On the Cliffside School
Chapter 1 Days ahead
Set in AU post-Deathly Hallows. Harry et al. have returned to finish their education. Read and Review. The later chapters, except for one, are shorter than this one.
This day on Harry's opinion couldn't be more dreadful. Snape had left them a huge list of Potions for the midnight sessions, 20 of them, before the period was over.
He was currently mixing a blindness potion, that was obviously used to make the maker and only the maker blind. It was Harry's firm belief that this was the most useless potion ever. Neville had become a 20/10 brewing this potion, with the rest of class squinting hard at the instructions on the board.
"At least I won't be the only one with glasses." He muttered darkly to himself.
"What was that?" said Snape. "Detention Potter."
Curses, how was he able to hear that? Harry wondered. I'm sure the phonemes were all blurred out.
"I see this class incompentence, along with the rest of the school's, had cost Hogwarts their eyesight. Let this be a lesson."
They got up to leave.
"You will also have to brew this potions," he said pointing and writing to the board, "and bring them for them next class. This will be half your grade for the year."
Half the students groaned, the other tripping on their robes, even the ever watchful Hermione. The noxious fumes of badly-brewed and volatile potions having taken a toll on her as well.
Harry read over the book's list, having transfigured his glasses to adjust for the mole-like state he found himself in.
Bugger, I'm almost blind. Should have used a Bubblehead Charm. Alas our hero was not fast enough.
The potion was ironically an eye-fixing potion, it read:
Molly's root and three petals.
Graphorn droppings.
Rotten mandrakes
Goat's innnards boiled over inside hippotamus innards.(Transfigure animals into targets and let hippo eat goat. (Fortunately Harry hadn't got rid of the Prince's book, our hero was not that stupid.))
Bowtruckle eyes.(Any eyes will work even artificial eyes, potion requires eyes as focus of spell, use pinhole camera instead.)
Rainwater.
Grindylow's scales
Fluxweed sun-harvested.
Centaur tail.
Blindness potion.
Well it looked difficult and… Centaur's tail, how the heck do I even get a Centaur's tail?
The class was over, so Harry quickly hurried over to Slughorn's office to get his help.
He rushed over to his office, unfortunately Slughorn only taught fifth years and under, as Snape did not like to have so much free time.
Harry knocked on his door half an hour after, using the right hand rule on the simply connected dungeons of Hogwarts.
It took longer than usual, so he peered through the keyhole, but he only managed to get a scratch on his super-modified glasses.
Slughorn opened the door, it was obvious the Potion Master had succumbed to the Potion effects as well. The reactions to the Potion were more difficult to repair with age, so his eyesight was likely damaged while he was taking a nap.
"Professor Slughorn?" asked Harry.
"Harry? Is that you Harry? I think I fixed our problem my boy! Quite the news! I also managed to get Snape fired," said Slughorn.
"But the class just finished Professor."
"I used a time-turner my boy, you know the new ones the ministry is selling? My future-self told me of my inevitable future blindness."
"I was quite mad, you see. So I set myself against the man. He has been sacked, his properties confiscated, and left homeless."
"Professor… "
"Well as homeless as a transfiguration user can be, so let's say foodless."
"Hm, no, that can't be right, the recent discovery of Organic Chemistry by the magic world reveals that lack of concetration is the reason for the exceptions to Gamp's laws of Transfiguration, therefore…"
"Professor…"
"Oh yes. Sorry my boy, you must be quite interested in my solution, right?"
"Well have here."
"Exocular Rent!"
The professor got his wand out, and Harry felt a pain worse than the Cruciatus.
Like a giant's hand buried inside Harry's skull. He felt and saw as his eyes were plucked out one before the other.
He clasped his hands to his skull trying to cover the bleeding holes and split nerves.
"Sorry boy. But the process cannot use any anesthetics. Let me help you."
"Reparo."
And the monstrous curse reversed itself. Harry felt two cold hard objects being rammed inside his skull, his orbit's bones expanding to allocate the largeness.
The world blurred with a strange translucency—
"Shit I have—"
"You have moody-eyes! Exactly my boy! I spent Hogwarts medical budget and the money we got from Snape's ransacking on these! A genius idea if you ask me. Now everyone on the school will be able to reverse Professor Snape's horrible mistake!"
"Professor could you hand me back my eyes?"
The careless Professor might have stepped on them. It was clear from the secondary screams Harry heard while being butchered that Slughorn had used his own time-traveled self to give himlself his own set of eyes. But even with his full-sight you never knew how careless Slughorn was.
The Professor was careful enough though, he even placed the eyes in a preserving jar, after Harry explained their plotological importance.
"They are green. My mother's eye colour, so I'm afraid I cannot accept—"
"Oh, your new eyes are green too! My own model's version can look at their own pupils by the way, impressive they are. Anyhow, I matched all of the eyes to the students photographs."
Shoot! With his lame excuse gone he had to admit the truth.
"Er, I would still prefer my old eyes back. I actually came here to ask you for assistance on the potion issue…"
"Oh, of course, you knew that the eye-fixing potion can only be made with the blindness potion as a key ingredient. You are still a sharp potioneer my boy!"
"Er, yes I knew that," said Harry. "So any idea where I can get the ingredients, and any idea if I can substitute some of them?"
"Yes, of course, most of them are only raw supply for the substance of the potion proper. A base if you will. The most important part is the eye-like object, the grindylow's scales, and the Centaur's tail."
"Oh, c'mon. How I'm supposed to get that?"
"Right well, you could just ask one of the centaurs? Or cut one of their tails perhaps? I'm confident they won't mind."
"Truly Professor?" I asked, Slughorn nodded.
"Golly."
"Hm, how long will the preserving jars act?"
"As long as you like."
"Now, if you excuse Harry, I got more eyes to pluck! More eyes indeed, before the Hogwarts wards detect my use of dark magic!"
With that taken care of Harry went off to the Owlery. One of the most peaceful aspects of Hogwarts, which for some reason he had never thought about, was the sheer grandeur and size of the place.
He wedged himself through the one-eyed humped witch and took the detour from Honeydukes to the hidden trapdoor.
Clearing out with his wand the bushes (he didn't care for the secrecy)he saw his target. Harry whistled to call Hedwig II attention.
The owl came zooming out from one of the high windows, swooped down and landed on his arm.
He had specifically asked for a trained owl, that way he would make sure no one killed Hedwig this time no one.
Alright I just gotta place a high priority order, 'cause everyone else will jam and bottleneck the Apothecary. So he signed with blood a Gringotts withdrawal and worte the order.
There.
Harry brought along Neville, it was 2:30 a.m.
Then he appeared, with the characteristic pop of Apparition, meaning he had used his time-turner.
He was the only other student who had gotten the Arithmancy Professor permission to buy one.
"Are we sure about this? Magical creature are not my forte Harry."
"They are not 'creatures' they are beings. And as such we are stealing from them."
Harry donned his cloak, they drank a temporal shrinking potion to fit, and marched ahead. Onto the Forbidden Forest.
"Mobile Quieting Charm."
"Shit Harry, how often do you wash this thing? It smells awful."
"You can't. I am afraid to do it. What if you wash it, the magic goes away? So I don't."
"Use a scourgify."
"Right, but isn't one rule of magic that doing things the laborious and stupid way is better."
"No it isn't."
"Scourgify."
The cloak cleared immediately, half of its concealing properties undone.
"Fuck. What did you do to my cloak! I told you it would wash the magic away!"
"Crap. Alright calm down Harry. I know someone who can fix it! We will take it to Ollivander."
So the friends trudged on, Harry quietly mumbling to himself.
The brambles and branches were everywhere. Occasionally the clicks from Acromatulas miles away could be heard on the crystal clarity of the silent forest.
After walking for half an hour the trees getting denser and denser they reached a moon-glade.
And on the moon-glade the Centaur's herd was peacefully sleeping, their quiet snores barely moving a leaf.
"It must be the hunting pack." Harry said.
Firenze was there his mane recognizable.
They were on human centipede formation, head to butt, mane to ass.
Neville levitated Harry, he carefully pointed his wand at the Centaur's tail.
"Diffindo."
"Accio Centaur's tail."
The cut tail floated toward a preserving jar.
Now for the perfect crime.
Harry got out the donkey hair he had pre-ordered.
"Heh heh heh."
He levitated close to the Centarus's butthole.
"Reparo."
There. Perfect, a little bit to the left but details were details.
Neville levitated back to the glade's edge. Over the Centaur's circle. He slowly wobbled above.
"What are you waiting for? Bring me over already."
"I don't want to muck it up. I am as clumsy as it."
"Oh don't be such a baby. Finite."
Harry plopped down to the ground, rolling over and dusting himself up.
"It was that easy! No need to worry."
The Centaur herd immediately got up. Their angry eyes on them, with spears on hand.
"You idiot you fineted the Quietig Charm!"
"Run."
They set off running, the hoofs of the herd thumping, the tribe set after them.
Harry and Neville started accioing rocks behind them. One of the Centaur lost them. Then Harry got his wizard's purse out and threw the Peruvian powder.
"That's two!"
"Who?"
"It the Centaur with the donkey's tail."
"What?" Ronan checked behind with his free-hand, his face turning into a grimace of anger. "You! You will die."
He started shooting flaming and poisoned arrows, their Protego bouncing them.
"I thought they din't use fire!"
"They don't."
Bane charmed more arrows.
"Shit!" The new arrows flew, rippling through their shields.
"Ah." One of them lodged into Neville's skull.
The sucker clung to the little skin on the back. Neville face was on rictus.
"I know what to do! Follow me."
Bane followed after them closing in on the distance, they shot a few tripping curses and stunners, but he jumped in and out the trail.
"Accio quiver!"
The empty quiver came flying to Harry's hand. Bane's arrows were hastily wedged under his armpit.
"Accio arro—"
"Great idea summon the arrows. Let them fly towards you!"
They were already exhausted but Harry quickly saw their chance. Grabbing Neville by the collar he got his wand out and ran towards the edge.
"Now we just got to do a double levi—"
But he felt the Centaur's powerful hands grabbing them both and they all tumbled past the cliff's edge, the momentum carrying them all over.
"Fuuuck."
"Poootter."
The ground was quickly rising to meet them.
Falling on top of a falling Centaur was not how Harry saw himself dying.
Now the little bushes were clearly visible to the eye. This is it Harry.
Wait!
"Neville."
"Use your your time-turner!"
"Right."
Neville got out the tirme-turner wrapped it over their necks and turned.
It was all well.
The rushing pop of apparition greeted Harry's ears.
Yellow, black. The 'puff's common room.
"Oh god. God, I think I shat myself in there."
"Potter, you miserable bastard. You could have killed us!"
"I could right, but I didn't right?"
But the two friends were not all clear from trouble.
They looked down. Like a beached and hunted whale poor Bane was rent in twain.
"Oh My God. What the fuck did you do to Bane?"
"Oh shit. So that was where the stickiness came from. Quick, to the Hospital Wing!"
The two of them then went out, wrapping the centaur on bandages and levitating him along.
"Let's call Dumbledore!"
"He's at the Board of Governors trying to re-hire Snape."
"But he was, oh right, time-turner."
"All right! Obstacles to avoid. Filch's replacement, map says he on Myrtle's bathroom, Mrs. Norris, seventh floor. And Snape hm," Harry browsed the map, "dungeons. If they catch us we end up in azkaban first, not in the Hospital Wing, that's the school's priority."
They turned from the room filled with statues, the one with portraits of famous people and only that. Currently they were passing in front of the Transfiguration classroom.
"Okay the Grand Staircases are—"
A sound interruped Harry.
A little girl came strolling by, her books quietly floating behind her.
"Shit, shit, let's get out of here."
They quickly dived behind a corner.
"Who's there?"
"We are fucked Potter! Fucked!"
"Shut up! Let me think."
The girl came closer, with her field of view between them and the Staircase.
"You had to ruin my Cloak. Didn't you?"
"Alright. Accio tapestry. Hurry!"
Harry levitated the tapestry in front of the hall, Neville busily dragging the Centaur behind.
"Hey! Not funny," shouted the girl.
"Quicker!"
The girl started throwing curses towards the tapestry. Most of the countered.
Neville was getting to the end.
"Incedio."
"Fuck."
"Quick. Quick! Wrap him over like a taco! On your shoulders, summon a new tapestry if you need. Quick!"
They swiflty descended, the girl able to see them, her gasp audible.
"What's that? Who are you!" The girl set after them.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"There's a chimey in that classroom. Hurry!"
The classrom indeed have a chimney.
"It's not pre-greenned Potter!"
"Don't matter, throw him over! He's unconscious!"
They did that, throwing the Floo powder as the girl barged in, and said. "Poppy Pompfrey!"
They barged in the nursery. The Centaur's blood and Neville's barf making the ground slippery.
Harry quickly got up reparoing the broken furniture his slippage had caused.
Luckily Madam Pompfrey had come over, and after they had explained what had happened they were cleared out.
"I cannot believe what Horace was thinking! Living in that Dungeon has made him fall on his old ways. Oh, Horace. You will get a word with me, very soon!"
Harry and Neville rested on the infirmary. The rest of the night blanketing their sleep.
And Harry dreamt.
He was currently remembering about his house, old and shabby house, his "mansion", Potter's "mannor."
(James was always terrible with money.)
The couple were by the warm fire of the foyer, after a cold day as a seeker/auror.
Ginny smiled, the curners of her bow tugging in most sweet semblance, showing her wide white teeth.
"How was your day my big boy?"
"I heard you got hurt, smashed your head right on a goalpost, classic accident. All while looking for the Snitch." She said tsking as she removed the fallin' snowflakes coquettishly.
"But I am here to thaw your heart, and fix you."
Ginny slowly approached Harry, her smile the widest you would see.
"Will you, will you marry me Mr. Harry Potter?"
Wow. Wow!
"I, I guess so Ginny. I love you, but why do you ask? We have all the time… it's so early…"
"Then you can do anything, a whole life ahead."
"I want you Mr. Potter." She said putitng her finger on top his mouth and throwing herself on top of him and both on the couch. "To make me a woman!"
My good and lucky day.
They approached each other, her big round eyes were darting from neck to brow, tracing Harry's centerline.
Harry grabbed her by the back and kissed her on the earlobes, her mouth.
He touched first base, Ginny soft breasts on his hands.
And then he wrapped his hands on her abodmen, her supple curves. Towards Homerun.
"Dobby so happy, now he can go back to family! No death for Dobby, Momma-Dobby will be proud."
What?
What?
Harry looked around, cracking open each eye. He could only see the snoreful Hospital Wing, and Dobby tearful eyes. Dobby, the house-elf was wearing a flowery wedding dress, and was top of him.
"You has accepeted, Husband Harry. You will be very happy, husband is one who is pregnant in elf marriage! Now you are with sons! Now you are Mother."
"No, no. No! Kill me, anybody." Harry had realized what happened, how the nightmare had bled into reality. The house-elf had exploited his own dreamworld to his purposes.
"Nooooo!"
Harry grabbed his wand, pointing it towards his head, to end the horror.
"Avada Kedavra."
Harry woke up.
"Oh thank God. Thank. Fucking. God."
"It was just a wet dream, just a fucking, shitting, and wet dream."
That was it, after he set the blankets and his underwear on fire, Harry was ready for the day.
Bane was fixed up, Madam Pomfrey even regrew his old tail.
Except for a detail.
"The potion. The effin' potion, I forgot."
"You could regrow your eyes," suggested Neville.
