Harry Potter and The Marauding Champions

By NonsensicalRants


Chapter 4:

Inheritance


Relaxing in the sauna was exactly what the Marauders needed after the week they had. Especially Harry and Viktor.

Fleur was kind enough to transfigure all of their clothes into swimwear, save for hers. The part-Veela settled for hiking her skirt up to her thighs and soaking her feet in the shallow water. They were a fine pair of legs and made for a great backrest as Harry sank into the steaming water and leaned against his girlfriend(!). As they did so they vehemently ignored Cedric and Viktor's debate on why it was called a sauna instead of a hot spring, as it obviously was.

Harry assumed it was because the Hogwarts founders had apparently formed an organization known as the Alliterative Assholes, and couldn't call things by their proper names if a similar word would suffice to make it rhyme or alliterate.

"So." Harry began the meeting. "Paddlecul, Firebird. How went your work on the map?"

Fleur and Cedric had spent their free time over the week skulking around the castle, using the original Marauder's map to explore as much of it as they could, while carrying the new prototypes. The autofill function should have managed the rest.

"Well, we've filled out most of the castle while you and Trionskin were off in wood shop, but we also ran into a problem." Cedric said.

"Several problems." Fleur amended.

Fleur and Cedric, who had both borrowed Viktor and Harry's maps during their excursions, set the four new maps on the floor beside the original. Harry had to turn around to peruse them, but that provided a perfect opportunity to face his woman and lay against her lap.

So soft.

The gesture must have looked rightly indecent to their fellow Marauders, but he didn't care.

"Vhat is this?" Viktor snapped when he picked up his map. "I cannot make sense of a thing."

Harry spotted exactly what the problem was with his map. It looked like... It looked like the autofill function attempted to draw over the same place over and over again until all that remained was an illegible collage of lines and curves. It wasn't just worthless, it was ruined.

"That actually makes sense. The original wasn't a single piece of paper, it has separate folds." Harry explained, picking up the map of his father's generation and holding it up as proof. "I'm guessing the strange spacial structure and overlaying positions of rooms in the school and secret passages make a normal map layout impossible."

The other's looks at him. Then looked at him some more.

"I'm smarter than I look, honestly." He exclaimed amidst their chortling at his sudden rise in IQ.

They all agreed that they'd need to start over from scratch to remake the maps, and set about disposing of the only ones. The only parts they kept were cutouts of the boxes that allowed communication and the title with their names.

Cedric conjured four cork boards the size of hand mirrors for them to stick their respective pieces too with hairpins, as provided by Fleur. She sure had a lot of them stuck in that bun on her head. They were the perfect tool for sharing messages and instructions to one another, so best not get rid of them. Especially since they had no idea how they even made them to begin with.

"So." Viktor pressed on. "Vhat do ve do about the veasley twins?"

"I think zat much be obvious, no?" Said Fleur. " We.."

"So. The eighty sixth-generation of Marauders has come at last."

They all leapt to the their feet at the interrupting voice, their wands leaping to their hands with them.

"They sure kept us waiting. A gap of nearly eighteen years in the line of succession is unheard of. We feared the worst."

The second voice was deep and sensual, that of a woman.

"We had feared, and dare I say, hoped we would never have to initiate a new generation. Alas, here you are."

That voice Harry knew, and knew well.

"Wait... Sir Nicholas?"

The Gyrffindor House ghost floated through the wall from above the tapestry entrance. From the other three corners emerged the Grey Lady, The Fat Frier and the Bloody Baron. All four house ghosts had come to meet the new Marauders.

And then they bowed. It would have been humbling if it weren't for the temperature in the humid sauna dropping to freezing with their appearance.

"Greetings Successors." The Baron said. "We have long awaited your arrival."

The two quartets stared at each other in silence for some time. Harry soon realized he was the only person with enough knowledge to put all of these pieces together. He figured he'd start with the obvious.

"So, my dad and his friends weren't the first Marauders?"

"No." The Grey Lady confirmed.

"But you four were?" Cedric, who was catching on surprisingly fast, prodded.

"No." The Bloody Baron denied. "We were the second."

That was a difficult morsel to mentally digest.

As far as Harry knew the house ghosts were chosen as stewards of their individual houses because they were the first of each to become bound to Hogwarts after their deaths. Their individual history was highly debated, and the Grey Lady's was a mystery. But for another generation to have been Marauders before them seemed impossible based on his skimming of Hogwarts, a History.

