With the Yule Ball lost in the past, many students were enjoying the new year and winter break before being thrown back into the busy life of a young wizard or witch by goofing off and trading stories with friends.
It wasn't a time for Third and Fourth years to be sneaking around the castle far from the prying eyes of other students and having secret meetings that may prevent life or death events. And it certainly wasn't the time to spoil the jolly mood of gifts or holiday spirit with dark thoughts revolving around a certain headmaster.
A couple days after the Yule Dance and the festive event of Christmas morning. (Which felt oh so stale without his family.) The members of Boundless had reluctantly agreed to allow Harry, Hermione and Ron to attend their sacred meetings after realizing that they had no real information on Quirrell or Voldemort. Other than the ground facts of what happened before they started attending Hogwarts.
In return for a brief, disturbing history lesson of what happened through year 1 and 2 the Boundless explained their theories and motives believing that the person who entered Harry and Ness's name in the goblet was either Invisible person, someone connected to Mr. Crouch and Mad Eyed Moody.
They quickly focused on Mr. Crouch when Harry recalled their first trip into the kitchen. Where they found Dobby, the house elf who used to belong to the Malfoys and a drunk Winky who was barely able to work let alone focus. All they could get out of her was that Mr. Crouch needed her despite the abuse she had faced from her old owner.
Hermione crisply explained how Winky had flatly refused to believe that Mr. Crouch was in the wrong for firing her right on the spot and kept sobbing about how Crouch was going to be lost without her and able to get into trouble.
Something Selvis noted odd since Barty Crouch was a grown man who had no problem taking care of himself, or so it seems when they recalled his bouts of sickness.
"Starting to get the feeling that the Crouch family is seriously messed up." Ness had murmured prompting Selvis to gleefully reveal his grove of gossip around Crouch, from his heartless display of throwing his own son to the Dementors after being found out as a Death Eater to the death of his wife.
"He's hiding something." Selvis gleefully finished.
"Or, he's a Death Eater himself." Luna offered before they talked about Cedric's clue, which had something to do with saving an item held close to ones' heart from the grasps of singers who could not be understood above ground confirming the Boundless theories of the second challenge being underwater as well as a worrying statement of the champions only having an hour to retrieve their cherished item.
Ness found this a bit hard to believe given the freezing weather they would face in February if they were forced to swim.
Ginny mused that it was probably going to be held above water behind a maze of water while Selvis pointed out that Ness had nothing to really fear since his cherished items were in another continent and hard to reach, meaning he could relax for a bit.
Harry could only share hopeful looks with his friends that Ginny was indeed right, after all, they had face firsthand the odd side of wizardry.
After that meeting, they agreed to search the castle for any more clues that would point them to the right direction behind who was the spy. They couldn't confront anyone without evidence after all.
The girls decided to head to the kitchen, to try and cox Winky into talking while the boys minus Selvis who quickly gave himself a reason of having a huge load of homework for messing up a question in potions decided to look in the library to research magical objects, scampering off before Harry and Ron could question how a Ravenclaw could fall so behind.
Mostly about the Goblet of Fire and, anything that would allow a dead man to live longer in hopes of disproving their Voldemort theory.
"So…" Ron started, struggling to keep himself awake as he read a book about The Wonderous Wonders of Charms and You, "Did anyone read Rita's latest piece in the papers?"
"She wrote something?" Ness glanced up from his book of, The Gauntlet of Rules which so far, had nothing helpful on the Goblet of Fire, "Is it another conspiracy theory about me and Harry?"
"No, it's about Hagrid." Ron dropped his voice as Harry looked up with a nervous frown, "She didn't find out about…?"
"Somehow, she did, and us talking in the corridor about Snape and Karkroff but she barely mentioned the fact that they were death eaters for some reason."
Ness snorted and turned the faded page, "Guess she grew tired of us for once."
"No, it's because Hagrid's part giant!" Ron hissed causing Ness to glance up, "…And?" he questioned not really understanding what was so bad about that other than Hagrid's privacy being invaded and shown to the world, "He's still a good teacher. Sure, he has problems with being a bit too hands on when it comes to certain monsters, but his classes are fun."
Ron shot him a weary look and muttered something under his breath, "Giants, are vicious, mindless brutes in our society Ness. There tribes focus solely on power and wealth."
"Sounds like humans." Ness pointed out, "Just bigger."
"They live in caves and kill each other daily."
