Harry Potter and The Marauding Champions
By NonsensicalRants
Chapter 3:
Aftermath
Harry, freshly showered and devoid of kiss marks, descended from Gryffindor tower in a bit of a tizzy.
The unprotected entrance to the common room had taken a series of blasting curses from both sides to open, and a further bit of advanced transfiguration by their head of house to open to make presentable.
McGonagall had immediately reared on Fred and George as suspects, but they had an alibi and avoided detention. Harry had one too, but said alibi earned him multiple detentions and a re-hashing of the bird and the bees lecture she gives to all first years after exams finish.
He also had to deal with a few upperclassmen confronting him about rumors of infidelity by their girlfriends. Harry had started the day denyingevery false rumor until he realized half of them were just trying to find out who had given him a makeover by process of elimination. He become more scrupulous in his answers when Angelina asked if it was Hermione, and whether or not he'd received a rainbow blowjob as well.
Now he was in a losing battle with his own reputation as he ignored the many girls trying to claim responsibility for the rumored bumping-of-uglies in the girl dorms.
It was with hopes that breakfast would help take his mind off of the debacle that Harry trudged down the grand staircase. Around the third floor corridor is where he encountered the fat lady's portrait being hauled up by the ever affable caretaker.
"Morning Mr. Filch. Good morning Mrs. Norris." He greeted casually.
Both growled at him as he stepped aside to allow them to pass. Funnily enough, the fat lady and her visiting friend both shared knowing winks with him.
He'd have to ask the pair what they remembered from last night.
Another floor down he encountered the entire house-elf contingency of Hogwarts School of Witchraft and Wizardry. Each and every one of them carried a gold-embroidered portrait that he recognized as being from the Headmaster's office. Each former headmaster and headmistress he locked eyes with made like the fat lady and winked at him.
Now if only he could figure out a way to sneak into Dumbledore's office and make them sing too.
He spotted Dobby and Winky as part of a quintet carrying a large tapestry.
"Good morning, Master Harry Potter Sir." Dobby greeted with a wave.
In his excitement the energetic elf lost his grip on the tapestry and his four companions dropped it onto the landing. It unfurled to reveal it's contents as that of Sultan Mustafa's harem.
Each and every one of lovely - and not so lovely - ladies on the tapestry showed some sign or another that they recognized him. In the goblines' case, she made a suggestive licking motion at him.
Sultan Mustafa was certainly a man of, shall we say, refined tastes? And an overblown paranoia of boggarts. Magical historians debated which of the two things - his sexual appetite or need to search every nook and cranny for shapeshifters - that had him replaced as a ruler. Harry suspected the answer was both.
With a mental list of witnesses to last night's misdeads in his head Harry proceeded to the great hall and breakfast within. And as if the universe hadn't delivered enough weirdness to his morning, his breakfast began strange indeed.
For one, the entire Bulgarian populace was missing save for Viktor. For two, Viktor wasn't seated with the Slytherins, but instead at the (understandably empty) Gryffindor table between Fred and George. For a third, said twins were sandwiched between Viktor and Cedric in Fred's case, and Viktor and Fleur in George's case.
Harry suspected he knew what was going on, but joined his fellow champions to help with the harassment all the same.
"Ze eggs are good, oui?" Fleur asked George.
The mellower twin nodded suspiciously as he slowly chewed whatever food, presumably eggs, was in his mouth.
"Da, I vould hope so." Viktor added. "After all, the four of us helped the elves cook this morning, and vorked extra hard on your food in particular."
Now Fred was mirroring his brother's suspicious glare, but both had the sense to not say anything as they quietly ate.
"Here!" Cedric interrupted by spooning a huge dollop of chicken gravy onto both of their plates. "You must try the gravy. We put our sweat and blood into it."
By this point the two let their forks drop with a clatter onto their plates. They actually looked scared. Time for Harry to deliver the coup de grace.
"Here." He offered, pulling a glass bottle out of his robe pocket and slamming it onto the table. "Have some butter beer."
The way their eyes bulged out of the sockets would be seared into his memory for years to come. It was the most comical expression he'd ever seen.
"We, um. We can explain." Fred began, sweating in utter terror at the glare Viktor had permanently affixed to his face; a face mere inches from Fred's own.
"Go on." Viktor enunciated slowly, his nose practically touching Fred's cheek.
"We've been developing a, er, potion. We call it The Fifth Amendment." Fred started.
