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An Old and New World
by Lens of Sanity
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Chapter Three: Causing Yourself Grief
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Harry finally acknowledged that he had the monster of all headaches as he sat in the stands beside his godfather. He had picked up a pain potion from Madam Pomfrey but refused the burn healing ointment because the scorching he got was all indirect, and he'd rather watch the other champions than sit in a medical tent any day of the week.
"You're crazy Harry, what made you decide to bum rush the dragon?"
Rubbing his temples he answered Sirius' question, "I couldn't get a pot shot in from long range, hell I could barely manage one from that distance. Besides, you always say it is results that matter, and it worked didn't it?"
"Can't argue with that…" he agreed nodding. "You flashed a Visible Aura on that last piercer by the way. That really put you over the edge on the whole being impressive angle."
Said being impressive aging potion began wearing off as Angelina squared up against the Welsh Green, she was using a similar method to Harry, aiming for the eyes with a Conjunctivitis Curse and following up with a bit of transfiguration that was far out of Harry's league. Eventually a huge swarm of tiny birds was swelling around the chaser, maybe even numbering in the low thousands.
"That was pretty cool," the younger stated. And to think that she was the only one of the champions who was making it up on the fly.
Dropping a Disillusionment Charm on herself she commanded the swarm, or maybe flock seeing as they were birds, to attack the half-blind reptile. She was attempting to distract it and slip by unnoticed. At about the eight minute mark Angelina was back in her starting position uninjured and beaming.
Good going girl, mine was better I think, but not bad at all.
Krum summoned the Firebolt he had used to win the Quidditch World Cup, hexing the shit out of the Chinese dragon and landing two consecutive Conjunctivitis Curses was enough for him to slip by unnoticed. For a while at least, he almost got burned to a crisp on his smooth attempt at extrication.
"It was very nice how you charmed that dragon," Harry said to the part‑Veela in condescending approval a short time later. "It is interesting to see that even reptiles are affected by your allure."
She ignored him, instead attempting to go the route of aloof aristocrat who was above consorting with the likes of such English scum. Harry smiled in what he hoped was a winning way, trying for the look used all the time by his onetime Defence Professor Gilderoy Lockhart. "You did very well for second place, you should be proud of yourself leetle girl."
Okay, throwing her own words back at her is probably going a bit far there Potter, you don't want to find out if there really is such thing as a castration jinx.
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As three people come out of a Pensieve borrowed from the Headmaster, Sirius said, "Told you the ageing potion was a good idea."
"That you did, I looked scary as hell didn't I?" Harry noted with pride, turning toward Hermione as she began to babble.
"I cannot believe you killed a dragon Harry, I read about it once and powerful wizards used to go out a try to slay one as a kind of initiation ceremony. I checked the library after the task and you are the eleventh youngest in history, displacing Wilfred Elphick from back in the twelfth century."
He mulled this news over smiling, the Prophet predictably played it off as a sure sign of his evil and dangerousness, but at this point Harry found himself more or less immune to criticism.
"When I picked up the Pensieve Albus continued in his vein of not helping, he was talking about your splendid gift for producing wandless Patronus Mist, and he then spent considerable time wandlessly performing several feats of magic before he would let me go."
"You think he wants me to see how much I can pull off without a wand then?" Really, the enchantments on that cup preventing him from directly helping must be pathetic.
"I don't see why we shouldn't add it to the rotation. You'll be mostly on your own though, the only wandless stuff I can really do is apparate, turn into a dog, and summon my wand. So you're going to have to figure it out for yourself for the most part."
"Any book knowledge for us Herms?"
"Do not call me Herms thank you very much..." she scowled, "and no not really, you seem to have worked out the difficult part already. The one decent book I found after you told me about the Mist said basically the same thing you did; force the universe to bend to your command, which I found to be quite frustrating because the book didn't say how to go about doing such a thing."
"Okay then, we may as well get on with it."
