Harry and the Pirates

Chapter 75

The Quidditch World Cup

by Technomad

Harry and Dudley looked around themselves in awe. They had never seen so many wizards and witches together in one place. The site of the World Cup, a huge, isolated meadow, was all but filled with tents. Smells of camp cooking filled the air. Harry smiled to himself at the way some of the attendees had interpreted the requirement to dress Muggle-style. It looked to him like they'd robbed a jumble sale.

"Let's find the Weasleys!" That seemed like a good idea, so the boys went walking along the main path. Percy wasn't with them; he'd had to go back to Roanapur to help Sirius with their new business. Remus Lupin had just arrived, and needed help finding a place to stay, since he'd never been in Asia before.

Soon, the boys from Roanapur found their friends. The Weasleys had claimed a nice spot for their campsite, and they were soon being welcomed by all of their friend's family. "Oh, it's good to see you all again!" Molly Weasley said, hugging them both. "Our Ronald apparently did very well for himself in your hometown, but he won't tell us what he did!"

"He saved the life of one of our associates, a Muggle woman known as Rebecca Lee," Dudley explained. "She was knocked into deep water and tangled in some wreckage far down. He dove in and used a Bubble-Head Charm to get to her, freed her from her predicament, and got her back to the surface. She was in a bad way, but Ron knew what to do and got her going again."

"My Ron? My littlest boy! He did that?"

"He sure did, Mum!" Ginny had managed to pry herself loose from Harry, and came over to join in the conversation. "She was really grateful, but she couldn't understand why he'd do that much for her; they hardly knew each other. He told her that she's a human being and he only did what any decent person would do." Ginny grinned. "She didn't know how to react to that!"

"Decent human beings are not something Ms. Lee has had much experience with," Dudley explained. "She doesn't talk about it much, but she apparently had a really rough time of life before she hit Roanapur. This new guy in her life, Rokuro Okajima, seems to have been a good influence on her. She's not nearly as touchy and dangerous as she once was." Dudley smiled reminiscently. "That said, she's still not somebody anybody with sense would want to take chances with!"

"Rather like the stories I've heard about Bellatrix Lestrange, only without magic and with Muggle weapons. She's as good with those as Lestrange ever was with spells," Harry said. He peered off into the distance. "Do my eyes deceive me, or is that the Lovegoods who're arriving?"

Sure enough, it was the Lovegoods. Xeno Lovegood was wearing a snap-brimmed fedora with a "PRESS" card stuck into it. Harry wondered where he'd got that idea. Other than the hat, Xeno was wearing the top half of a Muggle tuxedo over blue jeans, with rubber Wellington boots. Luna, at least, looked fairly normal, at least at first glance. She was wearing what looked suspiciously like a St. Trinian's school uniform, only with the St. Trinian's emblem removed and replaced with the Hogwarts emblem.

Dudley and Luna embraced, murmuring fondly to each other. When they were able to tear themselves away from each other, Luna began bombarding Dudley with questions. "How was Roanapur? How is Miss Balalaika? How is Sergeant Boris? Poor Sergeant Boris...he was so sad when I saw him last! How are the Black Lagoon crew doing?" Dudley was used to her rushes of enthusiasm, and began answering her questions patiently, one at a time. When Luna heard about how Ron had saved Revy Two-Hands, she jumped up and down with a squeal of joy.

"Oh, Ronald!" She flitted over and gave a very startled Ron a kiss on the cheek. "That was so kind of you! I'm glad Miss Lee is alive."

"So am I," commented Hermione. She had come up unnoticed while Harry and Dudley's attention was concentrated on the Lovegoods. "And, Luna...I understand why you kissed Ron, but don't make a habit of it. Got me?"

"Why would I want to make a habit of kissing Ronald?" Luna looked utterly innocent, but Harry knew her well, and could see a mischevious glint in her eye. "Isn't that your job?"

Ron and Hermione both blushed bright red. "Never change, Luna," Harry said, chuckling quietly.

The game wouldn't start until later that evening, so the PD Enterprises group, as they called themselves, decided to take a walk. They passed several refreshment stands, all offering Coca-Cola along with traditional beverages such as pumpkin juice and butterbeer. They all smiled to see how well Coke was selling.

