We disclaim. Hahahaha! Hans and Gretchen are ours, hands off JKR! Unfortunately, everything else is hers and we must make deep obeisance to her genius and to that of the inspiration for this story. To Nonjon, forever. If you and Rowling aren't Puff Gods, no one is.

We apologise to the above two authors and Terry Pratchett for the final line of this fic. It wasn't our fault. Hasselhoff made us do it.

(Good luck finding us – we finally found some people who would make good corpses! The final update: Sunset over Bobmin! Your Technicolor penguin farm is ours! BWAHAHAHA!)

The Dig-For-Glory of Durmstrang

Falling onto his arse in knee deep snow as his apparition attempt failed and surrounded by wolves with scarily big teeth that made Moony's seem inadequate, Harry looked around and sighed.

"Why does this shit always happen to me?" He asked as Durmstrang's students turned back into their human forms and glared at him.

"You are Harry Potter, winner of the Triwizard Cup, enemy of Voldemort, man of Dumbledore, and," the last words were whispered in hushed awe, "Friend of Hermy-oh-nee?"

"Er, yes?" Harry said.

"Then you must die." The dark haired boy grinned nastily at Harry. "For none shall live while one survives."

"Er, I think you've got that a bit wrong."

"No, the prophecy is very clear. If we are to have the peace required to finish the Great Project, both you and the Dark Lord must die for your existence blasphemes against our God."

"God?"

"Surely they must tell of the great and powerful Dig-for-Glory in Britain?"

"Dig-For-Glory?"

"Hans, you fool, your accent is worse than that Bulgarian extra on Baywatch." A slim brunette girl hit the taller boy upside the head. "It's Dig-Gory, not Dig-For-Glory. The Dark God of Hufflepuff must be honoured. Those who led to his death must be sacrificed to pacify his spirit. Only then will we win the Quidditch World Cup."

"The Ashes must be restored." Hans nodded.

"That's cricket, you muggle-born idiot." Gretchen spat.

"You mean you want to restore the Glory to Dig?" Harry asked, utterly confounded.

"We want to restore the Great Puff God to his former Glory, before he was foully murdered by that rat-faced snake-sucker, Pettigrew, and his piece of cat vomit master, Moldieshorts."

"Cedric Diggory?" Harry hadn't been friends with Hermione Granger for six years for nothing. Unfortunately, he hadn't been friends with Ron Weasley for six years for nothing either. "He died because of me."

"Which is why you must die to pacify his spirit." Hans was back on firmer ground here. Durmstrang was very clear on the subject of death – either you ate it or it ate you.

"Could we just kill Peter Pettigrew who actually murdered him?" Harry asked nervously, feeling for his wand and stopping when he realised that there were at least eight wolf-animagi students still eyeing him hungrily. At least, he hoped they were animagi.

Hans and Gretchen exchanged a look.

"That could work." Hans suggested.

"No, the prophecy is very clear. Harry must die for Cedric to be avenged." Harry had thought that Gretchen was rather pretty, in a Cho Chang way, but now he realised that she looked much more like Pansy Parkinson than the butterbeer barrel riding Ravenclaw.

"To the Wicker-Snow-Man!" Hans cried.

"Prepare the ice-throwers!" Gretchen ordered the two big Durmstrang students that reminded Harry of Crabbe and Goyle.

"No! I have to kill Voldemort! I have to tell Ginny I might l-er, like her! I have to live!" Harry screamed as they picked him up and carried him over the snow covered plain.

"Tough luck," Gretchen patted his arse comfortingly from her position under him. "The Dark Gods are All Powerful and since we got sent to second-rate Dark-God school we have to work extra hard at manipulating the rest of the world. We don't even have any Slytherins to take the blame for us."

Harry gave up, reached for his wand, remembered he'd dropped it when Tonks had grabbed his arse back in the Gryffindor dorm, sighed and leaned back. He could try to fight his way out and be used as a Durmstrang chew toy.

Lifted into the snowman's stomach, Harry thought that there were worse deaths.

His arms were raised above his head and his wrists tied together, making his chest muscles clench.

"Nice pyjamas," Hans commented, only for Gretchen to look up and run her hand over Harry's chest.

"Forget the pjs, feel his pecs, mmmm."

Hans pouted then struck a bodybuilder's pose. "Mine are better."

"Hah! Delusions of Hoff-dom!" Gretchen ripped open Harry's shirt and exposed his chest to the freezing cold air, making his nipples become almost as hard as Hans' glare. "Now that is a chest!"

Harry was shocked as Hans, Gretchen and all the Durmstrang students fell to their knees, including the wolves. "The Coiffed Hoffed One Approaches! He is marked by the Hoff! We almost killed a Chosen One! Great Dark God of the Hogwarts, please, we beg you, do not kill your humble servants for our mistake!"

Rolling his eyes at this particular case of hero-worship, almost as familiar as people trying to kill him, Harry shrugged. "Untie me and let me go and I won't say anything more about it."

Hans and Gretchen fell over each other to untie Harry, begging him again and again for his forgiveness, repeating again and again the words "I'll be there, whenever you call, I'll be there, whenever you need me, I'll be there" as a mantra. He briefly considered signing them up to the D.A. as shock-troops but realised that he really didn't want to involve the Puffs by using their pawn set in his own chess game. The price the Dark Gods would exact would probably be worse than anything old Moldieshorts could think up for him.

"Please," Gretchen and Hans knelt before him, "accept this as a token of our sincere regret at our actions."

They pushed into Harry's hands the scarlet swimming trunks embossed in gold made famous by their greatest God. "It is our most prized possession."

Revolted by the idea of holding another man's undies, Harry hid his grimace and asked how he could get out back to Hogwarts without apparition. They quickly led him to a small hunting lodge with a dragon head "that of the foul creature that tried to burn Dig-Glory" mounted above the fireplace.

"Gryffindor Common Room, Hogwarts School", Harry almost screamed and leapt into the fire almost before the flames turned green.

Hans and Gretchen sighed as his pecs vanished and went back into the forest to continue their mission to create the world's biggest abominable snowman with the biggest carrot Gretchen had ever seen, which bizarrely resembled Dumbledore's nose and was put somewhere very interesting indeed.

Harry returned to his dorm just in time to hear Neville's newly Americanised voice say, "The Potters, the Longbottoms, the Weasleys and the Browns, these are all noble Unspeakable names. The noblest of these is the Bells though. Katie graduated into the Holyhead Harpies, the finest branch of the secret Auror ranks having achieved the highest grades in twenty years. Not since the Longbottom-Potter-Evans class has such a promising young Auror entered into service and lived. If you're lucky, you will be one fifth as good as her."

"From this moment, you will train as you've never trained before. You will be a crack-squad of elite commandos, capable of working as a team or separately, capable of anything I, the Ministry or your Country asks you to do." The cigar had burnt down to a stub and had cast an eerie light over Neville's face, changing the soft curves into suggestive angles of devilry. As if to increase the effect, Neville grinned satirically. "By the end of this summer, Lavender, you will make Jack Bauer look like a Death-Nibbling pussy."

Harry dropped backwards onto the bed and groaned, "Why did I ever follow that yellow sick toad?"

The End. For Now.