This ain't no self-insert fic.
This ain't no slash fic neither.
This is Top Dog.
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Hermione didn't sleep at all well, and at about six o'clock she gave up and got up. The Gryffindor hangout seemed a bit weird completely empty, so she wandered down to the Great Hall, finding it likewise abandoned, then out through the front door to the courtyard.
The crackle of gunfire attracted her attention; after peering around, she isolated it's source as being the firing range she'd heard about.
Wondering who was making all the racket, she wandered down there and found an answer in the form of Harry.
He had a gun in each hand, and was blasting away at a row of moving targets, firing so fast it sounded almost like a machine gun; just as Hermione thought that, the guns went silent.
Their barrels were glowing. That explained the bulky heat sinks.
"You're up unusually early." Harry remarked, putting the pair of guns down on the table beside the range lane. "Trouble sleeping?"
"Yeah. After you showed up, I just wasn't tired any more." She said.
Harry looked faintly embarrassed. "Ah. That's the veritaserum; one of its key ingredients is caffeine. Would you believe I was so narked I forgot veritaserum's the equivalent of six cups of double-strength espresso?" He picked his guns up, reloaded them, and holstered them.
"… well, that explains that." Hermione said, slightly taken aback.
"My bad." Harry said, and headed for the castle.
Hermione wandered along with him.
"So… did Ron talk to Dumbledore?" she asked.
"No." Harry said. "I swept my room for bugs, but didn't find anything… the old fart must have some sort of surveillance up on me. I would suspect it's a directional mike in his room, it's directly opposite mine, but I've been running a white noise generator since day one. The net result is we can't trust anything said in my room to stay private. I'm trying to work out how that interfering old bastard's spying on me, but until I do we have to watch what we say. If you don't think he'd approve of something, do me a favour and say it in writing."
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S'tarak'hai R'hara'tath was in an unusually good mood. In other words, by anyone else's standards he was angry and depressed.
He came slouching up from the Slytherin dorms along with Ben and Michelle Chaos, Artemis Fowl, and Fleggitt Nelkroddly. The quintet represented the leadership of the Slytherin rebels; the group who didn't either toe the blood purist line or stay on the sidelines. Several other half-blood or mundane-born Slytherins were clustered around them; to anyone of the non-pureblood kind in House Slytherin, the massive Kenti landwarrior and the lanky New Australian Jedi represented their best chances of making it through the year in one piece. If that meant alliance with their supposed enemies in House Gryffindor, so be it.
As they arrived in the Great Hall, someone else was entering through the big doors that led to the courtyard; Harry and Hermione.
Harry was sauntering along with his usual cocky smirk on his face, while Hermione was trailing along behind him wearing an expression like she'd been hit with a sledge hammer.
S'tarak'hai smiled slightly as he cottoned on to what had happened; Hermione must have watched Harry working out. She'd now have a rough idea of what he was really capable of; but not the whole works. Harry very rarely showed his full hand; S'tarak'hai was convinced the long-eared mercenary was capable of things even Thousand Kingdoms Intelligence had no idea of, simply because letting anyone get a full handle on his capabilities was a most un-Harrylike amateur's mistake.
They settled themselves at the usual table (which had now grown to three tables pushed together) as the Blink Doggers arrived; Tara was mussed-up and obviously hung over. Ron, already sat at the table, was surprisingly clear-eyed considering how drunk he'd been the previous night.
"Morning." S'tarak'hai said, setting his tray down and seating himself, idly wishing the collegium had larger seats as he did his best to squeeze his sizeable backside onto the rather too small chair.
Tara growled at him. Bruce said, "Gudday."
"Note to self." Alice remarked. "Don't take Nav out drinking on a class night again."
"Shut up, Skipper. My head is killing me." Tara growled.
Harry handed her a hip flask.
"Here; hangover killer. It tastes like shit, but it'll clear yer head."
"Thanks." Tara said, took a slug from the flask, made a disgusted noise, and started looking relieved.
"Hi guys." Luna remarked, arriving and settling herself beside S'tarak'hai as per usual; Katarina started wandering round the table and trying to scrounge sausages.
"What've we got today?" Hermione asked since nobody had partaken of the ritual question.
"Bestiary, then Assault Magecraft." Harry said. "Another waste of time this morning, then the most interesting subject on the curriculum for the afternoon."