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For Harry, things settled into a fairly predictable pattern over the next fortnight of thirty hour days; sparring, precision casting, emerging wandless abilities, and the distractions offered by his two pet Slytherin girls. That last not taking up as much time as he would have liked, sloping off further when he noticed Daph, as she hated to be called, was developing a bit of an infatuation about one of the sixth years, a Hufflepuff he vaguely believed to be named Colin Digby. A belief which was palpably false due to the number of times he was corrected.
Another thing he became aware of was that Hermione did not like being second best when it came to her studies. "It's not entirely your fault Herms, you were born a girl, and girls are just not as good at maths as boys. You can't hope to compete against me in a course like Arithmancy which relies so heavily on mathematical ability."
Harry remembered a time long ago when intentionally annoying people in this way would have been the furthest goal in his mind. Trying to annoy her by being magically more powerful, or knowing how to conjure wandless fire just wouldn't work, but calling her Herms and saying she was inherently inferior would get her more worked up than Hermione's recent discovery of the Hogwarts' house‑elves.
Professor Kitty Kat finished her lecture on cross species transfiguration and the brunette was still refusing to make eye contact let alone speak to him. Harry briefly wondered why he was bothering to show up to this class when Padfoot was smashing his head against a wall attempting to teach his less than gifted godson the far more advanced duellist transfiguration.
"Potter. The champions and their partners will, as tradition dictates, open the ball with the first dance." Harry nodded along having not been paying attention through her end of class speech. Yeah, she had been saying something about a ball hadn't she?
"I've broken up with my girlfriends Professor so I don't have a partner. I'll just skip it."
For some reason the plural annoyed his teacher more than the implication that he was going to skip an important event. "You will find a partner, and you will dance. It is your duty to the school and tradition."
Harry had a few choice things to say to that but was shuffled out the door before he could earn a detention. One to which he would doubtlessly fail to show up, just like all the times he had done so when Snivellus, to use Padfoot's preferred form of nomenclature, attempted to force one on him.
"Do you have a date to the Yule Ball Herms?" he probably shouldn't have tried to provoke her with the nickname at the same time as he asked her out, or maybe it was more the assumptive of course you don't way of asking that got her back up.
Hitting him in the balls with a Stinging Hex she screamed, "Of course I already have a date Harry! And I wouldn't go with you if you were the last man alive."
As he doubled over in pain Harry for some reason got the impression that the girl was displeased with him.
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"Just ask her!" Harry was fruitlessly attempting to transfigure a conjured dog into a solid shield, a method of defence the one time duelling instructor called Transhields.
"I don't know what you're talking about Sirius." He was not doing well, the only way these shields were useful was if you could snap them into place. Taking forty five seconds to slowly change living tissue to none‑living stone, was not in any way useful in a fight. "Can't we just stick to direct damage spells? I'm actually good at those, there is none of this stupid swish‑flick bollocks."
"No we can't. If you are up against Unforgivables or any number of other curses, transhields are what you're going to want between you and your opponent. But don't try to distract me, just ask her you crazy bastard, you killed a dragon at fourteen for Merlin's sake you can ask a girl out."
"Sirius, I don't know where you got the idea I'd even want to go with her." Harry said, sighing. "I think you're just living through me, get your own life damn it."
He took a moment to glare disbelievingly at his godson. "Nobody spends that much time or goes to that much trouble to get into a girl's face, unless they are interested. It's like what you muggleborns do when you're in primary school, always pulling the pigtails of the girl you like."
"She's a conceited bitch with no personality. I don't see how you can even think I'd be interested." The dogman made a few comments to this statement and eventually Harry muttered not far enough under his breath, "Yeah well, Bella said pretty much the same thing."
"WHAT! When did you talk to Bellatrix?"
"Erm-, last weekend."
Sirius closed his eyes and appeared to be making a prayer to the gods. "And given that the high security third of the prison does not allow visitors, how were you able to hold such a discussion?"
"She's all alone there Sirius, you can't expect me to just forget about her can you?"