"Humans, just cavemen." Ness resumed reading while Ron shot him a frustrated look, "How can you be so calm about this?! Hagrid might get fired!"
"First, I live in America, the country of huge diversity and different ideals on how it should work. Second, Dumbledore wouldn't fire Hagrid based on race, the only thing he has to worry about are his lessons and the helicopter parents."
"The what?" Ron questioned looking to Harry for help. "Parents who hover over their child's well-being and don't really let them do much." Harry answered, "There probably writing Hagrid a bunch of hate mail as we speak to 'protect' their children."
"That's a thing?"
"Yup," Ness turned another page and brightened, "Finally, I found a page on the Goblet of Fire!" his find was rewarded with a loud shush from the Librarian prompting him to shoot her an apoplectic grin before he quietly read out the entry.
"The Goblet of Fire is a somewhat sentient being, being nearly impossible to trick or befuddle. It's main purpose is to set up tournaments, mostly the Tri-Wizard Cup and select the tournament's champions/players." He frowned, turned the page then threw his hands up, "And it just ends." He sighed, "Meaning back to square one."
"I'm starting to hate magic." Harry grumbled as Ron banged his head against the book he was reading, earning another shush and a steely glare.
"There's no one here but us." Ness muttered, then he paused and actually looked around, noticing Neville reading a book about plants he seemed intrigued by something and nearly crashed into a door frame as he slowly left the library.
"Okay, so there's barely anyone here." He corrected, "But still!"
"Well whatever the case is, let's just finish our search before dinner starts." Harry said, fighting a yawn of his own as he changed his focus to a book about water spells, "Maybe the girls have better luck."
Of course, the girls didn't have any luck thanks to Hermione who apparently had been secretly trying to free the House Elves by leaving knitted objects around the tower and had spoken a bit too loudly for their liking about wages and vacation days.
"The only thing remotely useful that we found out from Winky is that Crouch may or may not be in the right state of mind." Ginny explained during dinner, making sure to shoot Hermione venomous glares as the girl stiffly ate her dinner, "Luna had managed to make her loosen up a bit in-between bothering the House elves about hexes they might have found during their daily rounds around the castle when someone decided to stand on a soap box."
"They need help!" Hermione protested scowling as Ginny and Ron hissed, "No they do not!" while Harry and Ness shared weary looks before hoping that Selvis had somehow found something out.
It took him a month before Selvis actually had anything interesting to give them but, Ness had to admit it was a good piece of information and explained why Snape had given him the evil eye during Potions that day.
"Someone broke into Snape's potion storage cabinet!" Selvis practically exploded the moment everyone was in the Boundless club room, "They stole Gillyweed!"
"Gillyweed?" everyone minus the resident magic geniuses questioned before looking at said geniuses for an explanation, who bluntly informed them that Gillyweed allowed to user to breath underwater for a certain amount of time but was very hard to find out in the wild or to cultivate in gardens.
"So, who did it?" Ness asked.
"No one knows! But I saw Snape and Mad Eyed Moody having an argument about it." Selvis replied, doing his best not to give Harry a malicious grin as he glanced at the boy wonder, "Apparently, Snape blames Potter for the disappearance and Mad Eyed Moody wasn't going to let him interrogate him for 'pointless reasons' after pointing out how anyone could have waltzed in and stolen it."
"And here I thought I was Mad Eyed Moody's favorite." Ness jokingly lamented. They ignored him as Luna frowned and murmured, "Why would someone steal Gillyweed a month before the Tournament? Why not the day before?"
"Especially since it would draw so much attention to the champions." Ginny added, "What normal student would steal Gillyweed and leave?"
"A champion, who Snape believes to be Harry for some reason." Selvis finished as the trio swapped worried looks, probably having a hand in Snape's accusation of Harry being responsible.
"Harry, have you…?" Hermione started when Harry shook his head no, "I haven't received anything yet, maybe it was a fluke?"
"Or, their bidding their time to cast off suspicion." Selvis offered, "Although… Who would even have access to Professor Snape's office? It's locked up tight when he's not there!"
They mulled that over and shared a look, "So far, all I can think of is an ingenious student or, a teacher who knows about hexes and protection charms." Ness admitted.
"Goody, another mystery to solve a month before the big event." Ginny sighed as Luna changed the topic, asking about Harry and Ness's game plans for the second challenge.
