by Van © 2015
		Chapter 5

And for the use of confused muggles:  The Harry Potter Wiki  (Beware the occasional howling advert.)

Ginny had hoped to have the "Incarcerous Booster Bracelet" finished before Christmas, but this proved to be impossible.  After the initial growth spurt, the wrope plant's growth had slowed.  By the time Christmas break arrived, the leading tendrils had not quite reached the top of the branched oak staff clamped to the pot.

Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and most of their classmates rode the Hogwarts Express down to London and dispersed to their families.  Only a handful of students remained at the school.  Cassie took advantage of the holiday to visit the Somerset estate of Lady Jane Tydwell and the home of another friend in St. John's Wood, London.  Ffion remained on duty at Hogwarts.

Hermione split her break time between her parent's London home and the Weasley's ramshackle home in Devon, "The Burrows."  Harry popped in for a few days visit, so the competition for secure snogging locations in and around the house became fierce.  Arthur and Molly were tolerant and more than a little amused by the situation, cutting the Ron+Hermione and Ginny+Harry couples a great deal of slack, as long as propriety was maintained.  The several sprigs of mistletoe scattered around the house got a real workout.  All things considered, everyone had a good time (with only a mild degree of frustration for the youngsters).

As physical evidence of her acceptance by the Weasley clan, Molly had knitted Hermione one of her famous (infamous) jumpers.  To everyone's carefully hidden surprise, the sweater fit Hermione's svelte form perfectly and its complex pattern of interwoven stripes in several subtle shades of blue and gray was quite attractive.  Hermione was truly touched by her possible (probable?) future mother-in-law's kindness, and Ron couldn't take his eyes off the way the jumper hugged Hermione's breasts.

Hermione wore the jumper on the train ride back to Hogwarts.  Ginny wore her gift from Harry under her blouse, a gold necklace with a moonstone charm.

"I really wish we could have finished the bracelet," Ginny sighed, seemingly for the millionth time.  They had just returned to Gryffindor Tower and were climbing the stairs to their dorm room.

"Give it a rest, Ginny," Hermione sighed as she opened their door.  "Perhaps enough vine has grown for us to—"  She froze in the threshold and Ginny nearly collided with her back.  "Oh my."  The house elves had already delivered their luggage from the train, but that wasn't the issue at hand.

The wrope vine had, indeed, grown.  It had also branched several times, climbed up all three arms of the pot's oak staff support, and then continued up the wall and the side of Hermione's wardrobe, branching several more times.  It was now intertwined with the room's rafters and covered almost the entire ceiling.  The new growth had avoided the window, for the most part, but several tendrils were wrapped around the tops of the posts supporting the canopies of both beds.

Hermione estimated the length of the longest single strand of new growth to be something like...100 feet (30 muggle-meters).  With all the branching and turning and periodic clusters of leaves, it was difficult to be sure.  With Ginny at her side she walked over to the pot.  Together, they noted the three original intertwined vines now had a combined diameter of about a quarter inch, and had turned from smooth green to a fibrous brown.  Living cord had become living rope.  The vines overhead remained cord-like, but were also fibrous and brown.  Only the leaves and the growing tips of the vines were green.

"It looks like Devil's Snare," Ginny said quietly, gazing up at the vines.  She was referring to a dangerous but rare carnivorous plant.

"Not really," Hermione said.  "It's dryer, lighter in color, much thinner, and—"  She reached for the ceiling, leaped into the air, and just managed to touch a nexus of several strands with her right index finger.  Nothing happened.  "I doesn't grab you and attempt to squeeze you to death."

"Are you sure?" Ginny said as she walked to her bed.  She reached up with her right hand towards the strand of vine wrapped around the top of her lower left bedpost, and—suddenly seemed to be jerked into the air!  "Help!  It's got me!  It's got me!" she screamed.

Hermione gasped and reached for her wand, then sighed in disgust.  She realized Ginny had grabbed the bedpost with her left hand while planting her right foot on the bed frame.  Ginny had lifted herself into the air and her right hand had not been grabbed by the vine.  "Hold still while I use the Bombarda spell to blast you free," Hermione drawled.  "I'll try not to take off your hand."

"Don't you dare," Ginny chuckled and dropped back down.  "One thing's for sure," she said.  "We now have more than enough vine to make a hundred bracelets."

Hermione returned her wand to her jeans pocket.  "You have to admit that as decor it's very pretty.  It's like dwelling under a living canopy."  She turned to Ginny.  "Have you finished your Muldoon, yet?"

Ginny shrugged.  "Uh, actually..."

Hermione sighed.  "Have you started your Muldoon, yet?"

