Oh God Not Again! By Sarah1281

Chapter 25

"Are you guys okay?" Harry asked, turning to face his three companions.

"I believe so," Luna answered him, eyeing Ginny and Lockhart carefully. "But Norbert isn't." She bent down to pick up the Crumple-Horned Snorkack creature Harry had gotten her for Christmas and showed the stiff little pig-like creature to him.

"Is it okay?" Harry asked, concerned. He didn't even want to think about how difficult replacing Norbert might be.

Luna poked it experimentally. "I think it's just petrified. Do you have any Mandrake Draught with you?"

"How did it get petrified?" Harry asked, reaching into his cloak and pull out a vial to hand to Luna.

"I would guess that it looked into the mirror Ginny put on the floor," Luna said.

"Why in the world did you put a mirror on the floor?" Harry questioned.

Ginny flushed. "Oh, well, I was worried I might be tempted to watch the heroic fight and I didn't want to get myself killed so I put my mirror down so if I accidentally saw the basilisk's eyes I'd be fine."

"You know, it's a sad day when getting petrified is widely regarded to be 'fine'..." Harry mused.

"Speaking of, Norbert was fine and now he's even better," Luna exclaimed brightly, watching Norbert wake up.

"I've got to tell you, Luna, I was pretty surprised when you continued to print things about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in the Quibbler now that everyone knows that they exist," Harry said conversationally, waiting for the Draught to take effect.

"Well, Daddy and I had a long conversation about that and we eventually came to the conclusion that even though we no longer need to fight for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack's right for people to know it exists, it is still a very recently discovered species that little is known about, so there's still a story there. Besides, Norbert's adorable and so we've made him our official mascot. A regular Quibbler success story about the power of the press overcoming wide-spread ignorance, if you will," Luna explained proudly.

"Good for you, Luna," Harry said, genuinely happy for her.

"Of course," Ginny continued, completely ignoring the discussion about Norbert. "That was before I knew that the 'heroic fight' would basically just consist of you guys cheating and using a rooster."

"Hey," Lockhart began heatedly. "To the best of my knowledge, there aren't any 'rules' for killing basilisks. And even if there were, you should just be grateful that we saved you and not disappointed that we didn't fulfill your preteen fantasies of heroic behavior."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Of course Harry saved us; Harry always saves everyone."

Lockhart looked over at Harry approvingly. "That whole being personally called upon every time anyone was petrified all year thing really worked out well for you, didn't it?"

"When that guy kidnapped us, I thought 'well this sucks, but at least now I'll have a great story to tell people after Harry rescues me' but nooooooo. My story will have to be 'Harry heroically let the basilisk get within 200 feet of him and then sicked a rooster on it, killing it instantly,'" Ginny huffed, clearly very put out that nothing good was coming out of her kidnapping.

Harry and Lockhart exchanged glances.

"You do know that that's not what we're going to tell people, right?" Harry asked hesitantly.

Ginny blinked at him. "But...that's what happened," she said, as if that had anything to do with it.

"For now," Lockhart agreed. "But really, stories like that just don't sell books. We'll need to come up with something else."