"Money, money, money!" exulted Ron. "We get a percentage of every sale!" Harry looked at the huge crowd, and tried unsuccessfully to predict how much money would be in their accounts after the World Cup was over. He had seen many wizards and witches, and not all of them Muggle-born by any means, if their clothes were anything to go by, with bottles or cans of Coke.

"We'll make a fortune!" Hermione said, quietly. "A lot of these people are foreign-born, and to them, Coke's just an innovative British beverage. They may well be buying through us even when they go back to their homes."

"Pity we can't make sure that our monopoly extends beyond Britain," Harry said. "But we've got the British Isles sewn up tight, and that's a nice market right there. We can also look into foreign markets once we're back at Hogwarts and have access to the research materials on tap there."

"Hey, there's Seamus Finnegan!" said Ron. Sure enough, their Hogwarts schoolmate was just up ahead, in the middle of a knot of others all dressed in green to show support for the Irish National team. "Hey, Seamus! How was your summer?"

"Oh, well enough," the Irish Gryffindor replied. Despite his House affiliation, he'd always been reasonably friendly to Harry and his friends. He got along much less well with Draco Malfoy, but considering Malfoy's talent for alienating people, Harry found that unsurprising. "Have you decided where to place your bets? It looks to me as though Ireland'll take this!"

"I'm not so sure," Ron answered. "The Bulgarians have Viktor Krum, and he's very, very good indeed. Your team'll have to be on top of its game to beat him!"

"Aye, but he's just the one man, and we've a roster of top-notch players! Come on, fancy a flutter?"

"No offense, Seamus, but we'd rather not bet with our schoolmates. Too much chance of long-term bad feelings, and at school we all have to live with each other." Dudley said.

Seamus' face fell. "You mean you aren't going to bet?"

"Did he say anything like that?" Harry asked. "We're probably going to put down a few wagers, but we prefer to do so with the professional bookmakers. If we win, we're certain to collect our winnings."

"Don't you trust me to make good?" Seamus looked very hurt.

"In Slytherin, we have a saying: 'Trust, but verify.' We don't know you that well, and with your team loyalty in play, your emotions might lead you to make bets that you can't back if your team loses. We'd have to come after you for the money. And you wouldn't like that. Where we come from, failure to pay gambling debts is...a very bad idea." Harry said. As much as anything else, his matter-of-fact tone seemed to get through to Seamus, deflating his hurt feelings. Seamus wasn't close to the boys from Roanapur, but he'd heard more than enough through the school grapevine to know that Roanapur was a very dangerous town.

"Oh. Good point. Shall we see what sort of odds the bookies are offering?" Seamus looked very pale, even paler than would be normal for a fair-skinned boy.

"Why don't you come along? The more, the merrier." Seamus smiled at Dudley's invitation, and soon he was walking along with the Slytherins, chatting about school as they looked for where the bookies were.

Sure enough, the bookies were doing a roaring business. Harry and Dudley examined the odds carefully, with Ron, Seamus and Hermione looking over their shoulders. "Looks like Ireland's favored, right enough," Harry said. He handed the sheet around. "I'm willing to put twenty galleons on Ireland. Anybody want to chip in with me?"

"I'm in. Twenty galleons for me," Dudley said.

"And me," Ron said, swelling with pride. He patted his bulging coin pouch.

"Count me in," said Hermione. "These odds do look favorable."

"If you're betting, I'm betting!" piped up Ginny. "I'm good for it!" Her smile could have lit up a dark room.

"How about you, Luna-moth?" asked Dudley. His girlfriend was studying the sheet listing the odds on various things happening intently. Harry knew that expression. It meant that their eccentric friend was thinking and thinking very hard.

"I want to put two galleons down on this," Luna said. She pointed to one of the long-shot results. "I'm in funds, and the Quibbler's doing quite well. I can afford to take a chance."

Harry raised an eyebrow. The bet Luna wanted to make was fifty-to-one...in other words, if it came through, for every galleon the bettor had put down, he would get fifty back. "You want to bet that Ireland wins, but Bulgaria gets the Snitch?"

"Yes. The Irish team's very good," Luna said, with a smile at Seamus that had the Irish boy blushing bright red, "but Bulgaria's still got Viktor Krum. He's the best Seeker in the world."

