Angel Laughter: Year Four
(Un)Welcome at Hogwarts
Something lands on his head and Harry stands up from where he has been helping with the building of the tents. The weight doesn't leave even when he tilts his head to the side, so he pats with his hand and is surprised when something bits him.
Timcampy is hanging off his hand, teeth digging into flesh, but strangely not hurting him and when the pet starts beating its wings, it flutters around in Harry's face.
The building of the tent comes to a momentary pause with Harry and Hermione too distracted to do any instructing and soon all present Hogwarts students glance around for Professor Allen.
"If it isn't Unlucky Boy A," drawls a voice and Harry jumps, whirling around.
Dressed properly in muggle clothes and seemingly very much adapted to them unlike the rest of the wizards around is a man who seems vaguely familiar to Harry. Dark curls, pale skin, muggle tobacco. "Is your school still standing?"
Harry squints at him, not quite sure where he has seen the man before, who fishes Timcampy lazily out of the air by the tail.
Harry remembers. "You were with Professor Allen in Diagon Alley last year." Truthfully Harry usually doesn't remember people as random as him, but like the slytherin first year, Rhode Campbell, this man is a bit difficult to forget, particularly when he says equally difficult things to forget.
Hermione jumps at the chance. "Is Professor Allen here as well?" Her quest of research on the teacher has carried over into the holidays, still yielding no results, and she can stand that far less than her growing dislike of him.
"That guy a Professor." The other snorts as he stretches Timcampy's cheeks, looking mightily irritated. "It's a wonder you learn anything other than to cheat at cards." Fred and George's sudden snap to attention pushes Harry and Hermione quite literally out of the way, their eyes sparkling.
"The Professor knows how to cheat at cards?" They repeat in tandem, gleefully, in a tone that Harry knows not to humor.
"Why else do you think I'm here babysitting his stupid…damn...but wait…," suddenly the man looks up, examining them critically before glancing back at Timcampy, who is promptly flung into the air. Timcampy bares its teeth evilly. "Take care of that, will you?" He waves a lazy hand, disinterested and bored, turning to leave, speaking over his shoulder to them in a way that implies them being hardly worth a glance and much less time. "Just give it back to Cheating Boy at school or whenever."
While the Weasleys plus Harry and Hermione look at the pet, which they understand has just been dumped on them, the man has disappeared.
.
Timcampy is a strange animal. Harry has thought so already, but watching it now puts his opinion into perspective.
"Where does it all go?" Hermione wonders, almost fascinated enough to forget to eat lunch herself as the snitch pet eats many times its own body mass. Harry watches as Timcampy twirls its tail around a piece of bread twice its size and swallows the thing whole, mouth splitting wide.
"Awesome," the twins cow predictably, having become great fans of Professor Allen in the span of seconds without even speaking to the man in person and despite having a healthy respect and distance for him previous to finding out he apparently cheats with the best of them. It is almost unnecessary, but Harry tells them about the professor's invitation to play a game with him in first year, which he has just remembered, hoping that he won't regret it.
Fred and George can't wait to get back to Hogwarts.
Timcampy lands on Harry's head, stubbly feet digging into his head. Harry hopes it will not be mistaken for the snitch during the game.
.
Sitting and talking with Ron and Hermione about his scar and the terror attack at the World Cup, he finds he suddenly sees why Timcampy is often abused with stretching exercises. It is probably a good distraction for restless hands, but Harry refrains, seeing that Timcampy does, in fact, have very dangerous teeth that are capable of biting through a lot things harder than Harry's finger.
Hermione, though, is trying to find out what manner of creature Timcampy actually is, hoping it will aid her in her endeavor of finding out more about Professor Allen and hits the books, asks Charlie all the while Harry tries to dissuade her from it, having noticed that Hermione is gaining the habit to run herself ragged in her attempts to pry into things Professor Allen does not want them in.
The professor has given a warning; what will he do when they ignore it?
Just the thought of it makes him aware of terror so cold it ate into his bones and is festering now, reminding, reminding, invading his dreams, turning them into nightmares, never allowing him to forget, always there, always watching...waiting...
Not having been there that night, Ron can't grasp what haunts Harry and drives Hermione, but he and his family try his best to distract them, knowingly or unknowingly.
While the Weasely's seem to make a joke out of trying to find something that Timcampy doesn't eat or what it likes to do, because the creature is surprisingly intelligent, apparently, avoiding the twins' Weaseley Wizard Wheezes pranks and experiments with either incredibly great luck or cleverness after having been turned pink once, Harry mulls over the truth that things once lost can not be regained.
