Kerr Avon and the Goblet of Fire
There was a single, half moment when Avon realized he was about to have one of those irritating dream sequences before he was fully asleep and immersed in getting off the Hogwarts Express for another, miserable year at the most deadly private school experience this side of Lord of the Flies.
As usual, they were greeted by Olageus Gangrid, the school's gigantic groundskeeper. Also, as per usual, those two, irritating twits, Restal Vilsey and Calmione Grangeauronor, seemed to think this was the most exciting thing that could have happened.
"Oh, look, Kerr, there's Gangrid! Hello, Gangrid!"
Lots of jumping up and down, lots of happy smiles, lots of obliviousness to the fact that Avon couldn't care less.
He still remembered the day, four years ago, when Gangrid had shown up to ruin his happy, comfortable life. In those days, Avon had lived year round with his guardians, the Dursleys, who were everything he could have wanted in a family. They left him ALONE. Until this stupid wizardry thing had come along, he had spent blissful days on end curled up in his cupboard under the stairs with a big stack of books.
True, the Dursleys had sometimes tried to get him to be more social, but that wasn't too hard to deal with. If they tried to get him to help make breakfast on his cousin Tynus' birthday, Tynus inevitably wound up having indigestion so bad he felt like his insides were "being fried into lunch meat!" (Avon felt particularly good about that incident since Tynus using that kind of descriptive language showed Avon's efforts were improving his cousin's limited mind and weren't just for Avon's selfish benefit). If Avon was dragged off to enjoy a day at the zoo, large animals with scales and/or big fangs would be released into the wild until they gave up on that. No, Avon's life had been just about perfect.
Then, the owl showed up.
He'd tried ignoring it. Then, Gangrid had shown up. Gangrid was too big to ignore, even for someone with Avon's vast experience. He had been dragged off, willy-nilly, to a corner of London so embarrassing to the city leaders and the guidebooks didn't even admit it existed. Worse, all of these people seemed to know him.
"Look!"
"That nose!"
"Can it be?"
"It is!"
"It's - Kerr Avon, the Boy who Lived!"
Avon had never gotten the full story of his parents' deaths out of the Dursleys and had yet to make the effort of combing through obituaries or trying to obtain a copy of their death certificate, but he hadn't worried too much about it. People died. Unfortunate, but true. All he really knew about his parents was that they had left the scene some ten years ago and deposited him into the near Nirvana of life at the Dursleys. He felt the warm, fuzzy feelings for them that he reserved for people he would never have to speak to and even felt a certain gratitude for how neatly they had arranged his life.
Until now.
Even cousin Tynus, not the brightest bulb in the box, would have realized something was very, very bad in a situation where people looked at you in near awe for not being dead, especially when the not being dead thing had been pulled off years ago and you would have expected people to no longer be quite so awestruck that you still weren't dead.
It was one of those moments when you'd really like to have a heart to heart chat with a life insurance agent and find out exactly how bad your premiums would be.
Several kegs of fire whiskey later, Avon had the full story out of Gangrid. Apparently, Avon's parents had not left him in these comfortable circumstances out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead, they'd been murdered.
Well, that was a bit disheartening, and even Avon wasn't so uncaring not to feel that the kind of people who, after all, had produced such a sterling example of humanity as himself deserved better than that.
But it got worse. The evidence was that the murderer had meant to take out Avon as well.
Avon could understand that. Jealousy alone might make some people reluctant to share the same planet as him. Avon also felt a certain, smug satisfaction on learning the would be murderer had been fried by his own curse. Most people assumed this meant Avon was not a person to mess with. Although Avon had the highest of respect for his own talent for self-preservation, he couldn't help thinking it was much more likely that the would be killer had tripped over the ridiculous robes these people insisted on wearing and shot himself with his own wand.
But that didn't explain why people were so amazed that he was still around. Gangrid had some ideas about that, too.
1) It seemed the murderer had had a bunch of pals, the Federation Death Eaters, who might like to finish the job, and
2) Gangrid didn't think evil Lord Vold-Orac was as dead as all that.
This last took a little digging to get clearly explained, but Avon soon learned that an undead, bald wizard might show up at any time to try and kill him again. He also might bring along his friends to help this time. The only really good thing that had come out of that conversation was learning from Gangrid that there was one House in Hogwarts no sane wizard wanted to be sorted in.
"Not Gryffindor - not Gryffindor -" he had chanted under the Sorting Hat.
"Not Gryffindor? Are you sure?" the Hat asked. "You could be great, subject of a best selling book series and a string of movies. You could even have your own action figure!"
"Not Gryffindor - not Gryffindor -"
"Well, if you're sure, it had better be Sly -"
"GRYFFINDOR!" the Headmaster, Albus RojBlakledor said.
"No! The Hat said Slytherin!" Avon yelled.
"Don't be silly, Kerr. Where else could we put a boy like you except hip deep in heroes? All right, everyone, off you go. Lot's of classes and life threatening incidents to get ready for!"
The highlights of Avon's first year had been being chased by a blood drinking monster through the Forbidden Forest, getting bitten by a small dragon, and - oh, yes - nearly getting killed by the undead guy who had tattooed himself to the back of a teacher's head. In Avon's opinion, the school's hiring practices needed some looking into. The words "background check" clearly had not been explained to them.