Huh?
"It's supposed to allow you to avoid incriminating yourself after committing a prank, even under truth potion." George added to an explanation.
Harry still wasn't catching on.
"So, what? It's like the opposite of veritaserum?" Cedric asked.
"More like a memory erasing potion." Fred corrected, trying to lean away from the Bulgarian seeker.
"You can't confess to a crime if you don't remember committing it." Explained George.
Okay, NOW Harry was starting to get it.
"We originally tried using a potion that erases your memories after the fact, but then you have to dispose of the potion container, possibly while in the middle of the deed, which isn't always possible for a prankster." George continued. "So we tried to develop one you could take before doing something and not remember the details."
That was actually brilliant. If you knew what you intended to take the potion beforehand, you could easily stick to any preconceived plan. Hell, you could even wipe your memory of the plan and work off of a checklist, and be sure to burn the checklist before the potion wore off.
"I 'ave nev'air heard of such a potion." Fleur beemed. She seemed to be getting excited at the possibilities too. "What are eet's ingredients?"
The two staryed sweating even harder now, if such a thing were possible.
"Weeell we kinda hit a snag." Said Fred.
"We couldn't find a magical means of producing the effect we wanted." Said George.
"So we turned our attention to muggle means of altering memory." Finished Fred.
Oh.
Oh god.
No!
Harry smacked himself in the face, hard, before sinking into his hands. It was so obvious.
"Please tell me you didn't." Harry begged through his hands, his voice came out as something halfway between a laugh and a cry.
"Vut? Vut is it?" Viktor pleaded, ending his one-sided glaring contest and glancing between Harry and the Weasley's. "Vut did ve drink?!"
Harry looked up from his palms between the five older wizards(and witch) in front of him.
"Please tell me you didn't roofie us!" He pleaded.
The guilt in their expressions told him everything he needed to know
"We might have roofied you." They confessed in unison.
"What? What does that mean? What is roofieing?" Cedric pleaded.
And once again, Harry was reminded how poorly wizards and witches understood the muggle world.
"A roofie is a drug, known as the date rape drug, that sickos slip into girls drinks before having their way with them so they won't remember in the morning."
Fred leapt to his own defense at the renewed death glared from all four champions.
"That's actually a myth!" He exclaimed, still at a hush. "We did our research, even interviewed some cops, and there aren't any reported cases of drink spiking in bars. It's just something people less creative than us imagine it could be used for, so they get paranoid." (A/N - 1)
"Yeah." George added. "People can't handle their alcohol and try to blame their poor decisions on spiked drinks. Lord knows I've woken up beside a mistake thanks to alcohol before."
Harry couldn't relate. He'd only ever woken up from a night of forgotten drunknery beside one woman before, and it was the best thing to ever happen to him. So far.
"Wouldn't such a zing be illegal?" Fleur asked. "Just on the potential to do harm, substantiated or not?"
"Yup." The duo nodded.
"It was a bitch finding any, mind you." Said Fred.
"The nice meth dealer behind the hardware store took serious offense to our request when we asked for some." Said George.
"Us wizards really don't give Muggle's enough credit. Guns are scary." Said Fred.
"And loud." Added George with a nod.
With that mystery solved Viktor politely asked the twins to leave so the Marauders could decide what to do with them. They didn't need second telling before scampering off.
They discussed whether or not to report them to the staff, but that ran the risk of the twins winding up behind honestly didn't want that. Besides, there was a series of pranks and thefts committed the night before and this added evidence might implicate them, memory of the incident or no.
They would need to invent a personalized punishment for them. It was the Marauder way. A prank for a prank.
But with the great hall filling up fast they would have to put off planning their revenge for later. For now, they started on their own breakfast.
Harry had gotten as far as taking a sip of pumpkin juice before winding up in a coughing fit.
"What?" Fleur asked cutely when he stared at her mitten-covered hands.
They weren't normal, every day mittens. They were big, red, honest to God oven mitts. They clashed horribly with the light blue of her beauxbatons uniform. They also looked ridiculous.
"What?!" Fleur reiterated, blushing. "It eez cold in zis God-forsaken island."
Right. Cover story. Black claws for hands. He forgot.
By the time he'd finished eating, the Gryffindor table had filled to capacity by the late arrivals. It was here that the final oddity of the day came stampeding into his life when a centaur entered the great hall.
