This Means War

"Who is that?" Ron asked.

Harry looked up and followed the direction of Ron's gaze to the line of first years who had just come into the Great Hall to be Sorted. There was an older student standing among them. He had shoulder-length blond hair and was wearing sky blue robes, instead of the requisite black.

"Dunno," replied Harry, "but he looks familiar."

"He reminds me of Lockhart," Hermione said, a bit dreamily.

"Wonderful," said Ron, with a roll of his eyes. "Just what this school needs."

Harry exchanged an amused look with Ginny. It was shaping up to be another interesting year.

The line of scared-looking new students came to a halt in front of the head table, and Professor McGonagall brought out the three-legged stool and the Sorting Hat. As the Hat began its annual song, Harry kept his eyes on the stranger. He had a bad feeling about this.

"Connais, Jean-Patrice!"

The Sorting had barely begun and already Professor McGonagall had read the newcomer's name from her list.

"Who?" Ron asked, as the blond swaggered up to the stool and plopped the Sorting Hat on his head.

"Jean-Patrice Connais," Hermione repeated, in a perfect imitation of Fleur Delacour. "He's obviously French."

"Why isn't he at Beauxbatons then?"

Hermione could only shrug in reply.

The Sorting Hat seemed to be taking a long time deciding the newcomer's fate. At long last, the rip on the side of the hat opened wide and shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!"

Ron groaned amid the applause as Connais strode over to their table. He took an empty seat right next to Ginny. Close up, Harry could see that Connais' eyes matched his robes. Turning to her immediately, he stuck out a hand. "A pleasure to meet you. Jean-Patrice Connais," he said in a lightly accented English.

Ginny took his hand, but Harry could tell she wasn't particularly happy about it. "Ginny Weasley," she replied.

Hermione reached across the table to take his hand. "Enchantée."

"Mais tu parles français! Quelle surprise! C'est magnifique!" he rattled off, a wide grin spreading over his features.

"What?" said Ron, the tips of his ears going red. "What are you saying to my girlfriend?"

"Relax, Ron," said Hermione, turning to him and giving him a reassuring pat on the forearm. "He's just saying how nice it is that I can speak French. Although I can't," Hermione added, turning back to Connais, "not really. I just picked up a little bit on holiday a few years ago. What brings you to Hogwarts?"

Connais looked all too happy to answer that question. "I am an exchange student. Madame Maxime arranged for me to spend my final year of schooling here at Hogwarts. C'est formidable, n'est-ce pas?"

"So how is it you say your name again?" asked Ron.

"Jean-Patrice."

"Jahhhn…" Ron attempted.

"Maybe we should just call you Jay," Ginny suggested. And that remained his name – to his face, anyway – at Hogwarts for the rest of the time he spent at the school.

After supper the Gryffindors all made their way back to their tower. Harry felt a wave of nostalgia sweep over him as Ron gave the password ("Casanova!") to the Fat Lady. It was his last year here at Hogwarts. He'd just attended his last Sorting Feast. There had been times he'd wondered if he'd make it this far, and yet here he was, ready to take on his seventh year.

He said good night to Ginny in front of the boys' stairs. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Jay surrounded by a group of sixth year girls. They all seemed to be smiling a lot, while elbowing each other out of the way in an effort to get closer to him. Harry felt his stomach give a funny lurch as he watched Lavender and Parvati barge into the midst of the group.

"What do you think of that?" Harry asked Ginny, nodding towards Jay and his admirers.

Ginny heaved a sigh. "I always knew the other girls in my year were a bit shallow."

Harry raised an eyebrow at her. "So I don't have to worry about you joining his fan club any time soon?"

"Urgh! Not on your life."

Reassured, Harry gave Ginny a kiss goodnight before climbing the stairs to the top of the tower. Ron was already there.

"Hey, look a this, Harry," Ron called, beckoning him over. Another four-poster had been squeezed into the space between Neville and Seamus' beds, making the room rather crowded. Ron was pointing to Jay's trunk. "Look, here's his real name. Jean Patrice!" Ron crowed, sounding nothing like Hermione had when pronouncing the Frenchman's name. "He's got two girls' names," he added with a laugh. "No wonder he says it with that funny accent."

"No wonder he doesn't mind us calling him Jay," Harry added with a grin.

Any further comments were interrupted by the arrival of said Jay in their dormitory. For a moment there was silence, and no one was quite sure what to say to the newcomer. Then Seamus made an attempt to be friendly.

"You went to Beauxbatons, didn't you?" he asked. "Then you must know Fleur Delacour."

A lecherous grin spread over Jay's features. "That Fleur, she's quite a firecracker. You might say I know her quite… intimately."

Harry almost broke out into a coughing fit. The only thing that stopped him was surprise. Jay's French accent, which had sounded heavier than ever down in the common room, had strangely all but disappeared.

Harry exchanged a look with Ron. "When was this?" Ron asked, not succeeding in keeping the scepticism out of his voice.

"Oh, over the summer," Jay replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

"So you spent the summer in England too?" Harry asked.

"Oh no," came Jay's reply, "this was back in France. I ran into her in Cannes last month.