Harry remembered the anaethesia-less regrowing of his bones.
"Nope, no way, I would rather had Slughorn ripped them out again. These eyes are just fine."
So the two friends turned back towards the Great Hall, to catch up with everyone.
Neville had his anti-venom potion, from the arrows, to drink in every breakfast.
The students seemed a lot more twitchy this day.
"Well, I expected some mockery for my new eyes. But nothing like this."
Most of them had thick glasses, the rest squinting with their wands busily pointed to their temples.
"Well you are famous."
So Harry strolled angrily and kicked in the Great Hall door.
"Okay mofos, I, the one who took down Voldemort with bullets, am here! Anyone got a problem with me and my new eyes?"
"IT"S THE EVIL MIDGET! QUICK DON'T LET HIM GO!"
"What?"
"RAMPANT MIDGETS ON SCHOOL.
HAS LOCKHART MAD EXPERIMENTS GONE BAD?
Today on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry a most heinous and atrocious act has occured,—"
Someone was reading the newspaper to them in an accusatory tone.
"—with the recent inclusion of a new half-breed on the premise. This new species created by the fallen heartthrob wizard Gilderoy Lockhart. The Dawrf
There had been many alarming recent reports by a frightened school students on the iconic school. One in particular who has witnessed the creatures cannibilzing each other:
'I saw them! Goggly-eyed midgets, one with an arrow stuck to the back of his skull. They were barbecuing and planned to eat a whole Centaur!'
All these things point to the lackluster security and the fall of standards since the acceptance of half-breeds.
The quite rightfully and afraid students have also complained of the allegations of a mad potions Professor mutilating children, using forbidden magic to steal their body parts…"
Underneath there was a pensieve photograph of the incident.
Dean Thomas finished the Skeeter piece.
Shit, I'm indentifiable in that picture! Harry thought.
The mob of students was desperately pointing their wands at them, with thirty Colloportus already cast on the door.
Draco was the first to incant, "Stupef—"
"EVERYBODY! Calm down!"
Dumbledore clapped his hands together, lighting and blowing half the candles on the ceiling.
"As I am sure there's an explanation for this incident."
"First let us explain the recent appearance of the 'Moody-eyes.'"
"With no official name—"
"In status of BWL, I hereby officially name them 'Moody-eyes.'"
"Mister Potter, please."
"As I was saying the Moody-eyes are a quite recent and expensive invention, one whose only prototype, until recently, was owned by Alastor Moody."
"This concerns another piece of news that would have been more prominent if not for Mrs. Skeeter's article."
"Professor Snape has been fired."
After the cheering went down he continued.
"I tried my best to try and prevent what was a terrible mistake. Unfortunately Professor Slughorn use of a time-turner ensured he was better prepared."
Oh, and you didn't use yours old goat?
"The eyes are free, the process is optional, though quite painful. And I have temporarily lifted the restriction on dark cur—, er… As I was saying those of you who want—"
The door barged open.
"Not anymore Dumbledore."
"Guess who passed a decree on the Board of Governors in return for a favour for their mandatory—"
The students started firing curses and shouting at their Professor.
"You monster."
"Wicked man."
"You just want to make us a ugly as you."
"Really?" He swung around on his wooden-leg. "A scar as a way to build character. What a precious idea!"
He got his wand out and slashed it at Miss Patil.
"Boom, a beauty gone!"
"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"
"You, You!"
"Oh, relax Miss Patil, your sister is merely unconscious."
"But." He said pausing.
"It is a perfect oppurtunity to have the procedure applied to her. Wouldn't you think?"
"Please accompany your clone to the Hospital Wing Miss Patil, her similarity will make her your perfect ginea pig."
He swung around on his leg again.
"Now, as you must be wondering, I am here to be your new Defense Professor."
"Good luck everyone, you'll need it."
And then he vanished in a puff of peruvian powder.
"Drama Queen," said Harry.
"Heard that."
Harry dived under the table.
"It was just me Harry," joked Neville.
The fuss on the Hall settled down again.
Harry and Neville sat at their respective places on each side of Hermione's place. She was one the firsts of the student (after Harry and Neville), to come down.
She had thick glasses on top of her. After she saw both of them quietly sitting, Hermione perked up and ran over to her seat.
"Harry, Neville! Is it true what Madam Pomfrey said?"
"How do you know?" asked Neville.
"Why are you wearing glasses?"
"Everybody will think I am making fun of Professor Trelawney! It's brilliant, she gave me the idea when I noticed she looked the same under them, even with the eyes."
"And to answer the other question."
"You know because you can see the future Hermione." I guessed.
"How would you even do that? Wasn't she terrible at Divination?" Neville asked me.
"It's theoritical, but you just have to point your wand to your inner eye and make an eye-repair and enhancement spell!"
"Does it work?" asked Hermione.
"Sorta. I think you would mostly get predictions about blood pressure. But I don't want to take the next step and get a trephining." Harry said.
I could have used an eye-fixing spell, before that bloody fiasco. Thought Harry.
Hermione then took out a bell-shaped object covered in velvet from her witches' backpack.
"Well no, that's not how I know Harry. Madam Pompfrey herself told me about what you both did."
"She was the second Professor to get the eye-procedure done, by Slughorn I think. I suspect Trelawney was scared, 'cause blind prophets are supposed to be better."
"But she's a real seer, why would she be scared?" protested Neville.
"Are we sure about that? For all we know every wizard or witch could be a seer. I mean if the magical demons that use seers as a mouthpiece needed her consent to prophesize, how powerful can they really be?" said Hermione.
"Hermione thinks Trelawney was scared because she should be getting more accurate predictions without her real eyes." I said answering Neville's question.
"And that is why I wanted to show you this guys."
"You got one and didn't tell me."
"I was busy Harry."
With that Hermione uncovered the object.
"Behold! The first captured prophet demon!"
"And a new method to control prophecies!" I said.
A tiny Trelawney-like creature was trying to munch through the bars.
"I have been taking Trelawney's blood, using a hair Parvarti pilfered from her and a supply of Polyjuice. Don't look at me like that Neville. Harry and I, when he was not fussy about turning into a woman, took the blood-samples from ourselves."
"I don't follow," said Neville who was dimmer than his usual self.
"If you want to harvest the blood from someone without actually commiting such hideous crime, how would you do it?" Hermione asked.
"Well, it's simple, you just have to use Polyjuice to transform yourself into the target, and ah! Then you take a blood sample from yourself! It's even only illegal if you do it for identity theft or such." Neville verboseley replied.
"We did something bigger than that." She said.
"First step, capture the demons. To capture them, well Hermione and I made this little device. One made with self-renewable portkies controlled with Sneakocopes, took me ages to make that part work," said Harry.
"Then you put ghost wards around it, thereby trapping the creature. I had to launch a thousand of them around the world to even get one," continued Hermione.
"But what for?" asked some Gryffindor, probably Dean.
"The sneakoscopes are for guiding the teleporting apparatus to wherever it detects increased clairvoyant activity Dean." Hermione said.
"And boom, you just imperius yourself to not want your own blood taken, then an assitant takes it from you."
"What?"
"We mean," said Harry. "We have adapted Herpo's ressurrection spell, you know the one Voldemort used, because we are trying to incarnate an incorporeal creature."
"What!"
"Calm down, we haven't finished. Anyways ingredients, blood, bones, and flesh. The bones are symbolic already, so we went to the demon sperm bank. Yes, I know what you may be thinking, but it was the surest way to make the ritual work."
"And flesh is easy to make with creative use of Polyjuice and medical charms."
"Or over-applied essence of dittany," said Harry.
"And this is our result."
The silenced crowd fell even more silent if that was possible.
"A prophetic demon, incarnate!"
"You mean you invented a ritual for immortality, and you used to materialize a paltry prophet demon," drawled Draco, taking Snape's place as the Hogwarts drawler.
"Research into immortality is highly unethical," we said in unison "according to our societies' norms of conduct."
"This is insane! I, I, don't know what to say." Neville was clearly confounded.
"Well we could ask the demon what it knows." Hermione said.
"He can talk?" I asked.
"Er, no, he's as dumb as a fairy. It's more like you absorb what it will hear, like jabberwackies," she replied.
"You have to eat it, to hear what it says." Hermione said.
"What?" Everybody asked.
"His blood is magical, it's where it gets its powers from, so you have to eat it." She said with a fixed smile.
"You ate, you ate one already." I said accusing my evil research partner, who clearly did not want to share.
"I was busy!"
"Dobby badgered me all this morning about a strange dream he had after he ate one 'by acciddent.'"
"He found the Sneakoscopes floating towards Hogwarts, and thought it was the breakfast fairies…"
"Look let me show you."
Hermione opened the cage, the horrible alternate ending to King Kong soon to be revealed.
She grabbed a Trelawney many-armed creature, his insides dehiscing like a stacked pile of woodlice, each limb wiggling above the other. The demon was waving madly from side to side clawing and trying to tear her mouth apart.
"Gross."
And she chumped on his head, drinking the torrential blood.
"I swear to god, we are gonna put the blood on candies! Ha ha ha. It wont'be as gross as eating meat from a live cow," I said quickly.
Then, Hermione did nothing for a while.
"Ha. I knew it." Trelawney crowed on victory.
And then.
"EVERY STUDENT ON HOGWARTS WILL USE MOOD, NO WAIT THAT ALREADY HAPPENED. THE CHAMBER OF THE SECRE, ALREADY TOO. DAMMIT. …SNAPE HAS MOVED TO THE SHRIEKING SHACK ON DUMBLEDORE'S REQUEST. HE PLANS TO USE HOUSE-ELVES EYES AS A SUSBTITUTE TRANSPLANT. SNAPE'S HANDS READY THEMSELVES TO BAG THE ELVES IN A SACK. HIS PLOT IS TO REPLACE THEM WITH CLEANING CHARMS. SNAPE'S HANDS READY…"
"See," Hermione questioned, "You can have up to thirty minutes of directed and clear clairvoyance. Or two days of subconsciously-controlled randomness assuming you ingest it while sleep…"
"Yes, very well," said Moody appearing out of thin air and black powder.
"Eep." I said.
"How did you get back in here? The moody-eyes see everything?" asked Neville.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Moody said.
"In any case," said Moody, "let's get to the kitchen fast. And I want someone to keep an eye on Dumbledore." He said approaching him.
"Bill, please set a detection ward around him," as he said this he waved his wand with a silent spell. The air shimmered around the Headmaster and he was covered in head to toe in in a blue mist.
"Your time-turners Albus."
"He has two!"
The students saw what Moody was doing and started protesting.
"…Oh so Dumbledore can as many time-turners as he likes, but the Arithmancy Professor only gives…"
The voices of the Hall were silenced by a blow from Moody's staff.
"Alastor, don't be so paranoid," said Dumbledore, protesting the overcompilcated measures.
"…"
"Okay, here take them." Dumbledore said.
"Good, now Miss Granger, Professor McGonagall, and Mister Potter you come with me."
"Flitwick, I want you on the gate."
"Slughorn and the rest of the Professors each of you in the secrets passageways."
"Now Mister Potter call your friend Dobby."
Harry called him.
"Dobby. Dobby!" Nothing happened.
"Call your hose-elf Kreacher."
"Mm, I sold him to the Malfoys…"
"What!" shrieked Hermione.
"He wanted to work there! Sheesh!"
"Mister Malfoy please call one of your house-elves."
"Tonsy!"
A house-elf with sharp eyes and pointy chin appeared on the tables.
"It, it looks like Malfoy," said Neville. "Your house-elves look like you!"
"Have him take us to the kitchen, and check your map Mister Potter." The last part said by Moody in sotto voce.
The house-elf snapped his finger and they were taken to the kitchen.
Harry got out his map.
Moody then put the time-turners around their necks.
"We cannot change what we already know will happen. So we will wait in the kitchen while I ward it against escape."
There were four tables on the kitchen, each placed exactly below the ones on the Great Hall.
"Why are there so many tables on the kitchen?" Harry asked.
"It's on 'Hogwarts: A History' Harry, the elves put the prepared food here and then they apparated it, taking it above." Hermione answered.
The gang sat there semi-invisible under Harry's cloak with a Disillusionment Charm covering the defective cloak. The room was covered in the same blue glow as the one which Dumbledore was in. The glow was then dissillussioned too.
"Believe me that it is the most difficult disillussioment I've ever done. Disillusionig a glow, ha, one can always be surprised by magic," said Moody.
"We will let Snape get two elves inside the sack to satisfy the prophecy, one of them must be Dobby," he continued.
The rest of the elves were cloistered in the Professor's office. Hagrid sitting there and watching them.
"Can't we just gas him?" asked Harry.
"Snape will have drunk any antidote he can for any potion that has one. That is how he always have been."
"Do you have any more of the demon's blood?" Moody asked us.
"Yes," Hermione replied, "but there is a fixed number of prophecies that can be made in a given place, for a given period of time and a given topic."
"The creatures themselves mostly use it to protect themselves from predators," said Harry.
"That's why when we set up the sneakoscopes, they went to a place were the demons tended to gather up."
"To make sure they couldn't see their own demise? Using the masking that constants deaths provide, or relying on a dulled sense of security?" asked Moody.
"Yes."
"You could have asked the staff before you did this, Miss Granger and Mister Potter," said McGonagall protesting.
"You did not know what the strange powers these newfound creatures could have had," she warned us.
But they were interruped.
"Snape's moving, out from the halls."
"Prepare."
"He must be on the chimney."
Harry grabbed his weapon.
And there he was, Snape had a animal golem behind him and a giant sack.
He looked around the room and asked the only two house-elves.
"Dobby, and…"
"Candy Mister Snabe, me's Candy."
"Candy," he drawled, "where is everybody else?"
"Being unpaid."
"What?"
"These are hours where Candy and Dobby is paid, the rest of the house-elves isn't happy. They say it's shameful for elf to be paid."
"Never mind."
"Stupefy."
Severus shot the two elves, stunning them.
He billowed and crept as all Snape's do, checking for any student that may have eavesdropped.
Snape got the sack out and put them in.
Harry shot him.
BOOM!, the sleeping dart exploded in front of them.
"Really Potter? Your muggle toys are still too slow for me."
Snape started shouting dark hexes all around.
Moody and McGonagall positioned themselves in front and back.
"Alohomora, Circularis Ventus."
"Someone patronus the Professors, all of you watch for Dumbledore or Snape."
Hermione sent her otter to the staff, telling them Snape's location and sent for Sprout and Sinistra.
"Wingardium Leviosa," said Moody, trying to levitate the sack them.
"Dammit. Dobby Candy, out!" barked Snape.
Candy popped out to his hands. Dobby wanted to remain.
"Oh, how very foolish of you, loutish beast."
"Sectu Sempra."
Snape's curse flew towards the elf cutting great gashes on his skin.
"Dobby!" Hermione rushed to his side.
"Don't bother with Dittany Miss Granger, only I know the cure."
"Now Mister Potter, what will it be, your friend's life, or my realese?"
"YOU MONSTER! Incendio!, Diffindo!"
"Really Mister Potter?" asked Snape while he dodged and weaved through the web of shooting spells.
"I would have thought paltry children curses were above you."
"GENU FRACTURA!" "SULCO DEPLETURA PULMONIS."
"Much better."
McGonagall was by Dobby side, Hermione now on the back.
Moody then started tappig his cane on the ground each ripple shooking Snape sideways, producing a wide field.
"Expelliarmus."
Snape's spell did nothing, Moody's cane was glued to his hand, tumbling to his rhythm. But the tiny cuts and lacerations of passing curses were greater, darting through his generated shield.
