October descended upon Hogwarts with a vengeance. The castle, already a fortress of cold stone and drafty corridors, was encased in a shroud of relentless, icy wind and heavy, drumming rain.
For days, the downpour had been continuous, beating against the towering windows, causing the already-chilled air to seep silently into the very core of the ancient building. The relentless damp permeated everything—robes felt heavier, parchment felt clammy, and the stone walls wept with condensation.
Albert quickly realized he had fallen victim to the pervasive chill. Before the first cough could settle into something serious, he made a swift trip to the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey, the formidable yet fiercely protective school nurse, diagnosed his early symptoms instantly and prescribed a dose of the infamous Refreshing Potion.
The effect was instantaneous and undeniably effective, chasing the lingering aches and cold from his body with a jolt of warmth. However, the potion's well-known side effect soon manifested: for the next few hours, a steady, thin stream of steam, like the exhaust from a miniature engine, hissed perpetually from his ears.
The Weasley twins, who had also succumbed to the widespread flu that swept through the first-year dormitories, soon found themselves with the same peculiar, smoky affliction after their own visit to the nurse.
They didn't merely tolerate the symptom; they weaponized it.
Instead of hiding their steaming ears, Fred and George turned it into an elaborate performance art. They would crouch down, make loud, dramatic "choo-choo" noises, and then straighten up with synchronized blasts of vapor, imitating a steam engine pulling into a station.
It was undeniably funny, and they milked the performance for every ounce of laughter it garnered in the Common Room.
"The only good thing about this miserable weather is the ambiance of my new persona," Fred declared one evening, his voice slightly muffled by his steaming ear, earning a fresh wave of chuckles.
It was this very evening that found Albert, recovering and less prone to spontaneous smoke signals, sitting with his roommates by the Common Room fire. The flames roared, painting the room in a cozy, flickering orange glow, a stark contrast to the dim, gray gloom beyond the high windows. They were huddled around a table, attempting to tackle Professor Flitwick's Charm essays, but concentration was difficult.
"Albert, look at that," George groaned, momentarily abandoning his quill to press his face against the windowpane, condensation immediately blooming around his nose.
"This downpour has been ceaseless for seventy-two hours. Do you think the constant saturation has compromised the soil's integrity? We banked on sun exposure, not a continuous bog. The sprouts... they'll be rotten, won't they?"
Albert, who was meticulously adding the finishing touches to an intricate spell diagram, gave a pointed warning. "Be careful where you're leaning, George. Worry about your immediate academic future before you worry about your agricultural one."
"Ah!" George shrieked, belatedly pulling back. A fat, cold drop of water, having condensed on the stone arch above the window, plummeted straight onto his parchment, causing a delicate loop of text to bleed into a large, messy splodge of black ink. "It's ruined! My entire draft on the 'Switching Spell'!"
"Stop howling, you deserved that," Angelina Johnson snapped, rubbing her temples viciously. Angelina, having caught a vicious chill during a grueling, waterlogged Quidditch training session the previous week, was also suffering.
Even Madam Pomfrey's tonic hadn't fully cleared the fog from her head, and the Weasley twins' theatrical steam-whistle routine was pushing her to her limit. "You're making my headache worse. Just for once, focus on the syllabus."
"But Angelina, we're discussing the viability of our investment," Fred countered with dramatic flair. "This garlic patch is the foundation of a greater enterprise! We should go check it out. I'm anxious that our efforts are simply being dissolved by this flood."
"And how, exactly, do you propose to check on it?" Lee Jordan grumbled, leaning back in his chair. Unluckily, Lee had just had his dose of the Refreshing Potion, and two impressive jets of vapor were currently blasting from his ears with a soft, steady fssss.
"I'm not wading through three feet of water to look at moldy alliums. If you're worried about the garlic, then perhaps you should have planted it somewhere… sensible."
George slumped back into his seat, profoundly depressed. "It's no use. Even if we went out there, what could we do? We finally got the bulbs, finally saw the first tiny sprouts of success, and then this happens. Is it genuinely this hard just to grow a kitchen herb?"
The collective anxiety around the weather gave way to a sudden, localized burst of excited chatter across the room. Students were gathering near the Common Room's bulletin board, their voices rising with sudden anticipation.
"What's causing the fuss now?" Angelina asked Albert, momentarily forgetting her throbbing head.
"It's the Hogsmeade notice," Lee Jordan pointed out, his voice clearer than usual thanks to the stimulating potion, though his head still steamed gently. "They've posted the announcement for the late October trip, right before Halloween."
"Yes, but that's utterly irrelevant to us, isn't it?" Angelina replied, slightly irritated. "That trip is exclusively for the third-years and above." She had heard enough second-year students bitterly lamenting this unfair rule to last her the entire term.
"I'm not worried about Hogsmeade," Albert confessed, having already visited the quaint wizarding village when they first arrived. "I'm genuinely looking forward to Halloween here at the castle. I've heard rumors from the upper years that the celebrations at Hogwarts are legendary."
He continued, his voice lowering to a more engaging, story-telling pitch, detailing the rumored spectacle.
"Imagine the Great Hall: thousands of live bats fluttering among the torches, enormous, grotesque jack-o'-lanterns, rivers of pumpkin juice, and a feast that surpasses even the Opening Banquet. In the past, there was the time the troll broke in during the feast, or the year the Headmaster's cat was petrified—unpleasant, certainly, but undeniably dramatic."