Burdock Muldoon was a famous wizard of late medieval times.  One of his contributions to the wizarding world was the creation of what came to be called the "Muldoon Diagrammatic Method," the mapping on parchment of the interrelationships of spells and charms and their component elements.  Combining even familiar and well-understood magic can be unexpectedly problematic due to hidden dissonance or unexpected harmonics.  The Muldoon Method can highlight such conflicts, but devising a workable diagram is often a tedious procedure, requiring many false-starts until the multidimensional interrelationships become clear.  And even a well drawn "Muldoon" doesn't always clarify the situation.  Most students found the method to be quite difficult.  Hermione did not.  (Big surprise.)

"No, I haven't started by Muldoon yet," Ginny sighed.  "I don't suppose I could talk you into, uh..."

Hermione favored her friend with her best admonishing and slightly disappointed frown.  "Letting your friends help you is one thing, but can you call it your gift to Harry if you don't do the actual spell deconstruction and reconciliation?"

"No," Ginny admitted with a sigh.  "I really hate making Muldoons.  They're so... diagrammatic."

Hermione smiled and rolled her eyes.

They both set about emptying their luggage and placing their things in their trunks and wardrobes.  This didn't take very long, and soon the girls were changing into their uniforms.  The empty luggage was left for the house elves to take to the storeroom, and they headed down to the Gryffindor Common Room.  It was nearly time for the welcome-back-from-break feast in the Great Hall.

That night, Hermione and Ginny's erotic dreams returned, thanks to the thriving and ever-growing vine, of course.  In the girl's absence, the poor thing had been starved for oneiric energy, hence the burst of vegetative growth.  Reaching and embracing the tower's rafters had helped as they were oak and channeled Hogwart's complex magical energies.  Although the castle doesn't actually dream (as far as the faculty can tell) the ethereal power charging the nearly restored matrix of protective spells helped sustain the vine.

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, George and Ron's joke shop on Diagon Alley, had scored a major coup this Christmas season.  After securing permission from the Ministry of Magic's Department of Muggle Affairs, they'd entered into licensing agreements with the major muggle movie studios to transcribe their DVD and Blu-Ray catalogs into a wizard-compatible format.  How the actual transfers were accomplished was a trade secret.  It's well known that electronics are incompatible with magic.  Rumors flew that a cute and very talented young witch who works as a clerk at the big Virgin Mega-store on Piccadilly did the actual copying and creation of magical master-copies, but no one knew for sure.

The muggle studio legal departments would probably be astonished to learn of the arrangement, but it went like this: For each movie copy sold, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes deposited a miniscule fee into a vault in Gringott's Bank, the slowly accumulating galleons earned interest, a small tax to the Ministry was paid, and the remaining funds became part of the Bank's capital reserve.  It was a win-win-win-win situation (or possibly a what?-win-win-win situation) and was all perfectly aboveboard.  If the muggle "partners" somehow become aware of the situation and wanted their cut, they were perfectly welcome to make withdrawals from what was technically their vault.  All they had to do was get past the goblins.

The actual wizard movies came in the form of small cards with a movie's poster on the front and its trailer (in continuous playback) on the back.  There was a small brass holder (sold separately) that snapped onto the back of the frame of any painting (also sold separately), the card slid into the holder, and the movie would begin playing on the painting's canvas.  In other words, the cards sold by the Weasleys are analogous to muggle DVDs, the card holders to DVD players, and the paintings to televisions.  Landscapes or inanimate studies (fruit bowls, vases of cut flowers, etc.) were recommended as movie screens.  If a portrait was chosen as the playback canvas, the painting's subject or subjects had a tendency to suddenly pop into the story at random times, which could be very confusing for all concerned.

Anyway, that Christmas several Hogwarts students were gifted with movie cards and/or painting-players and Muggle Movie Nights became quite popular in all the House dormitories.  A good time was had by all, and even Ginny and Hermione's wrope vine benefited.  Even muggles know that good movies lead to good dreams.

One memorable night, Princess Hermione's diplomatic starship was captured by Darth Snape's Imperial Star-Destroyer.  (Not one of the local bulk cruisers mind you, but a big Corellian ship.)  A dual-bun hairdo was involved.  A long white gown that revealed her breasts when it (and they) got wet was involved.  A metal bikini was involved.  Finally a nerf-herding rogue of a smuggler named Han-Ronald with a walking carpet of a Wookie sidekick named Chewharry showed up, rescued her, and destroyed the Death Star—twice!  Snogging ensued—with the rogue, thankfully, not the Wookie—as well as vigorous rounds of "cargo smuggling."  The Force was with them.