"Avada Kedavra." Moody or Snape were the first to break truce.
Snape then ordered his heavy golem in front of him.
Everybody started dodging, Hermione and Moody scampering towards the sink.
"So we are taking off the kid's gloves? said Snape. "Very well!"
Moody continued to shoot at Snape but all his curses, killing included, were ineffective, stopping on the golem.
"What have you done? What is that thing?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
If I can get rid of the golem, Moody can use the staff again. I thought.
Snape started moving towards the shelfs with the meat cleavers and pokers.
Harry started coalescing the flaming and hot utensils around his dragon armour, all of them burnt and seared under the inferno of the Incedio's.
Snape was with his back to foyer-like furnace of the oven, the greater cauldron of the kitchen to Harry's left.
Harry set their trap off, letting a scalding fluid from above fall in, and the overturned cauldron sloshed its contents towards Snape's direction.
The bubbling concotions therein rushed towards him, trailing, weaving through the tables like hot magma.
"Reducto, Reducto!" said Snape, launching curses that made bubbles amidst the glowing potions, sending searing fluid in their direction.
Harry twisted and turned, closing in to the high-mounted shelves, all while dancing above the tables. Snape was desperately trying to escape the coming doom ahead.
"No, I won't be denied, I won't end like that mutt in Azkaban!" Snape said, the lava-like torrent cornering him in place.
"Fuck!" He was engulfed completely.
Harry was ready.
They surrounded him by all sides. Moody with his wand pointed at him, the blue glow coming back.
"Good, it's over." Hermione said. "But how can we fix Dobby? He's stable but—"
Hermione was cutoff, the rock-like foam under us starting to rumble and shake.
Cracks started to appear, with an orange-glow between.
"HA HA HA."
The bubble where Snape was contained bursted.
"AHA HA HA HA." Snape had emerged and crowed.
"Did you think you could keep me there?" Snape mocked.
"With Potter's ridiculous attempt to summon and use his pathetic kitchen knives? When I can brew skin stronger than titanium and osmium combined?"
He summoned the torn golem, the myriad of maggots on the reindeer creature coming forth and covering him.
"Now you will di—"
Click.
"No I just wanted to get close to you, which I did," said Harry behind Snape. "And to indispose the golem. Incedio."
His maggot-vest burned, while Harry pointed his gun at his head.
Snape stood there rock-solid.
And he smiled.
"Fuck, ALBUS!" Moody shouted.
Snape pointed his wand at his body, and he dissolved into the imperiused body of Sprout.
Moody was already in action. "Hogwarts wards say this is Snape's and our last time-turn! Tonsy!" The house-elf popped in front of them. And they all turned time one last time.
All of them appeared above Hogwarts grounds, outside of the Shrieking Shack.
Through the bleary, dirty, and gloomy windows Snape had popped out of thin air beside himself, dressed on that blood-scarlet cloth. One Snape went towards Hogwarts, the other looked ahead, probably coming back from the kitchen.
He never even left. I thought.
Moody tried to summon the time-mist.
Snape plucked out a feather and set himself a flame.
"Oh no, you don't. Aguamenti Mare."
A gushing torrent crashed through the window and extinguished the phoenix feather. But it wasn't enough. Snape's flaming figure had mounted on his impervious broom and flown.
"Bombarda Maxima."
The upper ceiling of the shack collapsed, through its lopsided roof the morning sky was visible.
Snape crashed through the broken doors, and flew off.
"HA HA HA." Snape drawled. "Oh. How very easy. Child's play if you will."
"You think so?" responded Moody. "You think I wouldn't know Albus would somehow try and help you? A warning from the future perhaps? That he would had given you a phoenix feather, or that you could steal one from the Professors?"
"They don't call me paranoid for no reason."
Their thestrals were ready, and Snape's plots seemed to be exhausted.
"Go." Moody said.
The professors mounted on their horses and dived in airplane formation, followed by Moody, Harry, and Hermione on brooms.
Snape snarled and started throwing Bombarda's with abandon.
He descended into the top of the Forbidden's Forest. Setting fire to the trees behind him, trying to make them go higher and lose him.
"If he gets past the temporarily extended wards he's gone. Quick!" Moody prompted.
Harry, Hermione, Sinistra, and Flitwick nodded.
Snape tried to imperius some of their thestrals, and Flitwicks's careened off to the side.
Flitwick cushioned his fall and got his own broom out once on he was on the ground.
Harry was busy summoning branches and other objects with Snape on the middle of their path.
Coming closer, c'mon.
Harry had closed on Snape and was ready to tackle him over.
They had arrived to the outer edges past the gates.
Snape and Harry collided, apparating. They were squeezed over and thrown into a dark and featurelss eddy of nothingness.
And they came, thrown each to a side. Well above the high sea of England's South.
The emormous waves and frothy mist of the storm was roaring underneath them. Together with the black, featureless rocks of the shore.
Harry and Snape fell, swirling on the air.
"Let me go Potter!"
Their wands were falling alongside them.
On each corner the predators danced, gently aproaching the spinning objects between them.
Snape attempted wandless magic and threw Harry back, his wand closer, himself forward.
Shit.
Harry could heard the ticking of the clock, Snape and Harry mutual circle on the edge the hands that marked it.
I didn't know it was so peaceful to fall.
Through a spiral they were falling, but Harry saw his spinning gun tumbing above them, with Snape unaware of it.
But I can't let Dobby die. Harry thought.
Harry tried to approach again his wand.
Snape waved again his wandless magic.
And Harry rolled, rolled to the side, Snape's spell instead proppelling Harry's wand.
"Potter!"
And Harry continued to roll and dodge, each time Snape tried to shove him he throwed instead Harry wand closer, placing himself on the millde of the spell's path. Two times on the circle Harry threw his shoes towards Snape.
The gun was four feet above them, and Snape gaze was concetranted on the wands below.
Snape smiled, and instead tried to summon Harry's wand, to place it father from Harry's reach.
No. Thought Harry. You won't.
Harry was close just mere inches below the gun. At the twelfth hour and sixth they both met.
Harry pushed himself and the gun on his hands fell.
Snape seemed unconcerned to Harry's new acqusiiton, like thinking, if you kill me your friend Dobby dies, and you still haven't got your wand, so what does it serve you? But now they were on equal footing. The gun a good distraction. Harry and Snape both equally distant to their wands.
They looked at each other eyes.
And dove.
Harry and Snape grabbed their wands and tanlged with each other. They fought on the nothingness of appariton as they vanished again, with each target on the void clear and manifested, floating to different ends.
Harry ended up pulling more and they both rolled in the outer Hogwart's lands.
Snape grabbed his wand ready to fire, Harry rose quicker without his.
Click
"Not so fast."
On the coming days Snape was tried for his crimes and sentenced to Azkaban.
And Dobby, Dobby was.
"C'mon Harry let's see how he is."
Harry and Hermione were on the Common Room ready to visit him.
"Do you think he will be fine?"
"Probably."
The house-elf lied amid the beds of the Hospital Wing, with a house-elf specialist(or a veterinarian to be more accurate, given wizarding society's lack of concern for the elves) to the side.
"Hello, Mister Potter, Miss Granger," he said without looking up from the clipboard.
"You may stay fifteen minutes no longer."
Hermione was ready to push the mucus outta her nostrils with that response. She had been tearing up for half an hour.
"It is already difficult to deal with a permanently reopenining wound," explained the specialist, "fortunately it is not longer one, nor does the curse produce a powerful venom. It is rather a very strange spell for a potioneer to make, so we will be able to stich it with muggle means till he gets better."
He said this while strolling out of the room, his voice barely audible at the end.
"What got your knickers in a bunch Mione?" I asked.
"I think that specialist is as insufferable as Madam Pomfrey. Remember the time she kept me three extra months that summer…"
Dobby awoke and interrupeted them.
"Mister Harry, Mister Herimone, you come to visit Dobby, very happy yes!"
"How are you Dobby?"
"Much better, the Mister Doctor has kept Dobby painless, in Malfoy house anaethesics were strictly forbidden."
"Lucius."
"It was Mrs. Malfoy, Harry Potter."
"So Dobby, what was your dream about? The one on the previous morning?"
"Miss Hermione bound Dooby not to say. Dobby cannot say! Dobby will—"
"The leader of the SPEW bound a house-elf. I think this is enough juice for a lifetime."
"Skeeter."
"Harry, I see you still remember me."
"Yes, each time I see one of those dung-beetles rolling up a shitball onto his tiny little home on a documentary I think of you. Of you and your avid readers, Miss Skeeter."
"Ready to bring the shit to your readers, Miss Skeeter?"
"Such animosity, tut-tut-tut. Shouldn't you be asking me to keep Miss Granger's nasty secret?"
"What for? Hermione isn't afraid of this coming out. And we can always tell the whole story on the Seerhead if you edit it."
"Well, in any case I came here to ask you about Dumbledore machinations."
"Yes, the old goat probably counted on Moody being paranoid." I said.
"Oh, so you are telling me this tiny detail because?" askd Skeeter already with her magic feather out.
"Because it will hurt him. Dumbledore probably thought that it would look more loyal and noble to his followers, in this case Snape, if he made a mock attempt at rescuing him. But Dumbledore knows full well he couldn't outmatch Moody at full-force. And he also knows he'll be more useful to Snape on the Wizengamot, trying to reduce his sentence."
"But why would he let Professor Snape proceed with such ridiculous plans? The organ stealing—"
"He wouldn't, the old goat might sacrifice his pawns, but he does not discriminate against species, so it was Snape's brainchild."
"And that's why you are telling me this? To make clear Snape's a monster?"
"Definitely, Snape might have hated Voldemort, and my mother might have been shallow. But Snape has always been a very dangerous, very selfish man."
"So cruel, did he not help you Mister Potter?"
"Yes, that's why I was willing to let him out of Azkaban, but his willy-nilly use of dark curses against my friend—"
"What about Professor Slughorn? and the recent allegations of Dark Curses?"
"That's different."
"Oh, such a clichéd heroics Mr. Potter! Everybody's tired of the Big Legendary BWL. All the creaking chinks on your bad-boy iron-sulfide chestplate are starting to show."
"My readers want the truth," she said circling around the room.
"And some smattering of drama, some rust to their leading figures."
"All the countless celebutards like Ronald Weasley and their grudgeful allegations of stolen fame, your dealings with the American Government, and god knows what else, the delicious collection of scandals you have managed to gather, just for me."
"I am going to serve it up, silver platter."
"I am gonna get you Harry Potter." Skeeter said. "And you will wish I had been your friend."
Skeeter smiled that taut beetle-smile of hers, and turned back strolling out of the nursery.
Harry and Hermione finished their conversation with Dobby and met up with Neville.
"Ron's still at it?" asked Hermione on the way to the Great Hall.
"At what?" Ron asked.
"You know, you still tell Skeeter 'Harry stole your thunder.'"
"He did. In any case," said Ron, "I think Snape's gonna get kissed this time, no way the Death-Eater prisoners won't try and goad the Dementors to do it."
They were interruped by the rest of the student streaming into the Great Hall and rushing past them. An entire generation of googgly-eyed people.
"Well, my cloak is officially useless."
"It feels like a centaur commune, everybody is virtually naked now."
"Fuck, Hermione! I had avoided focusing in Dumbledore's direction all day, now that I know I can see him I can't stop."
"Oh goodness," I said, "he has disillussioned himself from the waist down. Still visible but harder to focus on."
Flitwick then came over each table and waved his wand calling forth Hogwart's powers.
A spell settled over the students on the Hall and a new disillussionment covered them, making it possible but much more harder to discern any details.
Then Dumbledore got up from his seat and said, dangling.
"Well. As you have seen a lot of changes have happened recently."
"But, in a completely unrelated news, I was unable to stop Mister Potter and Miss Granger patent application, so Hogwarts is officially forced to sponsor part of their sinister investigations, as the public researh fund for students demands."
"Luckily for the world at large we don't have the money for that. So their abomination against nature shall only stain private hands."
Just what is it with the Wizarding World and the ressurrection thing? I thought.
"Hey, it is not like we actually hurt anyone old goat, I am not in the habit of sacrificing innocents."
"It is not a matter of who gets hurt Mr. Potter—"
"Really?"
"No, er, it is still wrong for er, reasons very important reasons, like how it is against what we believe. And those beliefs in turn are justified by further beliefs, so there!"
Harry blinked.
"Alright. I see."
They all finished their breakfast and went to their charms class.
Flitwick was levitating on his podium Emperor Palpatine style.
"Today we shall learn how to imbue muggle devices with magic."
"Finally."
"Great."
"What for?"
"Now, the key is on a tight self-regulatory spell. If you were a muggle an apparatus called a 'faraday cage' would suffice for protection against interfering magic. But with magic, the spell that we shall learn today will fight against the interfering disturbances."
"So the practice for this lesson is on setting and controling this sensitive, almost intelligent you might say charm."
He then tapped a radio in front of him and instructed the students to do the same with theirs.
"I want you to concetrate on the feedback you get from the it, I don't want you," said Flitiwick poiting to Justin, "Justin Flitch-Fletchy blowing another student backhair."
"So, do not rush it."
After Justin was placed on his own containment bubble the rest of the class set to practice.
I tapped the radio and said.
"Lì."
A rather simple incantation, the complicated part was the initial configuration. It was actually an adapted spell from an "elemental fighting tecnique", HYA! Of course the person who made the tecnique probably didn't know electricity wasn't a higher form of fire. It is as Ollivander said "lucky idiocy."
After Flitwich checked everybody's work and let the hamster out of the bubble he said.
"Very well, as you see it is not an easy spell to manage. Many of you might be wondering why a combat spell was used and not the sparking charm fifth's form or something like that. You know the one that is used to power simpler devices."
"It was a rhetorical, Miss Gragger. In any case what you must understand is that the spell is one of those few with a degree of independence, not true independence mind. Automation is as Professor Ollivander probably told you, a property that no magic can imitate, only emulate. Even Magical Creatures with sentience were likely created from mundane versions that were already aware. Making it highly likely that Acromantulas are some sort of hybrid beast."
"Why?" asked Draco.
"Good question Mister Malfoy! One point to Slytherin."
"Indeed why? This problem has been known since the time of the greeks as the clause of dependability, when many machines at the time were invented Wizards wanted to constantly improve them.
Endurance spells, self-levitating charms, flame-resistance, all of this things the Wizards of that era were able to add, to catapults, cannons, trebuchets on the medieval times, and many other relics from past history."
"But one day, it is recorded, a wizard called Iasos had added all sort of things to a crossbow and showed it to his muggle friend."
"'It has arrows with poison,' he said to him 'it heats up slightly when an enemy with ill intention is nearby, moving a little in their direction. It is even enchanted, and this is my pride, to add strenght to the user, as long as he has possessesion of it.'"
"And Kallias, the muggle, responded. 'Why not add the strenght to the crossbow itslef?'"
"Oh, I just thought it would be more useful this way."
"Can you spell it to shoot by itself?"
"Of course, and I could, oh, use the pointing spell to shoot in the right direction. What a fantastic idea."
"And Iasos set to work in the crossbow, whenever it detected an enemy nearby the little machine pointed and shot. Enemy gone."
"It was a great invention, and Iasos showed his creation to Kallias once again."
"'Fantastic Iasos!,' he replied, 'but what if you are hiding? Woulnd't want the crossbow to start shooting by itself.'"
"'You would have to dispell the charms to turn it off?' said Iasos."
