Chapter 11 - An after snack fight
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"Come on Harry there's a nice bistro down the street with cute little tables sitting out on the patio. This is such a nice day to go there and have something to eat and maybe a glass of wine."
"Daphne dear are you getting attached to those little glasses of wine with your meals?"
"Well as they say, when in Rome do as the Romans do."
"Okay my little Roman drunk, let us go to your little tables out on that patio to enjoy your little glass of wine and catch some of the sun before it goes down".
Being able to tell or explain a lot of what happened to the Auror boiled down to what the average person saw up and down the street and knew of the neighborhood but that happened later. We sat at the little table and ordered up the wine and Daphne wanted the "hors d'oeuvre which for this little bar turned out to be incredibly delicious. It was a plate of seafood with the muscles, clams on a black half shell, and shrimp, it went very well with the wine. When the plate was put on the toy like table there was hardly room for the two glasses of wine. It was typically old France resisting modern technology. The small chairs and table were scrunched next to the plate-glass windows of the bistro and the other little tables extended as far as possible into the sidewalk and still allow pedestrians a walkway. The two-lane road did not contain much traffic as this was a small quiet French town. The sidewalk on the other side was again as crowded as possible with fruits and vegetables from the grocery store pushing toward the street but still allowing pedestrian traffic on the small sidewalk on their side of the street. Gazing up and down the street the small shops extended their goods as far into the sidewalk as possible with hopes of a rich tourists stopping by to purchase their varied merchandise.
With all our school work from our tutors it was not often we got to enjoy this kind of relaxation. The Delacour's and Daphne were kept quite busy arranging our soon to come wedding at the Delacour manor. Our merciless tutors constantly pushed everyone to excel so we were quite busy and physically wore out.
"Harry, I was thinking, we have break coming up and I would like to visit the island but I don't want to spend our honeymoon there."
"Sounds like a good idea to me, I could do with seeing Sirius that is if he has run out of his girls from the island."
"I want to get in the last bit of tanning before the wedding and as we have discussed before the loft is fine for our honeymoon."
"Daphne, are you really sure you want to spend our honeymoon in the loft?"
"Yes Harry I'm sure, we can always go someplace special as the mood hits us but I definitely don't want to spend that time on the island."
"Oh, right! I can just see us having a honeymoon with Sirius lurking in the background and giving up his casino girls for some pranking of the newlyweds."
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While our visit to the island was enjoyable inviting Sirius to the wedding cause a whole new round of bad jokes from him. We returned to France and soon the wedding at the Delacour manner was completed as planed. The reception, which thankfully was very small, ended with Sirius tied to a chair, a Marauder to the very end.
(A/N; Since I have no idea what weddings and receptions would entail I will leave up to you to imagine the elaborate wedding, reception and the honeymoon details.)
"Daphne! While I love you dearly you have warned me complete completely out. So if you'll excuse me I think a nice hot shower right now may bring me back to life." I walk into the bathroom and automatically close the door. As the water in the shower reached the proper temperature I stepped into the shower sliding glass doors closed. While fully underneath the water in the shower I heard Daphne's say, "I'm not finished with you Mr. Potter." I then said," I'm not sure what I can come up with but you if you care to join me in the shower I'm sure we can try." Upon receiving no answer I open the glass door and found the bathroom completely empty.
Well I just shrugged off this first incident but over the next few days it reoccurred. There were time when I heard Daphne in the room say something but looking up or turning around I found she wasn't there. It took a while but we finally figured out that we were mentally talking to each other. It also became clear that this only happened when there was a strong emotion behind the thoughts, everyday conversations were not being transferred between us. I just shrugged it off as it just appeared to be another anomaly surrounded the life of Harry Potter.
/Scene break/
"Harry let's go down to the bistro I could use a glass of wine." Daphne purred and giving off a look that was to make me melt.
"Well if you want that glass of wine you best cut back on that sexy look or we will never get to that glass of wine."
Daphne hooked her arm in mind and dragged me to the bistro where it would be her favorite wine and seafood platter. The sidewalk tables were busy as usual, old men sat over their wine discussing politics of the day or just average people returning from their shopping day enjoying a cup of coffee. Across the street the market was busy with people squeezing the tomatoes and thumping the melons. At that instant I had mixed thoughts, the first being I was not going to let my seafood platter end up like my ice cream, ordered but never eaten. My next thought was honestly fear as Deatheaters appeared on either end of the street.