"Please tell me you're not still trying to come up with ways to break her out."
"I can't break her out, the only reason I can even get in there is because of my invisibility cloak, the Dementors don't appear to see me when I'm under it. But when I tried to get her out with it they got all shirty and disagreeable."
"She's evil, she deserves to be in there..." the man pointlessly stated, running a hand through his shaggy black hair. Harry just rolled his eyes and, changing the topic back, Sirius commented, "So anyway Bellatrix agreed with me then. You should just ask her out."
"Screw you Sirius Black."
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"Hey, scabby princess, McGonagall needs to know if you have a date to the dance."
Fleur looked over at her questioner with scorn. "I have not yet decided amongst my prospective admirers. You are to tell her this." The French girl responded in a way which implied she was sending him on an errand.
The black haired young man was not pleased with the order and so decided to further aggravate the situation. "I would have thought you could aura your way into at least one halfway decent date, just goes to show how much a poisonous personality will harm a person's love life," and he turned away with a somewhat smarmy look of triumph on his face.
"Out of interest, who exactly are you taking to this Yule Ball? I happen to know you have recently found yourself absent of love interests." Rita bloody Skeeter again, to think she was in the same dorm as pretty young Bella when at Hogwarts. His opinion of the journalist was bottoming out a bit, at least Harry still liked Bella.
"I'm going stag." An idea apparently flashed into his head. "No, in fact I'm going with you Mademoiselle Delacour."
"What?" a number of people at her table were made take notice at the shrill yell.
"Yes. That would be perfect, pathetic French wannabe escorting the real champion. It's not like any date you'd get would be able to go with you, all your little fans would be going with Fleur's Veela Aura, leaving you all alone and bored." She was about to object on principle and he just blundered onward. "We shall meet at seven forty five in the Entrance Hall, you are to give your best attempt at dressing fashionably, I will not have you showing up and embarrassing the real Triwizard Champion."
At this he moved off, leaving more than just the French contingent speechless.
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It was a couple hours later and Harry didn't feel too great.
He'd met up with the blonde Ravenclaw third year in an attempt to negotiate some help in his plan, and she had been somewhat agreeable. The plan was quite simple; place a monster Confundus Charm on the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain Roger Davies so that he believed this blonde was in fact Fleur Delacour. It shouldn't wear off for a couple of hours, and the two Ravenclaws could then go have fun together at the Yule Ball.
She said that it was a fairly reasonable request, requiring only a yellow jelly baby to be delivered to her bed on solstice morning, and that the weight of the jelly baby needed to at least the same as her, if not greater. Fine, that made a kind of sense, and tracking down a muggle candy, then engorging it enough to meet her requirements wouldn't be all that hard.
When asked why she didn't do the engorging herself she said it was because Harry was facing in the direction of the Constellation of Orion when he initially requested aid, as well as the fact that they both happened to be in the northern hemisphere at the time.
When it was brought up that a person cannot see the Constellation of Orion in the southern hemisphere, she responded that just because you can't see a thing didn't mean it wasn't there. This also make a kind of sense, though why it should matter with regards to the jelly baby was less than clear, but by this point Harry was having a little trouble keeping up with her.
Her last request, asked in a seemingly offhand way, was for Harry to buy her a drink in a tea shop on the next Hogsmeade weekend, and Harry just kind of acquiesced in a confused sort of way.
Walking away from this conversation Harry didn't feel so great. It was similar to how one would feel when your gut was telling you that the second hand car salesman had gotten something by, and for the life of you, you couldn't figure out what it was.
"Are you ready for tomorrow kid?"
"Hmm, oh, yeah. Will you pick me up some jelly babies later? I have kind of a headache."
"Voldemort again? Those are getting too frequent for my liking." Harry had been training a lot ever since he got the Time‑Turner, and one thing that he'd noticed was that being tired seemed to make him more accessible to the Dark Lord's mind, or something like that anyway. All he knew was that headaches suck and that pain potions tasted awful.