"'Why? I do not understand,' said the muggle. 'Can you just spell it otherwise?'"
"And Iasos tried and tried, and he quickly realized one very odd thing, he could chain in succession as many spells as he liked triggering each other like Dominoes. But they could not act differently, the spell triggers could not 'fork' so to speak."
"To put it more simply, magic cannot make decisions, or be spell to make decisions, by itself, no matter how complicated the device."
"Nowadays it still puzzles Wizards why this is so. All sorts of devices can act differently in different circumanstances, so it is not a limit to the natural world. And—"
"But what about probity probes, or those weather clocks?"
"Good question Miss Patil, but you see, the key disticion is not whether the invention is able to perform different functions or sense different things."
"The key distiction is that there's no spell or combination thereof for that. No spell that depending on what the other spells on the device have done can trigger different spells."
"You can only chain them in a simple line to each other, end to end. Numerous workarounds have been developed for this. Many contraptions exploit the quirky behaviours that specific spells give to certain objects or in specific conditions to act as a switch. And if you know the future you only need one chain in any case."
"Like the Bard's hopping pot story. The pot was a contrieved invention, more and more elaborate indeed, but ultimately, it did what it did by having many curses layered on top of it. Each of them doing a different thing, triggering independently of each other on different conditions. Had the wizard of the story refused to help, done something outside the original casters imagination, or completely unexpected, unpredictable perhaps, the curses would all have fallen apart."
"In other words the pot would have been, if the legend had any truth in it, cursed down through the generations by its owners to misbehave if the current owner did not alleviate the specific afflictions the witch or wizard found throughout their lives, thus enforcing altrusitc behaviour by an inherited threat."
"Help others, or else."
"And thus the pot was handed down, each member of the family passing more a more curses to the next one."
"So it was irrelevant? Useless?" asked Terry.
"No," said Flitwick. "The constant layering on the pot, or any other object, would have made it very unstable. A very dangerous spotaneous an uncontrollable device. It still a very valuable, dynamic creation, if real that is."
"But what if we had a deciding spell?" asked Flitwich in excitment. "A combination, with one like the healers use? A spell that could detects specific sets of ailments?"
"Then imagine if you will," he said with plain curiosity, "this spell effect another, like a train pulling on its wagons, not to detect an ailment, but to deduce from the symptoms what kind of affliction a person suffered."
"Passing information from charm to charm in order to winnow down the correct answer, the specific disease."
"It would virtually replace mediwizards, if such thing could be made."
"Mediwizards and mediwitches have to do this each day, but the plethora of magical maladies, tiny in comparison to the muggles ones though, makes it a very complicated job."
"However, it is reasonable that simple diagnoses could be made, crafting or using an incantion with the ability to recognize new ailments, not just preset ones. The whole deductive chain, wrapped into a single charm."
"The reverse could also be made," he said continuing the example, "curses that selected specific parts of the body, and different types of damage, trying and matching another disease, or any other new horror. Even if the maker haven't ever seen such a thing."
"Without the dependabilty clause, the pot would have had enormous power, it wouldn't not require a hypothetical line of succession to become what it was according to lengend. To make it, only the degree of skillfulness and work a, let's say, wand requires would have been necessary."
"As a final example for the day, you can use a Fixing Charm to imbue a Felix Felixis potion on any object. Let's say we do so on the black pieces on a chessboard, but right on the middle of a game."
Flitwick summoned a chessboard in front of him. The black side seemed close to being checkmated.
"Look at this one, I have rigged it, and set the pieces this way."
"But the Felix on the black pieces will make sure whoever is playing them will win."
"But this other one," he said conjuring another chessboard, "the potion is very weak. The pieces are in identical positions, but the outcome is nearly certain, the black side is going to lose."
Flitwich moved the pieces moved three turns, beheading the king on one set, on the other one the king had miracously escaped.
"So this will be this month topic, the dependabilty clause, and its many corollaries."
"But what about the combat spell, and using it on muggle things?" Ron asked.
"Oh yes, well you see the spell is one of those workarounds I mentioned."
"Lì."
"靂, crashing thunder, developed as a high-level fighting techinique on thirteen century northern China, it can resist couter-charms from other wizards. And it can also stabilize and maximize the energy that has been poured into it."
As he said it a lightning bolt appeared on the room. Flitwick was directing it, streaming all the power to a metallic ball.
"The feedback on the spell is part of the control you give it, as the fight with another opponent goes on."
Other lightning bolts popped in, curses thrown from panels around the room, but the bolt seemed to absorb them. Each time streaks of different colours from the hexes were incorporated, bluewashed as time flowed.
"When you use it on a muggle invention," Flitwick said making the bolt bigger, like a stepped hose swelling on one side. "We simply are 'fooling' the spell into thinking, or behaving as if it was being countered, it fights the disturbance, growing on."
More curses, slashers, blood-curdlers and boiling jinxes were thrown from the holes that had opened on the class.
"The spell finally adapts, changing its power, higher, lower, in order to complete itself, the loop setting permanetly to the optimal level, one that fits the device."
The lightning bubble had doubled to half the lower podium's size. It wrapped around the morphing metal ball, taking on its shape, clinging to its skin.
A lion of light gleamed red-hot among us, the charm trying to imbue itself like a bolted plate to a tarring, blackened copper skin. All the buzzing hexes from the walls were targeting the lion's body, making it pulse, changing and popping on its size, leaving dark or lighter blotches on the hide.
"This is why the devices tend to be burnt or be damaged instead of simply not working," Flitwich said barely through the buzz, sweat beginnig to cover his forehead.
The lion's head had started to twist inside out, and once it fell dripping to the ground—
"The spell is made for combat not for precision." Flitwich said with a huff.
On a containment bubble the effervent, expanding metal blew, forming once again a sphere.
After the class was over we went to the Common Room.
"God, I thought he would never shut up, he's starting to sound as boring as Binns."
"C'mon Ron, it was not that bad, it was actually intersting," said Neville.
"BS, my dad taught me how to do it, power muggles things, without rambling for an entire hour about greek dudes and child stories."
"Okay."
The day surprises were not over of course.
Binns and other ghosts approached us.
"Harry, Hermione, Neville, Ron. Our good friends, we the ghosts of Hogwarts, want to talk with you."
"Really?" asked Ron. "With all of us?"
"Okay, just Harry and Hermione smartass," said one of the ghosts, probably Myrtle.
"Hm, er, yes what do you want to talk about?" asked Harry.
The ghosts looked at each other, pausing. "The Resurrection Ritual you made of course!"
"Erm, yes, but it is not exactly resurrection. We haven't managed to make an ethical version of a Horcrux that doesn't involve killing someone. And do you really die if your soul remains?"
"We think yes." The ghosts responded.
"Harry, Hermione we understand why you are nervous, but well."
"You don't know what it is to be a ghost," said all of them in unison.
"From day to day you live, without wake or sleep, a tireless wade throughout as a limp and laming shadow." Nick said.
"We think we are being unfairly treated!" The Baron said.
"Not only by fate, but by society." said The Greay Lady.
"Indeed," said Professor Binns, "people from a very long time in the Wizarding World see us as cowards, for not facing Death, from the mythical legend."
"Exactly." continued Nick. "They seem to think that no matter how scared you are, be it croaking beheaded, as a child, burnt—"
"Or murdered," said Myrtle.
"Yes, or murdered," said Nick. "People think we should have embraced Death."
"And we are, sick, exhausted, weary, haggard, everything, of inhabiting this false life!"
"We miss the feelings and the touching warmth, that flirt with you on the coldest eve as the sun grazes the cloudless sky."
"We want that hollow filled, and covered with what comforting blanket is available, its provenance a mere afterthought to our cause."
"For it is a torture, a full and cruel foul, for destiny in such a mocking way to mark our path. With so much regret in the night of our dying lights. The one, of our dulled senses, in which folly and doubt sunk on our trembling hearts."
"It's a hell," said all the ghosts.
"Alright, We'll help you."
We set to work on the Room of Requirement. With a Hogwarts Professor with us we didn't think we'll catch as much flak.
To get the bone part, the ingredient in the ritual, we couldn't exploit the massive incest tendencies of the demon race to make sure a sperm sample contained a likely ancestor, like with the demons, but we had worked a possible solution.
"Do you mind changing species?"
"I mean just slightly?"
"We have this half-Veela research partner in France and—"
"No, we don't mind," answered the ghosts.
"Good. Well, then you will just resurrect in a body that is 'new' so to speak." Hermione said setting up the most difficult part.
"Then why the new species requirement?" asked the ghosts.
"It's easier to make a new body, instead of resurrecting into an older one, if the species is different, however slightly." Hermione clarified.
"The most difficult part is the initial one."
It began like this.
Tranfigure any object into a single cell. Creating such simple life is very easy to do, you can actually just tranfigure anything into it, not conjure it. Because even the simplest conjured specimens are very difficult to manage or mantain, the difficulty growing with the more the species resembled a human, for whatever reason.
Then you feed a replicating spell to the cell. By feed, one refers to the process of slowly, very slowly charming the object, as to not break the fragile cell structure. The replicating spell doesn't have an unstable duration unlike the gemino, but it takes more effort.
Once you fed the magic to cell, you nurture it and let them reproduce. They are essentially a gigangtic clump of nothing. A massive ball of pure connective tissue, connective as we usually start with that.
And then the transformation begins.
One essentially has to make every single organ, no easy way about it. Hermione and I started the research when we found out about the existence of muggle articial hearts and blood.
And the result is usually, if you are lucky, a massive clump of uselessness.
The organs are too undeveloped to do anything.
Just using advanced healing charms and potions is not enough to "make a body."
But it doesn't matter, the ressurrection ritual doesn't know this. It just needs something that resembles the early specimen enough.
It took thousands of expemimented-on larvae till we found this handy shortcut.
After six hours of work we had finished creating one "body."
"It will take us at least a week to start the process again, so who is going to—"
"The Grey Lady." said most of the ghosts.
"Nick." said The Grey Lady herself.
They flipped a coin and Nick came first.
"Alright you just have to 'possess' this 'body.'"
"This thing?" Nick said pointing to the strange tubular clump, positioned on the middle of the room, lying on a basin.
We nodded.
He hovered above the lump.
"It doesn't seem to have a brain." Nick said with confusion.
"It doesn't need one. You don't want to know what Voldemort did to get back, but we know he didn't need to do what he did. And he knew that too."
So Nick just stood at the center of the thing, not doing anything really.
"So you two are really going to do this?" A sudden and familiar voice said.
"Dumbledore!"
He had this weary and pained expression on his face.
"I just wanted to make sure…" He continued.
"The ministry is coming." He said, the twinkle in his eye coming back.
"What?" We asked him.
"It was not me. There are wards for this sort of things now on Hogwarts."
"So you better hurry up." Dumbledore said, almost urging us.
Crap. What now?
We quickly put Nick at the center of the room, trying to hurry but not to rush it. We filled a great basin with the potion initial ingredients.
"'Bone' of the Father, 'unwillingly' taken," incanted Hermione.
And in that moment Shacklebolt and Lupin popped into the room.
Time to exploit this Room to the fullest.
We ordered the Room to move.
Harry set the contents of the potion over, pulling a great lever to protect it.
Remus moved a shelf, one that materialized under his feet.
But we had already moved, leaving a wall erected between us.
We left them behind, yards by the second, their figures flying by.
"Flesh of the servant willingly given."
Hermione pulled the second great lever.
Lupin had ordered the Room to take it where we were and he simply rippled through the barriers, as if it were Diagon Alley.
Great.
We got to keep moving.
We surrounded our room with cardboard copies of our image. Fake props, decoys, stading close by.
Setting each of them to scatter, a laberthine world was set under Lupin's feet.
Through the incommesurate darkness Lupin's shape became a tiny mote, in the middle of that ocean of twisting rooms.
Shacklebolt emerged next.
The room simply fulfilling his request, as if it did not matter what we previosuly told it.
How did Malfoy hide? How did he turn the Room against me? I asked myself. If people ask to be where hidden things are? Why isn't he trumped?
I battled with Shacklebolt, as he came closer to us. We ended up having to expand the Room.
We didn't have much time, it wasn's as if you could simply "pause" the ritual.
"Harry," Shacklebolt said. "It is useless, just give up, nothing will happen."
"No."
"It is wrong to leave them like that." I said pointing to the shadows of former people.
"To leave them in a limbo of pain and bitter endless remorse."
"They chose Harry."
"I don't care. They are choosing again."
On the Escher maze we swirled around the other, shooting a myriad of combat spells.
He summoned a gush of air trying to stop the process.
"This room is limited to objects the user can make, with enough effort," said Shacklebolt.
"You cannot hide Harry. You cannot simply wish a Shacklebolt that agrees with you. So give it up."
Hermione was imagining more rooms to hide herself and all the ghosts.
The summoned cubes and shapes quickly swapped and interlocked amongst the other.
She managed to hide away. I just had to—
Lupin then came from behind, two man against one.
"And now we are alone." I said cracking my neck to the side.
They looked at me in askance.
Crushing hands made with the room bursted through the virgin ground of the newly minted earth.
I hade made him with dust and sand from the new floor, and I set my Earth golem in combat.
He backflipped to spin around and face them, with a spear ready on his weighty hands.
The golem rushed them on, dashing and grabbing Lupin by the navel.
While they were distracted I tried to stun them.
"Stupefy. Stu—"
Lupin cut the hands of the golem in half, razor-sharp blades setting him free, and leaving me trapped between.
He ennervated Shacklebolt just as he fell through the debris, pointing to his head and waking him.
All on the same beat he then pointed to my heart, ready to indispose.
"Oh no, you won't!"
The golem had bought me some time.
So I imagined a ball of acid around me, trying to discern through the muddiness were they were. I saw one of them, couldn't tell which, hopping and the other flying away on a big metal bird.
My defense, a gamble on my own life, for acid was difficult to target through, had worked to well, and they tried to pass me by.
I ordered a conjured floating island of black metal to follow them, my trap, a disillussioned room.
It took some seconds as they tried to swoop to the nearest visible set of rooms, on the black expanse of nothingness that had become the Requirement Room.
Shacklebolt saw the shimmer of my illusion under his soaring bird.
But it was to late as my eldritch creature devoured him.
On the belly of my playful beast he lied, afterwards I stupefied him.
"Harry!"
Lupin turned around seeing me atop my monster Leviathan, and he ordered his own bird to fly higer.
My creature jumped behind him growing great dwarfing copper wings.
It enclosed around him, trying to swallow him whole.
I pointed to the center, helming the avian roarer to his place, and then off to the right, on an extending platform I asked the Room to conjure, that appeared quickly, popping with load cracks, slab by slab to our side.
But Lupin was quicker, my beast's wooden throat roared in pain as Lupin bursted forth, spliting his stomach betwixt.
Lupin tried once again to locate the hidden Room where Hermione was waiting.
Too bad ghosts cannot imperio her. We are running out of time. The ritual's gonna—
"Take me wherever a hidden reussurection is." Lupin said. He shuffled through the rooms that appeared before him, as as easy as perusing an used book, setting each aside, moving their bodies whole.
Nothing happened.
"Take me where a ghosts—"
A room with only a ghost appeared, zooming before us. I took the oppurtunity to appear behind him a tried to gas him.
But Lupin bubble-headed himself as his sharpened lupine sense of smell detected it.
"Take me where I would be if I wan't trying to find me."
The strange command tricked the quirky Requirement Room, and Hermione's own hidey-hole appeared.