"Wait." Fleur seemed to have had an epiphany. "I think I can guess who ze first generation was, can ze four of you confirm some of my assumptions first?

The house ghosts each nodded.

"Every generation of Marauders are at least close friends?"

"At the very least." The Grey Lady confirmed, giving the Bloody Baron a suggestive wink.

Gross.

"And all Marauders are animagi?"

"No." Nicholas told them. "Three of each group are animagi, the fourth is always something more magical."

Like a werewolf or Veela, perchance?

"We actually have an entire speech about the history and fate of Marauders, but please go on. We can give it after we see if you can figure this one out " The Friar encouraged with his usual drunken blush.

Fleur went on.

"Hmmm. What group of four people do we know of zat were very good friends, and whom also seem to have identities wholly inseparable from zat of a specific animal?" Fleur speculated aloud, sarcastically

And then it clicked.

"The founders!" Harry and Cedric gasped in unison.

Viktor made a grunt that seemed to signify a slight epiphany, like coming to understand the theory behind a spell. After a week working as a lumberjack with the Bulgarian it was becoming easier to decipher his grunts.

"Their names should have made that obvious." Sir Nicholas chastised them. "Honestly, did you believe Slytherin was uncle Salazar's ACTUAL sirname?"

Of course! Harry had always thought the house names sounded ridiculous. They were Marauder aliases! It would be like Remus Lupin being remembered a Remus Mooney in the history books a millennia from now.

"Ravenclaw?" Harry pondered. "She was an eagle then? But why the distinction of her claw?"

"It was distinctly black, unlike the average sea eagle, along with her beak. Her plumage was pale, almost white." The Grey Lady explained.

"Gryffindor was a lion?" Cedric pressed. "So why the comparison to a Gryphon? What is a dor on a gryphon?"

"Dor was slang for butt in their time." Sir Nicholas explained. "His nickname meant Gryphons arse."

That's definitely chuckle worthy. Probably something the other founders came up with to always remind him how stubborn he is.

"I'm guessing Slytherin wasn't actually a snake, but was ze 'something more magical' you mentioned? Simply a parseltongue? Making Hufflepuff ze third animagi as a badger!" Fleur concluded.

"Correct." The Bloody Baron confirmed. "But uncle Salazar was much more than a parseltongue. He was part Naga, hence his ability to speak to snakes. The only trace of his half breed status to pass onto his descendants. One of every group of Marauaders must be a half breed, like mademoiselle Delacour here, or somebody suffering from a blood curse, like Mister Lupin.

"Hold your horses dear, we'll get to explaining that soon." The Grey Lady chastised the Baron.

The detail about parseltongue gave Harry pause.

"Wait, I thought you said three are animagi and only one is something else. If I'm a parseltongue and Firebird is of mixed heritage, then aren't we breaking the rules here?" He asked.

The answer was curt, but explanatory.

"You are not a parseltongue by birth. You've obtained the ability through means none of us can wrap our heads around, as such it is not in your veins nor will it be passed down by your loins." Sir Nicholas assuaged his concerns. "And even if it was by birth, you would be so very many generations removed from Salazar's Naga heritage that you would not qualify as a half breed. You must be no less than an eighth nonhuman. After four generations you no longer qualify."

Disregarding his use of the word "loins" this revelation came as a spot of relief. At least his kids won't ever have to deal with this "heir of Slytherin" tripe.

"May we give our well-practiced speech now?" The Friar asked. "We've done it eighty three times now, it's kind of traditional at this point."

Harry, Fleur, Cedric and Viktor responded with a cacophony of sounds, hand motions and nods all amounting to "Please, go on."

The house ghosts cleared their throats dramatically and adjusted their clothes before speaking in turns.

"When Hogwarts was founded the four founders looked to the universities of Muggle make and saw them to be distasteful." Said Sir Nicholas.

"They saw the stifling of curiosity, creativity and good humor alongside the destruction of brilliant minds and abuse of authority." Said the Frair.

"They decided such would not be true in their school, and so took measures to put in place a counterbalance to the authority and power of faculty, and a means to ensure the rise of great potential in future generations." Said the Grey Lady.

"And so they cast a curse upon the school. A true curse like the ancients used, one not cast with a spell nor of simple effects, but one to cause a repeat of ordered events forevermore." Said The Bloody Baron.

"This curse served multifold purposes. The first is to bring together four disparate youths who each represent the ideals, and potential for greatness, of the founders themselves." Continued Nicholas.

"The second is to instill in them the mischief and camaraderie needed to pool their different talents and personalities together into an unstoppable force, equal in might and authority to that of the entire faculty combined." Continued The Friar.

