Okay, so to clarify a few things; Percy got to Hogwarts via ~magic~ and neither Maddy nor Bella can manipulate the Mist and it seemed like kind of a big thing to hide... that's just my rational, though *shrug* ANYWAYS, have a new chapter
When the post owls arrived the next morning, Hermione looked up eagerly; she seemed to be expecting something.
"Percy won't've had time to answer yet," said Ron. "We only sent Hedwig yesterday."
"No, it's not that," said Hermione. "I've taken out a subscription to the Daily Prophet. I'm getting sick of finding everything out from the Slytherins."
"Good thinking!" said Harry, also looking up at the owls.
"Yeah, I'm tired of walking up to scared housemates to get the newspaper," Bella added.
"Hey, Hermione, I think you're in luck," Maddy pointed out as a grey owl soared down towards Hermione.
"Definitely not the Daily Prophet," Elliot commented as the owl landed, closely followed by three others.
"Ow!" Maddy exclaimed when a letter suddenly slammed into her head. "Too good to land, huh!" She shook her fist up at an owl flying away empty clawed. "Oh, Hades! Why do they keep on dropping them on me? Hermione gets the whole owl, I just get the - fuck!" The last letter that dropped down right onto her left arm, practically exploded and covered both of her arms, some of her hair, and several other parts of her body, as well as most of her food and some of Elliot, who looked at Maddy like she was at fault for that, in a silvery blue liquid.
"The Hades is this, ah, it stings," she hissed. "I hate people."
"You should go to the hospital wing," Harry said.
"What kind of murder bullshit is this!" Bella exclaimed reading over one of Hermione's letters. "Look at this!" She held out a letter that was written completely out of cut out letters from newspapers and magazines.
"That is an accurate description," Maddy agreed while Elliot grabbed her with one of her hands.
"No time to stay and look," she said quickly, "this shit's Moonseed Poison, in like ten minutes it'll burn itself into our skin. Bella, bring the rest of the letters up to the hospital wing, I want to read them and laugh at them." She then began to drag Maddy out of the Great Hall at a surprisingly tremendous speed.
Upon seeing the problem, Madam Pomfrey quickly began to tend to the two and had just barely finished doing so when Hermione ran in, tears streaming down her face and undiluted bubotuber pus all over her hands.
Bella brought a huge pile of letters up a few minutes later.
Apparently, all of Maddy's letters were from angry magical demigods. The were upset the gods were now a known thing. There were multiple people who had even said that Maddy was the only one at fault even though there was no possible way that she could have avoided the second task.
Hermione, Elliot and Maddy were let out of the hospital wing in time to be late to Care of Magical Creatures, for Hermione and Maddy, and Muggle Studies for Elliot. Hermione's hands were heavily bandaged and Maddy and Elliot had thick bandages soaked in some sort of potion wrapped around their wounded parts.
"Oh, there y'are, Hermione, Maddy!" Hagrid called when the two got down to his cabin. "Been wondering where you were. What happened?"
"We can explain later," Maddy sighed, noticing Pansy Parkinson sharply eying them, no doubt trying to listen in on what they say to see if there was anything she could use in some way.
"Alright, here, we're dealing with Nifflers today," he said, handing them both a fuzzy, black animal with a long snout. Maddy's cuddled up to her. "You won't be able to win, but it's still fun to watch them dig up coins. Go ahead and set them down over there."
"These are the best things you've ever had, Hagrid," Maddy said. "They're definitely Underworld creatures or related to some!"
"Really?"
"Yep, only Underworld creatures act this way around me."
"Fang likes you."
"Hagrid, Fang's a hellhound... that's an Underworld monster... that's why he's so big, normal dogs aren't the size of a small car."
"Oh." Well, he took that well. Actually, it probably made him like Fang more.
"Well, time to participate," Maddy said, walking over to the group of people and placing her Niffler down right beside Harry's, Hermione was beside Ron, who was overflowing with coins. Harry was just sitting there and chatting with Ron while Bella was actually digging through the ground herself.
"What are you doing?" Maddy asked her.
"Helping Fluffers," she replied.
"You've named it already?"
"Yeah, she's super cute. I plan to take her from Hagrid and she will be mine!"
"But they wreck houses, you heard Hagrid," Ron pointed out.
