Title: Code of the Griffin
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: Nothing Specific, general for first few books.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I do not own Hermione, or Luna, or Ginny, or Cho, or... I would buy them all but I am broke.
Summary: From a war ravaged future, someone is sent back in time to change the course of the war.
Harry dumped his duffle bag on the bed in his Lord's quarters, which had been expanded to add a second bedroom for Kate. The Hogwarts Express had pulled into Hogsmead in the middle of the afternoon, bearing Harry, Kate, Neville and the other students who had gone home for the week between Christmas and New Years.
Returning to the study, Harry sorted quickly through the pile of Order and House Potter documents on his desk, separating them into those that needed urgent attention, those that were important but not urgent and those that could wait. After dealing with the five urgent items, he stood up and stretched.
"Kate, I'm heading down to dinner." Harry called.
"You go ahead, I'm not hungry." Kate replied.
With a shrug, Harry left his quarters and walked down towards the Great Hall. On one of the corridor intersections on the second floor he found a disturbance. Luna and Michelle, both dressed in the Order's PT uniforms and with sweaty hair, were in the middle of the intersection, back to back in a defensive stance, and they were surrounded by ten older Slytherin and Ravenclaw boys.
"What you going to do about it, you damn dykes?" One of the Slytherin boys asked.
"Bloody lesbians." A Ravenclaw added.
Harry could see that Luna and Michelle were angry, but their Order training was preventing them from reacting to the provocation and there was a standing order to protect students and not to harm them. Unfortunately for these bullies, Harry was not in a particularly forgiving mood.
"Lovegood. Waters. Show me defence lesson fifteen." Harry ordered.
"Yes, Staff Sergeant." The two girls replied in unison with a slight smile.
Unarmed defence lesson fifteen was designed for use by one pair of troopers against multiple opponents to disable but not cause any serious injuries. Both moved immediately and the ten Wizards were all down in five seconds, several of them unconscious and three with broken arms.
"What is going on here?" Professor Snape asked, with a sneer.
"Ten cases of bullying. Ten cases of attempted assault. Ten cases of sexual discrimination. And ten cases of endangerment of the School." Harry replied. "I will submit a report to the Grand Marshall so she will know to expect your report on their punishment. If the punishment in insufficient they will all be summaraily expelled and sent to a Muggle Prison for assault on members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces."
Snape glared at Harry for a few seconds, until Harry simply spun away to leave Snape staring at his back.
"Fall in." Harry snapped.
Luna and Michelle fell into step one place behind Harry and on either side of him. They marched into the Great Hall, strait down to the Order table. Luna and Michelle sat down, with Luna's arm around her spotter.
"Grand Marshall. Follow me please." Harry said formally.
"Of course, Staff Sergeant." Hermione replied.
Turning, Harry led Hermione to the Head Table.
"Headmaster, I am duty bound to inform you that six students will be spending the night in the Hospital Wing, and another four will be supporting bruises. All ten students, from Ravenclaw and Slytherin, are to be seriously punished for assault and sexual harassment." Harry said formally.
"May I ask what happened, and how they were injured?" Dumbledore asked.
"They had surrounded Sergeant Lovegood and Private Waters and were seriously verbally abusing them. As per standing orders, the Sergeant and Private had taken defensive position and were not reacting to the taunts, but were seriously upset." Harry began.
"What kind of verbal abuse?" the Headmaster asked.
"They were insulting their sexual orientation." Harry replied, and Dumbledore frowned. "After overhearing the insults, I ordered the Sergeant and Private to execute a non-lethal unarmed combat exercise to extract themselves from the situation. As soon as the attackers were disabled Professor Snape appeared with a view to blame the entire situation on Sergeant Lovegood or me. I expect Professor Snape to show up shortly and demand that the three of us get expelled."
As if on cue, Professor Snape swept into the Great Hall and directly towards the Headmaster.
"Headmaster, I have witnessed Potter, Lovegood and Waters just assault several students, six of who are now in the Hospital Wing." Snape demanded.