"The Destructive Arts." Tara gloated. "This is gonna be cool."
"Ah, the main gist of why I am here; the fine art of blowing things into small blobs." S'tarak'hai contemplatively remarked.
"Don't raise your hopes." Fred gloomily stated. "Quirrel's a moron."
"It's downright painful listening to him trying to talk." George put in.
"Worst stutter in known history." Fred agreed.
"It takes him five minutes to say his own name." George added.
"And he doesn't know what he's talking about." Ben said.
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Disclaimer: It's not my goddamn planet! Understand, monkey boy?
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Top Dog: Enter the Fnords
Book 1: Harry Johnson and the Headmaster's Socks.
A Doghead13 / United Galaxies fanfic
Written & produced by Calum J 'Doghead13' Wallace
Brought to you by Hairy Scottish Git Productions, GMBH
This is not a drill.
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Chapter 12: Blood of a distant star
(In which Hell's Halitosis occurs)
As Harry had said, that first Bestiary class wasn't much of anything; the lecturer, one Professor Kettleburn, spent the morning giving the students a whirlwind tour of the facilities; Harry had completely ignored everything apart from Lavender and a pair of Asian girls named Padma and Parvati Patil, whom he unashamedly hit on.
Hermione had done her best to pay attention despite the distraction. It seemed Beast Mastery was a very unorthodox sphere of magecraft, but apparently under high demand.
("Beast Mastery," Kettleburn had explained, "Is not a skill. It is a talent. You either have it, or you do not. If you do, congratulations, in seven years you'll be able to get the highest-paid job in the galaxy. If not, tough shit. This class is here to find out. Besides, knowing how to avoid getting yourself killed around large dangerous animals is always useful.")
Walking back up to the Great Hall, Hermione chuckled a bit as she thought back to that. Draco had pointedly asked why one shouldn't just, you know, Flare Arrow any dangerous animals, and got a short but pointed lecture about protected species, especially concerning Earther dragons and big cats. Kettleburn had also explained that if one ran into a large dangerous Earther animal these days, one had better not harm it as it probably had shapeshifter relatives who would take a significantly violent dim view of some stupid human doing in their non-sentient half-siblings.
"What's the joke?" Harry asked. He had a Patil on each arm, much to Hermione's aggravation.
"Malfoy's expression when Professor Kettleburn chewed him out." She said, trying not to let Harry's blatant womanising annoy her.
"Ah." Harry chuckled a bit. "Yeah, blondie earned that one. 'Just kill it' is a fairly obvious reaction to an animal attack, but it's also fairly dumb. First off there's the whole endangered species and Amerai thing as Kettleburn touched on, and second off it's much better to use a stunner and get yourself out of there. When animals attack humanics, the vast majority are trying to get the victim to back off. They're not saying 'I'm a barking mad man-eater and I'm hungry', they're saying 'Get away from my kids', and you can't blame a parent for trying to protect their children. If you give them the room they deserve, the vast majority of animals will leave you alone. Of course, there's a few cases like saltwater crocodiles, bushwhacks, ogres, horse-dogs, knobblers, and doxies, all of which treat us humanics as prey, and then there's phronima, which are more like a seven foot virus in a spiny exoskeleton. But they are the exception. Most of the time when animals hurt people, it's because the people ignore, or don't understand, the animal's warning messages."
"You feel pretty strongly about that, don't you Harry?" Padma asked.
Harry nodded.
"Indeed. Who knows what the descendants of the zeppelin fish or the angelback land prawn might have been able to give the universe if they hadn't been run extinct?" Harry asked. "If it hadn't been for the Hardak menageries, the sabre-tooth tiger, the cave lion and the dire wolf would never have survived long enough to foster certain rare lines of shapeshifter. If Clan Hope hadn't preserved the giant ground sloths and the glyphodonts, the universe wouldn't really be any different, but it also wouldn't be quite such a fascinating place, would it?"
"True." Padma said.
"And anyway, I like animals." Harry said. "They always say what they mean."
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The assault magecraft classroom (Room 3) was large, low-ceilinged, had what looked to be a firing range at the bottom and a door onto a balcony at one side, and it was positively festooned with garlic.
"What's with the garlic?" someone asked.
"I guess it's to ward off vampires?" Hermione guessed.