Ron raised an eyebrow at Harry. They both knew it was a blatant lie. Fleur had been spending as much time as she could with Bill. With the war going on travel between England and France wasn't particularly safe, and people only made journeys at need. This raised another question in Harry's mind.

"So how did you manage to get a transfer over to Hogwarts? That must have taken some really special circumstances. Weren't you afraid of Voldemort?"

"Me? Afraid of Lizard-face and his band of Death Masticators?" Jay gave a very high-pitched and effeminate giggle. It wasn't quite like Voldemort's laugh. If anything, it was pitched even higher, and it was far more annoying. Harry recalled an old Muggle film the Dursleys had watched once. Something about a composer who had been Mozart's rival. Mozart had had a laugh like that according to this film.

"No, no, no, I'm not afraid of a bunch of posturing homosexual Storm Trooper wannabes," Jay added when his giggling fit had subsided. He seemed to think calling Voldemort silly names was a great joke. No one else laughed.

"You see," he went on as another fit of annoying laughter passed, "there was this very unfortunate incident involving our Astronomy professor's twin daughters and a pot of honey. Cor, but they were goers!" Harry and Ron exchanged yet another look at Jay's use of English slang. His accent was almost gone now. "They right wore me out! Besides, it was time to move on. I'd already shagged all the cute girls. The rest weren't pretty enough for me, so it was best I move on rather than disappoint any of them by turning them down."

A spluttering noise made Harry steal a look around the dormitory. Seamus was red-faced and making noises that sounded like a tea kettle ready to boil over. Dean had turned away and was getting his pyjamas out of his trunk, but Harry noticed his shoulder were shaking with suppressed laughter. Neville had a look of extreme dislike on his face, but Jay didn't seem to notice.

With a flourish of his hand Jay turned towards the door. "I'm off to the showers. Have to be fresh in the morning."

As soon as he was gone, Ron exploded. "Have you ever seen such a smarmy git? He beats Lockhart hands down! What do you want to bet that Madame Maxime sent him here just to get him out of her hair!"

They didn't know the half of it. They found that out the next morning, when Ginny met Harry at the bottom of the boys' stairs so they could go to breakfast together.

"Do you know what that puffed up French git said to me?" she spat without even stopping to say good morning. Harry had rarely seen her so angry.

"What?" he asked.

"That moron came up to me and looked me up and down as if he knew what I looked like under my robes, and then do you know what he said?" She was positively fuming.

"What?"

"He said, 'I know a zing or toooo abooot zeze tings, and I'm weelling to bet you're a B-cup!'" She blurted this last in a very exaggerated French accent.

"WHAT?" Harry thundered. He couldn't believe his ears. Right behind him on the stairs, he heard Ron emit an incoherent sound of rage.

"Why didn't you hex him into next week?" Hermione wanted to know.

"I wanted to, believe me," Ginny told her, "but then I remembered what Dumbledore said to us during the Tri-wizard Tournament. He wanted us to make friends with our foreign counterparts and extend the hand of courtesy to them."

"Well, that's all very well and good," said Ron, who had found his voice at last, "as long as they're extending the hand of courtesy to back to us. I don't think that crack of his quite counted.

"I know," said Ginny in a tone that was all the more frightening for all its calm, "I've been rethinking the matter, and I've decided that this means war."

p align"center

The following weeks were not easy ones for Harry and Ron. They had to put up with Jay's presence in their dormitory, after all. Jay tended to ask them strange questions, supposedly in an effort to get to know them. For example, one day he asked them what the first thing they'd do upon recovering from a near-death experience. Harry had a good idea what he'd do – he'd had enough near-death experiences in his seventeen years of life, after all. He definitely knew he wouldn't do what Jay would.

"I'd cast lawn chairs," he'd informed the others.

No one said anything for a full minute. Then Ron closed his mouth and blurted out the question that was on everyone's mind. "Why?"

Jay gave his trademark high-pitched giggle. "Because no one would expect it. It would make a great joke."

No one else thought it was very funny, however.

Then, one day out of the blue, Jay asked Harry how his godfather was doing. Harry had no idea what to reply to this. Finally he settled on, "He's been dead for two years."

"Are you sure?" Jay replied.

"Yes!" Harry shouted before stalking off. It wasn't until much later that it occurred to Harry to wonder how Jay even knew about his godfather in the first place.

He couldn't let himself react to Jay's oddities, though. It was all part of Ginny's plan to spring their revenge on him at complete unawares. Until everything was ready, they had to play along with their irritating new classmate.

And irritating he was. He seemed to delight in recounting his sexual conquests to the other seventh-year boys. He took special care to note how all the girls he'd slept with were either quite impressed or downright frightened by his size. Harry couldn't help himself. After hearing how well endowed Jay claimed to be for what seemed like the two hundredth time, Harry sneaked a peek one day in the shower, while no one else was looking. He had to work hard at not bursting out laughing at the minuscule sight before him. He didn't think anyone could grow that much.

Things became even more touch and go the day Hermione came to them in a huff.

