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Harry Potter was smiling. He hadn't stopped smiling since the incident on the Quidditch pitch. Yes, there was a lot of complaint - he'd basically murdered a classmate in front of the entire school. However, there didn't seem to be squat the wizarding world could do about it.
Aurors had been dispatched to the school to arrest him, and every single one of them had been turned away. Harry hadn't needed to attack anyone, destroy anything - nothing. He'd simply said that they'd be much better served going and dealing with the Voldemort problem and leaving him alone.
Well, to be fair, he'd been literally glowing with arcane energy and speaking in a loud, booming voice when he'd made his suggestions - but they were friendly suggestions, none the less. Really, he just didn't want to be bothered. By anyone.
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Sirius had fallen out of his chair for the second time. Harry was sitting in the kitchen with him at Grimmauld Place, recounting the day's events for his Godfather.
"Ok, so Umbridge tried to get me to leave her class. Again." Harry took a swig of his can of Mountain Dew. "I swear - every single day, Princess PigFace gets it in her head that I'm suddenly going to start to care what she says. I'm only even going to her stupid class just because I know it annoys her."
Sirius scrubbed some tears out of his eyes and climbed back up into his chair. Nodding, he bounced up and down a little - like an expectant child hanging on every word.
"So she decides that today she's had enough of my 'blatant disrespect of Ministry doctrine and law' and actually drew her wand. She pointed a wand right AT ME. Can you believe it?" he chugged the rest of the can and let out a resounding belch. Then he set the can on the table, waved his hand over it, and animated it to be a little metal dancing Lucius Malfoy - complete with hat and cane.
"Hello my baby! Hello my honey! Hello my raaagtime gaaaaal..." the little 'can-man' was singing in a tinny voice as it capered around, twirling hat and cane. The door to the kitchen opened to admit Remus, and as the wolf-man's eyes fell upon the small figure it squatted down, eyeing him morosely.
"Ribbit!!"
Harry was holding his sides, laughing silently in great shakes. Sirius, by way of contrast, was howling at the rafters, gasping for breath.
"Riiibbiiiiit..."
The tiny Malfoy copy just stayed there, hunched over, eyes protruding out of his face, croaking piteously at Remus. Lupin snickered at it, grabbed a bottle of butterbeer out of the fridge and then headed back out of the kitchen again. As the door clicked shut, the metal man burst back into a fury of dancing and waving.
"Send me a kiss by wiiiire!!"
The little man twirled and spun around.
"Baby, my hearts on fiiiire!!"
Dropping to one knee and clutching its little hands over it chest, it opened its mouth for the next verse as the kitchen door opened again. Slumping back into the frog pose, it stared again at Remus.
"Ribbit."
This time both Harry and Sirius hit the floor.
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Harry was sitting in the Great Hall, picking over his lunch. He found that he no longer felt much need to study. First off, even if he cared about the magical theory in all his books, that none of those rules even applied to him any more. For instance, he could apparate in and out of Hogwart's, completely disregarding the wards in and around the place.
True, it set the alarms to screaming every time he did it - aging Dumbledore another few years - but Harry just couldn't bring himself to care. He wanted to care. A little. Well... not very much. After the first couple of times, he even stopped bothering to put on 'his caring face'.
"Have at you!" Harry decided that right that moment - it being lunch time - was a perfect time to instigate a duel of sorts. So, he picked up a fork and headed over to the Ravenclaw table.
Luna Lovegood was sitting by herself, as was her habit. She was midway through her lunch of a delicious green salad when she spotted Harry Potter coming her way with a gleam in his eye. He seemed to be brandishing a fork.
"I challenge you to a duel, Lovegood!!"
Grinning widely, she picked up one of her forks and started to stand up. Harry jumped up on the table, scattering dishes and food. She followed him up and they saluted each other. With the forks.
The entire hall had gone quiet. The two of them were staring at eachother, smiling just a bit.
"Well. You seem a decent young lady Miss Lovegood. I hate to kill you." Harry's smile grew all the wider.
"You seem a decent young man, Mister Potter. I hate to die."
"Begin!"
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The two ran around the great hall, jabbing forks at one another, kicking food off of tables and just generally causing mayhem. Everyone else in the hall was quite honestly too stunned to even bother them - or had gotten up and fled in the face of such obvious madness.
They'd climbed on top of the Slytherin table and were inching backwards towards the far edge, Harry getting closer and closer to falling off the edge.