"The third was to pass on the traits and powers of the founders to each new generation, and to bequeath them with an everlasting friendship that surpasses time, distance and even betrayal or war." Continued The Grey Lady.

"The fourth was to, unfortunately, curse each generation to share the founders fate." Continued The Baron.

"In every generation one is cursed to be punished for a crime they did not commit." Said Sir Nicholas, dislodging his head like a hat to emphasize the point.

"Another is cursed to suffer a life estranged from the others." Said the Friar.

"A third is cursed to die by the actions of another member." Said the Grey Lady, casting her eyes downward in sadness.

"The fourth is destined to die by their own hand." Said the Bloody Baron, opening his robes to show the knife embedded into his heart, presumably by his own hand.

"But with the curse comes the blessing. And the curse will bring together four disparate youths under the guise of the Marauders, instilling in each of them a proper sense of mischief." Finished Sir Nicholas.

"The curse shall also bestow upon them shackles of friendship that shall never truly fade, even in death. Three to become animagi and the fourth a half breed." Finished the Friar.

"It shall also destine the four youths to craft and invent objects of immense power, one as a collaborative effort and one unique to each of them." Finished the Grey Lady

"And finally it shall bless them with a pair of rivals, the Innovator and the Spellcrafter. Foils with which they shall compete and better themselves." Finished the Bloody Baron. "One member of both parties are also destined to wed each other, but that's a mixed bag."

The ghosts went silent with the end of their tale. Silence in which the new generation could contemplate the history and fate they had inherited.

Harry, for his part, didn't understand the nature of a true curse at all. It wasn't something he'd learned about, but promised to remedy that fact in the future. The rest was pretty straightforward, save for one part that didn't add up.

"Hang on, my dad and his friends were all in Gryffindor. How could they have properly represented a founder each?" Harry asked.

"Ah, though they were all in the same house they were each excellent examples of one house' virtue or another. Your father being the quintessential Gryffindor." Nicholas told him. "To a fault."

"Remus was an eagle in the lions den." Said the Grey Lady. "Studious and brilliant. It saddens me to know he was never allowed to reach his potential after schooling, but such is the curse at times."

"I'm sure you don't need me to tell you of the guile, cunning and naked ambition of Mister Pettigrew?" The Bloody Baron said, souring Harry's mood.

"And I have NEVER seen a person more loyal than Sirius Black. It is by no coincidence that his animagus form is that of man's best, and most loyal, friend." The Friar said, uplifting Harry's mood. "Though he left much to be desired in his work ethic.

Harry snorted at that one. The first thing he'd done while recovering from the time turner adventure was ask to see the school records from his parent's generation. They were practically flunking out of school anytime other than end of year exams. Based on those and their owl/newt scores they should have all been top of their class, save for laziness.

"And vhat of this, curse?" Viktor broached. "Is there really no preventing us from falling to such miserable fates?"

His answer was four solemn head shakes and accompanying frowns.

"All have tried. None have yet succeeded." Said the Baron.

"And is there any way to predict which one of us will suffer which fate?" Asked Cedric. "Is it usually the Gryffindor or Ravenclaw killed by a friend for instance?"

Another quartet of frowns and shaking of heads were his answer.

"The best you can do, and I implore you to try, is to not dwell or contemplate which is which." Offered the Friar. "Doing so will only year you apart with suspicion and the need to walk on eggshells for fear of suspicion, or fear for each other's wellbeing. It destroyed your father's generation, don't fall to the same fate."

That sounded like an impossible request. How could they not obsess over it.

"I am more curious about zese objects of power you mentioned. Can you tell us more about zat?" Fleur pleaded.

"Well, the founders worked together to create Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Explained the grey lady. "A monumentally powerful and unique object, if you can view it as such. And each of the founders invented their own legendary artifacts. Surely you've heard of them?"

The Bloody Baron snorted. "Potter here has even wielded one to kill Ariadne."

"Who?" Harry asked.

"The basilisk. She used to have such a kind disposition too." The Bloody Baron bemoaned.

"Er, right. Gryffindors sword." Harry confirmed, refraining from commenting on the blood thirsty serpent.

"Hufflepuff created a goblet of sorts, though nobody knows for certain what it does." Cedric told them. "And I know of Ravenclaw's lost diadem which is supposed to grant the wearer increased intelligence."

"It's effects are a bit more complicated than that, but essentially yes." Confirmed the Grey Lady. "And Salazar crafted a locket holding the secrets to parselmagic, most all of which was actually invented by his wife and rival, who was also part Naga though of a different clan."