"Balderdash." A strident upper-class female voice stated. "If you try scaring a vampire off with garlic, he will take a bite out of it and then laugh in your face before he tears out your throat." Hermione looked at the source of the voice, and found an annoyed-looking attractive blonde dressed in a manner reminiscent of a Victorian matron; her entire pose and body language screamed of that severely obnoxious sort of upper-class person.
"Well how the fuck would I know that?" Hermione asked, the class-war instincts her uncle had drilled into her kicking in. Being the niece of a rabid Levellers fan can have interesting results.
"L-l-l-l-lad-d-dies, n-n-no f-fight-ite-ite-ite-ite-iting." A voice stammered. "M-m-miss V-v-v-van H-hels-s-sing, y-y-you m-must ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-accep-p-p accept th-th-th-th-that s-s-s-s-s-s-some of y-y-y-y-your ec-ec-ec-ec-expect-t-t-tations are w-w-w-w-wrong. F-f-five p-points t-t-to g-Gryffind-d-dor, M-m-m-m-Miss G-g-granger; th-th-the g-garlic i-i-is ind-ind-indeed t-to w-w-ward o-off v-v-v-v-v-vampires."
A lot of heads rotated to look at the speaker, who proved to be the thin rat-faced Arabic-looking guy dressed in a turban and bathrobes whom Dumbledore had introduced as Professor Mycroft Quirrel at the arrival feast.
"Ben was right." Harry murmured to Hermione. "He's a twit."
Quirrel proceeded to introduce himself (Taking nearly a minute to get his own name out) and waste most of an hour with a roll-call; the annoyed upper-class girl turned out to be named Integra Van Helsing. The surname made Hermione wonder if there had ever been someone by the name of Count Dracula; the thought unnerved her, so she left it.
The roll-call set the tone for the entire class; Quirrel frequently stuttered so badly you'd forgotten the beginning of the sentence by the time he managed to get the end out, and nobody missed the way his hands were shaking. Harry spent the entire class subtly taking the piss out of Quirrel, while Luna read the latest in a long line of upside down books (this one titled 'Herbal and Sacred Healing Beers') and completely ignored the lecture.
It was a relief when the class ended.
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Most of the first-years congregated in the Gryffindor hangout at the end of the Assault Magecraft class; the exception was of course the Death Munchkin type Slytherins, who headed directly for their own hangout.
On their way to their snake holes, the Death Munchkins encountered Snape. Each student bowed to him as he passed.
"Mr Malfoy." Snape said, coming to a halt.
"Professor." Draco said, with the bow that decorum required.
"We are going to set the Potter brat up." Snape stated. "Here's the plan; you must comply precisely."
Draco nodded calmly, accepted the sheet, flipped it open and had a careful read through.
"This could lead me to lose face." Draco stated.
Snape smirked nastily.
"Ah, Draco; indeed it could. Yet that face can be earned back; your father has arranged for some enhanced machines for House Slytherin's gravball team, and I have here instructions to Flint to bias selection in your favour; if you're any good you'll be given preferential treatment. And this is your first chance to earn an enhanced rank within House Slytherin; are you going to waste it?"
Draco inclined his head.
"I understand, Professor; the trade-off is acceptable. Excuse me; I shall arrange things at once."
Snape bowed; Draco returned the bow, and the two departed in opposite directions.
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Meanwhile in the Gryffindor dorms, the conversation had turned to the subject of the Assault Magecraft class.
"It wasn't so bad." Ron commented.
Integra burst out laughing. S'tarak'hai looked utterly disgusted. Harry made a pained noise.
"That man is an imbecile, Ronald." Integra stated. "He knows less about the dangers of this galaxy than I do, and I am no expert. There is no form of vampire that would be deterred by garlic."
"Are you certain about that?" Hermione asked.
"I am from a family that has served Great Britain as the first line of defence against all supernatural dangers since prior to Earth's invention of the steam locomotive, and I am the heir, so to speak, of the family business." Integra told her. "So, yes, I'm fairly certain I know what I'm talking about."
"The whole garlic thing was a rumour put about by Vlad Tepes; disinformation, you get the idea." Harry remarked. "Anyway, back on subject; Quirrel. I think he's an idiot or a shellshock case who didn't hold it together, or both. Whichever way, he's got no place trying to teach people to fight."
