Disclaimer: Anyone idiotic enough to think it’s mine should never take up babysitting. And anyone who tries to set a lawyer on me will get Albus on a sugar high set on them. So.

Chapter Four: The Plan

Dear Professor Lupin,

Hermione paused, wondering how to phrase the letter. If the wrong person found out that all the teachers – including Albus Dumbledore – were vulnerable children, it could be disastrous. She couldn’t tell Lupin what had happened in case the letter was intercepted. But how could she convey the urgency of the situation without attracting unwanted attention?

Professor Dumbledore has been called away on urgent business and we need a Defence teacher around. Could you come back to school as soon as possible please? He says sorry for cutting your break short but is sure the two of you can make arrangements when he returns.

Professor M McGonagall

Hoping that Remus would either not realise her writing was not Professor McGonagall’s, or recognise it as hers, Hermione sealed the envelope and was about to depart for the Owlery when a flash of gold and scarlet announced Fawkes’ presence.

“You want to take this to Remus?” she asked the phoenix, surprised. As he continued to flutter in front of her, she assumed it was a yes and began to fix the letter to his foot.

“Wow,” breathed a voice from the doorway. “What’s that?”

Hermione turned to see Albus in the doorway, staring in wonder.

“Albus, have you just woken up?” she asked quietly. As she spoke, Fawkes, trailing the letter, took flight briefly before setting on Albus’ arm. Albus winced as his talons gripped him, but relaxed a moment later and hesitantly put out a hand to stroke him. Hermione kneeled down to join in; Albus tensed up as she reached out her arm and Fawkes took flight again, this time out of the window.

“Want Papa,” Albus muttered.

“I’m sorry, little one,” Hermione murmured. “You’ll be back with your Papa soon, but right now you need to go back to bed. It’s very late.” She tried to take his hand but he pulled it away. Surprised, she gave up on that idea and instead motioned for him to follow her. After hesitating, he followed her through into Harry’s room. Her own room was the other side of the joint lounge, and she left all the doors open so she could hear the girls as well.

Hermione saw what had happened. Hagrid, who when she’d left them had been curled up under a thick blanket on the end of the bed, had woken and crawled into bed with the other boys, pushing out Albus and Alastor, the latter of whom was now exploring Harry’s (fortunately empty) trunk with interest.

She hesitated before retrieving Alastor from the trunk and transfiguring it into a bed big enough for both of them. Alastor climbed back in without a fuss, but when she tried to get Albus to get in he let out a scream.

The other boys all jerked awake, Severus and Argus beginning to cry. Torn, Hermione transfigured two of Harry’s stray socks into dummies and gave them to them before trying to calm down Albus, ignoring the fact that the other boys were now climbing out of bed and Argus and Filius were fighting over the covers.

It took half an hour of transfiguring all of Harry’s possessions into cots, stuffed animals and blankets, and keeping an eye on the door to make sure none of the boys unlocked it with magic and escaped, she finally managed to coax them all into bed. Albus, strangely, was tired enough to let her put him to bed but refused to go into the one that had been Harry’s trunk. In the end, Hagrid went in there, Severus and Argus were in cots and the others were in Harry’s.

Hermione had tried to keep the display of magic behind their backs, not knowing which children were Muggleborn. Perhaps she ought to try and find out. Albus hadn’t eaten all of his papers, there might be something locked safely away somewhere. It might also be a good idea to look up the teachers’ medical records to check for allergies and so on. That was something else added to the list of things to do.

Collapsed on the floor while the boys snored (thankfully none of the girls had woken up yet), Hermione was pulled out of her thoughts by the arrival of Hedwig. Hurrying over to her before she woke the kids, Hermione pulled off the hastily scribbled note.

Hermione – Found Sprout. Venomous Tent. got her – not too badly hurt, just a few scratches, taking her to St Mungos in case. Hope the others are behaving, see you later

- Ron

She groaned. It had been too much to hope that all the children would be found safely. But, she admitted, they hadn’t done a bad job under the circumstances. Hogwarts was a death trap for little children, and so far only one had been hurt.

Hermione rubbed her eyes, picked up a quill and began a list on the back of the note.

1: Buy supplies:
- Toys
- Nappies etc
- Clothes

2: Timetable – get DA members to babysit

3: Rooms:
- Playroom
- Girls’ bedroom
- Boys’ bedroom

4: Look up med and birth records

5: Talk to school – cancel classes? Or find alternate teachers?

6: Question house-elves again

7: Get books on parenting out the library!