Sounds powerful.

"I know my father's generation created the map together, but what of their individual creations?" Harry asked.

"That, is something I would suggest you try to find out on your own." The Friar told them with a benign smile.

"Okay... And these rivals? You said there's always two?" Harry egged on.

"Indeed. For the previous generation the rivals were none other than your own mother, Mister Potter." Explained the Friar. " Along with her best friend. She was an innovator, discovering shortcuts and improvement to all manner of potions. Her friend was the spellcrafter, who designed many amazing curses and jinxes. Oh, their clashes with the Marauders were things of legend. Such a shame their particular rivalry turned particularly vicious in their final years at school."

They returned once more to solemn silence after that, which the ghosts took as their sign to leave. Which was all well and good, because they had already given Harry plenty to think about.

"If there isn't anything else, we have duties to return to." The Bloody Baron told them as a way of excusing himself.

"Actually." Viktor said, stopping them in their flight. "I do have one question."

The Baron motioned for Viktor to continue.

"Vhat in the hell is a Hovelpov and vhat does it have to do vith Badgers?"

Their predecessors answered with uproarious laughter, either at his question, his pronunciation or both.

"It was a word aunt Helga made up for Badgers." Said the Grey Lady. "She made up weird words for everything, like snidget, or Quidditch or Hogwarts, though that last one was a play on her criticism of the meadery nearby, whose product she claimed wasn't even worthy of being a hog's breakfast. Hence Hogsmead. Some of these names stuck, even for things that were called something else before."

Helga was now Harry's favorite founder.

"There's a young lady in Ravenclaw house who has a similar quirk." Informed Sir Nicholas. "I have been debating with Helena if she could possibly be ain't Helga's reincarnation."

Harry would find this girl. Harry would befriend this girl. Harry would bring this girl on as an honorary member and possible successor for his generation of Marauders.

"Hah! You would entertain the possibility, you bloody Cathar." Snorted the Fat Friar. "How many times do I have to tell you there is NO THEOLOGICAL BASIS FOR REINCARNATION!"(AN-1)

"NOR IS THERE ANY FOR PRAYING TO MARY! MAYBE IF YOU CATHOLICS BOTHERED TO READ THE BIBLE YOU'D KNOW ABOUT THIS GUY NAMED JESUS!" Screamed back Sir Nicholas before whispering "He's kind of a big deal."

"LADIES, LADIES!" Interrupted the Grey Lady. "You're both pretty."

The ancient Marauders, having finally started acting like Marauders, bidded them adieux and left back through the walls.

The newest generation of Marauders returned to silence.

"So anyways, about the Weasley Twins."

And so they plotted, argued, and plotted some more.

Fleur suggested they try to somehow frame the twins for the series of pranks they themselves performed while under the influence. It was, after all, their fault for spiking the butter beer. Viktor shot that one down.

"Ve should take pride in our vorks and not tolerate others trying to take credit. Vhile avoiding being caught is more important, we vill not ever push the blame or punishment onto others."

He was very emphatic in his statement, and so was born the first Marauder Rule

Marauder Rule #1: Take pride in your work and never frame others for it not allow them to take credit.

Fleur pouted at the rejection of her idea, but even Harry couldn't bring himself to lie to his girlfriend and claim to like it. From there they threw out several ideas, ranging from cheating on the owl tests on the twins behalf, thus getting them into trouble, or fudging their scores into straight O's.

The reasoning behind that one was that it would get the twins a lot of positive academic attention, something they would despise. They shelves that idea for later.

"You, know I think we're trying to be too flashy." Said Harry. "Lets try some something minor, more simple. An avalanche of mini pranks against them, the kind of things they do. Give them a taste of their own medicine, as it were."

The other's like that idea. They liked it a lot.

"I have close to no experience doing such things though." Worried Cedric.

"Zen it should be a good learning exercise, oui?" Countered Fleur.

"I am not so sure. You are suggesting ve fight these Veasleys in an arena they are masters of. Small, petty pranks."

Viktor had a point there. If they were going to use the twins as a training exercise, then it behooved of them to bring in someone more experienced into give them advice. A master of the petty pranks to help them learn faster.

"Guys, can you keep a secret?" Harry suddenly asked.

"Niet."

"I tend to just run at the mouth, it's a big problem."

"I am a 'orrible gossip, 'arry. I 'ave already told ze whole school of our sordid bedroom escapades."