"I told you, he's an evil stutterbunny." Luna remarked.
"There's something bigtime fishy about that bloke." Ben grumbled; he'd been hanging out with Fred and George and listening in on the conversation. "Dunno, but I get this baaad feeling whenever I'm near him." He shrugged.
"He's been giving me the evil eye every mealtime since the get-go." Harry commented, getting all analytical.
Integra gave him a thoughtful look.
"Interesting. He is quite blatantly scared of myself, Mr R'hara'tath and Mr Chaos, and appears to have malevolent intentions for Mr Johnson."
"Which leaves us back at square one." Ben said. "OK, so who doesn't get on with Kenti landwarriors, New Aussie Jedi, Earther demon hunters, and half-Deladarian mercenaries?"
"A fairly extensive list of people, mostly of the genetic purist or otherwise undesirable sorts." Integra stated. "Pureblood-supremacist extremist groups find we demon hunters a little objectionable, strongly dislike persons descended from more than one species, normally do not get on with Jedi and have a long-standing enmity with the Thousand Kingdoms."
"Pureblood-supremacist extremist groups? You mean the Death Eaters, right?" Ben checked.
"Yes, and other such groups – the Sisters of Purity, the McGlark Genealogical Society and a number of other such groups of unpleasant sorts, but those three are the major players." Integra said.
"Is everyone 100 sure we're not making a mountain out of a molehill? OK, so he's got a speech impediment and is starting us on simple stuff," Hermione began, only to get cut off by a bark of laughter from Harry.
"Sorry to burst your bubble, but the man's a complete wanker." Harry stated, shaking his head.
"He was just as uninformative with the second-year class." Ben remarked.
"Notice how he didn't even try to teach us one single technique, let alone any of the underlying principles of the Destructive Arts?" S'tarak'hai growled. "I get the feeling he doesn't know a damn thing. Face it; we learned more about assault magecraft in McGonagall's class than with that pinhead."
"Yeah, at least she taught us to throw your generic fireball." Harry grumbled. "Hey Fred, you were right; it is downright painful listening to him trying to say his own name."
"Why the hell," S'tarak'hai snarled, "Have they brought in such a nervous wreck to teach us to fight? It's almost like they don't want us to learn anything."
Ben snorted disgustedly.
"You should have seen the twit they had last year. Terminal alcoholic. Put it this way, I don't think I ever saw him not drunk as a skunk."
"You're telling me," Tara boggled, "He was worse than that idiot?"
Ben nodded.
"Believe it or not, that stuttering know-nothing is an improvement."
Harry slammed the palm of his hand into the table. "I'll tell you what we ought to do." He said. "We ought to start a self-study group."
At that moment, several someones came crashing into the Gryffindor hangout; those someones were several Death Munchkins, including Draco Malfoy and the captain of the Slytherin gravball team, Marcus Flint.
Draco glanced around, then came sauntering over to where the gang were slouched, turning his nose further and further up as he came.
"Johnson." He said.
"Malfoy." Harry remarked. "How's about some Nerf? Or maybe hair gel? Hmm, and hows the Y-fronts, old boy?"
"You're oh-so-fucking superior, aren't you Johnson? Well, I'm gonna prove who's the better mage." Draco snarled. "Meet me on sub-level one, room 26 tonight at midnight – or can't you get out the dorms after curfew?"
Harry raised an eyebrow.
"And then what?" he asked.
"A test of thaumatic strength." Draco told him.
Harry considered that for a long moment, and then nodded.
"Right you are, wank-stain. Prepare to lose."
"You're going to find out who's the real mage, Johnson!" Draco snapped, and stormed off, flanked by the assorted gravballers.
"What a prick." Parvati said.
"Does he seriously wear Y-fronts?" Padma asked.
"Yup." Fred said. Padma started laughing.
"So, you gonna bother going for his fake challenge?" S'tarak'hai asked.
"Of course." Harry said.
"You can't be serious!" Hermione gasped.
Harry chuckled quietly to himself.
"Oh, I am." He said. "Listen, it's like this. If Draco shows up, I'll beat the shit out of him; if he brings his bookends and that mono-eyebrowed thug Flint, I'll beat the shit out of them too. They can't complain, that'd involve admitting they were out of the dorms after curfew. If he doesn't show up, he's just given me ammunition for taking the piss out of him; I'll legitimately be able to call him a coward."
