A.N—I'm updating a lot to make up for my lack of updates. R&R.
Disclaimer—I own Harry Potter! That and I can fly like superman! LOL.
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Chapter Thirty Three.
Dark and Difficult Times.
It was with a heavy heart that Harry packed his trunk up in the dormitory on the night before his return to Privet Drive. He was dreading the Leaving Feast, which was usually a cause for celebration, when the winner of the Inter-House Championship would be announced. He had avoided being in the Great Hall when it was full ever since he had left the hospital wing, preferring to eat when it was nearly empty to avoid the stares of his fellow students.
Lexi had saved the three a seat next to her. She was glad to be leaving. The last month had flown by, and she couldn't have been happier about it. She'd received word from her mother and uncle, but they hadn't said anything except that they were safe.
They ate their meals silently. Fred and George didn't move from Lexi's side and Harry, Hermione and Ron sat opposite them.
Soon they were waiting in the crowded entrance hall with the rest of the school for the carriages that would take them back to Hogsmeade station. It was another beautiful summer's day. Harry supposed that Privet Drive would be hot and leafy, its flower beds a riot of colour, when he arrived there that evening. The thought gave him no pleasure at all.
"'Arry!"
He looked around. Fleur Delacour was hurrying up the stone steps into the castle. Beyond her, far across the grounds Harry could see Hagrid helping Madame Maxime to back two of the giant horses into their harness. The Beauxbatons carriage was about to take off.
"We will see each uzzer again, I 'ope," said Fleur as she reached him, holding out her hand. "I am 'oping to get a job 'ere, to improve my Eenglish."
"It's very good already," said Ron in a strangled sort of voice. Fleur smiled at him; Hermione scowled. Fleur then hugged Lexi, thanking her again in French and giving the young girl her address so they could keep in touch.
"Good-bye, 'Arry, Lexi," said Fleur, turning to go. "It 'az been a pleasure meeting you!"
Harrys spirits couldn't help but lift slightly as he watched Fleur hurry back across the lawns to Madame Maxime, her silvery hair rippling in the sunlight.
"Wonder how the Durmstrang students are getting back," said Ron. "D' you reckon they can steer that ship without Karkaroff?"
"Karkaroff did not steer," said a gruff voice. "He stayed in his cabin and let us do the vork."
Krum had come to say good-bye to Hermione. "Could I have a vord?" he asked her.
"Oh… yes… all right," said Hermione, looking slightly flustered, and following Krum through the crowd and out of sight. Lexi watched the two leave with a sad smile.
The weather could not have been more different on the journey back to King's Cross than it had been on their way to Hogwarts the previous September. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had managed to get a compartment to share with Lexi and Cedric. The five of them had grown closer over the year.
They broke off their conversation about what action Dumbledore might be taking, even now, to stop Voldemort only when the lunch trolley arrived.
When Hermione returned from the trolley and put her money back into her schoolbag, she dislodged a copy of the Daily Prophet that she had been carrying in there. Harry looked at it, unsure whether he really wanted to know what it might say, but Hermione, seeing him looking at it, said calmly, "There's nothing in there. You can look for yourself, but there's nothing at all. I've been checking every day. Just a small piece the day after the third task saying you won the tournament."
"What about Rita Skeeter?" Cedric asked.
"Oh, Rita hasn't written anything at all since the third task," said Hermione in an oddly constrained voice. "As a matter of fact," she added, her voice now trembling slightly, "Rita Skeeter isn't going to be writing anything at all for a while. Not unless she wants me to spill the beans on her."
"What are you talking about?" Ron asked, confused.
"I found out how she was listening in on private conversations when she wasn't supposed to be coming onto the grounds," Hermione said in a rush.
Harry had the impression that Hermione had been dying to tell them this for days, but that she had restrained herself in light of everything else that had happened.
"How was she doing it?" Lexi asked at once.
"How did you find out?" said Ron, staring at her.
"Well, it was you, really, who gave me the idea Harry," she said.
"Did I?" said Harry, perplexed. "How?"
"Bugging," said Hermione happily.
"But you said they didn't work -"
"Oh not electronic bugs," said Hermione. "No, you see… Rita Skeeter" - Hermione's voice trembled with quiet triumph - "is an unregistered Animagus. She can turn -"
Hermione pulled a small sealed glass jar out other bag. "- into a beetle."
"You're kidding," Cedric said. "You haven't… she's not…"
"Oh yes she is," said Hermione happily, brandishing the jar at them.
Inside were a few twigs and leaves and one large, fat beetle.
"You got her in a bloody jar," Lexi said, laughing.
"That's never - you're kidding -" Ron whispered, lifting the jar to his eyes.