Ignorance and peace of mind counts among them, something he hasn't valued until it was gone.
Morbidly, it's another lesson learned. Professor Allen teaches full time and all around.
.
Ron is greatly suspicious of Professor Allen's pet as Crookshanks has taken to trying chewing on Timcampy once he catches it, which has given the entire Burrow a shock for more reasons than one, and mostly has made Mrs. Weasley fret about what to possible tell the teacher if his pet was eaten by a cat while under their care and be more careful! It's not funny Fred and George!
.
Having been stuck with Timcampy for the good part of two weeks now, Harry finds it strange when the life-snitch is suddenly no longer constantly within sight. Almost by habit Harry searches the air around him only to finally find it eating from Professor Allen's plate.
The young professor catches his eye, making a shudder run up Harry's spine by sheer reflex, smiles and gives a nod of gratitude in their direction.
Absently Harry contemplates, as the Sorting begins, what follow up actions the professor will take for having his pet taken care of for a couple weeks. The polite thing, which Harry has believed to be Professor Allen's thing for three years, to do would be to express his gratitude via a card or gift of appreciation or the like. But Harry isn't sure anymore Professor Allen really is polite or if he just pretends to be, and anyway, mostly he is just relived that he can look at the young teacher without freezing up.
Harry and Hermione both look forward to seeing the professor's next move and interpret it for all it is worth as observing and analyzing is quite something different from actively prying, actively asking, actively looking and surely nothing that they can be faulted for.
The young teacher is the only mystery the three of them haven't figured out within a year and despite it all, Harry is curious, so very drawn in by a matter that has nothing to do with him or Voldemort whom he can't seem to escape and that may be the most dangerous trial he has faced yet.
.
Professor Allen asks all three of them to stay after class. "I hear Timcampy has been imposing on you during the holidays." He smiles friendly and Harry tries very hard to actually see that smile and not dismiss it for being ever present and thus unimportant. "Please accept my apologies and utmost gratitude for taking care of him when he has been dumped on you."
"It was no problem," says Ron, eying the pet still strangely, not trusting anything Crookshanks likes to eat and that being the end of it.
"We have been trying to inform you, sir, but somehow Hedwig couldn't deliver the letter," Harry adds, remembering how ashamed Hedwig has been for her failure.
"Ah, yes. Please apologize to your owl on my behalf," the teacher says, who as of this year is shorter than Ron. "I was very much out of reach and out of the country during the holidays. It would have been rather worrying if your owl had found me in fact." He fishes Timcampy out of the air with the ease of long practice. "At any rate, thank you again for taking well care of him. I see he has gotten bigger." Here he stretches said pet's cheeks much further than Harry has ever seen him do and his smile is maybe just a tinge annoyed, but Harry can't be sure even as he files it away.
"What was he supposed to eat? We didn't know, so we just let him eat from our plates. " Hermione says, jumping at the chance to find out more, because just like with Professor Allen she hasn't found anything at all about his pet and is overly concerned about any magical creature since she found out about the houseleves, ignoring any sense of caution they should be listening to.
"Don't worry about it," says Professor Allen, ignoring as Timcampy bits his head as revenge for having worn out cheeks. "Tim should have known better than to eat anything at all."
Hermione's expression changes to one of alarm. "He is not getting sick, is he?"
"Of course not," smiles the professor. "Tim can eat absolutely everything. I'd even believe you if you told me he ate your homework."
There are a few moments of silence, before Hermione can finally voice, "what?" while Harry's mind is still trying to process if that was meant to be serious, an attempt at a joke, making fun of them, or all of it together.
"Timcampy is not so much a living thing as something that I have created from modern technology," Professor Allen says after positively agonizing long seconds as if talking about the weather, stunning them yet again.
He smiles and though it is blindingly innocent, a shadow of wickedness lies over it that Harry cannot unsee no matter how much he may want it.
Ignorance is a virtue. Harry is reminded that he has lost it.
.
Hermione is going insane after that, not even Professor Moody's lessons being able to completely take her mind off what Professor Allen has said despite Harry's best attempts on the contrary.
Ron and Harry are almost convinced she is camping in the library. How ever she manages to also run her elf-rights protest group on the side is something Harry doesn't really want to spent any time thinking about, lest he feel particularly incompetent and useless.