They of course didn't have one, (Ness sort of did but wasn't too sure if his plan would even work.) and spent the rest of the afternoon wondering why Mad Eyed Moody would possibly steal the Gillyweed for one of the champions if he was working for Voldemort.
Luna and Selvis bluntly offered poison as the reason before Hermione quickly pointed out that Gillyweed had to be eaten whole to work properly and that the slime it secreted would make it hard for the poison to properly intoxicate their victim and would at least give them a minor effect of the poison used.
"I hate this school." Ness groaned as they headed for dinner and prepared to study for an upcoming quiz, "Why can't everything be hard but have an answer instead of shoving more problems in our face?"
"Because, magic." Ginny bluntly answered.
So firstly, a HUGE apology for not updating for a month (Maybe even more...T_T) and for much, much slower updates that will happen in the future, as I am struggling with writing PIH. (Psychic in Hogwarts.) So, after banging my head for an full hour of trying to figure out a proper way to explain why I'm having trouble, (I have this bad habit of needing to explain EVERYTHING going on in my writing process since I'm afraid it's to obscure to connect to something else and make the main point get lost.) I'm just gonna try to be blunt and say it out right.
First- I've outgrown Harry Potter. Not in a 'I'm done because I've know about this for ages and wish it would die' sort of outgrown , but out of the 'OMG THIS IS SO COOL I WISH I CAN GO TO WIZARDING SCHOOL.' outgrown since I'm a teenager who is actually experiencing being in a official school setting, old enough to realize that the 'magic' behind reading what's going on a wizarding school has been ripped away since we almost NEVER see any school activities that isn't plot related or inadvertently important to the plot and because I read a fanfic which makes it very hard for me to try and beat around the bush when suspecting Dumbledore as a villain (And a possibly an accomplish to murder for hiring such awful DA teachers.)
Second-I'm terrible when it comes to beating around the bush. I forget what I'm doing or planning very easily and have to be careful about dropping hints since I may forget it from a new idea of what can happen next. So having work with a book where everything informational and helpful is spread out through a school year is hard since I'm working with bits and pieces of a bigger picture no one but the main characters seem to see. Hence why a big part is just Ness trying to figure out why he's here since I don't have a lot of ideas of lulls that aren't pointless to the story. Selvis was supposed to help with this since the Slytherin's have connections thanks to their parents, but since he's the same year as Ness and I wrote him as a sneak it's sort of hard to glean information to use properly since he's still learning about it as well.
Third- Short term writing goals. I'm terrible at long term goals and don't really plan for them, when I accepted I didn't fully realize that I would need to write all the book events up from Prisoner of Azkaban which turned my simple request into a long winded journey with little information of where to go besides have Ness in the story. I have a better idea of what I want and how to accomplish Ness's first year goals but its a lot harder for me to deal since I work better with short term goals in what I want to happen in the book.
Fourth-Music, I'm listening to music almost 24/7 not just to block out my little brother but to get new ideas, for example, if I listen to something Zelda related I'll get an idea for something I want to happen in my Zelda fanfic, listen to Mario and I'll start thinking up gender bent ideas which make no sense. It keeps me going when I'm writing since the song I'm listening to fits with the scene I'm writing. Most of the time. Harry Potter's soundtrack isn't something I really listen to since I never watched the movies, played only one game and found the soft orchestra soundtrack annoying to listen to. Earthbound's soundtrack is a bit easier to listen to, but it just sends me into the future of events instead of the current event.
Finally- Distractions. I have a lot of downtime and stay on top of my homework, giving me a lot of time to work with my hobbies, however if I run into a roadblock where I have no clue where to go from the corner I wrote myself in I either, jump to another story and focus on that, play video games and forget or whittle time away by watching youtube videos in my attempt to find fitting music or a funny video. Distractions aren't so bad if I'm inspired or focused since I'll keep typing away to keep the ideas firmly in place since I'll forget where I was going once I stop, but since PIH is a stop and start sort of story for me it's much harder for my focus to stay on that story.
I'm not going to give up or let my frustration (With almost everyone in the Harry Potter character pool. LOOKING AT YOU DUMBLEDORE.) leak to much into my writing since I hate reading stories that never get updated and are left without a small ending or a reason as to why the author had to stop. So you won't have to worry about that but just note, updates are going to be slower not because I forgot to edit and put it off, but because of the reasons stated above in my very long rant. (Give me an explanation and I'll find some way to make it very, very long _)
Thanks for reading up to this point though! ^-^