"No, I'm not," said Hermione, beaming. "I caught her on the windowsill in the hospital wing. Look very closely, and you'll notice the markings around her antennae are exactly like those foul glasses she wears."
Harry looked and saw that she was quite right. He also remembered something.
"There was a beetle on the statue the night we heard Hagrid telling Madame Maxime about his mum!"
"Exactly," said Hermione. "And Viktor pulled a beetle out of my hair after we'd had our conversation by the lake. And unless I'm very much mistaken, Rita was perched on the windowsill of the Divination class the day your scar hurt. She's been buzzing around for stories all year."
"When we saw Malfoy under that tree…" said Ron slowly.
"He was talking to her, in his hand," said Hermione. "He knew, of course. That's how she's been getting all those nice little interviews with the Slytherins. They wouldn't care that she was doing something illegal, as long as they were giving her horrible stuff about us and Hagrid."
Hermione took the glass jar back from Ron and smiled at the beetle, which buzzed angrily against the glass.
"You're bloody brilliant, Mione." Cedric chuckled.
"I've told her I'll let her out when we get back to London," said Hermione. "I've put an Unbreakable Charm on the jar, you see, so she can't transform. And I've told her she's to keep her quill to herself for a whole year. See if she can't break the habit of writing horrible lies about people."
The door of the compartment slid open.
"Very clever Granger," said Draco Malfoy.
Crabbe and Goyle were standing behind him. All three of them looked more pleased with themselves, more arrogant and more menacing, than Harry had ever seen them.
"So," said Malfoy slowly, advancing slightly into the compartment and looking slowly around at them, a smirk quivering on his lips. "You caught some pathetic reporter, and Potter's Dumbledore's favorite boy again. Big deal."
His smirk widened. Crabbe and Goyle leered.
"Trying not to think about it, are we?" said Malfoy softly, looking around at all of them. "Trying to pretend it hasn't happened?"
"Get out," said Harry. Lexi's hand was wrapped around the handle of her wand.
Harry had not been this close to Malfoy since he had watched him muttering to Crabbe and Goyle during Dumbledores speech. He could feel a kind of ringing in his ears. His hand gripped his wand under his robes.
"You've picked the losing side, Potter! I warned you! I told you you ought to choose your company more carefully, remember? When we met on the train, first day at Hogwarts? I told you not to hang around with riffraff like this!" He jerked his head at Ron and Hermione. "Too late now Potter! They'll be the first to go, now the Dark Lord's back! Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first!"
It was as though someone had exploded a box of fireworks within the compartment. Blinded by the blaze of the spells that had blasted from every direction, deafened by a series of bangs, Lexi blinked and looked down at the floor.
Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were all lying unconscious in the doorway. Harry, Ron, Lexi, Cedric and Hermione were on their feet, all five of them having used a different hex. Nor were they the only ones to have done so.
"Thought we'd see what those three were up to," said Fred matter-of-factly, stepping onto Goyle and into the compartment. He had his wand out, and so did George, who was careful to tread on Malfoy as he followed Fred inside.
"Interesting effect," said George, looking down at Crabbe. "Who used the Furnunculus Curse?"
"Me," said Harry.
"Odd," said George lightly. "I used Jelly-Legs. Looks as though those two shouldn't be mixed. He seems to have sprouted little tentacles all over his face. Well, let's not leave them here, they don't add much to the decor."
Ron, Cedric, Harry, and George kicked, rolled, and pushed the unconscious Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle - each of whom looked distinctly the worse for the jumble of jinxes with which they had been hit - out into the corridor, then came back into the compartment and rolled the door shut.
"Exploding Snap, anyone?" said Fred, pulling out a pack of cards.
They were halfway through their fifth game when Harry decided to ask them.
"You going to tell us, then?" he said to George. "Who you were blackmailing?"
"Oh," said George darkly. "That."
"It doesn't matter," said Fred, shaking his head impatiently. "It wasn't anything important. Not now, anyway."
"We've given up," Lexi said, shrugging.
But Harry, Cedric, Ron, and Hermione kept on asking, and finally, Fred said, "All right, all right, if you really want to know… it was Ludo Bagman."
"Bagman?" said Harry sharply. "Are you saying he was involved in -"
"Nah," said George gloomily. "Nothing like that. Stupid git. He wouldn't have the brains."
"Well, what, then?" said Ron.
Fred hesitated, then said, "You remember that bet we had with him at the Quidditch World Cup? About how Ireland would win, but Krum would get the Snitch?"
"Yeah," said Harry and Ron slowly.
"Well, the git paid us in leprechaun gold he'd caught from the Irish mascots." Lexi said.