But, worse than all that, he had been recruited onto a starring position on a sports team.
The less said about that the better.
The only good thing to happen that year was Calmione believing his and Restal Vilsey's completely lame excuse about why they were in the girls bathroom. Restal, thinking quickly, said they were there to save her from a troll that was rampaging through the school. Avon, thinking quicker, had explained Restal's camera as the most effective weapon handy for taking out a troll. Being nocturnal, the flash blinded them. On the not so bright side, this somehow made Restal and Calmione decide they were his best friends and that they had to go everywhere with him.
Avon had been determined not to go back his second year even before Dobby, the little creature that looked like a pile of lettuce, had shown up and warned him that someone would try to kill him that year at Hogwarts (Avon had pretty much figured out that part for himself). He had woundup barracading himself in his room (the Dursleys, thanks to RojBlakledor's heavy handed hints, had forced him out of the cupboard and put him in his own bedroom. With an eastern exposure. Where the sun woke him up. Bright and early. Every. Day).
Even if Hogwarts didn't take the hint, he thought the bars on the windows would create some difficulties.
Who knew that Restal Vilsey was an expert lock picker?
Or that his brothers "borrowed" flying cars on a regular basis?
Despite his best efforts, Avon was dragged from his bed (BEFORE sunrise) and taken off to the Vilsey family's architectually unsound home where there were great thrills like throwing gnomes out of the garden before they bit you. Oh, joy.
Still, Avon thought his clever ploy to keep from getting through Platform 9 and 3/4 until it was too late to catch the train might have worked. He should have remembered Restal's talent for hotwiring cars (which didn't translate into talent driving and REALLY didn't translate into talent parking. All that space around the school, and Restal just happened to slam them down into a psychotic tree).
The only real friend Avon had was Professor Snape. As Professor Snape was always saying, if Avon (Professor Snape also got his name right instead of calling him Kerr) had been in Slytherin, Snape would have seen him expelled in his first year (he just had to keep rubbing that in). During all of his detentions with Snape, Avon discussed ways he actually could get expelled but, so far, none of them had worked.
"For future reference," Snape had told him. "The next time someone is mysteriously assaulted, the Headmaster might be more suspicious if you didn't jump up and down, waving your hand, yelling 'It was me,sir! I did it!' Even he can't fall for something that obvious."
"I've tried to spread rumors that I'm this Heir of Slytherin. I even learned Parseltongue to make it more convincing. By the way, thanks for checking those language tapes out of the library for me."
"Anytime. Have you considered a flagrant breaking of school rules?"
"Well, I went after the giant spider, Brianagog. That might have worked. How was I to know Restal spends all of his free time dragracing in the Forbidden Forest? Or that he doesn't brake for ten ton spiders?"
But there had been worse than ten ton spiders or Restal's dragracing to come. The year had ended with Avon getting dragged down to the school cellar to face off against the real Heir of Slytherin, Dorian Riddle (Dorian, aka Vold-Orac, had this thing about staying alive by sucking out souls or life energy or something like that with the help of his pet monster).
Avon had barely gotten out of that one alive. Unfortunately, getting out alive had also meant saving Dorian's other victim, Ginny-lin Vilsey, Restal's little sister, who had wasted no time in telling everyone how heroic Kerr was in saving her. The Headmaster was so impressed, he completely forgot about expelling Avon.
Year three.
Don't even talk about year three. There'd been all that confusion about whether Sula-Anna-Grant Black had betrayed people or hadn't betrayed people or was dead or what. There'd also been those soul sucking things that thought Avon had 'Tasty Treat' tattooed on him.
Snape had taken pity on Avon when he was lying in the hospital wing - again- and tried to go over RojBlakledor's head and convince the Minister of Magic (Servalan Fudge, a peculiar individual who seemed to like Avon half of the time and hate him the rest. Avon put these mood changes down to Fudge being a politician who embraced whatever opinion the polls of the moment supported) that Avon deserved to be expelled. Not that it had worked, but Avon appreciated the effort.
Avon was really wondering what disasters were awaiting him this year when he arrived in the Great Hall.
"This year, we have a special treat for you!" the Headmaster was saying. "The Triwizard Tournament! Entrants will get to spend the entire year being thrown into deadly peril and facing scenarios that would get an ordinary school closed in a hearbeat with the entire staff on trial for reckless endangerment but which is just considered part of good, healthy fun among wizards! In fact, the Triwizard Tournament is so much fun, you may not even notice ordinary attempts to kill you or to get you off in a dangerous situation where you can be transported off school grounds to have the blood sucked out of you to revive your deadliest foe who will then try to kill you in a cruel manner not suitable for young viewers!
"And this year's competitors are three minor characters whose names don't matter and Kerr Avon!"
"NO!!!" Avon shouted, "I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid, AND I'M NOT GOING!!!" But, looking into RojBlakledor's twinkling eyes, he knew this wasn't going to work.
He wondered if there was any way he could talk Professor Snape into helping him kill the Headmaster. There was no other way the horror was going to end.