Stripped Bare- Chapter 52

Birthday Party At Hogwarts Part One- Getting Ready

Author's Notes- GhostChicken reminded me about something that I was going to write at the beginning but forgot about. How is it that Harry and Hermione's Muggle friends know about the magical world? Harry obtained special permission from the Ministry of Magic to tell Mitch in case he inadvertantly used magic so that he wouldn't have had to figure out a way to explain it all away, and the other guys found out from Mitch, with Harry right there to ask them all to keep it quiet. Except for Tad- That jackass was fortunately gone before this happened. As for Hermione- The girls found out when she started up with Stephen, and like the guys, they don't say anything because Harry and Hermione are good friends and they don't want anything to happen to them. (Wonder if Stephen is going to keep his mouth shut though. Think him being afraid of Harry is enough?)

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Harry Potter.

The few non-magic members of Harry's party guests that had arrived so far stood together in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, looking around in awe. They had never seen a school in Great Britain that looked like this. Kailah and Maureen said so to Curtis.

"You should see it on holidays," Ginny said, bustling past them with the remainder of the decorations. She came back after placing her bundle into a box behind a suit of armor in the corridor.

"What about the holidays?" Kailah asked.

Ginny just smirked as she walked back up to the staff table, where Hermione was putting the finishing touches on Harry's cake, eighteen of the many pieces spelling out HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARRY, and the ninteenth bearing his picture.

"Do you think it's too much?" Hermione asked when she noticed her red-haired friend.

"For as many people as you invited? I'd be worried that it might not be enough."

"If the house elves would have let me bring that other table in here like I'd asked, I would have been able to bring the cake back to it's original size, but they all said that it wouldn't be right to put another table up here. It would have been a desecration to them, I guess."

"When do you have to go get Harry? And for that matter, how are you going to get him here? You can't Floo without saying your destination, and he'll see the Leaky Cauldron when you arrive there."

"In about an hour. I'm going to have to Muffliato and blindfold him, but I don't think he'll mind when he sees the trouble we went to for him." She looked around the Great Hall proudly.

"How have you kept this a secret for the last two days? I thought for sure that he was going to get the details out of you when you went to dinner last night."

"It wasn't for lack of trying. He kept asking me about the cake and why we had to make it last night. I told him time and time again that he was just going to have to be patient and wait until tonight. He thought that we were going to the Burrow for dinner, but the cake has him totally lost. He doesn't know what to make of it. He wants to know why it's so big. I said that he would see tonight." She grinned and looked at Ginny. "He even tried to use his body to get me to tell him."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. As soon as we got back to the flat, he dragged me back to his room and had us both naked within a minute, and was still asking questions during the foreplay. They didn't stop until I flat out refused to talk about it anymore and left the room."

"You walked out and left him when he was randy?" Ginny's eyebrows raised. "I don't know if I could do that to Seamus."

"Oh no. It wasn't until after we'd made love. But I just wasn't able to think of any more excuses and was getting too close to telling him, so I just got up from the bed and told him that I wasn't saying anything about it, kissed him goodnight and went to my own room."

"So did he stop asking the questions?"

"Are you kidding? He started up with them again this morning after I took Andy to her flat so she could get changed for the fitting, and all the way up till I gave him something else to do with his mouth when I got back."

"What did you give him to do?" Hermione smiled slyly. "Never mind." Ginny giggled and leaned over to examine the cake. "So this will be a surprise for him, then?"

"A big surprise. He was only able to find out that we were baking him a cake, and he got that because he helped with it. He doesn't even know where the cake has gone to. I had to sneak back to the flat to get the balloons I'd forgotten, and he was in the kitchen scratching his head, muttering, 'Where did she put the cake?'. It was too funny."

"Well, you'd better get going if you want to get him here soon. Almost all the other guests have arrived, and I'm going to go and get the rest of the Muggles. They're going to meet me and Ron in the alleyway outside your building. Hopefully Harry doesn't see them, or he'll know something's up."

"Who's left?" Hermione turned around, searching out the friends that they'd brought with them earlier. Kailah, Maureen and Curtis had sat down at the far end of the leftmost table, where the Hufflepuffs sat during the school year, Andrea leaned against it, talking to them and to Mitch, Tyler, Jason and Brenden, who still stood against the wall. "Hmm. Still missing Shane, Cameron, Kendall and Warren from the Kings of Hearts."

"What about...?"

"That'll depend on if they're there to meet you. You'd better go now. If everyone is there, it'll take you a few more minutes to get them all here, considering that you can't Apperate to the Cauldron from the front of the building, and they'll have to all be here before I bring Harry."

"How long do you think it'll take?"

"I can give you twenty minutes, thirty at the most."