"You're sure about this?" Dudley gave Luna a concerned look.

She nodded. "Very sure. My Daddy follows the sports news religiously. He's looking for evidence of conspiracies to rig Quidditch games, but hasn't found any." She quirked a grin. "Yet."

"In that case..." Dudley drawled, "I'll put two galleons down on Ireland winning but Bulgaria getting the Snitch, on top of my regular bet on Ireland. Any of you care to join me?"

Except for Seamus, whose loyalty to Ireland was total, the others all chimed in. Harry collected the money and went in to make the bets. He was reassured to see goblins behind the counter. While he didn't much care for goblins, he knew that their financial integrity was unquestioned. During the last war, both sides had trusted the goblins to keep their wealth safe, and the goblins had richly earned their trust.

When he stepped up to make his bet, he noticed that Fred and George Weasley were there, too. They greeted him in friendly fashion, but he went on his guard. Once the bets were placed, he went over to see what they were up to.

"Well, if it isn't our ickle snakey friend..."

"From Thailand. Glad to see you're back..."

"And we're even more glad..."

"To hear that Ron did very well there."

Harry had had enough to do with the twins to be used to their style of speaking, and didn't let it distract him. "Good to see both of you. Here to make a bet?"

"We already put down a bet..."

"With Ludo Bagman."

Harry did not show it on the surface, but underneath, he was rather surprised. He hadn't known the twins had any money, and to see them risking it, much less on a bet with a fellow amateur, rather than at a safe bookie's place, was something he had not expected. "Uh...you blokes sure he can back up his bets?"

"He was a major Quidditch star in his day..."

"He's got to be rolling in the readies."

"Well, if you say so, I'll accept your word. I'm kind of conservative about gambling, myself. I don't go for wild bets, much, and don't bet with anybody whom I'm less than 100% sure of." Harry suddenly grinned. "Hey, if you win your bet and he doesn't pay up, you can always hire us to make him pay!" He'd never done that before, but he'd seen people in Roanapur dealing very harshly with those who had stiffed them. With his friends behind him, he was confident that he could take the job on. And the twins' Galleons spent just as well as anybody else's.

"We'll keep that in mind..."

"If we need your help..."

"We'll let you know."

"What do you have planned for the money, if you win?" Harry asked, all innocence. While he liked Ron and Ginny, he didn't mind separating the twins from any suddenly-acquired burdens of unaccustomed wealth. He wouldn't outright cheat them, but he had no compunctions about driving a hard bargain with them. Ron and Ginny were his friends, and for their sake, he'd have gone easy on Arthur and Molly Weasley. The twins...weren't.

"We plan to use the money..."

"As seed money..."

"For the business we want to open."

"And what business is this?" Harry was suddenly very interested. He knew that PD Enterprises had the wizarding market in Muggle soft drinks sewn up very tight, but he was always alert for more opportunities. He wondered for a moment what other Muggle specialities would do well in the wizard world that weren't already being sold there.

"We want to open..."

"A joke-and-novelty store."

"We think that Zonko's..."

"Is mired in the past..."

"And we see openings..."

"For new and better joke products."

Harry thought about that idea for a while. While he, personally, was not at all fond of practical joking (he imagined Revy Two-Hands' or Balalaika's reaction to a joy buzzer and shuddered) he could see that such tactics could prove useful. He was always aware that he was Number One on the Death Eaters' "Better Dead" list, and if practical joke products could throw any attackers off enough for him to get the drop on them, he was quite willing to use them. One lesson he had learned early on in Roanapur was pragmatic willingness to use whatever worked.

"Listen, you two. I can't stay and talk right now. After this is over, come look me up at school. Bring along your proposal and any ideas you've worked up. If it looks good to me and my financial advisor, I'll consider backing you financially, either personally or through PD Enterprises." Harry planned to run the twins' plans past some of the goblins he'd dealt with. If there were weaknesses in their scheme, he trusted the goblins to spot them before he invested any money.

"Would you? We didn't think..."

"That you'd be interested..."

"In helping us."