"It'll be fine," Bella said, "besides, I have a few people whose apartments would be really fun to trash! Let's see... it's mostly kids of Venus, I would do it to Reyna too but she would probably punish me in some way since she's the preator. No sense of sisterly love in that one. I'm joking, she loves me, but she really would like kick my arse or something if I did anything to her place."
"Well, let's check how yeh've done!" said Hagrid after a few minutes. "Count yer coins! An' there's no point tryin' ter steal any, Goyle," he added, his beetle-black eyes narrowed. "It's leprechaun gold. Vanishes after a few hours."
Goyle emptied his pockets, looking extremely sulky. It turned out that Ron's niffler had been most successful, so Hagrid gave him an enormous slab of Honeydukes chocolate for a prize.
The bell rang across the grounds for lunch; the rest of the class set off back to the castle, but Harry, Ron, Bella, Hermione and Maddy stayed behind to help Hagrid put the nifflers back in their boxes.
"Now, what have you two done to yerselves?" Hagrid said to Hermione and Maddy, looking concerned.
"We got a lot of hate mail," Hermione sighed. "I got a letter filled with undiluted bubotuber pus."
"Mine literally exploded on me," Maddy added. "It was Moonshine Potion or something."
"Moonstone Poison," Bella corrected.
"That's nasty stuff, that is," Hagrid commented. "It can do some real damage. Anyways, what're people mad at you for?"
"Other demigods are getting pissy because I didn't just not pass out in the lake," Maddy said. "I'm actually relieved, I can openly say 'thank you Tyche,' or 'curse you Eris,' or you know whatever else I want to say."
"Don't worry you two," Hagrid said gently. "I got some o' those letters an' all, after Rita Skeeter wrote abou' me mum. 'Yeh're a monster an' yeh should be put down.' 'Yer mother killed innocent people an' if you had any decency you'd jump in a lake.'"
"No!" said Hermione, looking shocked.
"Yeah," said Hagrid, heaving the niffler crates over by his cabin wall.
"Wow, so 'kill yourself' messages exist in the wizarding world too," Maddy said. "Wonderful, just what I've always wanted."
"They're jus' nutters. Don't open 'em if you get any more. Chuck 'em straigh' in the fire."
"I wonder why I didn't think of that..."
"Yeah, you're usually the first one to suggest avoiding things by destroying them," Bella nodded.
Harry's owl didn't return with Percy's response until Easter -by which time both Maddy and Hermione had gotten an innumerable amount of hate mail, including Howlers- and alongside the letter, she carried six chocolate Easter eggs. Harry, Ron, Elliot and Bella's were the size of dragon eggs and full of homemade toffee, Hermione's was barely larger than a chicken's and completely empty and Maddy's was just massive and filled with caramel.
"You know, I'm fine with people being afraid of me if it means I get huge amounts of chocolate and caramel," she said.
"You can have some of my egg, Hermione," Bella was saying at the same time. "I can just steal some of Maddy's later."
"You will do no such thing!"
"Thanks, Bella, but you don't have to do that," Hermione said, sadly looking at her tiny egg.
"I feel conflicted," Maddy whispered at no one.
"Don't you want to see what Percy's written?" Harry asked her hastily.
Percy's letter was short and irritated.
As I am constantly telling the Daily Prophet, Mr Crouch is taking a well-deserved break. He is sending in regular owls with instructions. No, I haven't actually seen him, but I think I can be trusted to know my own superior's handwriting. I have quite enough to do at the moment without trying to quash these ridiculous rumors. Please don't bother me again unless it's something important.
Happy Easter.
In the last month of May, Maddy and Harry were held back after Transfiguration.
"You are to go down to the Quidditch field tonight at nine o'clock," she told them. "Mr Bagman will be there to tell the champions about the third task."
That night, Maddy and Harry met up in the entrance hall and then ended up walking into Fleur as they walked past the Beauxbatons cabin.
"So, what horrible thing do you think we'll have to this time?" Maddy asked.
"I heard something about underground tunnels," Fleur replied. "We might have to search for a treasure or something like that."
"That might be the best possible situation other than not doing this. Searching for treasure, I can use a niffler, if it's like a labyrinth thing that we have to go through and then get out of it I can just use a super long string like Ariadne gave to Theseus. It feels surprisingly good to actually bring up history that I actually know about."
"That would be a pretty good plan," Fleur nodded.
"Am I the only one that isn't familiar with this sort of stuff?" Harry asked.