Well, at least now he knew not to let Fleur or Viktor get away with the whole'Oh, I don't understand sarcasm, I'm a foreigner' schtick ever again.

Harry told them everything.


The following Monday was one to remember.

For Harry it started with a trip down to the kitchens to hunt down his favorite, and least favorite, house elf. Dobby was excited to help him and would probably do anything he asked without question, so the well-practiced lie was kind of redundant.

"Some friends and I prefer our beds made a certain way, I was wondering if I could request for the elves to make mine, Fred and George's bed differently?"

Dobby absolutely beamed at him.

"Of course Harry Potter sir, how would yous be liking it? I be doing it myself!"

Harry then proceeded to teach Dobby how to short sheet a bed. Sure, that would mean the elf would short sheet his bed as well, but Harry tended to sleep on top of the covers with a separate fleece blanket to keep him warm. Especially this time of year.

The only class he had that day was defense, which had been canceled the week before for some mysterious reason. Instead of an eyepatch wearing Moody, however, the class was being substituted by none other than Dumbledore himself

And it suuuuuucked.

"The best defense against danger of all kinds is to recognize and avoid them to begin with." Was the exact sentence he used to begin his lecture.

And that really should have been it, but he droned on and on and on. He gave an entire thirty minute speech about how it's every individual's responsibility to keep themselves safe, for they are the only ones who can. Most of the remaining class devolved into a mostly philosophical question on the importance and benefits of learning self-defense, the Muggle philosophy behind the right to bare arms, and discussing hypothetical situations involving bar fights, muggings, or recognizing aggressive body language of people best left avoided.

It was a speech nicely summarized by the phrase "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" But sure Dumbledore, go ahead and waste two hours of everyone's life stretching a two word lesson into a fucking novel.

Oh and he gave them all homework that had them considering what kind of actions a spouse or other loved ones could do to you in particular that could inspire you to violence, and possibly murder. He also assigned them to look up crime statistics on assault and murder. Big shock, a lot of murders and violence in relationships are in reaction to infidelity or some kind of psychological abuse.

So yeah, don't cheat on or nag your spouse death. They might fucking kill you. Big revelation there professor.

Harry might as well have titled his essay "Do the opposite of what the Dursley's did to me." And devoted the entire thing to recounting his personal experiences living in that house and relating them to potential future relationships. That ought to hurt the old man where it counts, not that Harry was vindictive or anything.

When they finished their homework Harry followed Dean and Seamus to their detention. He no longer had any of his own, but he wanted to keep tabs on the progress of his fellow students and he was curious if Seamus could understand or translate the Magnificent Yapping Blue Tit.

"It's informing Draco that he should stop styling his hair with whatever mixture of acromantula spit and trill spooge he uses and politely instructing him to crawl back up his whore mother's birth canal by way of her rectal wall until he bursts out of her stomach like a... What the hell is a Xenomorph?"

So the tit was not only more foul-mouthed than Harry ever imagined, but was also familiar with Muggle filmography? Neato!

Leaving Seamus with instructions to write down all future Tit insults - for his own later use, of course - Harry went down to Hagrid's hut to see that he had created an actual woodshop for working on the spare bits of wood. Hagrid had been busy, creating a saw mill for splitting logs into thin beams and the severed branches to even thinner beams.

The purpose was obvious. Detentiones were being forced to build fencing along the path of deforestation leading up to the Durmstrang ship. He would have been left wondering how such a pitiful construction was supposed to deter any of the wild beasts from reaching the path if it wasn't for the rune students carving animal-repellant arrays for practice.

The wizarding world really needed to get up to date on child labor laws. Or maybe the Muggle world needs to stop pretending people below the age of sixteen shouldn't be paid for the work that they totally aren't doing? Bit of both?

At least those students were being paid in extra credit.

His next stop was to the library to study up on true curses. The first book to discuss the topic was written from the perspective of a Muggleborn.

"You ever seen Stephan King's thinner? That's a regular curse, easily cured by a counterspell. A true curse is more akin to the curse of the pharaohs, anchored to a place and designed to befall anybody who meets a certain set of conditions. It can be as simple as instant death for anybody who crosses a threshold, to jinxing a school position so that anybody who fills it will either be sacked, retired or killed within a year of taking it up. But they can be even more complicated than that, requiring dozens of conditions to activate and having dozens of effects on the afflicted party."

According to this, the Marauder Curse sounded like it may be the most complicated one ever devised, or at the least implemented.

