cloak that was so-very-precious-and-shouldn't-be-lost-under-any-circumstances, not that it had ever been explained to him exactly why. Again, he felt that strange drop like he had when he lost his wand. He had slung it carelessly into his bag which he had left on the floor by his feet. It had either been transported with all the other stuff, or it had gotten left in the common room. Damn, now that was another thing to worry about.

[Gerard Malloy]

Sometimes Gerry wished he could will things to happen. That would be very useful in this particular situation, because he could will it to never have happened. Then he could actually grade those papers that he was apparently destined to not ever look at. Maybe he should just slap some grades on them at random based on how much he liked the students and hope none of them noticed that's what he had done. Or toss them in the air and give the ones closest to him the best grades and go down from there. That was surely a fail proof method for paper grading right there, as long as none of them came to him for an explanation. Oh, well, he was the professor, he could surely muster up an inscrutable and inapproachable look to discourage that from happening.

He not only had no idea how to turn Albus back to normal, he also had no idea how to assuage his student's fears. "You're supposed to tease them back," He stated, recalling his own childhood spent tormenting his siblings. His sister and brother had both been able to hold their own, though he supposed that Andrew would have had a more difficult time of it if Gerry and Lydia had been allowed to perform magic at home. Their mother had certainly threatened them on more than one occasion when they'd attempted to employ magic against their helpless brother.

"I've got this great book on hexes," He offered, "Relatively harmless, but you can get back at them." And he would look the other way should that happen, though he couldn't say the same for any of the other professors. If he saw Lily or the others in the Potter-Weasley clan tormenting his student, he would be sure to give them detention. He hadn't ever noticed it before, but then, he hadn't been looking, either. Now that he was aware that there was a problem, he would be sure to keep his eyes peeled, though.

The Potions' Master waved his hand at the brownies again, "Eat the brownies, Potter, they're good for you." This was less of a request and more of an order, as Gerry made clear when he added as an after thought, "If you don't eat them I'll deduct points from Slytherin." Which was a lie; he wanted Slytherin to win the house cup more than he wanted Albus Potter to eat the brownies he'd filched from Pattie's stash in the kitchen, but he liked to remind his students who was in charge, and Potter seemed to be forgetting that fact.

The problem with sitting in the staff room was that the rest of the staff was likely to walk in at any moment, and he had yet to actually help his student. He hoped that Albus was done moping about being teased by his siblings (merlin, that's what siblings did, it was part of the contract!) and was ready to go fix his face already, because he didn't much fancy sharing this problem with any of the rest of the staff. He didn't want Patty to know he lacked in any way, seeing as he was after her job, and he wanted Sofie to be impressed with him so he couldn't really admit to her he didn't know what he was doing. And he didn't care to let Teddy or Gavin in on his lack, either. Maybe if Sinistra or Flitwick were to help, that wouldn't be so bad, because he wasn't trying to impress or compete with either of them.

"Well? Ready to go to my office yet? Or do you just want to sit in the staff room surrounded by pink sofas all day?"

[Albus Potter]

Taking a brownie in a subdued manner, Albus nibbled dutifully at one corner of it. They were pretty good, he had to admit, and wondered for the first time why his head of house had been coming into the staff room, for he clearly hadn't been randomly awoken by his crashing being as Malloy was fully dressed, carrying cookies. Marking papers, but at this time in the morning? Albus was impressed, a little, that was some dedication. He took a bigger bite of the brownie, he didn't want points deducted from Slytherin, even though the odds of this happening were minimal.

"Fine," he muttered after a pause. He stood up, half a brownie still in his hand, anything would be worth getting away from this topic of conversation. He patted his pocket to check that his wand was still there (it was) and then vaguely motioned around looking for his bag. "I just gotta find my bag," he murmured, mostly to himself. "I dunno if it came with me or if it's in the common room still," he added with a shrug, pretending to be nochalant about it, he didn't want to come across as entirely pathetic that morning. For some reason he clutched the egde of an adjacent sofa as he walked, like an invalid, even though there was nothing wrong with him (except, perhaps, shame), stumbling forwards a few steps. He pushed off and stumbled back to the sofa he had arrived from, thinking again about the sofa in his dream, the way it had been floating, and the way he had crash landed on it. That creepy, creepy laugh... That laugh that followed him.

Regaining his balance and some sense of dignity, Albus encircled the sofa, looking around on all sides for his satchel, as he completed the circle he came up short and stopped abruptly. He swore for the third time that morning, but this was the quietest of them all so far, barely above a whisper. He walked back round again, the other way, still no sign of it. He frowned, hoping sincerely that it was in the common room and not lost in the void between here and there, otherwise his Dad was going to kill him. How long could he pretend, Albus wondered, that he still had the cloak? Periodically over the last few years it had been snatched off his for periods of a few weeks at the time when it was urgently needed, then returned.

He had to check the common room, right now. Albus turned abruptly to face Malloy and marched towards the door.
"Okay, I'm ready," he said, a little more loudly than he probably needed to.