Harry had to double, triple and quadruple check to confirm it was indeed a centaur, but it had a human torso and a horse for a butt, then there was only one thing that could be. Quack like a duck and all that. The centaur wasn't alone as he, and several of his brethren, seemed to be escorting the entire Durmstrang populace into the great hall.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Viktor flagged down one of his classmates, the one who liked to paint his robes with spaghetti, and held a hushed conversation in Bulgarian. A conversation he relayed with what looked like a blush.
"It appears somebody stole the Durmstrang ship and, somehow, carried it up and down two mountains to leave it stranded on top of a cliff deep in the forbidden forest."
Hmm. Wonder who could have done that.
"And ze centaurs?" Fleur asked.
"They escorted us back through the horrid forest." Viktor's classmate, Poliakoff of Harry remembered correctly, explained with a shudder.
"That's awfully... charitable of them." Cedric observed, his voice dripping with suspicion.
Harry seconded that opinion.
A reclusive tribe of man-hating beast men helping foreign witches and wizards navigate through their territory?
"Well there's a gift horse in need of a dental exam if ever there was one." Harry decided as he stood up to march towards the demihumans Hogwarts shared a ward system with.
"Vut?" Viktor and Poliakoff asked after him in confusion at the expression.
"Nothing!" Harry called back with a wave. "Be right back!"
Harry approached the centaur nearest the door and realized he was familiar. Ronan? No, this one was Bane. Harry remembered Bane. Harry remembered Bane perfectly.
"Oh my goodness! Bane! Is that you?!" Harry greeted in his best impression of a middle aged attention-seeking woman he could.
For his part, the surly centaur flinched at the unexpected greeting before considering the greeter. Recognition dawned on him like a rising sun.
"I haven't seen you since that time you were debating the merits of leaving an eleven year old boy to die in the forbidden forest with these two. How. Have. You. Been." He punctuated each word with a Hagridian(tm) slap to Bane's shoulder. His bottom one.
The pair this debate had taken place with stood in the entrance hall and were pointedly ignoring the conversation. Firenze at least looked amused, for what little of his rescuer's face Harry could see from this angle.
"Ah yes. Mister Potter. How very nice to see you well." Bane greeted patiently.
The usual buzz of rumor spreading had already erupted from the students within earshot of his flippant greeting earlier. Which is to say, Harry could barely hear Bane's response over the cacophony of whispering coming from every corner of the great hall.
"Mighty nice of you all to help escort these foreign students back to the castle. I didn't know you had it in you to be charitable." Harry continued speaking in an unnecessarily high pitch.
"I suppose we all have it in us to show goodwill to one another, Mister Potter. We showed quite a bit towards rescuing you when you wandered into our territory years ago."
We? Maybe this poor centaur was getting up there in age. He clearly wasn't remembering that series of events properly. Could you tell a centaurs age by the state of their teeth like you could horses? Were centaurs herbivores like horses or omnivores like men? They did seem to have human teeth and did carry around weapons normally used for hunting. Hmmm.
"Well it's always good to see a person change for the better. So tell me, Bane, what brought about this sudden burst of philanthropy from you?"
Bane made a sound that resembled an animalistic growl being held back in his throat. Good to know Harry was accomplishing his mission.
"When a lost herd is wandering aimlessly in your territory, it is best to help them on their way." Bane explained.
Harry mentally translated that to "A bunch of naked monkeys carrying wands were trapped in our house and it was easier to guide them away than have a pitched battle in which all of us would probably die."
Seemed reasonable.
"I'll leave you all to it then."
Harry found himself regretting his decision to antagonize the warhawk of the local centaur clan when, later that day, detention had him and a handful of other student's following Hagrid into the forbidden forest.
Hagrid, as per any detention, confiscated their wands at the start. What was unusual was when he handed them axes and a blister curing balm and pointed out which trees they were to chop down. They did as told without any further instruction for some twenty minutes before Hagrid returned with the Bauxbaton's herd of Abraxan.
"No no no! You don' be holdin the axe like that!" Hagrid had boomed when he saw their atrocious forms.
And so began their improptu lesson in proper wood cutting. Particular focus was placed on only using your arms and letting the weight of the axe do most of the work for you. Most of them had made the mistake of trying to work through the whole tree using the axe, whereas they were only supposed to use it to remove the bark and use the giant saws(which Hagrid had yet to bring out, so they couldn't have possibly deduced) to take the tree out.