Running back through the list, Hermione wondered if she’d forgotten anything. She edited several, crossing out number seven and putting it before number five. In the morning she would move the children to the Room of Requirement. Before she could make any other plans, she heard the sounds of a child stirring in the girls’ room and hurried in before any of the others woke.

“Hermione? Hermione, wake up.”

One eye opened sleepily. “Mm?”

Harry held out a hand and pulled her to her feet. “How’re the little ones?”

“Uh …” Hermione yawned. “Asleep last check. How’s Professor Sprout?”

“She had a few scratches and a broken finger, nothing too serious. The Healers fixed her up nicely. I had to pretend she was a relative of my aunt’s and I was looking after her for a few days. I’m not sure they believed me but no Aurors accosted me accusing me of kidnapping innocent little girls, so no harm done.”

“Oh … good.” Hermione yawned again. “What’s the time?”

“Just gone eight. I think the kids have started to wake up.”

“Great.” Hermione rubbed her eyes and pulled a crumpled piece of parchment out of her pocket. “Right. Everyone’ll be at breakfast now, so I can go and tell them classes are cancelled. Then, we take the kids to the Room of Requirement and leave Neville or someone to baby-sit …”

“While we do what, exactly?” Harry asked warily.

“Go shopping for supplies. And …” She checked her list. “Look up their medical records, see if there’s anything we should know about. They should be with the students’ in the Hospital Wing. Let’s hope Poppy doesn’t like paper as much as Albus.”

“Er … are you sure that’s a good idea, Hermione?” Harry squirmed. “I mean, imagine how embarrassed the teachers are going to be once they’re turned back – they’ll be utterly humiliated if they find out we read how one of them had a bed-wetting problem in their teens or something …”

“It’s preferable to one of them having an allergic reaction to something we feed them and dying,” Hermione said firmly. “And where did that come from?”

Harry went bright red and coughed. “Um, it was just the first thing that came into my head.”

Hermione gave him a strange look, and returned to her list. A sudden thought struck her. “We don’t have anyone working in the Hospital Wing anymore. I know Professor McGonagall used to help Madam Pomfrey out when it got busy, but we don’t have either around now. Find out who’s best at Healing and put them in charge. We can’t escort everyone to St Mungo’s.”

“Right. I’ll ask Susan Bones, she’s top of the class.”

“Good.” Hermione yawned again. Harry looked at her worriedly. “Hermione, are you okay? You look exhausted.”

“It’s been a long night,” she murmured. “Long week actually … I should go and address the school now.”

“I’ll come with you, then go and get some supplies. Erm … what exactly do we need?”

Hermione handed him a second list. “Nappies for the younger ones, toys, clothes … everything I could think of’s on that list. I think you ought to go to a Muggle store to get it, which means changing a lot of money at Gringott’s; but you won’t be able to do that without attracting a lot of attention, so …”

“I can ask Dobby for a favour,” Harry suggested.

“Right, good idea.” Hermione ran a hand through her hair. “Okay, while you’re shopping I’ll talk to the D.A. I thought we should share the responsibility of looking after ten kids with them rather than anyone else, because -”

“We can trust them,” Harry finished. “Great, because I for one don’t fancy looking after this bunch of terrors with just you, me and Ron.”

“But it’s got to be kept between us.” Hermione’s voice turned more serious. “If the wrong person finds out about this …”

“So, what are we telling the school?”

“That the teachers are ill – let’s say food poisoning, it’s close enough to the truth.”

“They’re all kids?” Dean said, wide-eyed.

Hermione nodded. “And, like I said, they need looking after. In the current absence of any teachers – well, any adult teachers – that responsibility falls to us.”

“Why us, why not the prefects?” Susan asked. “I mean, I’m both, so it doesn’t personally affect me, I’m just curious.”

“Because Professor Dumbledore is six years old and can’t even pronounce any defensive spells, let alone perform them, and there are a lot of wizards out there who would love to take advantage of that – some of them with links to the school. As much as I hate to say it, we don’t know several of the prefects and don’t know if they can be trusted with him. One of them is Draco Malfoy, after all.”

Ginny paled. “I never thought of that.” The atmosphere in the Room of Requirement was uneasy as the other members took a moment of silence to reflect on the situation.

Hermione broke it after a few minutes. “I’ve drawn up a rota, for us to take turns at being responsible for them, two at a time. At the moment there aren’t any classes at all, so the shifts are half a day long each, if no-one has any objections.” She paused, but no-one did. “Dean, Luna, you’re first today, okay? The rest of you can go, Harry and I have the shift after that.”