There's no place to hide and I doubted there was anyplace that we could run. The Deatheaters of course did not wait for anybody to make their minds up and were hurling curses at everyone and everything. I first thought was to fall back into the bar and of course escape out the rear door. What did the rear bring? An open field or a wall enclosed storage area that would trap us? With my left hand I brought up the strongest shield that I knew how to make and with my right hand I sent a stunner at the group off to my right. By this time curses were ricocheting off my shield, the small tables and chairs were exploding all around my shield; the produce market across the street had exploding fruit stands and fruit exploding in all directions. Shops up and down the street were treated similarly with deadly curses impacting their merchandise and storefronts.
I was realizing that not only was my shield holding against all incoming curses but I was feeling no strain on my magic to keep the shield maintained. I suddenly realized that I had something more to fight with, I had forgotten about the Weasley twins decoy detonators. I figured the detonators could not do much more damage than what had already been done. I released a couple of the decoy detonators to my right as Daphne hurled numerous curses in the same direction. To my surprise the detonators did not scoot off in any random direction but headed straight at the death eaters. The explosions took out about six of their ilk. When I looked down the street to the left I almost lost my concentration needed for my shield. It seemed that my stunner had taken out half of the enemy on the left side of the street. Wasting no time I fired another stunner down the left side of the street and witnessed the same results with most of the standing Deatheaters being stunned. The fates must have been watching over us as at that time as the French Aurors arrived causing a fierce battle with the remaining Deatheaters. During this time the bad guys had revived a number of their stunned companions who were rejoining the fight. Unlike my stunners the French Aurors were throwing deadly curses. The English Aurors never rose to this level of violence or deadliness, it was obvious that most of the fighting Deatheaters would not survive to reach their Ministry's holding cells.
Seeing that the French had every thing under control, and the fighting was over, I dropped my shield and surveyed what was left of the street. All the curses had taken a destructive action up and down the street all except for our little table. Even the wineglasses hadn't been disturbed so Daphne and I sat back down. I finally got to work on my seafood platter and sip on my wine before one of the Aurors came over and started speaking French. After a bit they found an English-speaking officer who start asking questions and took our statements.
"Monsieur witnesses have stated that you threw spells or curses that appeared to have a great affect on these English scum. We thank you for your assistance. From the civilian's description your shield seems to be quite powerful and easily deflected many curses thrown in your direction. If I could have your names and addresses and your business here in France it would be most helpful. Furthermore, if I could impose upon you to see if you recognize any of these villians while our 'Oblivators' take care of the Muggle population of this village."
"We would be happy to help in any way that we can. This is my wife Daphne and I am Harry Potter we are here on our honeymoon." I of course saw his eyes flashed to my forehead and my scar but he just nodded and jotted down something more on his notepad. We then went to view the death eaters to see if we recognized any of them.
"Harry what kind of stunners did you throw at those death eaters? I did recognize them at first because of the golden streaks in the red stunning spells."
I turned and faced Daphne and said, "I hadn't noticed anything they were just a simple set of stunners. Come on we need to finishing off looking at these creeps and get back to the wine.
We did not recognize any of the death eaters on the left side of the street but upon viewing those on the right side of the street it appeared that the Nott family would have to look for a new heir as Theodore Nott lay dead in the street. Further down the street we encountered another familiar face, Cassandra Andromeda Selwyn Evans née black was now no longer a living part of any family.
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"Daphne was it just me or were those tests just too easy? I always heard that owl testing was horrible was it our great tutors that made it so easy?"
"I'm with you Harry, I found those tests quite easy. However, we still have the NEWTs to face in the coming year."
"So where do you want to go on vacation, we have the island, or would you like to go someplace different like Las Vegas?"
"Let's head back to 'Escape Haven' and see what all the elves are up to. Don't forget we have all your other places we have to visit. Hopefully it will only take a couple of days and we can hit the island for a couple weeks, how does that sound to you?"
"It sounds like a plan, I just hope that Sirius hasn't been way too bored, all we need is for him to start a prank war with us."
Being in France and not reading the French language made their newspapers of no interest to us so we missed most of the scandal. The scandal results were brought to our attention by a letter from Headmistress McGonagall. After a little research we found that the Professor was now Headmistress because Dumbledore was found bribing the Wizengamot. Mdm. Bones was interested in not only where he got the money but why he was trying to affect one Harry Potter.