They worked in pairs removing tree bark all day, making a path along a shallow stream that couldn't be more than a meter wide. Harry naturally chose to pair with Viktor, who obviously hadn't slept in the Durmstrang ship and received the same number of detentions as Harry.
Several of the less skittish inhabitants of the forest came to watch them suffer, chief among them Bane and an entourage of centaurs Harry had never seen before, but assumed were of similar temperament to the warhawk. There was also an annoying blue tit that tweeted like a song bird in what sounded like mocking remarks in it's best approximation of the Scottish language. It was clearly some kind of magical bird, but what type, none of them could tell.
It wasn't until the sun was getting low that Hagrid brought out the saws and, again in pairs, they got to work.
Harry praised his luck that he had the beastly Bulgarian as his partner. The two of them could power through a tree in ten minutes flat. Well, that wasn't completely true. Viktor cold power through an entire tree in ten minutes flat. Harry just helped.
After they finished felling all of the trees they split up to take out the branches with their axes.
The day of detention ended with Hagrid teaching them how to properly tie the fallen trees to the Abraxan in such a way that it wouldn't choke them or put stress on their wings. The hardest part was coaxing the majestic creatures to tow the logs and guide them to the back of Hagrid's hut.
To call them uncooperative, would be an understatement.
That evening found them loitering in the library with Fleur and Hermione as they studied. When they remembered to use the blister balm, which Harry desperately needed, the girls looked absolutely aghast at the result.
"It healed zem?" Fleur asked in surprise she examined Harry's perfectly smooth palms.
"Yes? Wasn't that the point?"
Fleur ignored his question as Hermione snatched up the potion bottle and examined the description. Potions made for selling were required to list their ingredients. Allergic reactions to magical ingredients were heaps and bounds worse than allergic reactions to more mundane things.
Fleur looked over Hermione's shoulder to read along and nodded when his bushy-haired friend tapped the glass container to indicate an ingredient.
"We will be borrowing zese for ze evening." Fleur informed them before pecking Harry on the cheek. "Goodnight."
Hermione repeated Fleurs actions, for Viktor, before the pair vanished from the library.
Harry turned an inquisitive eye to his fellow seeker, but Viktor could only shrug.
The next evening after classes saw a disproportionate amount of Gryffindor students in detention, along with the return of Harry and Viktor's blister balm from their ladies. It now smelled of lavender and eucalyptus instead of a nondescript cream.
Harry figured they wouldn't have done anything dangerous to it. After all, no woman would ever try to poison the man they loved, Right?
Right?
Detention went the same as the day before. Remove the tree bark, ignore the centaur watchers, saw the tree down, apply blister balm, remove the branches, ignore the tiny bird attempting to speak a human language, have the Abeaxan drag the tree trunks to the hutt and apply more blister balm.
It became apparent that the plan was to clear a trail along the stream all the way to the Durmstrang ship. But it only became apparent to the Marauders because they took up the two invisibility cloaks and followed the stream for ten whole kilometers in pairs. Up and down two whole mountains, to the cliff where the ship was moored.
It was trapped beside a large pond, which was likely an aquafer, and for the life of them they couldn't figure out what they'd done to get it here.
"Maybe we shrank it and pushed it up the stream?" Cedric offered.
Harry shot the idea down.
"No. Even if we could have shrunken it without causing all of the spacial expansion charms inside to collapse, likely impossible, it wouldn't have reduced it's weight or mass and there is no way we could have dragged it. Maybe with the entire Abraxan herd, but it would have taken forever."
"It has a method of flight, but it can only be activated ven Karkroff and five teachers activate the function." Viktor offered.
"Mmm. Maybe. We are razzer brilliant together, we could 'ave overridden ze controls." Fleur offered.
It was doubtful, but also the best possibility they could come with before it was time to sneak back to school.
The next day saw a proportionate amount of Slytherins joining the Gryffindor students for detention. Clearly the other teachers caught on to Snape's intentional targeting of the house of lions and decided to return the favor.
This was made all the more humorous when you considered most of them were prissy little purebloods(Draco) who had never done hard labor in their life, or likely even any household chores. They sure were amusing to watch as they struggled, and the talking tit jeered them mercilessly, or at least Harry thought it was jeering. He couldn't really tell.