"No, no. Not this time at least, just remember the jelly babies. They are important."
"Okay jelly babies, got it. I want to get you working on accuracy with that offhand column of fire you've been creating, I know you said it's inefficient and draining but it is still worth learning." Sirius started conjuring small birds and having them fly toward Harry, who then tried to torch them out of the air without a wand.
His headache was even worse by the time they quit.
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"Confundo!"
It really is good that her name is Luna, at least the whole moon thing gives you warning that the girl is a total wackjob. Harry thought this to himself as he watched the cherubic blonde walk off arm in arm with the sixth year. He would never learn that at precisely the same moment Luna was humming a song with the words Harry Potter, off his rocker.
Sweeping majestically into the Entrance Hall platinum hair loose and framing her flawless face, the Beauxbatons Champion Mademoiselle Fleur Delacour looked less a woman than she did an untouchable goddess, the picture of perfect beauty and elegance.
"You are late, it is seven fifty five and I told you to be here ten minutes ago…" he paused in thought, clearly giving her body a onceover. "At least you don't look too horrible, I expected a little more of an effort but it will have to do."
"I am not 'ere to meet with you 'Arry Potter," her accent was slipping, she must have been having as much of a great time with this as Harry.
"No? Who do you claim you are meeting?" He asked lightly. At her response he said, "The Ravenclaw? Erm-, I don't know how to break this too you but he's already in there. Are you sure he knew you'd agreed?"
Fleur knew there was something wrong with that statement, but right at that moment Professor McGonagall's voice called, "Champions over here, please!" and Harry took the French girl's arm, whisking her toward the Great Hall.
Angelina was looking gorgeous, she was on the arm of a guy Harry vaguely recalled played for Puddlemere, the same team Olly Wood got signed for, and Krum was with…
"Hermione?" he exploded. She answered triumphantly with a smug little smile. Harry turned to Krum and stage whispered, "Not bad, she's a live one though so watch yourself."
"You are with Ms. Delacour Harry?" asked his no longer bushy haired friend.
"Yeah, it's a last minute thing. To be honest I think she hexed my date." He didn't even bother attempting to say this circumspectly. Realisation dawned on the stunning woman's face at this statement, and Harry cut in as his date was about to begin shouting. "Smile my dear, pretend you knew about this the whole time, you wouldn't want to lose face in front of the cameras now would you?"
Everyone applauded as the champions entered the hall and Harry, once more using an ageing potion so as to appear appropriately champion‑like, offered a proud smile with the most desirable woman in the room on his arm.
Pulling out a chair for the French woman at the top table, Harry then took a seat for himself beside a stern and imposing figure he learned to be one of the organisers of this event named Mister Crouch. Harry felt an unaccustomed rightness in the world, one which was subtly not being shared by his companion. "I have taken the liberty to inform the house‑elves that your meal is to be prepared in the English way, as you are well known for preferring; much grease, and foods heavy on carbohydrate."
Who knew witches of Veela descent lose control of their aura when they're angry? Harry found himself glad that Fleur could not perform the full avian transformation, and in a heavy French accent she ground out, "You have to be the most infuriating person I have ever had the misfortune to meet."
"Why thank you Fleur, I am honoured to be bestowed such a remarkable title." he said with a winning smile. "To think, if we were competing in this childish competition using Durmstrang rules you would have gotten the opportunity to duel me. Alas the road not taken."
"It is likely I would have killed you." Harry just nodded in condescension. "What did you do with my original date may I ask?"
That came out in a tone far closer to a demand than a request, and Harry just gestured to the poor besotted Roger Davies who was hanging on the younger girl's every word. The woman petulantly began working her way through a plate of brutally overcooked lamb chops, finally giving in and asking the one question whose answer she couldn't figure out on her own.
"Why do this? It is clear you are unaffected by my Veela heritage, and it is equally clear I dislike you strongly. So why do it?"