"Isn't beating him up a bit, I dunno, a bit like lowering yourself to his level?" Hermione asked.
Harry rolled his eyes.
"I'm a Sith Knight." He said. "I've got two options. Either I rule the darkness, or the darkness rules me. There's no middle road. No easy option. I could never be a Jedi; I've got a time-bomb in my head and their regime of self-denial would set it ticking. That's why they call me Darth Venger; there's this little voice inside me calling for payback against anyone and anything that ever crossed me. Either I master my rage, or it masters me."
"I don't really get it." Hermione admitted. Harry sighed.
"All Sith have a certain thing that their life revolves around." He explained. "Take Darth Vader; he's had this thirst for conquest since early childhood. Sir Kenobi once told me that trying to train Darth Vader as a Jedi was a mistake from the word go. Darth Vader was a maniacal conqueror who ruled the Eastern Rim Alliance with an iron fist until he realised that his own anger over his treatment as a child and the death of his mother had made him a slave to his nastiest impulses; he later said, and I quote, 'Nothing and nobody makes a slave of Darth Vader'. Not even Darth Vader's own fucking id, it seems. Take Malfoy's father, Darth Laver; he's a good example of what happens when a Sith lets their demons run the show. His pet obsession is the complete and utter domination of everyone and everything around him, and he's got pretty good at it if his brat's anything to go by; that little drip is so obviously under his daddy's thumb it isn't even funny. And then there's me. Our Sith titles are exactly that; titles. They indicate what we call our Shadow; it's a mix of obsession, inner demon and monster from the id."
"I still don't get it." Hermione said.
"Vader; drop the 'In' from 'Invader'." Harry informed her. "Venger; drop the 'Re' from 'Revenger'. Laver; drop the 'Ens' from 'Enslaver'. Treya; drop the 'Be' from 'Betrayer' and fuck up the spelling, she was a bit on the dyslexic side. Sidious; drop the 'In' from 'Insidious'. Vager; drop the 'Ra' from 'Ravager'. You getting the picture yet?"
"Oh. So… what's the 'Darth' bit about?"
Harry snorted. "It's the Sith equivalent of the 'sir' you attach to a knight's name. It's actually from the Atlantean for 'Evil', it's a holdover from the bad old days."
"Darth Vader… Evil Invader… I get it." Hermione said. "Harry, how can revenge be evil?"
Harry looked at her for a long moment.
"It's entirely possible to take things way too far." He said. "My bad side regards this entire galaxy as responsible for the shit I've been through, especially a certain beardy old bastard who can't even hire decent help. But anyway, after what that little bastard did to his poor bloody familiar, either I'm going to make him wish he'd never done that or I'm liable to go off the handle. It's a balancing act. Trust me, I know what I'm doing; I've been doing it for quite a while."
"Fair enough." Hermione said. "I'd like to come with you, I want to kick him a few times too."
"Can I come?" Ron asked.
Harry paused.
"Okay, here's the deal." He finally said. "Either you're dead quite, or you don't come. The staff have no need to know about our little excursion, understand? I'm going to lead this thing, and you're going to follow my instructions until we're safely back in the dorms. Are you cool with that?"
Hermione nodded.
"Sure." Said Ron.
Harry nodded.
"Good. Let's go get some food, then I suggest we make up a list of everything we'll need for self-study Destructive Arts. After that, Granger, Weasely, be at my room at eleven fifteen on the dot. Not a minute before or after; we synchronise watches."
Harry marked the top of the minute, and they adjusted their watches to match his, then everyone trooped off down to the great hall for food. After dinner, they went back to the Gryffindor hangout.
After a short discussion they decided the primary thing they needed was space. Ben and Michelle volunteered to do something about that, and they dispersed; Lavender once more accompanied Harry to his room.
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At precisely 11:14, Hermione was out of her room; she arrived outside Harry's room just as her watch hit 11:15 and Ron arrived from the other direction.
The door opened, and Harry stuck his head out.
"Good. Come in." he said. They did.
"So what's the plan?" Ron asked as they sat down. Lavender was lounging on the bed along with Carla.
Harry placed a pair of objects Hermione recognised on the table; they were collapsible police batons.