The surprising exception to this trend were Crabbe and Goyle. The two had managed to take down a tree with combined axe strikes before Hagrid could instruct them on proper procedure. The care for magical beasts instructor seemed torn on whether to be disappointed in the other students for not correcting the bozos, or being impressed that the two fourteen year olds could manage it.
Harry, along with all of the other student's, settled for being impressed.
The rest of the week passed in a blur. A few more odd creatures stopped by their work areas to see what they were doing, including what looked a lot like a scaly unicorn whose single horn was more like that of a deer instead of a narwhal.
A few of them went to go check it out when it vanished, but only found burnt footprints in the brush where it had been.
"I think that was a Kirin." Draco said suddenly as they walked back to the others.
"A what?" Harry, Vincent, Gregory and Ron asked dumbly.
Draco sneered. At all of them.
"It's like a unicorn, but found in the far east. Japan, Korea and China." He explained.
"Oh." Said Vincent dumbly. "Then what's it doing here?"
Ron made a suggestion.
"Well I imagine somebody imported a baby, or egg, illegally.(Hagrid?) Then tried to raise it despite not knowing how or without realizing it couldn't be domesticated.(Hagrid.) Then, instead of responsibly turning it over to the authorities to be returned to it's natural habitat, released it into the forbidden forest."
Harry also discovered what alterations his girlfriend(?) had made to the blister balm when, instead of healing it to baby smooth skin, his palms imstead developed tough callouses where blisters had once been.
The same night he made this discovery he made another one. When he grasped Fleur's bare ankle underneath the library table and she utterly swooned, after making an adorable squeak that is. Turns out girls like being grasped by rough, calloused hands. A lot.
Who knew?!
When Harry confronted the two girls about why they altered the potions to do this their answer floored him.
"If we are going to have lumberjacks for boyfriends, we might as well try to meek out all of the benefits that come with it." Hermione had said, before turning on Viktor. "Would you be open to growing out your beard?"
Harry was thankful Fleur didn't make a similar request of him. He would have hated to disappoint her.
By the end of the week Harry no longer gained new blisters from detentions. They weren't even halfway through carving a path through the forest to reach the ship, but Harry and Viktor's detentions were over so they didn't care. Well, Viktor cared a little, but only because he and his fellow Durmstrang students were stuck sleeping in the Slytherin dormitory until the work was done.
It was because of this sleeping arrangements that the Marauder's chose to meet up in the dungeons when they next had the chance.
Harry had snuck out to the Bauxbatons carriage under his family cloak to retrieve Fleur while Cedric snuck to the Slytherin common room entrance under Moody's to retrieve Viktor. The four met in front of a tapestry depicting a beautiful oriental woman with her hair in a bun sitting beside a hot spring in nothing but a white fluffy towel.
She considered them as they removed their cloaks and revealed their faces.(Viktor's with a fresh 5 o'clock shadow) and Harry stepped forth to open her passage.
He made a show of stretching in such a way as to indicate he was sore from a hard day's work. It wasn't hard to do, considering he very much was. The raven-haired woman giggled before opening the passage so they could enter the secret greenhouses.
They were immediately bombarded by thick steam and the scent of mint.
As they entered and adjusted they could see a massive silver cluster-leaf tree on a tiny island surrounded by a pool of scalding water. It's wide branches blotted out the white moonlight from the glass roof above and hid the tiny courtyard Harry knew was beyond it. Snowberry branches hung over the rocky enclosure for the pool and stone seats sat all around it in a bed of vibrant green mint and silver licorice.
"Welcome everyone." Harry announced dramatically. "To the Slytherin Snowberry Sauna!"
Notes:
A.N-1:
I would link to studies or articles done on the topic of drink spiking, but I'm not allowed to. So I'll name a couple. If you care about this subject feel free to research further.
- Embodying Uncertainty?: Understanding Heightened Risk Perception of Drink 'Spiking' by Adam Burgess, Pamela Donovan, Sarah E. H. Moore
- Prospective study of 101 patients with suspected drink spiking by Quigley P, et al. Emerg Med Australas. 2009
Drink spiking is mostly a myth, but using Rohypnol to rape people is very real. Usually in Hollywood circles, on children, but I would hope my readers are well-informed enough to know all about this, and not need me to explain that vial den of pedophilia.
Also, Epstein was assassinated. Water is wet. Grass is known to be green in pigment. Thank you for allowing me to give you this public service announcement.
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