Another night, Doctor Ginny Crusher, Chief Medical Officer of the Starship Enterprise, beamed down to an alien planet with her commanding officer, Captain Jean-Henri Potier, on a diplomatic mission.  The mission went rather badly.  Several of the locals were quite familiar with earth culture and demanded to know why a Star Fleet Captain with a French name spoke with an English accent.  Ginny had always wondered the same thing, so she was no help.  Anyway, they were both stripped naked and thrown into a horrible dungeon.  Yes, it was horrible.  They only had a thousand large satin pillows to sleep on.  There was a constantly running champagne fountain and regular deliveries of gourmet food, but they had nothing to do.  So... they snogged... and snogged... then snogged some more.  They also played "dock the starship" on a regular basis.  (In the back of her mind, Ginny realized that this particular episode had very little plot, but it was still her favorite.)

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Meanwhile, in the non-dream world...

Like all seventh-year students, Hermione, Ginny, and Luna were busy prepping for their N.E.W.T. exams, the graduation tests that would be their final chances to demonstrate their suitability for hire to prospective employers.  This was very stressful, even for Hermione (especially for perfectionist Hermione), but the three friends persevered, just as generations of witches and wizards before them had persevered.

They also found the time to collaborate on the preparations for the crafting of the Incarcerous Booster Bracelet, Ginny's gift for Harry.  It only took Ginny three attempts at a Muldoon diagram before Hermione announced her approval.  She had proposed a minor change to the third parchment, but Luna pointed out that her proposed "improvement" was actually a mirror image flip of two of the key interrelationships and wasn't an actual change.  Ginny threatened violence (not really) and Hermione withdrew her suggestion.

They had everything they needed, included a generous handful of clippings from the still thriving vine, and agreed to meet in an isolated chamber that Saturday, right after the students with signed permission slips departed for Hogsmeade village to loot the Honeydukes sweet shop and chug butterbeer at The Three Broomsticks.

The chamber chosen for the spell-casting was down in the dungeons.  It was an odd chamber with no formal name and was in the shape of a star, or perhaps the "Ior" rune, and was located between the Potions Classroom and the Slug Pit.  (Unfortunately, the slugs had survived the Battle of Hogwarts, but on a positive note, the infestation was still limited to the actual Pit.)

Hermione and Luna suspected it was one of the so called "other" chambers discussed in Bagshot's Hogwarts: A History.  Supposedly, the founders' instructions to the architect were sometimes slightly contradictory.  Not wanting to offend the four greatest wizards and witches of the day, the poor fellow had done his best, but the web of spells he conjured instructing the various blocks, stones, and columns where to situate themselves sometimes included minor sub-phrases that translated to "and so forth" or "like that."  His intent was to let the conflicts resolve themselves, and the star- or ior-shaped chamber was one such resolution, an unplanned space of no actual purpose, an "other."

Hermione and Luna watched Ginny unroll her Muldoon diagram and place it on the floor, then uncoil the five coils of vine she intended to use to craft the bracelet.  Each strand was about three feet in length and had been stripped of leaf clusters.  If she was successful, the brown, cord-like strands would form a complex Celtic-style knot pattern, the ends would fuse together, and the resulting closed cuff would automatically size itself to Harry once he slid it on his wrist.

Ginny would be doing the main casting, but all three witches had a role to play.  Hermione would imbue the spell nexus with self-healing and power-channeling properties and Luna would take the lead on the physical pattern knitting.  Ginny would tune the result to the Incarcerous spell and shape it for Harry's aura (which she knew very well).

"On three," Ginny said quietly.  All three witches had their wands at the ready.  "One... two... three!"

Three wands waved, three faces frowned in concentration, three pair of lips muttered silently, and five strands of wrope vine cord began to twitch.  Time seemed to stand still... then the five strands of wrope lifted into the air, wiggling like worms, and began weaving themselves into the desired pattern.  An eerie, viridescent glow lit each strand, shedding green sparks as the strands crossed and recrossed.

Suddenly, things went very wrong.

There was a blinding green flash and the wands flew from the three witches' hands!  Ginny's wand spun like a top, shedding strands of rope in ever-spreading spirals.  Luna's wand bounced from wall to wall, tracing the pattern she had been trying to impart to the wrope strands.  Hermione's wand bounced from the ceiling to the stone floor and back, shedding green sparks, and the sparks seemed to attract Ginny's flailing ropes and the unraveling wrope cords.  Wherever the sparks, a cord, and a length of rope met, there was another blinding green flash and more rope and cord emerged!

At this point, Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration and the Principle of Artificianimate Quasi-Dominance came into play.  Ginny wasn't trying to conjure an animal from nothing, but the living nature of the wrope vine cords and the animate nature of the Incarcerous generated rope blurred the line.  If a learned committee of wizards and witches were to debate the magic principles involved, they might not be able to reach a definitive conclusion, but the result was unmistakable.