"Put two and two together." Harry said.
"So, how are you planning on getting out the dorms without setting off the fire alarm?" Hermione asked.
Harry raised a finger, walked over to his window, and slid the shelves to one side. "Take a look at this."
Hermione had a look.
"As you see, the roof is approximately a foot below window level here." Harry said. "If you cross the ridge at the other end, you'll find yourself passing a window onto a secret passage connecting hall seven on the sixth floor and the back of the technomancy lecture hall; said window doesn't have any glass or shutters. It did have bars, but five minutes work with a monowire dispenser dealt with that."
"Okay, but… why?" Hermione asked.
"Every fox has more than one entrance to his hole." Harry said. "It's a basic defence practise; never block yourself into a dead end."
"Cool." Ron said.
"This isn't a fort and we're not in a war, Harry." Hermione said.
Harry slid the shelves back into place.
"That's nonsense." He said. "This entire star system is regarded as an intensity-three warzone, and this collegium happens to be the most heavily fortified location in the system."
"What's 'intensity three warzone' mean?" Lavender asked.
"Intensity-one warzone; publicly-approved police violence such as 'the war on drugs'." Harry said. "Intensity-two warzone; political violence zone, usually the state versus the public, including apartheid and ethnic cleansing, but normally just dictatorial oppression. Intensity-three warzone; two or more opposed terrorist or other underground organisations actively pursuing warfare. Those three are the warfare intensities that the general public don't usually regard as warfare, but they kill far more people per annum than the traditional guns-and-nukes type warfare. Intensity-four warzones are when two or more nation's ground troops are actively engaged in open-field combat. Intensity five is when you start getting orbital bombardments and starship-versus-starship engagements. Intensity six is all-out nuclear war resulting in collapse of society on a global scale. Intensity seven is warfare resulting in the complete destruction of one or more inhabited planets. Intensity eight entails the use of starkilling devices. Intensity nine is what's going on between the Galactic Council and Zeurghnorf; an intergalactic war of annihilation. Intensity ten has never happened, thank fuck; it's a war of annihilation between two or more universes. That help?"
Lavender nodded, her eyes wide.
"So anyway, back on subject. You've seen the way the entry hall and courtyard are arranged; they're designed so you can turn them into a kill zone using two actively-cooled machine guns and a pair of anti-armour launchers. That lovely hologram on the Great Hall ceiling is there to disguise the murder holes and segmentation portcullises; it's an extension of the entryway designed to eliminate even more invading troops. This place isn't a college campus; it's a fortress able to withstand a direct hit from most orbital bombardment weaponry. Yeah, if you don't know what you're looking at it looks like a tumbledown old heap of rocks. Well it's not, and if you think it is you've got another think coming." Harry continued.
"I've got to read 'Hogwarts: A History' sooner rather than later." Hermione muttered. "Gah, there's so much stuff I need to learn!"
"I can give you a good annotation to the public history of this place." Harry said. "I had a look at the Thousand Kingdoms Intelligence dossier and the Ordo Xenos report, and I've got a list of where they conflict with the public version of events. Did you know this place was successfully invaded once? Hogwarts was occupied by Mordred's troops during the final year of his insurgency. The houses concealed the entrances to their dorms, and the Slytherin gravball captain of the time managed to sneak out and kamikaze Mordred via one of the Great Hall's murder holes after nine months of occupation. Six students actually made it out alive; they managed to get out in time via a secret passage connecting to Hogsmeade when Mordred's troops flooded the building with nerve gas. The rest of the school population died, of course; those that hadn't been killed during the invasion, that is. There have been sixty-two attempts to take Hogwarts since Mordred and every one of them ran afoul of the robots."
"What robots?" Hermione asked. Harry looked startled.
"You mean you hadn't figured it out?" he asked. "Damn, you're slow on the uptake. You know those suits of plate mail that're all over the building? They're not suits of armour; they're Sentek hunter-killer robots. If that lot get activated anyone outside the dorms is fucked, and I mean proper fucked."
"… I didn't know that." Lavender said. Ron too was looking shocked.
Harry nodded. "Yeah, it's all the interesting details that get left out of the official version of events. Anyway, it's time to meet the malodorous blonde one. Coming?"
He pulled the shelves out the way, opened the window wide, and swung out onto the roof. Ron followed them, with Hermione rather doubtfully behind them.