But she didn't seem to come closer, being very close to an escape. She had figured the simple solution, to get out.
"No, I won't let this happen. Cannot let you get out," Lupin said.
"I am going to do something that I cannot undo."
He pointed his wand at humongous floating cubes, spheres and thousands of tonnes of wood and cocrete that manifested at his command.
"Finite."
Lupin finisihed his own magic, and as all the incepted new rooms came closer the rushing air of their collapse was felt.
All of the Room began to shirnk around us, Lupin unhinging the place's support.
The pressure on the air was increasing by the second, and my left ear bursted in pain.
As the fractal-like construct continued to implode, we tried to rush to the room's exit.
I carried Shacklebolt on the shoulder while the imminent threat that had become this chamber began to convulse. It was like being a parasite inside a slug, one whose gut was being crudely twisted by diabolic children that had poured salt on its soft body.
We ordered the Room to take us out, but the lightest fancy of imagination was far too slow for it.
Lupin had rendered The Room deaf and impotent to our emergency.
The exit was no bigger than a dot, all too far.
The tail of this beast we dwelled in was now swinging from kilometer to kilometer, wildy from side to side, entire building-like shapes swaying on its center.
And in middle of it all, we saw the jaw of the lich finally begin to cede and detach.
We darted, sprinting out as fast as we could. Just as the door was getting smaller and smaller.
And as we leaped, the belching creature almost sliced us in half, the portal of the door closing, disappering behind my back.
"Good." Lupin said.
"Stupefy."
Hermione stunned him, and Hermione let the blood from my missing hand slip into the basin.
"Unwillingly taken by the now vanished beast."
It was over.
"I just had repaired that Room, and now even the door is gone. Fantastic." Dumbledore protested, and the basin boiled with the potion.
Nick's ghostly shape was covered by the blob. One who was being rearrenged, scultping its own blood and flesh. It changed, expanding over his ghostly figure and taking Nick's contour.
Mouth, ears, eyes and then his body, and a young man appeared before us. The only change was his eye colour.
"I, I am alive." Nick said with tears. "Oh god, oh sweet God! Thank you. Thank you so much!"
We all hugged him, we hugged him and we let him sleep.
The next day the news of Nick's state had propagated through the entire school.
It made the papers and he entered the Great Hall in medieval clothes.
"This place, I have been here for centuries, but it is so different this way, all of it."
Nick sat on our table and curious people asked what it was like, and then they told him how bad they felt for his early demise.
Eventually he got around to eating and we had to continue our day.
It was a Saturday, and being of legal age I could make a little visit to Gringotts.
"Hello."
"Hello Mr. Potter, how may I serve you?"
A goblin mumbled his response, blearier than usual.
"I wish to subrscribe to your fighting club."
The bustling and huffing of the crowd paused immediately. A little lady to the side asked me.
"Do you have what it takes!?"
The lady shouted the question at my ear full-force, and standing rock solid I said.
"I do."
"Don't answer like that SCUMBAG. DO YOU FUCKING HAVE WHAT IT TAKES? IT AIN'T NO PLACE FOR PUSSIES MR. POTTER."
"Enough, Mr. Potter, follow me. Now!" The goblin said.
I was shackled to the ground, days or minutes might have passed on the dank dungeon I was kept at. All the free candy of the room someone had already happily eaten.
A man from Russia was standing next to me.
"Karkaroff."
"Potter."
"Why have you eaten all the candy? There was plenty on the dungeon for both of us!" I said very angry.
"In mother Russia you are taught to eat candy whenever it is given! All most get candy for themselves!"
"That was the lamest Mother Russia joke, ever."
"No joke, serious custom. Candy fight with you Potter, contents of my belly prize, or poop in case you lose." He proposed.
Karkaroff shut up, and days might have passed again, his noisy stomach was rumbling with his treacherous sin.
As the minutes went a desperation began growing inside of me. So to pass the time I stood next to the door, barely seeing through the thick bars on the tiny window.
Nothing happened past the grey-black brushed steel, and the only sound was that of the flickering light bulbs.
But like a restless buzzard Karkaroff was watching over me, and like a restless fly the bulbs droned.
Then an echo was heard.
Karkaroff started playing with his mane, twirling shortish thumbs, "I have long hair, long hair, secondary character with long hair. HA HA HA HA HA."
Clearly the candies the gobling gave him were laced, and had driven him insane. For he started banging the walls with his bare feet, trying to climb to the ceiling. Then the echo we heard faded.
"How weird." I said.
Very weird.
Karkaroff had undressed and sat on a corner, he was starting to play with his—
"If you do that," I warned him. "I'm gonna shove your arms so far up your ass people will think that your father fucked a boggart."
Karkaroff redressed and even tried to offer me a candy he had probably coughed up, or transfigured.
At last a goblin entered the dungeon.
"Welcome to the fight club! You will have to fill out this forms, and you will be shortly welc—"
"Actually thinking on it I don't want to be in any society that accepts Karkaroff…"
"He's not certain to be accepted." The goblin replied.
"Really?" I asked skeptically.
"Yes. The applicant has to shave his entire body, fast for three weeks, without water for the last three days, and as a final task you have to fight a bear!"
A bear, rabies and ire complete exploded through the wall.
"FOR FOOD. To survive, to enter the club you have to eat the last challenge!"
"Only three wizards on the entire millennial history of this bank have made it—"
But Karkaroff had already started to fight, he stood behind the bear, a bit her ears off.
The enraged creature swooped down on him, the claws tearing apart an eye and both limbs.
The armless Karkaroff fought on, he stood in front of the rushing bear, kneeling.
Karkaroff plan had failed, instead of tripping the creature like he intended, he was torn by the bear with her feet drawing out half his innards.
Karkaroff remembered his wand and putting it on his mouth he tried to set the bear on fire.
He only set himself afire and rolled on the ground convusling.
The evil creature plans almost fulfilled, the bear rubbed her paws, and with a sinister smile, roared in laughter trying to dine.
The bear grabbed the flaming form of Karkaroff and began to devour him.
But the fire spred over the bear's fur, incapacitating the furry fiend and evetually Karkaroff emerged the victorious finalist.
"You have to eat her," the goblin protested.
Karkaroff laid down the essence of dittany I brought with me and with one triumphant smile chomped on the tiny bear ears and eyes.
"Okay, I don't know what the fuck you put in the food in this place, and why you even have echoing prisoners in chains on a freaking bank. I thought this was a place where you fought to become a man."
"Instead it is this decoherent and angry thing where nothing makes sense and there is this big fiery expolsion at the end."
"There was no explosion."
And with that the bear's gut exploded, covering the room in blood.
…
"HA. Mother Russia curse made tiny little bear stomach crack! First time you fought Russian you lowly beast?"
My whole Saturday seemed to have been wasted, but at least I felt again like a man.
"I don't even know why I doubted in the first place, the dobby thing aside."
I was back on the library reading a book on Quidditch, lamentably it seemed there was only one book on Quidditch, and it didn't seem to be written by an academian.
"The fuck is this thing? The Twilight novels are bigger."
As I finised the only scholarly material on Quidditch on Hogwarts, Ron strolled in.
"Whatcha reading?"
"Er, nothing, so what's up?"
"Nothing, with Snape gone there's no one booking all the pit hours…"
"We could try the flying pig thing—" I suggested.
"Er, yes, but before that, we can, you know just use it."
Well a Quidditch pit and only the two of us with our brooms.
"Boring, isn't there like two-person games that wizard have invented, or something?"
"We could transfigure a Snitch? Try and catch it?"
"I bet you that, if it was me the one who faced the Dementors I would not have fainted." Ron said.
"So, we can either throw ourselves from our brooms and see who survives the longest, you know play chicken with gravity."
"Or we play seeker."
Well Ron ideas tended to be worse, so what gives?
"But not just one, think Harry, let's make Golden Snidgets!"
"Hundred of them and then."
"Just to be clear, winner doesn't have to eat them, right?"
"What? No, but the one who catches more at the ends is the winner!"
So he started to conjure the many Snidgets by the dozen on the middle of the field.
"I am not sure about this anymore Ron, isn't it a little bit cruel?"
"What animal do you suggest we use then?"
"You know what, I am gonna sit this one out. If you want to conjure Snitches then I'm in."
"Suit yourself."
So I sat on the bleachers and saw him conjure the creatures.
Is this safe? I wondered, knowing my luck Ron would probably end up summoning an indigested Simurgh, or something else complety ridiculous.
"How are you gonna get rid of the shit? You know the one from the birds?"
"I will just use a portkey, dump it on Snape's old home if I have to."
Yep, that is probably how it started, the legend of the Simurgh, giant teleported bird poop. Not too long before some smart-alec creates an actual Simurgh, Acromantula style.
Well Ron got on his broom, and started swatting from side to side, swaying like a drunked sailor, from end to end of the stadium.
"What are you doing?"
"It is this stupid birds! They are getting in my mouth."
No wonder the creatures neared extinction, a bird that stupid couldn't possible survive.
"Repel them."
"I am! They just zoom in from undeneath. I have to keep moving the shield. What is the spherical one again?"
"Protego Maxima."
So he patched up the hemisphere and the birds stated to pathetically flop in front.
"This is too sad Ron, just let them go."
"They are gonna die anyway, they only eat each ohter."
What? Does magic makes cannibalism possible? Fuck, how did this creature came to be? Did some sadist made them?
Ron got the hang of it evetually and soared above the swirling birdies.
He was covered in feathers from head to toe, looking like a creepy underployed Big Bird. He then started to capture them.
"You are gonna get caught. Just get down."
"Too late. Mister Weasley," said Professor McGonagall.
"Do you know that it is illegal to catch Goldedn Snidgets!? I'm afraid expulsion won't be enough. Why prison time is the least punishment you shall get."
Of course Ron didn't swallowed it and just untransfigured Hermione.
"Dammit Ron, you didn't even let me use the time-turner to bring myself."
At that moment another Hermione appeared.
Ron descended and vanished the birds.
"You aren't angry?" He said from quite a distance. From quite afar I sprinted to the field.
"I once let flocks and flocks of birds chase you, and die throughout Hogwarts, smashing windows and all that, on the halls, the toilet… remember?"
"Last year with Lavender?"
"Yeah." He said quite happy, "okay."
I finally made it.
"Here, this is what you want, right?" Hermione asked me.
She handed us our time-turners.
"Before you ask, without Snape's support on the board they are handing them to students, change of rules. They are supposed to be goverment-free anyways."
"Are you kidding me? My father would kill for one of this," said Ron.
"They are probably trying to buy Harry and other important student's favour back. Heard Malfoy got a golden one."
"Really, that bad, huh? Fudge really believes he's gonna get the boot again so soon?"
"Probably, but to be fair Fudge wasn't that insane in the first place."
"C'mon." I said.
"Well Umbridge was the bad one. But really can you blame a goverment official for not believeing Dumbledore without any evidence. The whole Voldermort is back, Believe, thing!"
"Okay, I see what you mean." I said to her. "I suppose my hate should be towards Umbridge. Also you gave me another reason to dislike the old coot."
Why didn't Dumbedore offer any evidence anyways? Fudge looked completely more, ugh, respectable now.
I know, I could make a little research, heh heh heh.
We had dressed ourselves on black, from head to toe.
With tight spandex suits on us, Neville, me, and Ron, not Hermione though, she refused to come.
"All right, all set?"
"Yes."
"Yup."
We moved silently through the Halls trying to look normal.
And once outside we mounted our brooms.
We climbed up high to Dumbledore's window.
And slithered insided in.
The old goat was tightly sleeping, snorring to his heart content.
Perfect.
As worms crawling up a butthole, we piled into the room after each other.
"Now."
We bound Dumbedore, hogtied him and punched him on the jaw 'til it cracked for good measure.
Sitting on his chair we turned him around.
"Speak. Why did you—"
Fuck. Our voices were obviously disguised, but how do we ask him now, we would be giving it away, too clear who we were from the questions. Shit.
I know, I could subtract the memories from his soon unconscious bod.
I grabbed the Pensieve basin.
And cracked it on top of his head.
There, now to review his memor—
Fuck, the Pensieve is broken.
Alright, I ennervate him, ask him how to repair it, break it again to stun him, and then I can see his memories.
Ennervate.
"Quick, old goat how—"
"Harry?"
"How did you know?"
Shit. He probably guessed by the old goat phrase. I could see it on his contained smile, and now I had just confimed it.
Crack. Just to make sure he doesn't alert the portraits.
Obliviate.
Memoria.
There, now I can Ennerv—
Oh, C'mon! I forgot the fucking portraits.
I will have to Imperio him to order him to make the portraits forget.
I told them my brilliant plan.
Neville facepalmed.
"Er, I used the quieting charm we used on the forest, remember? The portraits can't hear us."
"But they can see—"
"I also covered them." He said.
Yep, he seemed to have summoned cloaks over them.
Good Nevile, I would have rewarded him, but he did not like to be petted.
Alright, Ennervate, ask, repair Pensieve, False Memory Charm, Obliviation. Done.
So we repaired the basin, rubbing some strange-like translucent balm he had stashed.
"Ugh. Who made this shit? Snape? It's slippery and disgusting."
Neville read over the label.
"It seems to be from the same company that sells the broom-servicing kits."
"Yeah, Harry it's even the same pale white colour…"
"Never rubbing the broom again then."
"Stroking the broom, you mean," correted Ron. "Brooms are stroked, in order for the balm to reach the tip. Fred and George taught me how to do it."
"How to follow the delicate aerodynamic shape. How one grabs it by the thickest part, and wrapping your whole hand—"
Can't, imagine why they refused to help him.
"TMI."
Well we finished "stroking" the basin and once it stopped glowing and froathing above the ground, we extracted Dumbledore—
"Fuck! How do I extract them? Ennver—"
"Stop ennvervating Dumbledore!" said Nevile. "There's only so much balm and knowing you, you will stun him with a concussion instead of the normal way, like a normal person."
"Alright, no need to shout."
"So how do yo—"
"I know, just let me take care of it," he said exasperated.
We unbound him and laid him on top of his desk.
"My granny taught me how to do this, part of being in a noble house and all."
He put his wand on his temple.
And strongly held him tight.
"And. You. Just. Got to. Pull" Neville said, a white strand coming forth, the elasticity of the thread fighting him back.
"Quick Ron, help me and take my wand to the office's side, I will hold him," said Neville placing himself above the desk and Dumbledore.
I had to grab him too, lying across his inert shape and holding on.
"Dammit, he's fighting it too much," said Neville. "He doesn't wanna get let go of the thought!"
I had to put all my strenght on holding him, body-binding him and sticking him. Ron had taken the strand and wand to other side of the room past the door. And Neville.
Neville continued to push, and push.
"You Won't Win! The Honour Of The House Longbottom Will Prevail!"
He had applied all the pressure he could, great strands of thought were unraveling, like a rope under more weight it could hold. White wild thoughts were bouncing around the room.
The great fluffy subtance continued to resist him.
"Shit." I said. It was so close.
"No One Has Yet Resisisted The Ho—"
"God. Stop Neville you are—"
"I AM NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM. AND YOU WILL CEDE YOUR SELF."
PLUCK!
…
No, no way.
I was gaping, all of us gaping, gaping because a white shapeless blob had come out of his head, with all his memories included, all his emotions tagged there.
And then.
"You. YOU!" Ron bursted.
I didn't know what to think.
"YOU KILLED DUMBLEDORE, SEVERED HIS HEAD AND TORN HIS ETERNAL SOUL APART! YOU. FUCKING. MORON!" said Ron.