Seems she was also still involved in Dumbledore shenanigans that had taken place during the tri-wizard tournament. Mdm. Bones further found that the bribery money was coming from the Potter family vault as Dumbledore had illegally declared himself Guardian and was tapping the money in the Potter vault. Now bribing was considered illegal as was bribing the Wizengamot but being caught was considered a 'faux pas' of unforgivable proportion.
All of the bribing and trying to gain control of one Harry Potter led back to the tri-wizard tournament and the manipulations therein; this led to the scandal where he lost all of his positions as ICW Muck-it-up, Headmaster and Chief Warlock. Dumbledore was considered lucky he wasn't put in jail the rest of his life but he was given a break again because he was defeater of Gringlewault, so he was released of all charges. Of course this left me short of all the galleons he had taken but what the hell, he was the great leader of the light and my galleons were irrelevant as far as the Wizzengemot was concerned.
Sirius was extremely happy to see us and started rushing around making sure that we had a super return to the island with barbecues parties and drinks. It however did not take long before Sirius was back at the casino chasing women and living his unique lifestyle.
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We did visit most of the properties that I was the owner of, and found I had more elves that hairs on my head. Dobby was thrilled to see us and was upset when we found that he could not hear us calling him from France, so there appears to be a distance factor when calling elves. I must say that Dobby had all of his elves working, from maintaining the houses and their gardens to tilling the farmlands. Since they all seem busy and happy we didn't ask although we did find out that Dobby was handing out Christmas presents and birthday presents in our names. He was quite happy because he was quite busy. No longer cleaning and cooking's his entire life he was now consumed in directing elves on the many Potter properties. Dobby's enthusiasm and weirdness as a normal elf was offset by his good heart and was a great addition to the Potter family.
Daphne and I got another joint letter from Headmistress McGonagall. This letter however was asking us to return for our seventh year schooling at Hogwarts. He was a difficult decision to give up the sun and relaxing lifestyle but in reality we were English. Being English and being a Lord within England insisted that Lords attended Hogwarts as a tradition. So for no other reason we accepted and sent a letter off stating we would be returning in September to Hogwarts.
September 1st at Kings cross platform many stares accompanied us as we entered onto the platform as a squad of elves deposited our trunks in the luggage car. Daphne and I headed to the rear the train to find a secluded compartment if that was possible. Draco showed up not long after the train departed the station. "Potter you made a big mistake killing Nott."
"Well it's a funny mistake Draco since I'm still alive and he is not."
"His friends within the Slytherin house are not happy with you, you best watch your back, Potter. "
"Making threats to revenge Nott's death for Slytherin house? No style Draco, you forgot to add your father and girlfriend Mrs. Evans into that threat."
"The dark Lord will be soon be eliminating both of you, you half blood and your blood trader slut."
We always thought that Snape was lurking in the darkness whenever Draco start his mouth running episodes so he could take points and/or give detentions . It appeared this year would be no different as Draco ranted I stood up ready to hit him in the face, Snape slithered out from nowhere," that will be 10 points Potter and detention tomorrow night."
"Nice try Snivelus but you'll need to take that up with the Headmistress as you are not allowed to access points or give detentions until we arrive at school."Even the points taken by the Perfects who road on the train to Hogwarts were only effective after review by the Headmistress. I was curious how in all the years that we have traveled on the train to Hogwarts we have never seen a teacher before and when one shows up it turns out to be Snape. I close the compartment door in his face and put the most powerful locking charm I could think of on the door. We would sort this out after we got to Hogwarts.
/Scene break/
After we were seated the in the Great Hall my survey of the head table found that not many changes had been made in teaching staff. While the Headmistress now occupied Dumbledore's golden chair there were two new faces. The Headmistress introduced Kingsley Shacklebolt as the new DADA professor and Hawkes Hawlish as the new Transfiguration professor.
I gave Snape a heartfelt sneer and turned to Daphne." I'm going to enjoy this year watching Snape miss me in the potion class."
"Well you're not going to be the only one not taken his class because I'm sure not going to take his guff." Daphne laughed.
"Have you heard anything about the Transfiguration professor yet?" I asked.
"I think he's an ex Auror but I'm not sure."
Breakfast the next morning had barely begun when I heard the words," Mr. Potter please see me in my office after breakfast." I hope that the Headmistress had not picked up on what Dumbledore was now incapable of doing.
Pleasantly something new had been added since I was last here, the Gargoyle sprang aside as we approached without requiring a password. But as usual as I went to knock I received "enter" from within the Headmistress's office as if she knew someone was there.