"I don't know if I can take this not reacting to Jay anymore," she fumed. "He's a moronic piece of shit!"

"Hermione!" Ron exclaimed in a tone halfway between shock and admiration.

"Well, he is! There's no other word for him!"

Harry had to wonder what Jay could possibly have done to provoke Hermione to such language. He soon found out.

"Do you know what he did? He jumped out at me today on the way back from Potions. He shoved me into an empty classroom and cast a Stellatus Charm!"

"What's that?" asked Ron.

"It makes the ceiling go black and stars come out on it. I suppose that was his idea of atmosphere. But that's not all. He tried to dance with me then!"

"That arse!" bellowed Ron. "I'll show him!"

"We can't react yet, remember?" Ginny tried to placate him.

"Why the hell not? This is getting to be too much!" Ron yelled back.

"He really is taking things too far," Hermione added. "Padma Patil told me he pulled her aside and promised to blow her mind. And that was after telling her how much he'd dreamed about seeing her lying topless on his bed!"

"What did she do?" asked Ginny.

"She hit him with a full body bind and got out of there. What do you think?"

"True. No real woman would willingly go near him." Ginny paused and sighed. "All right. I see we're going to have to move things along. What do you say we call a council of war tonight?"

The council of war was made up of all the former DA members who were still at Hogwarts. Harry used the enchanted Galleon to summon the members to the Room of Requirement that night.

"Right," he said once everyone was assembled. "This isn't a proper DA meeting. This is a special meeting to decide we're going to do about Jay."

"It's about time," interrupted Hannah Abbot. "If I have to listen to another marriage proposal from him, I'm going to scream."

"At least you don't have to listen to him go on about how grateful he is to you for being his only reason for living," added Lavender Brown. "Honestly, does he think smarmy lines like that are going to get him anywhere?"

"He keeps going on about wanting to touch my hair and see how soft and warm it is," put in Parvati.

"That's nothing," said Lisa Turpin. "He cornered me the other day and went on about me leaning above him with my hair framing my face and my lips incredibly red and swollen from his kisses. He said I was looking at him with the most beautiful passion-filled eyes he'd ever seen, like I wanted to devour him. As if. And then he said that every man in the world envied him at that moment and he could have a Veela chorus line right there and they'd turn around because they'd feel outclassed by me!"

Harry felt ill at the idea of so much syrup issuing from one person's mouth. Looking around the room he could see that the rest of them also looked rather green about the gills.

Before anyone else could tell another story and make them all sick, Harry spoke up. "The bloke is obviously a menace. We're going to have to do something about him. I'm opening up the floor. Does anyone have any ideas?"

"I brought this along," said Ron in the ensuing silence. "I don't know if it'll be any help though." He was holding up a small book covered in black binding. Harry felt a small thrill go up his spine at the realisation it looked a lot like Tom Riddle's diary.

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"It's that git's little black book. I, er, sort of took it out of his trunk when he wasn't looking."

"And?" Harry asked. "Did you look through it? What's in there?"

"A load of rubbish if you ask me," Ron replied.

"Do you mean to say you read it?" asked Hermione.

"Yeah."

"How could you do that? Isn't it in French?"

"Well, no it's not, actually."

"He's an obvious fake," said Harry. "Haven't you ever noticed how his accent comes and goes? When he's up in the dormitory, he sounds just like the rest of us, but put him in front of a girl and the accent comes back."

"He must think it sounds romantic or something," said Ginny with a roll of her eyes. "Although, he did speak French to Hermione at the Sorting Feast."

"It was very basic," Hermione pointed out. "Anyone with a minimum of exposure to the language could have said as much as he did."

"If he's a fake, what's he doing at Hogwarts then?" asked Ron.

"Maybe he's a Death Eater spy!" shouted Colin Creevey.

"Don't you mean a Death Masticator?" put in Seamus.

Harry didn't know whether there was anything to Jay being a Death Eater spy, but it was as good an excuse as any to get rid of him. "I think we need to confront him with our evidence and ask him to prove his loyalty," he said.

"There were rumours of Death Eaters in Hogsmeade," said Mandy Brocklehurst. "I overheard Professor Snape telling Professor Flitwick.

"So all we have to do is convince him to prove he's no chicken by going out and facing them," said Ginny. "That shouldn't be too difficult to do with the proper incentive."

"What?" asked Hermione, "You mean?"

"Yeah. One of us will have to promise him a fitting reward if he goes out and does it. That along with a good ego-stroking ought to be enough."

And so it was decided. Harry was very glad he didn't have to be around when Ginny, Hermione and most of the other girls at the school did their convincing. Suffice it to say that the ploy worked.

Jay's body was found the following week. He'd been coated with honey and staked out naked on top of an anthill. There, for all to see was the evidence that he'd been exaggerating his size.

"Hah," said Ron. "His thing can't be more than an inch long."

The expression on Jay's rigid features spoke of prolonged intense pain before he died, but in spite of his great suffering no one seemed to be much moved by his passing.

"I guess it just goes to show," Ginny said, as they all turned away from the grisly sight, "all's fair in love and war."

Note: This story was written before HBP came out, and so it is A/U.