0594 Weird Situation
Words : 1411
Updated : Mar 12th, 2026
Chapter 593 of "Harry Potter: The Golden Viper" introduces: 0594 Weird Situation "Ugh..." After a few painful groans, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the house-elves Dobby and... Read on to discover!
0594 Weird Situation
"Ugh..."
After a few painful groans, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the house-elves Dobby and Freodom, who were lying beside them, gradually regained consciousness. Their bodies and minds felt battered, as if they had been ripped from one place and abruptly dumped in another. The abrupt and unnatural change in location left them revolving in agony with their senses scrambled.
As the heavy fog slowly lifted from their thoughts, the strange room they found themselves in came into focus, accelerating their return to alertness out of sheer necessity to understand their predicament.
Harry was the first to open his mouth and his voice emerged as a hoarse, uncertain whisper. "Where... where are we?" His eyes were wide as saucers behind his glasses as he tried to take in the perplexing scene before them.
The chamber they now occupied was easily the size of one of Hogwarts' larger classrooms. Rich curtains, elegant wallpaper, plush carpets and splendid drapes adorned every surface, all highlighting a flashy alternating pattern of black and yellow - the colors of Hufflepuff House. Based on the furnishings and layout, they appeared to be in some kind of combined study and drawing room.
"I haven't the foggiest," Ron responded, blinking in bafflement as he pushed himself up on shaky arms. He turned his face toward the tall windows, where warm, honeyed sunlight poured in and pooled on the floor in dazzling puddles of gold.
After hours spent shivering in the castle's chilly stone corridors, the soothing rays felt like a blissful caress on their chilled skin. "Look at the weather outside, Harry. Merlin, I can't imagine how long we've been unconscious!"
"Perhaps...perhaps one of the professors found us after we passed out and brought us here to their office to recover," Hermione suggested hesitantly, pursing her lip. But even as the words left her mouth, she didn't even trust her own reasoning.
If a teacher had indeed come to their rescue, the sensible course of action would have been to escort the unconscious students to the care of Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing, not brought them away to a private study.
Hermione glanced at the floor where they had just gotten up from, which was obviously unreasonable—Even Professor Snape was unlikely to be so inconsiderate about their wellbeing as to simply dump their unconscious bodies on the floor of his office.
None of it added up.
However, Harry apparently didn't realize the problems with Hermione's speculation. He looked around, finding everything within his field of vision quite ordinary, yet giving him a strange feeling.
"You're probably right, Hermione. I bet it was Professor Sprout that found us," Harry said, spinning in place and continuing to observe his surroundings. "The kitchens we sneaked into is right near the entrance to the Hufflepuff common room and dormitories. What if she came across us and levitated us here? Have you been in Sprout's office before, Hermione?"
But Hermione's mind had already poked huge holes in that theory. Judging by the late afternoon light streaming through the windows, they had to have been unconscious for a minimum of 12 hours which was a shocking span of time.
There was simply no conceivable scenario in which the motherly Head of Hufflepuff House would find three students collapsed outside her House's common room and not immediately raise the alarm. Professors Dumbledore, Watson, McGonagall and the rest would have been notified straightaway. The notion that they would have been left here by any professor to awaken on their own, disoriented and unattended was unbelievable in itself.
"No," Hermione answered, her voice high and shaky with growing unease. Another unsettling realization struck her then - the room was eerily silent. It was as if all the familiar sounds of the bustling castle and school grounds had been completely muted, unable to penetrate the walls of this place.
"Harry Potter sir, Dobby is confused as well," Dobby said, his eyes and voice filled with bewilderment as he looked around. "In his duties, Dobby has scrubbed Professor Sprout's office many times. Dobby can say without hesitation - this is not being her office. In fact, Dobby has never once laid eyes on this particular room. It is not belonging to any Hogwarts professor Dobby knows of!"
After calming down those watering eyes, Hermione was face to face with a towering wall of books. As a bibliophile, Hermione felt her mind automatically categorizing the collection's contents, but as she scanned the elaborately stamped spines, confusion swiftly overtook over her initial curiosity.
Only a Booklover as careful and conscientious as Hermione would hesitate to pluck books that did not belong to her from their shelves to examine them without direct permission from its owner, even in their current predicament - but the titles imprinted upon the old leather bindings alone were enough to give her a serious stop. She had originally thought that the books on the shelf would all be magic-related, but the reality was not as she had imagined.
"What is it?" Harry inquired, alerted by her unusual stillness and deepening frown. He hurried to Hermione's side, craning his neck to get a better look at the shelves' contents for himself. His eyes grew as round as saucers looking at the text on the spines in bewilderment. "Are those - cookbooks?!"
"Not all of them," Hermione confirmed solemnly with a slow shake of her head, lifting a finger to point out a distinctive blue and gold spine on the middle shelf. "There's a copy of 'Hogwarts: A History' right there." Her voice was oddly tense, almost disbelieving.
Ron, tiptoeing up behind them, squinted at the indicated book, and following Hermione's guidance, he saw the book. Then, he understood the reason behind Hermione's unusual tone.
Thanks to her tireless enthusiastic recitations, selected passages of 'Hogwarts: A History' were seared into Harry and Ron's brains. It was easily the most massive, intimidatingly dense book they had ever laid eyes on - but the version tucked away on this shelf was shockingly slender. Unrecognizably so, completely different from what they remembered.
Fed up with the endless parade of perplexing irregularities and determined to get some answers, Ron threw caution to the wind.
"Right then, let's have a proper look, shall we?" He said impatiently, reaching out to grab the book without further ado, before Hermione could stop him. But the instant his fingers brushed the leather spine, his whole body spasmed as if he'd been shocked by a live wire.
Ron snatched his hand back with a yelp, cuddling it protectively against his chest as he stared at the book in outraged bafflement.
Under Harry and Hermione's confused gazes, Ron said blankly, "Something's not right. I can't touch this book."
Seeing that Harry and Hermione couldn't understand what he meant, Ron simply pointed at the bookshelf and said, "You can try it for yourselves!"
"Honestly Ron," Hermione huffed, hesitance fighting with the burning need to know bubbling in her chest, "Putting our hands all over someone's private things without permission is terribly impolite and inappropriate-"
Her halfhearted scolding was cut off with a squeak as Ron grabbed her wrist and brought her hand into contact with the book spines. Simultaneously, Harry reached out and brushed cautious fingertips over the leather. As one, the trio froze with three pair of eyes flying wide open in shared shock as they processed the uncanny sensation.
'Hogwarts: A History' and the other books on the shelf appeared to be placed there, but when they actually tried to touch them, the sensation at their fingertips felt like touching posters stuck on the wall. They couldn't take these books off the shelf at all!
The three of them turned their heads to observe the ordinary room again, each with a chill in their hearts. At this moment, Dobby, who was also wandering around the room and had come to the desk in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, jumped onto the table. He glanced at the newspaper-like sheets of paper spread out on the corner of the desk and his huge eyes showed confusion.
"Harry Potter sir," Dobby squeaked raising his head to look at Harry. "Does the noble wizard knowed anything about an 'Royal Wizarding Association'? Dobby is never having heard of such a thing!"
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