Occasionally, at random times during the day, Ron and Harry catch her muttering about the lack of compatibility between technology and magic and the impossibility of creating life even though Timcampy looks as alive as the next student and why does it eat and grow and how that would explain why Hermione has never even found a mention of creatures remotely similar to Timcampy.
Ron is of the firm belief Professor Allen is pulling one over them, having been influenced by Fred and Gorge who have been pestering said teacher lately about all dirty tricks the twins believe him to be capable of, and that Hermione is finally going insane from studying too much and walking into the teacher's trap, which he still doesn't actually think exists.
Harry is a bit more skeptical, but is quite ready to believe that Professor Allen told them a blank lie just to watch their reactions. Harry sees the fact that the teacher doesn't say anything more on the matter in any direction as confirmation of this theory, but it remains a theory and only that, which may be the most frustrating thing of all. They don't have any proof either way, so Professor Allen may as well have told them the truth and they just have no way to know.
The matter of Timcampy gets pushed from his mind for the sake of focusing on his lack of imagination for his Divination homework, though he still notices that Timcampy apparently has gotten a bit attached to all Weasley's except Ron and is sometimes following them through the halls or eating from their food. Personally, Harry has to say it is a bit unsettling to talk with Ron only to have his plate emptied by the time he focuses back on his food. It urges him to check over his shoulder for white hair and smiling, impassive eyes.
.
As if he doesn't have enough to worry about as it is with foreign schools bound to arrive soon, a tournament that happens to be very much - to refer to Professor Allen's Special Tri-wizard Tournament World History lesson - an ancient-styled muggle-copied life-or-death step backwards. In addition, creepy dreams about his nemesis as well as the grade one rat traitor, Sirius has returned to England risking arrest and Dementors just because Harry's scar hurts a bit.
Voldemort he can necessarily 'deal with', Professor Allen is as normal as anyone technically speaking, and Sirius' safety is much more important than both of the aforementioned together. That Harry is just as fruitless in his endeavor of assuring Sirius' safety as Hermione in in her efforts concerning their teacher makes him feel a different kind of fear than the one he is watching out for in weekly history lessons. Which one, he wonders, is more choking? What does fear want to tell him when there is no spell to avoid, no creatures to dodge?
.
Initially Harry has been a bit excited about the tournament, that he will admit. If only because it is something new, supposedly really great, and it sounded like fun. That said, he has looked forward to it as a member of the audience and not to be stuck in the ring.
It hurts less that someone is trying to kill him than that Ron doesn't believe him, though.
Despite Hermione's company Harry feels lonely; the entire school believes him to be a cheater and attention grabbing celebrity and to Cedric, who he respects a lot, his entry must be insulting. With good reason from Cedric's point of view, of course, and Harry understands that very well.
And consequently while he tries not to let people's opinion of him get to his head, hatred from someone who he considered his best friend does hit Harry hard.
It is a good thing he has practice in not-seeing unwanted attention and not dwelling on unwanted things, because even something as mundane as breakfast has become depressing with everyone to his right and everyone to his left stonily ignoring him when they aren't throwing him glares. Even Hermione opposite of him, reading the Daily Prophet, isn't much of a spot to rest his eyes on.
Eyes mostly glues to his plate still lets him notice when she stills.
"Some ministry diplomats have been killed," she tells him in a low voice after a prompting kick under the table, her eyes staring at him intently before once more going back to the article. "And not just from our Ministry. It says there were some foreigners with them; ambassadors apparently."
Harry looks up, unease tickling down his spine. "…Who did it?"
She doesn't look at him, even as she is shaking her head, as if the newspaper would spit out more information the longer she watches it. "They don't know," she says, her voice is just a bit sickened as she continues. "They found them in pieces. All torn apart in some room they were meeting in or the like."
Harry pushes the gruesome mental picture away with sheer force of will. "Don't they have suspects? Maybe its some Death Eaters like at the World Cup."
"It must be," Hermione bites her lip. After a short pause she adds significantly in a low voice, finally looking at Harry through her bangs, "there wasn't a Dark Mark, but if they can cut off friendly relations with other countries then if You-Know-Who comes back..."
Harry doesn't notice the taste of his toast, only that is difficult to swallow against the bile of foreboding rising in his throat.
AN: The first part of Year Four.
Year Four is will have more than two chapters, things will happen.
Thank you for reading and please be so kind as to leave your thoughts on the way out.
TBC.