"You are wonderful!"
Eyes glittering in the candlelight, Luna responded appropriately "Thank you - I've worked hard to become so."
"I admit it - you are better than I am!" Harry was smiling like a loon as he said this.
"Then why are you smiling?"
"Because I know something you don't know."
"And what is that?"
"I am not left-handed." Harry twirled the fork around in his left hand for a moment before flipping it up into the air and catching it in his right. Giving his weapon a few test slashes for effect, and then lunging in to give Luna a bit of a poke with it. The battle began in earnest once again, this time with Harry doing most of the attacking and Luna giving ground steadily.
"You're amazing!" praised the blonde girl as she was forced onto the defensive in the face of a much greater skill now that Harry switched hands.
"I ought to be, after fifteen years of raising food to my face with these things."
Harry drove Luna back to the other end of the table, the tines of their silverware bound up together.
"There's something I ought to tell you, Mister Potter."
"Tell me."
"I am not left-handed either."
As Luna flicked her own fork up into the air, she smiled dreamily and pirouetted lazily on one foot. Harry stepped back, he face showing his admiration for her part in the playing.
Reaching her right hand up with a lazy wave, her fork dropped softly into it. Closing her eyes completely, Luna performed a gentle back walkover off the end of the table - her sense of balance perfect. Harry had to scramble off the side of the table to face her.
Locking forks once again, they resumed the battle with furious purpose, leaving the Great Hall while trading more of the script as they fought.
Neville Longbottom had been watching the entire affair with a bite of food halfway raised to his face. Setting his fork down at last, he just shook his head.
"Who knew."
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Floating hundreds of feet above Hogwart's under his own power, Harry was pondering the state of things. He'd come to the conclusion that ultimately, he could do exactly whatever it was he wanted - anything he could imagine. However it had happened, he had effectively become a being comprised entirely of willpower and magic. He supposed he might be able to simply smite Voldemort into dust - however, he really wasn't feeling much like it at the moment.
Flying down towards Ravenclaw tower, he found the window he wanted and rapped on it quietly. One of the fourth year girls looked up at him. It wasn't exactly curfew yet - though, it also wasn't standard practice for someone to be hovering outside one of the tower windows either. Especially a boy. An upside down boy.
He motioned over towards Luna and made a beckoning motion. The blonde looked up at her yearmate, and then spotted Harry outside the window. Closing the book she'd been reading, she came over and opened the window.
"Hello, Harry!"
"Hello, Luna! It's a lovely evening - would you like to come out for a bit of a float?"
Without another word, she hopped up onto the window sill, stepped out into open air and let herself fall.
Harry dipped around and caught her deftly around the waist in a warm hug.
"I knew I could trust you Harry. No fear."
Smiling widely, he propelled them both away from the body of the castle proper, out over the lake. The night mist was creeping along the surface of the water, passing a most, earthy smell up into the evening air. It came with a touch of chill, but the proximity of the two kept them plenty warm enough.
"Where should we go, Luna? I mean, we can go anywhere. Anywhere at all."
Harry looked into Luna's eyes as she stared up at him, considered what he had in his wallet, and made his decision.
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"Luna, I've never had a girlfriend before. So, I'm going to just give this a go."
Nodding over her mug of hot chocolate, Luna found herself smiling so widely that she thought her face might crack.
Harry considered himself for a moment. This ascension into magical dietyhood business was all well and good. He certainly felt no fear at all over what had happened to him, or what was to come. Considering Luna's background and habit of seeing what wasn't readily apparent to most everyone else, he found that he had grown kind of fond of the strange Ravenclaw. He knew that he could do much, much worse for himself than to date a friend.
"So, do you think you could date The-Boy-With-Hyphens?" It struck Harry as somewhat comedic. He'd just flown both himself and Luna from Scotland to Paris - stopping along the way to pick up a little bread and cheese, along with some chocolate. They'd then landed on the top of the Eiffel Tower, and were currently lounging in the observation deck - and as it was well after operating hours, they had the place to themselves.
Luna squinted at Harry just a bit, the corners of her eyes crinkling with mirth - the seriousness of the situation completely ruined by the big hot chocolate mustache she was now sporting. "I'd love to be your girlfriend, Harry Potter."
He laughed a bit, and handed her a napkin. "Brilliant! That's just brilliant!"
Now he had a dedicated partner in crime. Hogwart's had only just begun to see the madness.
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