"God." was my eloquent reply.
"Oh, C'mon," said Neville, "knowing him and this school. This is probably a decoy, a golem, or just a polyjuiced—"
Dumbledore then popped in the office. "See?" said Neville. The whitish blob bounced around the room a few times more and then went away through the floor.
"A very clever deduction Mister Longbottom, I would give you one point to Gryffindor, alas."
"And as for what you wanted to know Mr. Potter—"
"You are alive?" I asked.
"Yes, as Mr. Longbottom deduced this is merely a doppelganger, my brother if you will."
"Oh, alright then."
Wait.
"What the heck is wrong with you!"
"Why do you put students through this, just what in the name of"
"Need I remind you that you killed someone Mr. Potter?" Dumbledore said examinng his nails.
"Not that you were going to protest about that, quite obviously you all had forgotten about it, like a clueless movie hero, and you were just going to protest about my deceptiveness." He continued.
"What fuck, what!" said Neville.
"But," said Neville. "I thought I was right, that it was a fake-body all along! His neck felt as soft as a marshmallow."
"That is because I fed him a ready-made potion. It would not have worked otherwise."
"You, you are insane. You fed your brother a flesh-softening potion to weaken his neck and teach us a moral?"
"IT worked, did it not?"
"Oh my god I am a murderer," said Neville realizing what had happened.
Fuck, and all this day I thought it was Ron the one that was going to jail for animal abuse.
"How do you declare yourself?"
"Innocent," said Dumbledore.
"I was merely trying to teach them a lesson."
"And this excuses—"
"About trust," he added.
"And this is supposed to excuse you?" asked the hall of the Wizengamot.
"Yes."
"I did not want to reveal this."
"But Harry Potter is an extremely important person, his morals must be perfect. It wasn't supposed to go that way, the other propesized children kept dying through my sometimes excessive teaching, training methods."
"What the hell are you talking about?" asked Fudge.
"Yes," said Madam Bones, who was in charge of the session, "explain."
"You see, the world is going to end."
The hall did not react to this.
"Well at first that was my reaction too, but my seer, Professor Trelawney, warned me of the the imminent danger."
"After I had 'overdone' the training that several of the prophesized adults could go through, only a few newborn candidates were left."
"You said children."
"There were children too."
"In any case, when I realized that I was trusting the enitre future of the planet on a few newborn babies, I asked myself."
"Have I gone too far, I am really that dumb?"
"But fortunately, before I had to answer the question, the disaster seemed to be less imminent."
"Only Britain seemed to be in danger, this time."
"And I had plotted to use Potter and co.'s recent privacy invasion into my office."
"This is a murder trial Dumbledore, nobody cares about that!"
"To blackmail, to blackmail Mr. Potter and Miss Granger to the exclusive privileges over their new prophetic invention. A monopsony, or maybe I would had left a few clients to make it less suspiscious. Hm, yes, an oligopsony, then."
"As the papers all over the world have reported." He paused adressing the Wizengamot. "Their contrived machine/potions can only make a certain number of predictions, as it is bound as allseers are, by constraints on propehices themselves. Acertain number, per place, per topic, specificity and cotrol degrading, 'til some unprectibale time has passed."
"But it was the perfect oppurtuniy. A priceless moment, one to hornswroggle the secre, well, it is not as he and Mis Granger hid the process. One to get the patents, or a privileged supply, as I said."
"Enough," said Madam Bones.
"We had heard enough. It has become apparent that altough reckless the actions of Mister Longobottom cannot merit anything graver that Manslaughter."
"Being a minor he will not serve in Azkaban, he and his two friends will for the following five years fulfill their sentences on community sevice."
She raised a flask filled with a whitish substance with a tiny label on the side.
"You will also seek to return Aberforth to a body, if such a thing is possible."
Madam Bones had a clerk hand us the jar that was Aberforth thoughts.
"As for you Mister Dumbledore."
"Though your brother might still have a chance to recover, this court finds you guilty of at least fifty other charges, including child endagerment and negligence."
"You will serve seven years on Azkaban."
With Dumbledore gone the school seemed empty.
"Who's gonna be the new Headmaster?" asked Hermione that day.
"I nominate myself."
After everyone grunted at my antics I stood up on the table.
"Hey, you are gonna crush my eggs!" said a nameless student.
I made sure I was standing on my own eggs.
Free of annoying distractions—
"Mr. Potter you cannot be Headmaster while being a student."
"Why not? I could improve Hogwarts so much!" I said strolling from candle to candle above, balancing on the delicate tips, fortunately the charms were strong millennium old—
BAM!
"As my first act I will respell all of Hogwart's millennium-long spells, as it is apparent no one has bothered too."
Brushing my self from the ground I continued.
"If I am a student while I am also Headmaster, I would be the ultimate example of accountability. You could take it out on me. Think about that."
"But the teachers would have a strong incentive not to annoy us."
I said flicking back my head.
"I would liberate the House-elves! Instead of feeding on throughs with residual scraps left from previous meals, or 'reward-fairies' mailed on the post, they would get a meal! Actual food."
"I would fire any teacher that risked our lives! Remember the last Defense Professors, one of them Voldemort?"
"But I get where your nervousness is coming from," I said approaching Dumbledore's seat.
"You fear, that power will corrupt me, nay that I am already corrupt."
I sat on the magnificent chair.
"That is why I propose that Dobby, nay Hagrid be made Headmaster! The ultimate beacon of uncorruptibility." I finished standing up again, and returned to my seat.
And once I made it back.
"What did you do?" asked Hermione.
"The wards on the seat are broken," I said whispering, "just take a seat and it will think you are the current Headmaster."
"Where did you put it?" asked Ron.
"Dobby helped me put it on our dorm. Let's get out of here before they realize."
At the end McGonagall was made Headmistress.
But I got to keep the seat.
"24 carat gold on the black market."
Mother fucking yeah.
"What you want so much money for?"
"You are already rich." asked Neville.
"It's the principle of the thing." I replied.
"You know, like when I went after Snape, after he killed Filch. You know at the end of sixth year?"
"Oh Man, tommorrow is Filch death anniversary, gonna miss the old cudger," said Ron.
"I can't believe Dumbledore got Snape off the hook after that," said Neville.
"Well, besides Harry's testimony, how do we know it wasn't an inside job," said Hermione.
"You mean Mrs. Norris?" I suggested.
"No you nitwit! They found his body on the ground, maybe he was suicidal, he just slipped and Snape was there," she said.
"Snape and Filch were touching I am sure, very closely when he 'fell'," I replied.
"Oh, C'mon, they are full-grown adults, what, were they kissing? An item? Dating each other under the Summer's moonlight or somehting?" said Hermione.
What is she talking about?
"A mere jealous spat killed the best caretaker this institution has seen in ages?!" said Ron, taking advantange of the moment and already half-drunk.
"That is Bullshit!" He said. "Filch knew this castle better than Scabbers knows the insides on the underwear I keep him on! He would not have slipped, not in a thousand years, that enormous was the man's dexterity."
"And he too was too generous a person to deprive us of his presence through a selfish suicide!" Ron finished, clearly angry at Hermione's heresy.
"So, as you see. If they were on the rooftop, it was because Snape thought that he wasn't going to get caught," Ron added.
"I, I was in love with him."
"I was in love with the Filch."
"I think he was in love with me too."
"And when that love waxed full, I was with child."
"But then, he turned around a left me."
"Bullshit," said Ron.
"I carried her over to term, and when the school year ended and I went to look for him."
"I saw him on the rooftop."
"With another girl, Padma."
Hermione continued to cry, choking.
"Don't worry," we all said on the Common Room. Fred, George and nearly every student on the house, 'cept for the missing ones who were around the rest of the castle.
"We just said those things about Filch because it was all dramatic, you know an important day, one to rally behind someone," Ron said swinging his whyskey.
"Yeah," said Fred, "we don't really care about him, you know that dude, Filch or whatever he's called."
"And you are not a bad person Hermione, because if being a good friend means covering up the murder of a missing stranger, then I am ready to be a good friend!" He finished.
"Yeah, me too."
"And me."
"For Filchina."
"I don't remember seeing Padma." I said.
"That, was Snape."
Well those two day had surely gone fast.
Another new day at Hogwarts, and what a month it had been. It had been like being drunk, drunk in a kiddies' carousel and as naked as the monkeys on Discovery Channel.
No worries though, it was the appropiate moment for relaxation, despite the rencet trials. Hogwarts had been the center of seven different ones, six on this year. What else could happen?
Mine's on the fifth. Snape's trial for his hideous potion disaster, later. A court hearing for our inventions, prophecy and ressurection rituals. Mine's, Dumbledore's, Ron's, and Neville's, the last one were he broke down with guilt for possibly killing Aberforth. And on this week Hermione's, where she was cleared of all charges for several reasons, she never actually aborted, though it is illegal on the Magical World. On the murder of Filch she was also exonerated for serveral reasons too, among them her age at the time, and the statue of limitations thing.
It also helped she was friend to a main character, heh heh heh.
Well then, with nothing else to do, me and my best buds decided to tie a few loose ends.
We were paying the Dursleys a visit.
"Alright people everybody gather up."
"What Harry?" asked Ron.
"I've decided we are paying the Dursley a visit!"
"Why?" asked Neville, grunting, rubmling, and being all descriptive on his ways, like a Dr. Seuss character.
"Mm, well I never settled the whole abuse thing."
"Oh, so this is going to be one of those revenge fics right?" said Hermione.
"Well it seems that way."
"Hey, how come you can still enter the boy's dorms without being invited or setting some kind of alarm?." I asked.
"Oh, get over youself. As if it was that big of a deal, if you wanted to enter the girl's dorms you could just take a temporary sex-change potion or something."
Hermione said.
"I heard Goyle did that while Draco asked him to diguise himself on sixth-year," Neville said giving his own two cents.
"See what I mean," she said. "Boys are the ones that need watching, not girls."
"Oh yeah right, I will remember that the next time I need to roofie a girl." I said.
"Just ask another girl to do it, or you know, if I wanted to roofie another man I would not even need to bother. I could do it all by myself." I said.
"Why would you want to roofie another man Harry?" asked Ron.
"Rhetorical question. Anyways my point is that Hogwarts anti-rape system is rather shoddy, sorry, very shoddy. I mean, we are Wizards and this is what the staff comes up with? I would say it is a sore display of the lack of creativity on the part of Lady Ravenclaw and her 'unbeatable wards'."
"Fine, I will talk to Headmistress McGonagall," said Hermione.
"Great Harry, you just sicced the teacher's pet on ruining free fryday-blowjob day," said Ron.
"There's no such thing as free fryday-blowjob day Ron. We just said that because the man you trapped and converted into your pet has the right to at least a night of freedom," replied Neville.
"Scabbers, for your information, is perfectly happy as my pet. And when I finish his reformation, the judje will give me a huge reward for inventing such a fashionable and fair pusishment. For psuedo-paedophiliac murderers, no less."
"You are the one who's literally stuffing poor Pettigreaw on your underwear, right now," said Neville.
"Justice." was Ron simple reply.
…
"Okay, jeez, I will realese the dangerous convict from his locker-room therapy."
"But if he starts murdering again, or spending cuddly time with kiddies, then I will stand corrected." Ron pronounced and picked the rat from the gap on his briefs.
"This is insane," said Hmermione.
"I agree" I said.
"Just another way Lady Ravenclaw creativity has been mocked, fullygrown men disguised as rats can now enter and live on the female's dorms."
"Because I am generous Peter."
"Because I am generous Peter, I have even enrolled you in Hogwarts."
"When the school year finishes you will get your education recognized, but under a different name."
"What?" he asked.
"Well, you get your NEWT'S but under another name, Peter Weasley, namely."
"What for?"
"Yeah," I said repeating Weasley's question.
"Well, no one will want to hire a pedophile right?"
"His record doesn't say he's a pedophile," interrupted Neville.
"Anyways," said Ron.
"You get your NEWT's under a new name, without seven years of education, just one. I talked to the judge and rearranged."
"More like he saw that you were abusing your power and forced you to aquisce," said Parvati overharing our conversation.
"Details," said Ron. "You even get the Hogwarts fund for poor students! Wonderful right?"
"Er, sure Master Ron."
Well that was a dispirited Peter. He, should have been rotting in Azkaban along with Sirius Black and Lestrange.
"Okay, if you all got nothing better to do, I am going to Headmistress McGonagall's office."
"Alright."
"Why are you telling us this?"
"Get going."
Wow, geez some friends I have, you would think they wouldn't want go with me.
"You didn't react this way when the Chamber of the Secret was opened, or when the dangerous convict Sirius Black escaped."
They were already going down the hall and ingored the question.
Hmph fine, if they don't care what I am going to say then so be it.
Mm, should I still pay a visit to the Dursley's? I mean so much free time, so many things to do.
Alright feet take me to Dumbledore's office.
My feet remained on the ground.
Er, I mean McGonagall's office.
I started walking towards the Headmistress' office.
The Gargoyle was still there keeping watch.
But had they reset the passwords, hm? I don't think so.
Heh heh heh.
Well, I thought, putting on the gloves, let's hope changing the password's manually isn't as laborious as it seems.
Beak, obviously, who would put the password's control anywhere else?
The secret to the thing was to put a scroll with the passwords inside.
Once a month the Gargoyle used a new password.
But what if there was another scroll inside?
Dual passwords that's what.
It was not that well-designed to be fair.
Of course to open the beak, and this was something that I noticed over the years, you needed the password itself.
But knowing Dumbledore he might have rigged the beak with traps or something.
But now he's not here anymore is he?
I mean it is not as he could come back as a Professor, or just wander and hang around like that strange bum we found once on a closet.
Well I put the scroll inside the beak.
"Password to the office." I wrote on it.
There, as simple as it can be without being obvious, with this new passoword, it will seem like it opens at random times and is broken, I hope.
Now I just have to check out what Dumbledore keeps in his office.
I slipped on the the strange staircase and—
Wait before that, what is down there anyways?
"Down."
The moving staircase started to creak and vibrate carrying me downwards.
The walls started turning faster and faster, but it did not feel any different.
And then.
"No way."
The Chamber of Secrets was in front of me.
"Oh C'mon, how stupid can everyone be? A thousand years and nobody thought of this? The entrance is the freaking staircase on the same floor as the other entrance? with stairs no less."
"Well it makes a lot more sense than the girl's bathroom."
"I mean Slytherin was a registered sex offender, but give the man his credit, he was not that obvious. A bathroom for lord's sake."
Come to think of it why hadn't anybody used a house-elf to get in here?
"This is the lamest secret ever." I pronounced.
"Oh look at me," I said picking up the bones of the basilisk "I am Salazar Slytherin and I hid this huge-ass snake."
"You know in a children's school."
"To murder them."
"Did I mention I am famous too?"
"You shouldn't make fun of the dead Harry."
"Jesus Christ Myrtle don't do that." I said to the sudden ghost.
"Myrtle, shit, nobody thought of sending a ghost either?"
"For what?"
"To find the fucking Chamber, that's what."
"This is ridiculous." I said in disgust.
"You know what? I am moving the secret stash of stuff the twins and I keep here."
"I am opening the remaining section of the Chamber to the school."
"You are opening the rest of the Chamber Harry?"
"Yes, I am telling McGonagall right now." I said stepping back into the stairs.
"You know, I will tell her that I suddenly remembered the passwords that I luckiliy guessed on the second year."