"That's fine. Even if they come, I should have them all here by then." Ginny moved to the fireplace and picked up a small pot with the glittering Floo powder in it from the edge of the table to her right. The Muggles turned to watch what they'd only seen once now with interest. "Diagon Alley!" Ginny called as she threw a small amount of the powder into the fireplace and after setting the pot on the mantle, stepped into the emerald flames and was gone. Hermione wandered over to where her friends sat.

"That is still the strangest thing I have ever seen. Green flames?" Curtis was muttering as she approached. Kailah tried to explain about Flooing, but as she didn't know much about it herself, broke off before she'd really started. Hermione took over, and had just finished making them understand the charmed powder when Ginny reappeared with Kendall and Cameron.

"Shane and Warren are next," she said. "When I come back with them, we both can go back. You to get Harry and I'll be going after..." She rolled her brown eyes.

"They actually came?" Hermione couldn't believe her ears. Ginny nodded.

"They were waiting, just like Warren when I got there, and Shane arrived just after I did."

"Then I should wait until you come back..."

"No, you know that he doesn't trust anything that has to do with..." The redhead sighed. "They said that they come together at the same time, or not at all."

"But there's no way you could fit in the fireplace at the same time, and you have to take them into the Leaky Cauldron in the first place. You have to have ahold of them to get them there, or otherwise they'll..."

"I know, I know. I'm going to have to explain that to them again when I go back. Maybe I can get them to understand that it's going to be impossible to take them all at the same time." She turned and tossed more powder into the fireplace, then was gone again. Hermione turned to greet Kendall and Cameron, who both appeared slightly rattled.

"Harry gets around like that all the time?" Cam asked, clearing his throat and shaking his head as if to clear it. Kendall goggled around at the Great Hall wordlessly, his hazel eyes widening as he took in the size of the chamber.

"No," Hermione laughed. "It's the only way to get here from London without taking the school train, and that won't run until September first. For the most part though, he does Apperate." Kendall's and Cameron's eyes turned to her in question. "What Ginny did to take you to the first place you went to?" They nodded. " But you can't do that here and he only does it when he's in a hurry anyway." She led them over to the others and headed off to meet with some of the school's house elves that were going to be handling the food for the party.

"This is so wierd," Curtis said. "It's totally cool, but wierd!" The rest of their group continued to stare around at the other party guests. There was a great number of them wandering around the cavernous room. The eyes of a particularly beautiful girl struck Cameron from the next table. He excused himself and made his way over to her. The others stared after him and laughed when they saw where he was going.

"Trust Cam to find the hottest girl in the room and try and hit on her," chuckled Mitch.

"He won't have a chance with that one," said Hermione said as she joined them. "That's Fleur Weasley, Ginny and Ron's sister-in-law. The guy by the door, the one with the red hair? That's her husband, Bill." They watched, and sure enough, Fleur shook her head and held up her left hand, showing off the gold band that encircled the fourth finger, then gesturing towards the door, she said something to Cameron. He turned in the direction she'd indicated and with a nod, walked back to the rest of the group.

"Always getting turned down, huh, Pastner?" Mitch asked as Cam shook his head, dazed. Hermione patted Cameron's arm sympathetically.

"Don't feel bad. I know this doesn't mean anything to you, but Fleur's part Veela, and that means she has a lot of attraction to most men."

"Harry too?" Kendall asked.

"He became immune quickly as he was in a tournament with her when we were in our fourth year here. It involved contestants from two other schools and we still don't know how unless Harry was entered under the name of a fourth school, but he and another Hogwarts student, Cedric Diggory, were champions along with Fleur and Viktor Krum from Bulgaria."

She went on to give them a brief rundown of the events that ensued and ended in Cedric's death and Harry's battle with a newly restored Voldemort. She was telling them about what had happened three years later when Harry and Voldemort had met in this hall for the final time when Ginny returned with Shane and Warren.

"I say give me about five minutes, then you go for Harry. It's going to take me about two or three of those minutes to get the first two to the Leaky Cauldron."

"How long till I can bring him back here?"

"I'd say about ten minutes, just to be on the safe side."

"O.K., but you'd better hurry. It's getting late and I told him I'd be back at the flat by seven." Ginny nodded and vanished into the fireplace a third time. Hermione checked her watch twenty times over the next five minutes, and sighed with relief when the minute hand finally reached the point where she could allow herself to get up and Floo herself to the Leaky Cauldron.

She called out for everyone's attention, and explained that Ginny was going to be coming back with three more people and then Harry would be arriving, blindfolded, and everyone was to be quiet until he saw his finished birthday cake. When they'd all agreed, she vanished into the emerald fire.