"Remember, three knocks." Harry told Carla.
"Hurry on back." Lavender called as Carla closed the window.
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The trio moved quietly through the deserted halls of Hogwarts. They had a near miss with Filch, but Harry fired a subtle curse at the man, causing him to yelp and run off; there was a distant farting noise as he rounded the corner.
"What was that?" Ron whispered.
"Explosive Diarrhoea Curse." Harry replied. "He'll be on the crapper for the next hour or so; come on."
And they made good time to the first sub-level and thenceforth room 26.
"What the? Where's Draco?" Ron asked.
"Shaddup, Ron. We're early." Harry said as the three of them arrived at the centre of the room. "We'll wait till ten past, and then clear out assuming he's not shown up."
"Hey, what's that creaking noise?" Hermione asked.
The floor collapsed, dropping the three of them down a chute, at the bottom of which they landed in a small pile of debris.
There was a ping, and a scroll appeared, hanging in the air. Harry read it a couple of times, and chuckled quietly to himself as he grabbed the scroll out the air. "Very clever, rat fucker." He muttered.
"What's it say?" Hermione asked.
"Dear Johnson." Harry read. "As you've no doubt noticed, you seem to have taken a little plunge, and hopefully some of your barking dogs are with you. I knew you'd just assault me if I showed up, so I decided to establish my superiority from a safe distance; anyone who knew anything worthwhile would be able to tell a Dumping Floor enchantment when they saw it. That is of course why Room 26 is not used. You're now on the off-limits third sub-level; have fun. Signed, Draco Mercurio Malfoy." He stuffed the scroll into his pocket for later disposal. He didn't say about how the letter had been addressed 'Dear Harry Potter', since he didn't feel Ron needed to know about that.
"What about the termites?" Hermione squeaked, a sick feeling of terror creeping up in her guts.
"Calm down." Harry said. "Brazilian mutant flesh-eating termites are extinct." He drew one of his guns – the pump shotgun – and cocked it.
"Follow me." He instructed.
"How do you know which way to go?" Ron asked, obviously worried.
"Simple. See the 'Fire Escape' signs? I'd be willing to bet good money they point the way to the exit." Harry said, pointing. Right enough, there were clearly illuminated fire escape signs.
"Oh." Said Ron.
Three corners later, Harry stopped dead in his tracks as something growled.
Oddly, the growl sounded like it was coming from more than one throat.
Hermione worriedly peered round him, and nearly fell over backwards when she saw what was stood, stiff-legged and snarling, in the hall in front.
It was an ugly three-headed dog the size of a Transit van, and it was putting out very clear 'Angry Animal' vibes.
"Cool, it's a Cerberus hound." Harry said, acting as if he didn't have a triple-cranium mutt the size of a small bus threatening to eat his face.
"Oh shit, we're gonna die!" Ron pointed out.
"Nah." Harry said, tensed up and sneezed violently; a shower of liquid flew out. When it touched the air, it ignited with a dull thud, and suddenly Harry was blowing a cloud of fire out of his mouth; it roared like a jet engine, shock patterns rippling off the tips of the flame, which was so hot it sent Hermione and Ron reeling back; when he let off, the paving slab he'd aimed at was glowing. The three-headed hound yelped and scrambled backwards to the other end of the passage.
"What in the fuck was that?" Hermione squeaked as they ducked through the nearby door and onto a staircase. Hermione recognised this flight of stairs; it was the one they used to get down to the alchemy lecture hall.
Harry let out a low laugh. "Don't ask me any questions and I won't tell you any lies. We'd better get back to the dorms; I've got someone waiting for me to do interesting things to her. Come on."
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Lavender felt quite relieved when there came three knocks on the window and Carla pulled the shelves out the way; a moment later the three came scrambling back in.
To her bemusement, Ron and Hermione looked sincerely shook up.
"What happened?" Lavender asked.
"It was a set-up, of course." Harry said with a shrug.
"Harry, what was with that fire breath?" Hermione asked. Harry sighed.
"Does the old fart need to know about that? No, the old fart does not need to know about that. It's private business, Granger. Anyway, you've got all the information – use that brain of yours and work it out."
"Why didn't you just, I dunno, shoot that thing?" Ron asked.