"Yes," Maddy nodded.
They walked down the dark lawn to the Quidditch stadium, turned through a gap in the stands, and walked out onto the field.
"What've they done to it?" Harry exclaimed, stopping in his tracks.
The Quidditch field was no longer smooth and flat. It looked as though somebody had been building long, low walls all over it that twisted and crisscrossed in every direction.
"Nevermind, it won't be underground," Fleur added.
"Damn it, why'd you have to suggest that and get my hopes up?" Maddy muttered.
"Hello there!" called a cheery voice.
Ludo Bagman was standing in the middle of the field with Krum. Harry, Maddy and Fleur made their way toward them, climbing over the hedges.
"Well, what d'you think?" said Bagman happily as they climbed over the last hedge. "Growing nicely, aren't they? Give them a month and Hagrid'll have them twenty feet high. Don't worry," he added, grinning, spotting the less-than-happy expressions on Harry's face, "you'll have your Quidditch field back to normal once the task is over! Now, I imagine you can guess what we're making here?"
No one spoke for a moment. Then, "Maze," grunted Krum.
"That's right!" said Bagman. "A maze. The third task's really very straightforward. The Triwizard Cup will be placed in the center of the maze. The first champion to touch it will receive full marks."
"We simply have to get through the maze?" Fleur asked.
"There will be obstacles," said Bagman happily, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Hagrid is providing a number of creatures... then there will be spells that must be broken... all that sort of thing, you know. Now, the champion who is leading on points will get a head start into the maze." Bagman grinned at Harry. "Then Mr Krum and Miss Delacour will enter and finally, Miss Mender will enter as well. But you'll all be in with a fighting chance, depending how well you get past the obstacles. Should be fun, eh?"
Everyone nodded politely.
"Very well... if you haven't got any questions, we'll go back up to the castle, shall we, it's a bit chilly..."
"So close to being able to do the Ariadne's string thing," Maddy muttered as everyone began to walk over the new hedges again. "Other than that, this is pretty much just... standard life... although that is the reason why so many of us have died before the age of sixteen. Oh gods, I've survived Poseidon trying to kill me and I'm going to die in a maze."
"You have been having a lot of these moments this year," Harry said.
"And you haven't had enough of these moments, Harry!"
Everyone walked together along the castle, although Krum split off rather early to go to the Durmstrang ship.
Fairly close to the point where Fleur would have to split off as well, Maddy felt a familiar drop in her gut and stopped dead in her tracks.
"Maddy?" Harry stopped as well.
"Is something wrong?" Fleur asked.
"Not really, somebody that I kinda know just died somewhere within a twenty mile radius," she replied.
"Wait, who?" Harry asked.
"I don't know, that's why I was so vague, if someone I don't really know dies I can only tell that someone has died somewhere within a twenty mile radius."
"That's quite a power," Mr Bagman commented. "We should find who it is."
"Mr Bagman, can you stay here as a place marker?"
"Sure, of course!"
"Harry, come look with me, Fleur, can you get Circe MacBeth?"
"Of course I can, but why?" She asked.
"You can ask her yourself, come on, Harry!" Maddy shouted as she ran away with Harry in tow.
Maddy, Harry, Fleur and Circe were walking back to where Ludo Bagman was anxiously standing, talking to Professor Dumbledore and Professor Moody. Harry quickly tried to shove the Marauders Map into his pocket.
"Ah, Miss Mender," Dumbledore said in a strangely solemn voice. "Ludo has just finished telling me about what has happened. Have you found anything?"
"No," Maddy sighed. "It might have just been a mistake, or something, maybe. Possibly. Kinda unlikely but still possible, it's a pretty unique feeling. Sorry about that. Maybe wasting your time, that is. Language is hard, I think you get what I mean so I'm going to stop talking now. Right now. At this moment. Harry, please say something before it's just lots of words falling out of my mouth like word vomit. Like right now. Harry, why aren't you talking! Y-"
"Oh my gods, stop, Maddy!" Circe exclaimed.
"Thank you," Maddy whispered. "I'm sorry for that babbling..."
"It's quite alright, I imagine you are quite stressed," Dumbledore commented as Moody quietly conversed with Harry. "We will try our best to help. I'll ask Hagrid to do a more thorough search of the grounds and Professor Moody and I will see what else could have happened."