The DA filed out of the Room of Requirement, and Hermione led Dean and Luna through a door the other side of the room. The Room of Requirement had turned itself into a child-friendly suite, including a large nursery, two bedrooms filled with child-sized beds and cots, and bathroom, and frequently added and took away again extra rooms as the occupants needed. The small meeting-room that the DA had gathered in shrunk into a broom cupboard as Hermione closed the door behind her.

Dean’s mouth fell open as he saw the nursery full of teachers. Hermione chuckled.

“Which one’s which?” he asked.

Hermione pointed each one out, and Luna went and knelt down by the sandpit where Rolanda was trying to make a sandcastle, and showed her how to flatten the top of the bucket before turning it upside-down. On the other side of the room, Poppy was busy painting an unhappy Severus by dipping her hands in the paint and wiping them all over him. Dean spotted the situation and hurried over to sort it out. Hermione smiled as she observed the first babysitters at work – so far, so good.

“Remind me to never have kids,” was the first thing out of Harry’s mouth as he dropped what looked like the entire contents of a large department store on the nursery floor.

Hermione stared at him. “Harry, you can’t mean that. I-I thought you liked children.”

“I do. Sort of. Look at this.” Harry held up a receipt that was longer than his torso. “You have no idea how expensive having children is. Whoever pulled this, prank or not, seriously owes me.”

“Just show me what you bought.”

Harry emptied the carrier bags, and had to shoo away Alastor who had come to see what was going on. Hermione placed him back in the sandpit and helped Harry move everything into the girls’ room. Harry had bought stacks of children’s clothes in various sizes, enough nappies to paper the walls with, and a menagerie of cuddly toys, as well as things like rash cream, wipes and bottles.

“You didn’t buy any other kind of toy?” Hermione enquired.

“I got some dollies and soft blocks and stuff.” Harry showed her inside the last bag. “But there wasn’t much on offer than wasn’t electronic.”

“It should be enough. You go and give the kids their toys, I’ll put the clothes and stuff away for them.”

Most of the teachers immediately pounced on the toys once they had seen them. Harry found particularly amusing the way Poppy started wrapping several dolls and teddy bears up in “bandages”, and making Hagrid play at nursing them with her. Severus cuddled up to a fluffy rabbit twice his size in one corner, and Stella buried all the blocks in the sandpit and started a game with Alastor to see who was the fastest uncovering them.

Harry watched them until Hermione came out of the bedrooms, looking exhausted.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Hermione …?” Harry said tentatively.

“Yes?”

“I know now’s not a great time, but … maybe we could talk about last month? Soon, not right now.”

Hermione closed her eyes. “Yes. Maybe. Later. I’ve got some things I need to figure out first.”

“Okay. When you’re ready to talk.”

Sybil started trying to eat sand, and Harry rushed over and prised her fingers away from her mouth. “No, Sybil. Sand’s not for eating.”

A small hand tugged at his jeans, and he looked down to see Severus staring balefully up at him. “Hawwy, look what they’re doing.” He pointed to Albus and Minerva, who looked as though they were fighting. As he drew closer, however, Harry found that was not actually the case.

“We’re playing kiss-chase!” Minerva told him cheerfully. “Albus keeps catching me.”

“Really.” Harry stifled a chuckle. “Just be careful, kids, we don’t want anyone falling over or anything, right?”

“Look what I did!” Harry turned to see Pomona trying to show him a picture she had painted.

“Wow, that’s great.” Harry knelt down to see it properly. “What is it?”

“It’s you and Her – Hu – her over there,” Pomona answered, pointing at Hermione.

“Her name’s Hermione, Pommie. And it’s rude to point, okay? Don’t do it again. But it’s a lovely painting.”

Two bright pink circles of colour signified his and Hermione’s faces. Harry had two large black circles halfway down his and a large red lightning-bolt scar in between them, and the top of his head was covered in black spikes. Hermione’s face was almost obscured with a mess of brown strokes. Pomona had several of these brown strokes on herself, but was grinning away happily at the praise.

“Is Humoniny your girlfriend?” she asked with a giggle.

For some reason Harry felt himself go red. “No,” he said, hoping Hermione couldn’t hear them. “She’s just my friend.”

“Albus is my friend,” piped up Minerva’s voice from behind Harry. “Does Hermione kiss you, Harry?”

This time Hermione looked up from the sandpit, a small frown on her face. Harry felt himself go redder as he lied, “No.” The girls looked disappointed as he changed the subject back to Pomona’s painting, and hoped the kids would want to go to bed very soon.

TBC …