There were a few rules to curse making. Namely that they must be balanced between positive and negative effects and activators. For an instant death curse on a tomb it's balanced out by the karma of the individual. Your negative intent of robbing the tomb fuels the negative effect of the curse. If you want a curse to have multiple negative effects then you need to add a positive effect or two.

For three negative effects it needs to be fueled either by three negative conditions - difficult - or one negative conditions and two positive effects added to the curse. It wasn't unheard of for a curse to be designed to grant predominantly positive effects, but the same rules applied. They had to have negative effects added to balance it out.

Hence the suicide, murder, estrangement and scapegoat clauses for the Marauder curse.

Unfortunately, true curses were nearly impossible to break after taking effect except by the person who crafted it. It truly was impossible to dispel the negative effects if you've already experienced the positive ones, which the four champion already had.

Fortunately, they had years to try and figure it out and the knowledge and experience of nearly two whole generations of former Marauder's to draw on(Just as soon as they capture Pettigrew.) Maybe more if there are any living members of previous generations to his dad's posse, which was a distinct possibility.

He wasn't quite finished reading the book on true curses by the time Madam Pince came around to kick students out of the library for the night, but he learned all he really needed to know for now. Now all that was left for him to do was wait until it was sufficiently dark out to sneak from the dorms and meet with the others.

Child's play.

"Evening Voulgeneb." Cedric greeted him at the edge of the forbidden forest.

Krum, who Cedric had picked up from the Slytherin dorms due to their proximity to Hufflepuff, gave him a polite nod as he appeared with Fleur, whom he himself had picked up from the carriage for obvious reasons.

"Evening Paddle Butt. Any trouble in the dungeons?"

"Nice and peaceful."

"Right on."

Now all that was left to do was wait for their new benefactor to arrive. It was a quiet and chilly night, which gave Fleur all the excuse she needed to cozy on up to him. That was nice. Wasn't enough to keep his mind from wandering though

"So uh, hey Trionskin?"

Grunt.

"Your beard is growing really fast." And it was. It was already almost as thick as the buzzcut on his head.

Grunt.

"Are you taking some kind of potion to make it grow faster?"

"I bought a cream I rub on my face. Make beard grow faster."

Mystery solved.

"I'm sure that'll make Hermione very happy."

Affirmative grunt.

Fortunately their wait had ended with the arrival of their new mentor. The crushing of leaves beneath his padded feet announced his arrival.


Chapter 5 Preview:

The return of Padfoot


"None of you have ever use The Throne?" Sirius said, aghast.

The blank expressions and shrugs they gave the old dog seemed to only disappoint him further

"How have none of you ever taken a deuce on the throne? Well we're going to solve this right now. Who needs to use the toilet?"

Viktor raised a hesitant hand.

"Come with me. All of you."

The four teenagers followed their pet dog under their invisibility cloaks. Their path lead them back into the castle, up four floors and down several twisting corridors until they stopped beside an empty stretch of wall with a suspiciously low wall sconce.

Sirius reached behind the sconce and grabbed hold of an easy to miss rubber ball and yanked on it, revealing it to be a toilet pull chain.

The blank piece of wall melted away like hot wax to be replaced by a regal wooden door with smoky stain glass windows.

Sirius turned the tiny knob and opened the door, revealing a small closet with a massive throne. It was identical in every way to the overly ornate chair Dumbledore sat on at the head table, save for the seat itself which was that of a cushioned porcelain toilet seat.

In any non-magical setting the idea of a cushioned toilet seat sounded like a horribly unsanitary thing to put your buttocks on. But in Hogwarts there was plenty of magic, and house elves, to keep such a thing sanitary, clean and dry.

"Mister Krum, if you would kindly enter, and if the rest of you would kindly give the door some space and privacy."

Viktor entered the cramped throne room and the others backed away until they had nearly turned a corner. And then they waited.

A few minutes later - nervous bladder there Viktor? - their Bulgarian friend emerged from the throne room, shuffling like a zombie. As they approached him Harry saw that he seemed to be in a slack-jawed daze. The man was barely coherent.

"Well!?" Sirius prodded.

"I have gazed upon the face of God." Viktor told them. "And he is smiling down upon us all with much benevolence and pride."


Notes:

The Cathars were a Christian sect centered in France during the 13th century, or the 1200s. Hogwarts was founded around 1000 AD. To square this circle I am stating that Cathars existed in magical France as early as 1100 AD(Remember, wizards and witches live a very long time), around the time the house ghosts were alive.

Also Sir Nicholas is obviously French, I mean, come on.

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