"So?"
"So," said Fred impatiently, "it vanished, didn't it? By next morning, it had gone!"
"But - it must've been an accident, mustn't it?" said Hermione.
George and Lexi laughed very bitterly.
"Yeah, that's what we thought, at first. We thought if we just wrote to him, and told him he'd made a mistake, he'd cough up. But nothing doing. Ignored our letter. We kept trying to talk to him about it at Hogwarts, but he was always making some excuse to get away from us." George said.
"In the end, he turned pretty nasty," said Fred. "Told us we were too young to gamble, and he wasn't giving us anything."
"So we asked for our money back," Lexi said, glowering.
"He didn't refuse!" gasped Hermione.
"Right in one," said Fred.
"But that was all your savings!" said Ron to the twins.
"Tell me about it," said George. "'Course, we found out what was going on in the end. Lee Jordan's dad had had a bit of trouble getting money off Bagman as well. Turns out he's in big trouble with the goblins. Borrowed loads of gold off them. A gang of them cornered him in the woods after the World Cup and took all the gold he had, and it still wasn't enough to cover all his debts. They followed him all the way to Hogwarts to keep an eye on him. He's lost everything gambling. Hasn't got two Galleons to rub together. And you know how the idiot tried to pay the goblins back?"
"How?" said Harry.
"He put a bet on you," Lexi smirked. "Put a big bet on you to win the tournament. Bet against the goblins."
"So that's why he kept trying to help me win!" said Harry. "Well - I did win, didn't I? So he can pay you your gold!"
"Nope," Fred said, shaking his head. "The goblins play as dirty as him. They say you drew with Cedric, and Bagman was betting you'd win outright. So Bagman had to run for it. He did run for it right after the third task."
George sighed deeply and started dealing out the cards again.
The rest of the journey passed pleasantly enough; Harry wished it could have gone on all summer, in fact, and that he would never arrive at King's Cross… but as he had learned the hard way that year, time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead, and all too soon, the Hogwarts Express was pulling in at platform nine and three-quarters. The usual confusion and noise filled the corridors as the students began to disembark. Ron and Hermione struggled out past Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, carrying their trunks. Harry, however, stayed put.
"Fred - George – Lexi; wait a moment."
The twins turned and Lexi froze. Harry pulled open his trunk and drew out his Triwizard winnings.
"Take it," he said, and he thrust the sack into George's hands.
"What?" said Fred, looking flabbergasted.
"Take it," Harry repeated firmly. "I don't want it."
"You're mental," said George, trying to push it back at Harry.
"No, I'm not," said Harry. "You take it, and get inventing. It's for the joke shop."
"He is mental," Lexi said in an almost awed voice.
"Listen," said Harry firmly. "If you don't take it, I'm throwing it down the drain. I don't want it and I don't need it. But I could do with a few laughs. We could all do with a few laughs. I've got a feeling we're going to need them more than usual before long."
"Harry," said George weakly, weighing the money bag in his hands, "there's got to be a thousand Galleons in here."
"Yeah," said Harry, grinning. "Think how many Canary Creams that is."
The twins stared at him. Lexi was blinking rapidly.
"Just don't tell your mum where you got it… although she might not be so keen for you to join the Ministry anymore, come to think of it…"
"Harry," Fred began, but Harry pulled out his wand.
"Look," he said flatly, "take it, or I'll hex you. I know some good ones now. Just do me one favour, okay? Buy Ron some different dress robes and say they're from you."
He left the compartment before they could say another word, stepping over Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, who were still lying on the floor, covered in hex marks.
Uncle Vernon was waiting beyond the barrier. Mrs. Weasley was close by him. She hugged Harry very tightly when she saw him. Sophia came up to him and whispered in his ear as she hugged him, "I think Dumbledore will let you come to us later in the summer. Keep in touch, Harry."
"See you. Harry," said Ron, clapping him on the back.
"'Bye, Harry!" said Hermione, and she did something she had never done before, and kissed him on the cheek. Lexi mirrored this farewell and hugged him tightly.
"Harry - thanks," George muttered, while Fred nodded fervently at his side.
Harry was swept off by his Uncle and Aunt, his fat blonde cousin waddling beside him.
Cedric drew Lexi aside and hugged her tightly. "I'm going to miss you so much." he mumbled into her hair.
"I'm going to miss you too." she said. "But, hey. You'll come stay with us right?"
"Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skrewts couldn't keep me away." Cedric grinned. He kissed Lexi, then he walked through the crowd and steam to find his family.
Lexi left, the twins on either side of her and the bag of galleons clinking at Fred's belt. They were going to be having a very fun summer.