"Two of my friends seem to be under the impression that I like you. I personally think they are wrong, but the idea interested me regardless. I wished to discover for myself whether there was anything beneath your poisonous exterior." That was not he response she had been expecting. "So far it appears my first instincts were correct."
Though the follow up was just the kind of thing she'd expected.
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The dance was interesting, he'd stayed with his godfather's advice and kept things simple, after all having ones hands on a stunning woman had its perks. As the song finished and his date was about to take her first opportunity to excuse herself, Harry turned his back on her and approached Angelina without a second backwards glance.
"Care for a dance my lady?" Harry took her hand and pulled her into the second, much faster song.
After a while she gave up the whole rigid and put upon attitude, mainly because Harry refused to let go and she'd have been forced to cause a scene in the middle of the dance floor to escape. "What do you want Potter?"
"Straight to business I see, no time for the pleasantries, any of the finer things in life?" He saw the look on her face and decided to drop his ridiculous playful act. "Fine Johnson, I'll get to the point. You were the only champion who went into the first task without preparation, I do not know if you were aware but cheating is one of the core aspects of this thing."
"What are you saying?" some of the hostility dropped from her tone.
"I'd love to get you naked with your egg, and take a swim in the prefect's bathroom." With a roguish smile he continued, "Then again I am kind of a pervert."
He disengaged as the song ended, leaving the other Hogwarts Champion unsure as to whether or not her competitor was helping or being his usual insufferable self.
Catching up with Sirius about ten minutes later they got on with the second plan, the basic idea being that such a high profile event like this was the perfect distraction for a prank. Although what they were doing even Harry thought was a little mean.
"Come on, this is Snape for Merlin's sake. How can anything we do to him be considered mean?" the older man questioned.
"I dunno, he did try to save my life when I was a little first year, he can't be evil all the way through can he? Besides Albus likes him." the younger responded.
"You know, he was infatuated with Lily when we were in school. After they stopped being friends in fifth year he kind of started stalking her."
"What! He was friends with my mother? How come nobody ever mentioned this before now?"
Sirius shrugged, "Never really seemed important."
"...stalking?"
"A bit yeah."
"Fuck it, stop talking and start cursing." No more did the younger think that a precision babbling hex mixed with a compulsion was too mean. What was making a greasy evil Potions Master floo to the Ministry and start hitting on the Minister's Undersecretary, when compared to stalking a person's mother?
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"You know your eyes really look beautiful in the winter's moonlight." Harry said in his best corny line spouting voice.
"What do you want 'Arry, it appears you 'ave won tonight's unexpected challenge. Can you not leave me to watch 'ze stars in peace?"
They were in the rose garden, and other than a few preoccupied teenagers the two were all alone. Harry had recently passed a leaving, and visibly upset Olympe Maxime on the way over to his date.
"You seem sad. I was expecting angry not sad."
"You have had your fun at my expense, and I find myself no longer caring. Not only are you ahead in 'zis tournament, but I see you 'elping your schoolmate even though she is clearly less fond of you than I."
After standing in thought for a while he came to a decision. "Can you fly? Like on a broom."
Not even bothering to ask at this point she just answered, "Oui, though I prefer other methods as broom riding is uncomfortable."
"Come, I'm going to show you something cool."
Fifteen minutes later the two champions found themselves on the roof of Hogwarts, and despite the mountains in clear view it felt like tallest point in the world.
"As far as I know the only way to get up here is by flying, there are no staircases that I've seen which can access the very top. Hell, nobody is even sure how many floors the castle has, but the view from here is one of the best. I do not know why I am the only person who has wondered what is up here."
The French girl looked around, the sight really was remarkable. You could see the whole vista of Hogsmeade, the Forbidden Forest, Black Lake, and everything Britain's sole magical‑only community had to offer.
"Why bring me 'ere?"
"I don't rightly know, it just seemed the thing to do. Bella and Padfoot both said I should give you a chance, so I'm going to stop being a dick in the hopes that there is more to you than you're letting on."
Two hours later Harry left.
He may have accidently taken both brooms.