"Yay," said Mrytle. "I am getting more vistors to my toilet! Thanks Harry, I won't tell the baron that you were mocking his daddy."
So I made it back to ground level, and ended on her office. She seemed to have returned to the place while I was underground.
Nothing beats having a map that can essentially monitor everybody's postion and name.
Knock, knock.
Oh Shit, how will I explain why I am suddenly here?
It was too late, McGonagall opened the door and my Cloak still did not disguise me.
"Mr. Potter."
"You arrive here, under your cloak, semi-translucent like a ghost in a low-budget movie."
"Is this some sort of joke?"
"Er, yes. It's a little bit of hazing, the Hogwart's ghosts do to the new Headmaster."
"They told me of the tradition, but you know my cloak is useless."
"As you know, with everybody on school litterally being able to see through it."
She seemed to take it lightly.
"Oh, so the ghost eavesdropped the password and gave it to you?"
"Yes."
Did she knew, or just suspected? Dammit had she set the password already, or was she testing whether I got here somehow else?
"Oh, well you know I like surprising people, he he" I told her. "Also it was Peeves the one who jinxed open the door for me."
Note to self, keep the lie with Peeves, give him something to make sure he knows what I am talking about in case McGonagall asks.
"So what brings you here Mr. Potter?"
"Oh yeah. I forgot. Guess what? I have figured how to enter the secret section to the Chamber."
"Good Heavens we'll be able to recover Collin Creevy's body, let's hurry up."
"Wait!"
"What?"
"I told you already, the half of the body on the lake was his. Tom shot his remains on the sewers to cover up his crimes, get rid of the evidence."
The truth lied somewhere in between.
Ron had insisted on carrying back the sword, and well accidents happen, try carrying a first-year with you and see how easy it is.
To be fair Fawkes had gotten chomped down and was reborn fifteen times before he managed to dodge the basilisk.
So if Collin's popped-eyed body had ended torn in half, and one half was found by firsties.
It was not all our fault.
"As you say Mr. Potter, Voldemort was very insidious that night."
"So we got to make sure itsn't some sort of decoy." She continued.
"Polyjuice wears on death."
"Yeah, and prophecies only get told by seers and resurrection is impossible."
Hey! Comparing dumb ol' Voldie to me is so unfair.
What did he ever do in any case? It's not like he invented the ressurrection thing or did anything intelligent, like ever.
I keep telling them it was Herpo the Foul, the guy who made everything Voldie took credit for, but nobody listens.
In any case we did not want to reveal the truth when we were in second year. What were we supposed to say? Now I realize how stupid the decision was.
So we made the whole thing up and said I only remembered the passwords to the first sections of the Chamber, the place were his body wasn't.
With the Chamber business taken care of I decided that thinking was not meant for idiots.
Confundo.
I pointed my wand at myself.
Confundo.
I was trying to make myself believe to have done something impossible, something that would break that unbreakable spell called Confudo.
C'mon Harry, you can do this, confuse yourself!
Confundo.
Confundo!
There.
I am Harry's twin Noville, I am Harry's twin Noville.
Lily Potter and James Potter are alive and they only feed me red tapioca with rotten egg. I am my family's house-elf.
Focus, Harry, focus.
Confundo.
When I turn sixteen I plan to kidnap my brother Harry and make it seem like he initially offed himself.
As the false story then unravels I will make the family believe poor Harry has's been severly afflicted, injured, while he was kidnapped.
I did not know it at the time but I had confounded myself, to be split twice, each third of my mind a 'twin' of the other.
To wit, I belived I was my own twin.
And this is the story I will tell my parents.
Poor Harry, quite the incident he suffered among his captors. For he was seized by wormtail and padfoot, and while whiling the time away Harry has known the pleasures and drawbacks of the Lestrange.
Poor twin Harry has acquired a hideous STD, spelunking on Bellatrix moist caves. Numerous more were contracted pumping up Voldie's multiple lowly whores.
But it is part of the plan. Harry never will be kidnaped. Only I, will feed Harry potions, who will sleep on the broom's closet, all to hideously deform him.
To make it look like his hokey-STD curse is to be horredounsly transformed.
Big round eyes like saucers Harry will acquire, drooppy ears and pointy nose, all achievable and perhaps reversible with the right potions.
And so! Harry the newly minted house-elf shall take my place, while I, Noville the superior twin reigns.
"HA HA HA!"
"HA HA HA!"
Years had passed on my mind.
And I had succeded.
"I am Noville Potter the scion and heir to an ancient house."
"Hear my thunderous words and weep."
"For a new Voldemort, is to come!"
Of course the fun had to be ruined.
"Dammit Harry stop it!"
"No I am Noville and you shall respect me, my maiden-servant."
"Mr. Potter," said Madam Pomfrey, "you are not Noville, your twin brother has pulled down a fast one on you, you are Barry Potter, control yourself."
Could it be possible, could dastardly Harry and Noville concocted a terrible plot against me? They hated each other, but the only thing they hated more was myself.
"No!"
"Samantha set you up, didn't she, the bitch? My half-sister has always been envious of my girlfriend, whom she secretly pines for."
And now I am bringing my ex into this.
"Ginny is mine, bitch," I said, thinking she had a spy on the room. "Get your own red carpet to munch, slut."
"Stupefy!"
There they were, Barry and Noville, those monstrous twins.
"Avada Kedavra."
The fucker dodged my deadly curse and punched me on the nose.
Ron and Hermione looked at each other, my traitorous and disloyal friend helping my tandemic twins.
"I won't let you win so easily." I said to the sudden couple.
"Hear me sspirit of SSyltherin, for I your heir, hass brought you treacherouss tribute. Feast!"
The walls cracked open, and a mostrous snake could be seen slithering through the walls. Transparent creature, like everything else since we got the eyes.
Exocular Rent.
I popped out my moody eyes. While the rest of them did the same, the echoes sounding off.
The battlefield was evened, no one could put back on their eyes, lest the basilisk's gaze kills them.
We frayed blind on our recent and newly darkened cavern, while my new pet wrecked chaos.
We could only use dark echolocation, or other crude spells to tell what had happened.
But Barry and Noville had pre-empted me, they threw a curse at my basilisk, blinding him.
Another creature joins the ranks of the moody-eyed. I thought hours later on full-clarity.
The basilisk was blinded, but what did it matter? No one can put on the eyes still, this time for similar reasons, for whosoever takes the time to do so will lose, shot on duel while distracted.
While I stumbled among the thuddy bodies of the nursery, I grabbed Oliver Wood's own.
"Seize! Or I shall cast the new Professor's body to the wind—"
But it was too late.
"Stupefy."
They stunned me, they stunned me and our new Professor through the windows fell down.
I sat on McGonagall's office.
"There's a reason people don't confuse themslves Mr. Potter."
"Lack of creativity? New drugs?"
"No, and not specially if they access to time-turners and new prophetic potions."
"Had your future versions not set a mattress, which unfortunately was insuffiecent."
"Our new Quidditch Professor would not only be rambling concussed, and imprented on the ground, but dead." I said, finishing her sentence.
"Professor Wood thinks that matress is his mother/girlfriend/protege Mr. Potter!"
"If you ask me Twilight was still more fucked up. My weirdo wants to dry-hump a pillow with a hole, not a preggo vamp's unborn."
…
McGonagall looked me stiffly on the eyes.
"While you were confused Mr. Potter," she said clearly angry.
"You believed yourself to be God knows how many different people. And when your own time-turned versions tried to stop you on the infirmary, you called on your own basilisk!"
"Battling youself, wounding an innocent animal, and knocking yourself to the ground!"
"Fine," I said. "Next time I will tell Noville or Barry if I do it." I said.
"You mean Ron and Neville." Hermione asked.
"No, as the nursery fiasco demonstrasted, only I can stop myself."
"No more Confusing yourself Mr. Potter, not alone! Is that clear?" McGonagall said.
"Fine."
Well, fortunately my basilisk had survived, and because he counted as a snake.
Heh heh heh.
The students were already diving as the mighty beast entered the hall.
"Behold!"
I trudged with high drama and a heavytonne snake to my wake.
With great aplomb I plopped down on my seat.
And sat, sat while the older onlookers, cowards, cowered.
"Relax. The powerful Noville will not eat those he deems worthy."
"You confused yourself agai—"
"No, that's the name of the basilisk, Noville."
"Noville the tremoundous Snake."
"Like if Currious George was a five hudred gorilla that ate children."
"So be kind to the man in the black hat, lest he loses his patience."
"Where's my breakfast!" I asked.
Immediately several students offered me their plate.
"Cool, Barry," said the voice of Dennis Creevy.
"Can I touch your pet snake?" another student asked me.
"Hm, eggs bacon, pancakes, your tribute satisfies me." I said.
"You may pet my basilisk." I said granting them the great privilege.
Creevy mounted the beast on a Dr. Strange-like reenactment.
Rather unoriginal as I arrived that way on the first place, yee-hawing aside.
McGonagall coudn't do anything(she had previosly tried to stop me), per the Hogwart's pet rule(toads, owls and snakes valid pets), so I sat content while she simmered on the background.
Good, very good.
After Creevy's idiotic and pompus display, he dropped off the snake(so self-aware, not!), and the rest of the kiddies asked me if they could ride it too.
Hm, could I profit from this? Or is the sheer coolness of a basilisk as exclusive transport better?
Well I compromised and decided to let my new accolades and followers to accompany me on tuesdays, thursdays, and sundays.
The rest of the week I alone will stand upon this, my kingdom.
"Why does she have Moody-eyes?" a firstie asked me, expunging me from my reverie.
"He, Miss Tibbler, it's a he, and it was sad accident on the infirmary what gave it the eyes."
"So you'll let us ride it to the classes?" a second-year this time said.
"Yes, Miss Perppington. You can come with me and Noville, but though big, this beast is not infinite, so I wand a lis—"
The kiddies rushed me with conjured lists with their names, and that of their friends, written. So, eventually we had to use magic to decide.
I, of course, wanted to use the goblet, and the firsties too.
But McGonagall the bitter and hemmorroidic bitch didn't allowed it.
"Oh, you party-stuck twat, let the kids have some fun. Bring the goblet."
"If you allow a teacher on the ride Mr. Potter I—" She wanted some supervision on the basilisk's rides.
"Oh, so you want to ride my snake?," I said almost thrusting my hips, almost. Phew.
"Yes. I mean a Professor should, er, mount the animal… chaperone… for the kiddies safety!"
"No. No way, what would be the point then?"
"Fine, a prefect then."
"If you make me prefect…" I replied.
McGonagall wanted to kill me with her eyes, a rather stubbed technique as years of investigation concluded, basilisks were the only creature with deadly eyes besided the Gorgons, and their eyes were pricey too as my recent financial gain proved.
But the prestige my and Hermione's discovery that had brought the once intellectually dead(still on my opinion, alchemy was only mandatory through my repeated requests this year) school seemed to appease her. So she ceded to my blackmail.
"Fine."
Yay, this day, the almost murder of Wood aside, was perfect.
Well on this day too(so many things have happened) me and Neville were going to visit a certain Professor.
We mounted the snake and through the stairs we went.
Neville, the little whimp, was screaming his longs off.
"Keep it down will ya? IT'S JUST the staircase."
"I am at greater heights and greater speeds on a broom daily."
I was going to drop him off if he pissed his pants anyway.
After we zoomed past the many rooms and made a little stop in the bathroom we reached the Professor's office.
Knock, knock.
It was most unnecessary, as we could see him through the doors (People were still getting used to the fact that the eyes didn't cover anything, rumoured it was that fifty nudists had already subscribed their kids to Hogwarts.)
Ollivander gave us permission to enter.
"Hello Professor Ollivander."
"Hi, Mr. Potter, Mr. Longbottom."
"ER, hi. Hm, er, I… and mean we, er… were wondering if you knew anything about the deathly hallows?" said Neville the eloquent quiverbag.
"Oh! Very intersting, so you want to improve the cloak to make it impervious to these eyes?"
"Actually—" Neville was interrupted.
"I must say that I learned lots of new things about wand-making and magic theory after Mr. Potter lent the ministry and me the elder wand for study. So many new things about wandlore!"
"Thestral umbilical cords, not the penis, or the bones, but umbilical cords. Who would have thought of that?"
Neville tried to speak again.
"No, I mean, Harry and I—"
"Ouch, I mean I broke his cloak. Harry never washed it "cause he thought it would take the magic away.'"
"And it was smelly and cramped and he farts, and… It was an accident okay?"
"I don't care," I said, "my cloak might have become useless in this school but it's still useful on the rest of the world."
"Or was, in any case."
"So, have you tried steeping the cloak on thestral stillborn blood."
"Oh God, it's so obvious now."
A great pegasus mare laid in laborous pain on the edges of the Forbidden Forest.
With mad and sorrowful eyes that begged for us to put her out of her misery she was looking at us.
Was it the sweat or the strange smell? Well I did not know but Neville must have felt it too.
I think my best bud has fallen in love with a horse.
"She's so beautiful."
"And sexy," said Neville.
"Oh, that, that's just the pegasus magic, it prevents creatures from eating her."
"It is a very strange, and if the pegasus is indeed a created magical creature, stupid ability that pegasi have."
"You know, to make any predator fall in love with them. The animals don't eat her, but try to mate with it."
"Most of the unborn young end up dead, so it is a very dependent animal, with Thestrals the only subspecies more domesticated and depedent."
"Really?" I asked trying to take my mind from the mare.
"Yes, they require a special potions regimen, because as you know all thestrals are stillborns."
"So they are quite delicate."
As Ollivander said this the mare started heaving uncontrollably.
"There's nothing we can do for her at this point, a new thestral is going to be born."
As he said this, the dying horse gave a tearing whimpering neigh, and a strange alien black creature was produced.
Neville collapsed on the ground, crying.
"Why, why must all pretty things suffer, first my parents, now, my horse-wife! Why?"
"It is the sacrifice that the mother makes for the young that makes the thestral invisbile Mr. Longbottom. As it protects the animal from the gaze of death itself."
Ollivander heaved an axe.
And chopped the thestral.
"Wheeeee!"
"Or rather the insane moron that fell in love with a horse, took the local folklore literally and gave them the ability, and all the nearby equine and human progeny, the ability to become invisible, cursing the ground of his birthplace."
"What?"
"Well we published it just yesterday Mr. Potter." Ollivander said while Neville curled in fetal positition and sucked his thumb.
"This mystery wizard of semi-powerful skills, probably some farming reube, made this spell."
"It affects all british wizards of a particular region, gives them a very specific blood-carried curse."
"He put this cursed talisman, care to guess where?"
"Godric's Hollow?"
"Exactly! Very well, Mr. Potter three points to Gryffindor."
Neville summoned a shovel and started to dig a grave, 'cause he said magic was not appropiate to dig the graves of loved ones. What a strage thing for a wizard to say.
"He poisoned the well of the town, so to speak, and any wizard or horse that drinks from Godric's Hollow river will:"
"a) be able to mate with horses."
Note to self, never get near to a centaur again, ever.
"b) and their offspring will be magical creatures."
"What kind of magical creature?"
By this point Neville was writing the epitaph to Horsie Whitemare Longbottom.
"One with a special subset of abilities. To wit, if the cursed mother ever dies protecting the cursed son, this requirement of the hex was probably put there as a symbolic token of love from the our hypothetical brony, then they will gain the ability to become invisible."
"Or if threathened by another wizard they will be immune from his magic?"
"Yes, exactly Mr. Potter! You see the curse actually uses the mother's death as an oppurtinity to make a horcrux out of the victim with the mother's soul."
