The clock at Harry's desk chimed five, and he surveyed the mountain of mostly-finished paperwork with a satisfied sigh. Not that he liked paperwork as such, but being stuck in here meant that there were for now no Dark wizards on the loose out there. Another half hour, and he'd be able to go home and catch up on the Quidditch highlights in peace.
As if on cue, a small orange paper aeroplane flew through the half-open door of the office and whizzed around his head like an angry wasp. Oh well, at least it's not a red one. He plucked it out of the air and unfolded it.
Got a double in detention. Thought you might want to know. Hermione x
"Another one?" Harry said out loud to nobody. It seemed to be the rage these days for tearaways and eccentrics to proclaim themselves Harry Potter and run around saying and doing things that he himself wouldn't in a million years. He was torn between annoyance and amusement: his experiences with Rita Skeeter had taught him how much nonsense some people were willing to believe, but on the other hand, some of the things attributed to him would be more at home in the Quibbler. Only last month, a Hogwarts student had sworn that he'd given his blessing for a Muggle karaoke party at the school. Rather less amusing were the snide insinuations some of them made against the Weasley family and Dumbledore.
Harry descended the back stairs to the entrance to the detention section, where a uniformed guard waved him through. Had he not been the real Harry here, the wards would have kicked in and immobilised him before he could get off even the quickest of hexes. Hermione was waiting for him in the corridor inside. She greeted him with a smile and a brief hug and led the way down one of the cell bays.
"So where is this boy-" Harry said, and stopped short as they reached the entrance to the last cell. He'd seen doubles before, but this didn't make it any less disconcerting. The inmate was the image of Harry himself, looking much as he had at sixteen, and was pacing the cell clenching and unclenching his fists and muttering swearwords under his breath. He looked up when Harry entered.
"Who the fuck are you to call me boy?" he asked in Harry's own voice. Harry moved into the light and noted with satisfaction the surprise on the doppelgänger's face.
"Harry Potter," said Harry. He rarely needed to elaborate, least of all now.
"Fucking impossible. I am Lord Harry James Potter, last of the Noble and Ancient House of Potter."
Harry shook his head. "Forgive me if I don't bow, your lordship, but I've had enough of wizards calling themselves lords to last two lifetimes."
"You fucking idiots are all the same. Don't you know that Dumbledore's full of shit? You're wasting your time on Voldemort, while all the f-"
"Dumbledore's dead," Harry said, resisting the urge to add a few choice words from Lord Potter's lexicon. "So's Voldemort."
"You think that'll stop the pureblood supremacist shits? They'll fucking take over, I tell you."
"What's this Noble and Ancient House rubbish if not pureblood supremacy?"
Lord Potter didn't have an answer, even a four-letter one. He paced for a few seconds and resumed his tirade.
"I was just telling that fucking prick Dumbledore what a fucking prick he is, then I'm in a fucking field with a load of your fucking friends around me with wands. So I got my gun-"
"Of course you did." Harry wasn't unfamiliar with guns, and they occasionally came in useful when his work took him deep into the Muggle world, but now and again you'd get a witch or wizard thinking it was so much better than magic. Invariably they'd end up in St Mungo's with, if they were lucky, the correct number of extremities.
Lord Potter glared at Harry and continued, "- but the fucking bastard just blew it up." He held up his right hand, which had evidently seen the attention of the Division's mediwizards but was still a bit red and swollen.
"Imagine that," said Harry. "Was it a Reductor Curse or a Blasting Curse?"
"My magic is better than your fucking shit. Look!"
Harry did indeed look, but all he saw was Lord Potter standing there with a constipated expression. The wards were intact, as was everything else. "Finished?" he asked.
"Where the fuck's Lady Potter?"
"There's a Lady Potter too?"
Harry heard a contemptuous snort and turned to face Hermione, who had just entered the cell behind him. "Lady Potter had better not be me," she said, fixing Lord Potter with the hardest of hard stares. Harry would have known better than to take issue here;unfortunately for Lord Potter, he wasn't Harry, however much he might claim otherwise.
"What have you fucking done with my Mione?" yelled Lord Potter. Harry edged slowly away from Hermione, bracing for the inevitable explosion. Lord Potter's Hermione, or "Mione" as he called her, was apparently far less assertive than the one he knew.
"Mione..." said Hermione, and to his amazement Harry saw that she was trying not to laugh. None too successfully, as it turned out, as she released a hoot of unrestrained mirth. This reaction seemed to unhinge Lord Potter entirely: he gave an incoherent scream andflung himself headlong into the containment ward. There was a blue flash of magical fire, and he arced gracefully through the air to collide far less gracefully with the opposite wall.
"But I'm Lord Potter!" he said as he got to his feet, a distinct whine creeping into his voice. "I can save you all, I know everything you don't, I-"
Hermione cut him off. "You'd be amazed how many people we get in here saying that. Come on, Harry. This'll be an interesting write-up."
"They're all interesting to you," said Harry as he followed her from the cell, but for once he couldn't help but agree.