"Four reasons." Harry said. "First off, Cerberus hounds are highly endangered. There's less than a hundred of them left, and every healthy adult may prove vital to the continued survival of the species; the hound down there is an adult male in excellent condition. Second off, they're cool. They're the only naturally three-headed species in known space, and the only survivor from a massive genus; they're too cool to blow away. Thirdly, their skin is some of the best biological armour in the galaxy; even a lightsabre would take two or three seconds to burn through, and a .60 Super Magnum shell would just detonate against the animal's hide and piss it off. And fourthly, I didn't need to kill it; I could get it to back off by just scaring the crap out of it, so that's exactly what I did." He sat down on the bed and casually put a hand between Lavender's legs. "Now scoot, I've got some unfinished business."
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Lying down on her bed, Hermione knew she wasn't going to have much luck going to sleep. Her brain was whirling with information.
What was with Harry? How come he could blow fire out of his mouth?
Something Artemis had said on the train came back to her.
"The apast's syndrome is inherited from your mother, who happens to be a weretiger possessed of a very prominent tail."
She resolved to talk to Artemis; he obviously knew what was going on.
End Chapter.
AN –
Top Dog and Biker ½ are looking for a more permanent home. This home needs to enable me to;
- attach graphics to each chapter, probably up to about 500k per image, primarily as chapter header images but possibly more than that; I want to be able to have graphics appropriate to that chapter rather than fucking Zwinkys or noisy smileys.
- post other artwork.
- insert song lyrics into the flow of the story, the exclusion of this being my main problem with this site if you ask me, a fanfiction website that would ban Symphony of the Sword and Drunkard's Walk has something seriously wrong with its priorities.
- maintain tight control of formatting, especially the spacing of line returns. Careful use of line returns can make a big improvement to the way a story flows, and scene breaks can become much more fluid.
- insert HTML links into the text of the story, primarily so I can post links to reference images in the author's notes.
- arrange story listings in an in-story chronological order on the website. To see what I mean, check out the Undocumented Features chronological listings on the EPU website. If you don't know where to look, run a Google search on 'Undocumented Features', they're like number 2 on the results list. Yeah, Gryphon is pretty much my role-model as a fanfic author.
- connect to a forum. Definitely a necessity. And preferably have a comment thread / guestbook system enabling readers to comment without signing up to a forum, much like here.
My intent is to make Top Dog and Biker ½ a much more 'multimedia' experience, primarily using the stock of character art I'm building up. I don't plan on entirely ditching but I want to be able to control what the reader sees on clicking through to a chapter instead of getting saddled with random adverts.
If anyone's got any suggestions, drop me a line either via PM or in the comment thread for whichever fic you're reading this in. I'm aware I may have to construct a website myself, but I'm hoping to avoid that as my HTML skills are non-existent.
A phronima is, in the real world, a type of deep-sea crustacean parasite; it takes over the body of a salp (a type of jellyfish) and rears it's young in there. It also looks so nasty it inspired the xenomorphs from 'Alien'; it looks pretty much like a miniature transparent Alien. Of course, what Harry's talking about are either the Alien aliens or Genestealers, or some such similar horrible parasitic gribbly of the fairly standard science-fiction-nasty type.
The fundamental difference between humans and animals is fairly simple; animals don't lie. If an animal doesn't like what you're doing, that animal will tell you it doesn't like what you're doing, and if you don't understand (0r just ignore) what it's saying you can't exactly blame the poor animal for taking things to the next level and having a go at you. Most of the time, the things animals say are pretty obvious; snarling is a 'back-off' signal, and if you respond by backing off, the animal will probably leave you alone. Of course, there's probably an exception to the 'don't-lie' rule in the primate world – there normally is, chimp social interactions are unnervingly reminiscent of us humans at our worst – but there you go.
Actively cooling a machine gun; the real-world example is the water-cooled guns of the First World War. Those guns could fire non-stop pretty much indefinitely, assuming a reliable supply of ammunition and cooling water; try that with a modern air-cooled machine gun and the barrel would melt in a very short time. The down side is of course weight; a water-cooled Maxim MG'08 has a total weight of 62 kilos. To put that into perspective, the FN MAG (aka the British L7A1 GPMG, it's used by eighty or so nations under a variety of names) weighs just 10.15 kilos.
Doghead Out.