"Because it is an unintentional horcrux, it protects the son or daughter from the killing curse and other powerful spells, instead of turning the person into a ghost, in case of sudden death."
"What does that mean? That I have my mom soul's as my horcrux, all becasue I was born in some rural backwaters?"
"Yes, Mr. Potter, your curse means that your mother ghost shall be trapped forever in shall we say limbo? As anyone who made a horcrux intentionally or not."
"But you are not alone, Mr. Longbottom here also activated his latent curse!"
"What?"
"Yes, Mr. Longbottom, neither of the Lestransges can actually kill you."
"Oh my god. My mother soul is trapped in a fucking lounge for the rest of her existence!"
"Weren't you going to bury the horse?"
"Fuck the horse! What can be done Professor?"
"Er, I am not sure."
"What else do you know about the Deathly Hallows Professor?"
"Well, the other 'gifts' of the curse are that the umbilical cord becomes a very poweful wand core—"
"Why?"
"We aren't sure, probably to fulfill the crazy symbolism of the bard's story."
"What else?"
"Well the ressurrection stone is not actually part of the curse per se."
"It is just the result of numerous years of investigation."
"Meaning that Cadmus Peverell, as many textual critics believed, is not real."
"So what is it then?" I asked.
"The result of the research on Horcruxes of our mysterious Wizard."
"But people born on Godric's Hollow seem to have an affinity for its use."
"Though you should know all about it Mr. Potter. What with all the researh you have done on resurrection rituals yourself, you must know more than anyone about the subject."
"God, with all due respect Professor but I don't care," said Neville.
"I just want to know if anyhing can be done about my mother."
"I don't know of anything that can be done, even your death might not free her, souls that are split must be reunited before a certain period of time, otherwise they just explode after the parts find each other, probably like Voldemort."
After he said this he steeped my cloak on the newborn's blood.
"You mean that if, when I die, if my mother ever feels any regret over anything, the parts of her soul that I bring with me to limbo are going to kill her?"
"Explode, she will explode, like Voldemort did, but with her soul. You know, more painful that the Cruciatus?"
"Who was this moron who did this?"
"Some goat obessessed-freak of the fifteenth century."
Well my cloak still did not protect me from the prying moody-eyes of everyone.
But at least it protected from the eyes of everyone normal.
After all the hubbub, the misnistry decided it was going to evacuate Godric's Hollow, (only the wizards were going to be evacuated, and they were going to apply this huge-ass spell to try and uncurse it). First they where going to keep a herd of thestrals to keep the positive parts of the curse, but we offered to use the same method that we used for blood renewal instead.
That meant that Hermione and I along with the misnistry were going to own the biggest invisibility cloak empire ever. Oh Yeah! To think that a basic understanding of muggle blood substitutes like perfluorocarbon-based oxygen carriers or HBOC's and advanced potion making was enough to make me so much money, along with oppurtunism of course.
You see the powers of this curse are carried on the blood.
I truly didn't know what to do about the whole exploding ghost thing, I mean what could I do? Nothing came to me.
Neville was of course devasted as he had to visit his mom almost everyday(he wanted to become a nurse).
"Well, that means that you have access to part of your mom's soul right here Neville."
"What?"
"Don't you ever read the scientic journals that the Minsitry gives?"
"…"
"It's a very unstable process(the horcrux by brony curse), my mom's own soul lied on my blood for years, I think, until Voldemort's death set that part of her soul free…"
"But it is very likely that your mom's soul isn't latched to your blood but to her… like why I had Voldie's soul on my scar? I was the only living thing on the room… Your father dies, your mother somehow survives, your curse is activated…"
Neville of course ran away after he realized that his mom might be actually hear him when he talked to her on the hospital.
It was a brand new day, woo hoo.
After I figured how to permanently bind the blood to the cloak I spent the afternoon on the higher reaches of the castle.
Hogwarts was an enormous place to lose youself in.
Through the windows you could see the landscape, like tiny little strokes made with a delicate brush, little waves and birds on the shore.
And deep underneath, the translucency barely hinting it at it, like a killer whale hiding behind the water, the Giant Squid.
Magical squids feed from the well of their bellies, devouring the iternals of the ingested creaures they swallow for weeks.
Lord Gryffindor tapped from this power when he bound the creature to himself.
And at his death the Squid was free to do as it pleased.
They had tried to get rid of it, but this one could survive the killing curse.
And the wizards who said that it was because Lord Gryffindor had made a horcrux for the beast were thrown into the lake, to be eaten for their slander.
"Obviously the Squid is like a phoenix, and Gryffindor kept the secret for obious reasons," Gryffindors like to say.
One day a child, one history on the books says, tried to face it.
Standing on the sandy shore he said to the teal-coloured Leviathan.
"I am not afraid, whatever you are"
"you don't move me, not one inch."
The boy got his wand out.
"My classmates, they hit me, steal my stuff sometimes. They say that I shouldn't, shouldn't be in Gryffindor, that I am a coward."
"And I don't face them, I run away and cry, and the girls see me, and they try to step in, which is so embarassing."
"Maybe they are right, maybe I should have been a 'snake.'"
"But it's not true," said the boy whispering to himself.
I' will show them, show them that I can, show them why the Sorting Hat put me in Gryffindor!
He inched a little closer to the lake's edge.
"I will show them that I have more courage in my little finger than they in their bloody smelly fists. I am—
His neck snapped after the Squid grabbed him, and bit his head off.
Some Headmasters used to pay the Squid an "accidental squib"(read student with bound magic) tribute every year.
Fifty students had died on its crushing jaws since the inception of the school.
More than Salazar's monster.
In any case the view was beautiful, just ruined by Luna Lovegood flopping like a fish on a shallow pond.
Doesn't she know how to swim or something?
Lessee.
"Accio."
I tried to turn her around, she just suddenly seized, flipping about, like a caught fish about to be split from the cuts of a sharp bait.
"C'mon."
I tried to turn her around to save her, but she just started to loll her tongue out and crossed her eyes.
"Fuck it!"
I let go of her, while she just lay there underwater, little bubbles coming out of her mouth.
A final big one came out, and she dissolved.
"Hello Harry."
"Hello."
"I must say, you are the first one dummy enough to fall for that trick."
What?
"Just a little game a play with the nargles, pretending."
"I like to pretend all sorts of things, I pretend to be dumb so people might underestimate me."
"I pretend to be insane so people might not take my ideas seriously."
"Why?"
She did not answer.
"Okay." I replied.
Well it was probably going to remain a mystery.
"Hey do you want to—"
And she was gone too, well I suppose I was going to spend the rest of my day alone.
I decided to check out a place on far, far away from here.
Here on yonder, the grass was even greener.
The yellow petals and the soft reds oranges, blacks, and blues of the streaked sky.
Good lord, I love meadows.
Chirpirng birds flew on soft arcs. The swaying winds that speak the gentle breeze of the day sounded by.
"Come hither," those swirls said. "Oh come, and know, know the shape and meander of the blue river."
"Know the curves that the hedges near the cliff take, the shadows that the building make."
"Deep underneath on our vowels we keep the keys to these place, the one who has been locked for a hundred ages, with you."
"You can sleep and the warming calming day shall never pass, the suave rays of the sun will all halt."
"We the winds, have kept this place here, just for you, won't you come to visit us some day?"
A little entrance opened under my feet, the spoken edifice opening. A cobbled and grey path reaveled the steep stairs of a big and cozy room.
Statues of all sorts covered the place, of animals I never seen before.
There was such a deep peace there, something so invinting about it, a place where I could truly be happy.
In that single mythical room were time for centuries still stood.
I strolled through the mahagony doorframes, the marble ceiling and the golden fountains.
I removed from around my neck the little key that I had bought on the black market.
"What am I supposed to do with you?" I asked the key.
The little silver key said nothing.
My only friend here was the echo, the echo and the breeze, the sun and—
I took my clothes off and dipped into the warm water of a fountain.
I put a bubblehead charm around me.
This was to be my own secret place, away from everything.
"Nowadays you have to scrub real deep to seen any dirt."
The new caretaker "Buffle," said while telling the students how to do it.
"Unlike my evil abortionist predecessor, I do not hate magic, 'cause you know I'm not a squib."
"Scurgify."
He stripped a painting of all the inhabitants.
"Fuck."
"You killed them!"
"She was my only friend."
"Shit, whoops, er, well maybe using magic for all cleaning is not such good idea after all."
"And maybe hiriing a moron who cannot properly point his fucking wand is not such good one either, eh?" The student who lost his only friend said.
"You know just saying."
"…"
"ANYWAYS," said Buffle, interrupting Draco. "I will actually be one of your teachers. I want to establish a good rapport with you. So, you will learn here about cleaning in general."
"I used the 'Scourgify' as an example, because I feel it is overused."
"There are more than ten thousand different cleaning spells, half of them invented by laborious immigrants and housewives that wanted to simplify their own miserable and short lives."
"You will be learning all of them here, this will actually count for a quarter of your NEWT grade."
"Right," said Draco.
"I am serious, Umbridge got a friend of her as PM elected, so under the excuse of lack of proper training, well we are all screwed."
"So I am, to the best of my abilities, responsible to inculcate within you a deep love for the art of cleaning."
"But I won't do that, 'casue you know I am not an asshole."
"So just mermorize the spells and you shall pass."
"Okay?"
"Yes Proffessor Duffle."
"Yes."
"What about the portrait-people?"
"Hogwarts."
"Remember rememeber very well the battle of Koernig."
"That's what our history teacher used to say to us."
"So, remember, the blood spilled, the trees infested with the swarming flies."
A little bit dramatic.
"The rotting corpses that the flooded the Hogsmead river."
"One thousand and a hundred years ago upon the very grounds of the castle, the biggest battle on recorded magical history was fought."
"But first, a little about what happened five centuries years later, the second biggest battle, if it could be called that."
"We usually don't have a name for a certain kind of warlock."
"In a puny attempt by the modern 'You-know-who' to make himself bigger, he attempted to replicate this phenomenon."
"In other words, Voldemort tried to make his name forgotten, unmentionable, the so-called taboo."
"Names, cannot be forgotten. Well, not in magic."
"But, when the person lying behind it has surpassed everyone before him, both ruthless and great. And when it no longer fits you, and the skin of your humanity falls; the name goes along. Not as a side-effect of a botched and skilless ressurretion like 'Voldemort"s, one that merely gave him some powers like the taboo and his deformed appearance."
"It can only happen to one person at a time."
"In any case, we are sidetracking, let's go back to what happened here a thousand years ago.
"That day, the fifth of July 1024, to be precise, he/she called his forces to join him."
"All the minor and major overlords of the world, people Voldemort would have run from, gathered and the thing was adjourned."
"On the precipe upon which this schools sits, on the dawn, he stood. The outline of his shadow casting over the valley."
"6:00 p.m. a sudden change on the landscape."
"Darkness flowed like a cloak over the horizon, a cursed bloodflow. Clouds covered the place and rain came from above. Mighty tempests of a turgid and malevolent power, red dawn had come, over to the mountaintop and flushed forward."
"Giants came crawling forth, carrying their heavy clubs and handmade weapons, the hags blasted their horns and raised their shields."
"The army jostled and the climate wobbled, twisted eddies and flurried hurricanes, dustdevils and quaking tremors started."
"The earth gaped, tore open."
"It was the time. It was the time for the sacrifice."
"The wizard stood there with wickedest smile on his face."
"And the pathetic vermins of that world's time, the lesser creatures, were wiped away."
"The culling had begun."
"The weak and foolish animals could not withstand it, the fairy-like toddler-time had ended, a true menace had manifested, gracing this world."
"They tried to kill him, they were swatted away."
"And not a proper sacrifice their blood even made, not even a powerful ritual could they usher."
"On plain disgust the wizard left, bored with the meager, limp, frail challenge."
"So he set to take over the world by himse"
"Have you not heard dull and stupid child?"
"He left, to raid other planes, to conquer and lay waste, we were saved, saved not out of nobiility or high honor and valour, but because we were too minuscule to make him worth the trouble."
"For what is to own an ant's nest? If nothing but child's play?"
"And thus this land came to be were Hogwarts was built, the useless blood sacrifice was not entirely wasted afterall."
"Wherefore apparenlty their deaths were able to provide the magic fuel for your education, the daily strenght for each toilet cleaning spell, the coverlet changes. All those menial lullabies for the pamby-namby students who missed a big fat kiss from 'mummy.'"
"Let us bow my students, for such important, good and thoguhtful decision."
"What decision?" asked Hermione.
"The decision, Miss Granger, that left a pricelss historical site on the hands of four incompentet and blundering morons, four survivors of the cull."
"Helga, Salazar, Godric, and Rowena."
"They latter said they had deafeated single-handedly the wizard."
"With cheers they were granted by the nearby village the land to their use. Hogwart's land. So they decided to found a public school, the founders probably thinking it would clean them from any lingering doubts from their previous shady and seedy background."
"Our mighty squabblers set on other adventures of mindless notoriety, the many of which I will not bother with on this class."
"But just so you know, instead of talking about the ceaseless and theatrical wars of the whiny goblins and the meandering and courageous pilfering of our instution's favorite buffoon."
"Who?"
"Who? Indeed."
"Gryffindor. We are not going to talk about the marvelous rapey adventures of Lord Gryffindor and his party of wonder-reubes, now that we have the time and that my mind is back on track we are going to talk about proper history."
"We are going to talk about how the true history of the founders was discovered after their deaths. The millions of twists and intricacies of the stellar empires that had Earth's as its capital many moons ago."
"The rebellions, revolutions and decisons that were made, the treaties that were forged on this very planet."
"All the elder and rich accounts that are portrayed on those sacred grounds, we are going to exhume the past. The past before some moron set the magic and science of our civilization millions of years back, for we know live in an era of hapless inicident."
"I welcome, all of you, to History not of Magic, but of everything."
"You should haven't brought the bloke back," said Ron.
"And left Neville with Black, and Malfoy, and god know who else on Azkaban?"
"He may be a goat-lover, but c'mom."
"I am not talking about Aberforth Harry, Binns is just insane."
"Boo-hoo, Ronniepoo is complaining he can't drool and snore on his daily nap, the babe needs his bottle?"
"Leave him alone Zabini, seriously."
"It was easy before, his class, our Professor was happy, truly alive," said Ron.
"He trudged through the day droning like the warble of the mating swines, and I would know I do live near a farm. Professor Binns, he, he was not alive," said Neville.
"Exactly," I said, "What have you got against him Ron, do you want him dead or something?"
"Yeah Ronniepoo, afraid that the other little ghosts will want your body for their use?" asked Zabini.
"What if they do? What if all of them do? Like if Myrtle decides she doens't want to hang around stools all day long and wants her old body back, hm?"
"So Ronniepoo is afraid of the ghosts."
"I is not afraid, is just saying, the dead belong to the death."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, I mean if you hit your head on the Quidditch posts, would you not rather we bring you back? Like that one time—"
"I told you concussions are okay for whizzies Harry!"
"I don't know Ron, you are not very sharp, what if the muggle doctors are right? Concussions are dangerous," said Hermione.
"You are afraid you gonna have to change your hubbie's nappies after he loses the few extra neurons he has Granger?" asked Zabini after he decided to hang around and listen to our consversation.
"I don't want to marry a vegetable, that's all." Hermione replied.
A/N: By the way, I know that is not the Deathly Hallows symbol, and that it isn't the corrected one either. I made it that way to make a point, ironically enough.