"I've no hard feelings against you. You made a mistake targeting your little brother, but you paid for it. And since then, you've been well-behaved, at least as far as my friends and I are concerned." Harry was aware that the twins had not stopped their pranking, but since they left the Slytherins, and his friends in particular, alone, Harry could not have cared less. "Look, I've got to go. Like I said, look me up when we're all back at school and we'll talk."

When Harry rejoined his friends, they were getting ready to set up a camp. He'd never seen wizarding tents before, and was fascinated at how much more room they had inside than outside. "If you could market these to Muggles, you'd make fortunes!" he said.

"Yeah, but thanks to the Statute of Secrecy, we can't," Ron grumbled. "Could you bear a hand with this rope?" Once they were done, they had two tents pitched.

"One for the boys, and one for the girls," Hermione said. "What do you think?"

"I want to know why we need two," Luna said. "I don't mind sharing with the boys." She gave Dudley a significant look. Dudley blushed as Harry and Ron smothered grins.

"You may not, but we do," Hermione said. Behind her, Ginny raised one eyebrow. "In any case, what's done is done. Come on, let's go see who else is here!" They set out on a circular route, looking around at all the attendees who'd come for the Cup game.

Harry had never seen so many magical people in his life. They passed groups speaking French, some of them flying flags from African countries, others with French, Belgian or Monagesque flags. There were other foreign-language speakers, and Harry, Hermoine and Dudley were delighted to run into a large Russian-speaking contingent.

"You speak Russian like natives!" said Vyacheslav Ivanov, who seemed to be the leader of the Russians. "You could transfer, you know. Durmstrang would welcome you!"

"Thanks, but we like Hogwarts. We've a lot of projects going on there, and don't want to leave them," Harry answered. He didn't much like what he'd heard about the Durmstrang headmaster, who had got out of Azkaban by shopping a bunch of his fellow Death Eaters. Other than Professor Snape, who had proven repeatedly that he was trustworthy, he trusted nobody at all who'd ever had that mark on his arm.

Luckily, the Russians didn't press Harry about why he preferred Hogwarts. They repeated their invitations, Harry and his friends turned down offers of firewhiskey and vodka, and they went onward. They saw many interesting things, like a little boy who'd apparently appropriated Daddy's wand and was having great fun making it blow huge bubbles, until his mother came and grabbed him and got the wand away. The girls giggled at this, and the boys smiled.

About halfway around the campground, they ran into Draco Malfoy. "Hullo, Draco, what's been happening in your life?" asked Harry.

Draco scowled. "My father and mother are both here, and they've taken over the tent. They pretty much pushed me out, and said they 'needed some privacy.'" Harry raised an eyebrow. If Lucius Malfoy was back with his family, did that mean their campaign against Abraxas Malfoy had borne fruit? He wished he'd been able to keep up with the Daily Prophet and the other wizarding periodicals in Thailand, but that hadn't been possible.

"So how's the rest of your family? Is your grandfather here?" Luna asked. She seemed her usual artless self, but Harry could tell that she knew exactly what she was doing. However, she was so wide-eyed and innocent-seeming, Harry figured that Draco Malfoy would be completely taken in.

"Didn't you hear about it?" Draco asked excitedly. "Grandfather Abraxas is in Russia, requesting political asylum from the Ministry there! A bunch of people came forward saying that he'd done all sorts of awful things back before I was born, and next thing I knew, he was leaving...and Dad was coming back home!"

"Oh? We're sorry to hear that he's having trouble. Do send him our best wishes, will you?" Hermione's tone was utterly sincere, but Harry knew full well how false it was. She'd been a key player in the plan to bring Abraxas Malfoy down by use of the media.

"Hope he stays well. We're all hoping he clears this nonsense up!" Dudley's wish that Abraxas Malfoy would stay in good health was completely sincere. From what they could piece together, he, and not Lucius Malfoy or anybody else, controlled the Malfoy family money. Hiding out in Russia, he'd not be of much use if the Death Eaters' organization came back to life, and as long as he lived, no matter how much he wanted to, Lucius would be dependent on his father for money.

A trumpet fanfare rang out. "Oh, that's the signal! They're about to start the game! Let's go find our seats!" Ron said, a huge grin splitting his face. They all turned and jogged toward the bleachers, tickets in hand.