"You don't need to do that, I could be entirely wrong!" Maddy exclaimed. "I'm just kinda jumpy about that sort of feeling..."
"I trust your instinct, besides we should be as thorough as possible when dealing with someone's life, however, you four should return to your carriage and common rooms respectively."
"We can he-" Harry began.
"You have already done more than enough," Dumbledore interrupted.
Maddy and Harry said goodbye to Fleur and Circe as they begrudgingly departed from the others and headed for the front doors.
"So what did Moody want?" Maddy asked.
"He saw my map," Harry replied as he pushed on the front doors. "He asked to borrow it."
"Did you let him?"
"Of course! I didn't see a reason not to and even I didn't agree he could have just confiscated it."
"Fair enough," Maddy sighed. "Night, Harry," she yawned as she slit off from Harry and headed for the dungeons.
The next day, Maddy, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Bella and Elliot headed towards the Defence classroom after their History of Magic classroom. They hurried out into the corridors toward the Dark Arts classroom and found Professor Moody leaving it. He looked as tired as they all felt -Harry, Ron, Hermione and Bella had woken up at some obscene hour of the morning to send a letter to Sirius (they also saw Fred and George, who were apparently blackmailing someone) and Maddy and Elliot were just groggy from sleeping through the entire class- the eyelid of his normal eye was drooping, giving his face an even more lopsided appearance than usual.
"Professor Moody?" Harry called as they made their way toward him through the crowd.
"Hello, Potter," growled Moody. His magical eye followed a couple of passing first years, who sped up, looking nervous; it rolled into the back of Moody's head and watched them around the corner before he spoke again. "Come in here." He stood back to let them into his empty classroom, limped in after them, and closed the door.
"Did you find it?" Harry asked without preamble. "The body?"
"No," said Moody. He moved over to his desk, sat down, stretched out his wooden leg with a slight groan, and pulled out his hip flask.
"Did you use the map?" Harry said.
"Of course," said Moody, taking a swig from his flask. "There wasn't a single person anywhere on there that was dead."
"So whoever killed the person disapparated with the body!" Ron exclaimed.
"Incorrect," Elliot mumbled lazily. "Y' can't disapparate within the Hogwarts grounds."
"I've told you that a million times," Hermione sighed. "There are other ways the body could have disappeared, aren't there, professor?"
Moody's magical eye quivered as it rested on Hermione. "You're someone who might think about a career as an Auror," he told her. "Mind works the right way, Granger." Hermione flushed pink with pleasure.
"Well, the body wasn't invisible," Harry said. "The map shows invisible things. Then again, I'm not really sure if it shows bodies..."
"It probably does," Bella interjected. "It shows ghosts."
"That doesn't mean it shows bodies," Maddy, who was leaning on Elliot -who was also leaning on Maddy- said. "Ghosts and bodies are different, actually I'd say it probably doesn't show bodies since ghosts are like the life force, sort of, of people. It's hard to explain but I bet you get it. To make sure you might want to take a look at the Founder's Graveyard... I'm gonna go to the sleep party now..."
"An excellent point," Moody agreed. "You could also make a good Auror."
"No thank you, I'll stick with something boring. Slightly lower the risk of me dying before the age of twenty."
"Maybe," Ron said, thinking hard, "maybe whoever died was picked up by someone on a broom and they flew away!" He looked quite pleased with himself and he clearly wanted to be told that he had the makings of an Auror as well.
"This is accurate and happens all the time," Bella nodded.
"We can't rule out someone taking the body," Moody growled, then he yawned widely, so that his scars stretched, and his lopsided mouth revealed a number of missing teeth. Then he said, "Now, Dumbledore's told me you six fancy yourselves as investigators, but there's nothing you can do for this. The Ministry'll be looking for anything that could help, Dumbledore's notified them. Potter, Mender, you two just keep your mind on the third task."
"What?" said Harry. "Oh yeah..."
"Should be right up your street, this one," said Moody, looking up at Harry and scratching his scarred and stubbly chin. "From what Dumbledore's said, you've managed to get through stuff like this plenty of times. You both broke your way through a series of obstacles guarding the Philosopher's Stone in your first year, didn't you?"
"We helped," Ron said quickly. "Me and Hermione and Bella helped."
"And Elliot was sleeping," Maddy interjected. "Also, yes, piece of cake. Compared to the other tasks anyway. Probably."