Every fiber of every fabric comprising Hermine, Ginny, and Luna's uniforms unraveled and flew towards the green sparks, like the wrope cords and Incarcerous ropes.  The more green flashes that occurred, the more fibers defected from the clothing side to the braided-fibers-suitable-for-binding side.  The girls' clothing first shredded, then fell apart, then flew from their bodies.  And that included their shoelaces and underwear.  A rain of buttons, zippers, clasps, and lace-less shoes rained to the floor or were kicked from thrashing feet.

And speaking of binding, the ropes and cords began binding the three witches!  Coils tightened around their wrists and ankles, legs and arms, torsos, and passed through their crotches.  Soon, they were suspended in midair with strands of rope stretching up to the rafters, around the torch holders mounted on the walls, and down to the ventilation grates set in the floor.  The girls struggled and kicked and tried to scream for help, but their bonds included ball-gags of knotted rope!

"Mrrrpfh!"

"Nrrrrm!"

"Eeeefh!"

The naked witches struggled, the ropes continued to proliferate, and slowly the squirming, wiggling prisoners were pulled together!  Their bonds kept changing.  Rope bindings came apart, bands and loops slithered up and down their limbs, then came together into new configurations.  Also strands of cord slithered around their fingers and toes, braided themselves through strands of their long hair, and tightened to further constrict their movements.  But it was after their helpless, naked, writing bodies touched that things got really out of hand!

As Hermione, Ginny, and Luna's contorted, bound bodies came together, their wands stopped spinning and bouncing and also came together.  The wands hovered in midair, butt-to-butt, and formed a triad with the three tips forming a perfect triangle.  The floating wands began to spin, and more rope and cord spiraled out of the nexus, flew through the air, and reinforced the distressed captives' bonds.

Ropes realigned and tightened and Hermione's face was pressed against Luna's left breast.  At the same time, Hermione's rope ball-gag reformed itself into a ring-gag and head harness, forced her mouth open enough for her tongue to press against Luna's nipple, then additional strands of rope and cord tightened to make the arrangement inescapable, no matter how either of them squirmed or struggled.

"Mrrrpf!"

Then, things changed, and Ginny's right foot was thrust into Luna's mouth and lashed in place with her wiggling toes against the blond's wiggling tongue.

"M'mmrph!"

Things changed again, and now Luna's right hand was forced between Hermione's legs and her cord-bound fingers slid first against, and then between Hermione's labia!  Rope tightened around Hermione's thighs, further trapping Luna's hand.

"Neeeek!"

Other examples of intimate and involuntary groping and mauling occurred as the slow changes in their bodily positions and bondage continued.  It was like a bizarre, rope-enforced, slow-motion make-out session, a midair ménage à trois with animated rope!

As an added distraction and/or torment and/or delight, loops of rope and cord not wrapped around any of the witches' body parts began sliding and brushing and quivering against any and all available breasts, feet, buttocks, armpits, ribs, the backs of knees, etc., etc.  Some of the sensations thus engendered might be described as caresses, but others definitely crossed the line into tickling!

"M'mreek!"

It was horrible!  And it showed no sign of stopping!  The oldest ropes and cords eventually began dissipating and fading back into the ethereal planes, but they were constantly being replaced as fresh rope and cord joined the "party."

It would appear that Ginny had made a mistake of some sort while crafting her Muldoon diagram.

Ffion had changed into one of her exercise outfits: sneakers, tights, leg-warmers, and a sleeveless leotard with a scoop neckline.  All were in shades of gray, of course, including the sneakers.  Her purple locks were pulled back and restrained by a gray elastic headband.  She was in the Sentinel Magus' office and was midway through her warmup stretches when two things happened.

(1) A scroll flew from the bookshelf and unrolled itself on her desk.  The other items cluttering the surface either moved aside or decided to help by holding down the edges of the scroll.

(2) One of the writing quills left the silver holder and began bouncing, point down, on a certain spot on the scroll.

The scroll was a map of Hogwarts and the bouncing quill signified the triggering of one of the castle's minor alarm spells.  Some sort of strong magic was happening at the site indicated.  This particular charm was insensitive to classrooms, except after school hours, and also ignored faculty members.  That left students, of course.  Until the final alignment of all the school's alarm spells settled into the lay-line matrix, this particular charm was proving to be a bit of a hysteric, triggering itself at every unscheduled meeting of one of the school clubs or in response to students practicing for practical exams.  It was getting to be bloody annoying.

"This is getting to be bloody annoying," Ffion muttered under her breath, then heaved a sigh.  It was only three weeks until the last of the adjustments in the spell matrix would supposedly be complete.  After that, there should be far fewer false alarms.  One could only hope.

Ffion noted the location under the bouncing quill.  It was an oddly-shaped chamber of no designated purpose down in the dungeons, the perfect place for student mischief.  "Detention!" Ffion muttered as she grabbed her wand and headed for the door.  "Somebody's in for a lot of detention."