"I think the collective atmosphere is the magic," Albert added. "Playing games is fun, yes, but celebrating a dramatic holiday like Halloween, en masse, in a millennium-old castle is an entirely different level of lively. It's the spectacle that matters."
"You make a good point," Lee Jordan conceded, abandoning his self-pity over his steaming ears.
"And speaking of the feast," Albert leaned in. "When I went to see Hagrid a while back, I noticed the pumpkins in his backyard patch. They weren't just big; each one was nearly half the height of a grown wizard. They must have been massively expanded using the Bloating Charm, specifically for the Halloween decorations. The sheer magical energy invested in a single feast here is incredible."
It was a pity, Albert thought privately, that the twins couldn't just use the Bloating Charm on their newly potted garlic. They weren't intending to eat it, after all. But, of course, the charm was complex, far beyond the reach of first-years, even magically talented ones.
Unlike the majority of the student body, who were now buzzing with either excited anticipation or bitter resentment over the Hogsmeade trip, Albert and his immediate circle remained relatively unenthusiastic. They had seen Hogsmeade recently, and without a vault full of Galleons, the trip held little mystery or appeal.
Finally, late that Sunday afternoon, the sky seemed to tire of its effort. The unrelenting rain softened to a drizzle, then stopped altogether. A heavy, moist silence descended, broken only by the drip of water from the battlements.
The moment the last drop fell, the twins were on their feet, armed with borrowed umbrellas and grim determination. They insisted Albert, who was the only one who had truly seen the location and understood the seriousness of their predicament, accompany them. Albert, seeing no immediate distraction for his new Alchemy quest, agreed.
The walk was dreary. The ground was saturated, sucking at their boots with every step. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of wet earth and decaying leaves. When they finally reached their meticulously chosen "secret garden" on the far edge of the grounds, the scene was one of total, utter devastation.
Their field was no more than a churned-up patch of mud. The carefully spaced soil mounds had dissolved. The tiny, pale green garlic sprouts, which they had celebrated only a few days prior, were now blackened, limp, and entirely submerged in a shallow, stagnant pool of water. The work of an entire week was literally rotting before their eyes.
The expressions on the faces of Fred and George were utterly desolate, matching the gloomy, oppressive sky. All the hope, all the careful planning, and all the physical labor had been wasted by the relentless, unseasonable storm.
"Look at this," George whispered, his voice thick with defeat, gesturing at the pathetic, soupy mess. "It's all gone. We can't even try to salvage the bulbs. This is... this is just sad."
"What in the blazes are you three doing out here?" a frustrated, booming voice suddenly cut through the heavy silence.
They spun around to see Hagrid, storming towards them. He was not using an umbrella, and his coarse moleskin coat was plastered to his immense frame by the clinging, heavy moisture. His initial expression was one of genuine anger and concern; he clearly believed they were attempting to sneak into the forbidden woods or engaging in some other dangerous mischief.
"Professor Hagrid!" Fred stammered, pointing a trembling, muddy hand at the soggy patch.
Albert quickly stepped forward, giving a brief, exasperated explanation of the situation, omitting the amulet part and focusing purely on the agricultural failure.
Hagrid stopped dead, his imposing figure hunched over to peer at the muddy disaster. He stared from the sad, dissolved sprouts to the two despondent Weasleys, then back to the mud.
"You mean to tell me..." Hagrid said slowly, his booming voice dropping to a baffled rumble. "You boys went to all the trouble to sneak out here, dig up a patch of ground, and plant a whole crop of garlic... just for it all to be washed away?"
He looked absolutely speechless, a true rarity for the half-giant. "That is absolutely the most utterly misguided, sodden waste of time I've ever seen anyone put into growing an herb!"
He shook his massive head, his initial fury melting away into overwhelming, pitying disbelief. He clapped both twins on their shoulders with hands the size of dinner plates.
"Don't you be depressed, now. It's just a bit of garlic," Hagrid comforted them gruffly, his mood swinging from disbelief to paternal concern. "I'll give yeh another sackful, and we'll just plant it next to my own patch. I know the ground that drains properly, and I can keep an eye on it."
"No, Hagrid, with all due respect, that won't solve the problem," Albert interrupted, deciding that this farce had gone on long enough. He pointed out the obvious, common-sense solution he had been holding back for days. "The issue isn't the ground, it's the weather, and the long walk. This time, we need to completely change the logistics."
Albert gestured back towards the towering castle, a bastion against the elements.
"We plan to ask you for the next batch of bulbs and some good, rich compost, Hagrid. But this time," Albert concluded, looking pointedly at the twins, who were finally starting to catch on,
"we will transplant the garlic into pots. We can bring the pots back to the Common Room—up by the fire—where they can sprout safely and dryly. The only trouble will be carrying the pots outside every once in a while to ensure they get adequate sunlight, but that's a small task compared to losing the entire harvest to an October flood."
Fred and George stared at Albert, and then at the rotting field, and then back at Albert, realizing they had been utterly blind to the obvious solution the whole time. Hagrid, meanwhile, looked impressed and relieved that he wouldn't have to keep an eye on a secretive