"In the meantime... constant vigilance, you two. Constant vigilance." He took another long draw from his hip flask, and his magical eye swiveled onto the window. The topmost sail of the Durmstrang ship was visible through it. "You four," counseled Moody, his normal eye on Ron, Bella, Elliot and Hermione, "you stick close to these two, all right? I'm keeping an eye on things, but all the same... you can never have too many eyes out."
The next morning, Sirius sent back a letter to Harry.
Harry - So someone has died? Harry, absolutely DO NOT interfere or go looking for the person. There is somebody very dangerous at Hogwarts. Your and Maddy's names didn't get into the Goblet of Fire by accident. If someone's trying to attack you, they're on their last chance. Stay close to your friends, do not leave Gryffindor Tower after hours, and arm yourself for the third task. Practice Stunning and Disarming. A few hexes wouldn't go amiss either, maybe ask Maddy to help you with some physical fighting, you never know if it could be used. There's nothing you can do about the death. Keep your head down and look after yourself. I'm waiting for your letter giving me your word you won't stray out-of-bounds again.
Sirius
"Who's he, to lecture me about being out-of-bounds?" said Harry in mild indignation as he folded up Sirius's letter and put it inside his robes. "After all the stuff he did at school!"
"Yeah, but he didn't have an evil wizard after him," Maddy pointed out. "I think he made some good points. Meet me and Bella in the empty classroom across the hall from History of Magic between dinner and your last class."
"I can't do that time!" Bella exclaimed.
"What why not?"
"I'm still doing orchestra!"
"Since when have you been doing orchestra?"
"Since first year! Don't you remember, we had a whole conversation about it in our first year and the fact that I play the violin is the reason why we even got past Fluffy!"
"I vaguely remember that... Why hasn't it come up since then?"
"We don't do anything and you don't pay attention to anything," Bella replied.
"Good point..."
"-in training for the third task, straight away. And you make sure you write back to Sirius and promise him you're not going to go sneaking off alone again," Hermione was saying, apparently she, Harry, Ron and Elliot had been having a conversation. "You really should meet up with Maddy and Bella sometime to get some physical training in."
"I can do after dinner," Bella offered, "and I know Maddy can too because she doesn't do anything and, Harry, I know you can as well because I know that you also do nothing."
"You got me there, I've got no life," Maddy sighed.
"That's fine with me, and I do do things," Harry said defensively.
For the next few days, Harry and Maddy spent all their time looking up spells, practicing them on the others -'the others' being Bella, Hermione and Ron since Elliot decided to hand out with Seo-yun instead of being slammed with spells- and Bella and Maddy teaching Harry some basic fighting and defence moves. Bella also gave Maddy her shield because she was, in Bella's words, 'too fragile.'
"Can't we kidnap Mrs. Norris?" Ron suggested on Monday lunchtime as he lay flat on his back in the middle of their Charms classroom, having just been Stunned and reawoken by Harry for the fifth time in a row. "Let's Stun her for a bit. Or you could use Dobby, Harry, I bet he'd do anything to help you. I'm not complaining or anything-" he got gingerly to his feet, rubbing his backside "-but I'm aching all over..."
"Sounds like complaining," Bella said as she stood up after being reawoken by Maddy.
"Hey, you have giant hair that acts like a cushion."
"Since when has hair been a cushion? And it doesn't help when I fall forward onto my face! I chipped a tooth last time!" She grabbed her lips and pulled them out to reveal her recently chipped front tooth.
"Well, you both keep missing the cushions, don't you!" said Hermione impatiently, rearranging the pile of cushions they had used for the Banishing Spell in Charms, which Flitwick had left in a cabinet. "Just try and fall backward!"
"Once you're Stunned, you can't aim too well, Hermione!" said Ron angrily.
At the same time Bella had exclaimed, "How about you try falling in a specific direction while Stunned!"
"Why don't you take a turn?"
"Well, I think Harry and Maddy have got it now, anyway," said Hermione hastily. "And we don't have to worry about Disarming for Harry, because he's been able to do that for ages...I Bella should go over some more defensive moves, while Maddy works on Disarming..."
The bell rang and they hastily shoved the cushions back into Flitwick's cupboard and slipped out of the classroom.
"See you at dinner!" said Hermione, and she set off for Arithmancy, while Harry, Bella and Ron headed toward North Tower for Divination and Maddy headed for the East Tower for Study of Ancient Runes.