"All of who are guilty of assault and harassment on two of the people who are keeping the student body, and the Wizarding community at large, safe." Dumbledore said, his voice hard. "Each of the assaulting students will lose 100 points, loose Hogsmead privileges until they leave us and will serve detention every Saturday for the rest of the year. Any Prefects will be stripped of their position. They will all be banned from Quidditch for the rest of their time here, and all shall be on probation. Any further rule breaking, no matter how small, will result in their immediate expulsion. Furthermore, should they in any way repeat any of the derogatory terms they used, no matter the context, they will be expelled immediately and possibly face criminal charges."
Snape grumbled at being overruled so forcefully by the Headmaster.
"And Severus." Dumbledore added. "If I ever find out you are lying or misrepresenting disciplinary events to me, I will not wait for Lady Granger to fire you, I will do so myself. This is your only warning. The Order may be our only hope."
Snape glared at both Harry and Hermione for a second before sweeping out of the hall. Harry and Hermione returned to the Order table, neither speaking for the rest of the meal.
Hermione was sitting at the writing desk in her Ruling Lady's Quarters, running through the final draft of her proposal for an alternate second task for the Tri-Wizard Tournament. The three Champions had been informed that the clue from the Golden Egg was no longer valid and that new information would be presented soon. She looked up at the knock on the door.
"Enter." She called, expecting it to be Sergeant Longbottom, who had the Duty Officer shift for the evening.
She was surprised when Harry walked in, dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
"Hey." Harry said, lowering himself into a chair on the other side of the desk and dropping a file on her desk. "Incident report for today."
"That could have waited." Hermione replied, her eyes seeing the telltale signs of nervousness in his posture.
"I know, but I figured I would bring it anyway." He replied.
Silence descended. Hermione knew that she had to let Harry set the tone of the conversation, so she set the fountain pen down and waited. The only sound for the next few minutes was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.
"I'm not him." Harry said quietly.
"Not who, exactly?" she replied a second later.
"The one you married. I'm not him." Harry responded.
"Well, of course you are not."
"I just hope you don't expect me to be like him." Harry said, sadly.
"He… My… The other Harry led a very different life, even up to this point." Hermione stated. "For his entire Third Year, he thought Sirius Black was a mass murder who betrayed his parents, only to find out that he was innocent and his Godfather. We helped Sirius escape with a Dementor's Kiss on sight order hanging over his head. In his fourth year, he was selected as the Fourth Tri-Wizard Champion and was slandered in the press. He never got to know his Godfather. Never got to have a sister like Kate. He very much felt he had to fight the war alone."
Hermione looked away from Harry and she lowered her voice.
"Yes he was my Husband. Yes I loved him with all my heart. Yes I miss him. But beneath it all, it was Harry Potter that I loved, and you are Harry Potter." She continued. "He never had your courage in a big fight, your commitment to both school work and running House Potter, or your leadership. All things I love about you."
Harry was silent for a few seconds.
"When's your next off duty weekend?" Harry asked.
Hermione opened up her day planner and started flipping through the pages.
"Next Saturday I'm duty officer. Sunday is re-qualifications for yourself and Kate. The following weekend I am stuck all weekend in meetings for the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Weekend after that I am free." She replied.
"Very well." Harry said. "Hermione Granger, would you like to go out with me two weeks from next Saturday?"
"Harry Potter, I would love to." Hermione replied, jotting a note in the day planner.
"Good." Harry said. "No expectations. This is just like any other first date."
"Of course." Hermione replied.
Harry nodded, rose from his chair and left. Hermione shook her head, picked up her fountain pen and got back to her Task proposal.
Michelle led Luna to the couch in the corner of the Ravenclaw common room, and helped her partner and lover down onto the seat. Out in the rest of the school, Luna was the strong one. The sniper to the spotter, the Sergeant to the Private. But here in Ravenclaw House, thanks to the early bullying and insults, it was Michelle who was the protector and Luna was the protected.
"It was them." One of the seventh year girls said. "They put four of our own in the Hospital Wing."
The girl who had spoken and another started to approach Michelle and Luna, when they were intercepted by a dozen Beauxbaton girls, led by Fleur and Janet, and three Ravenclaw girls.
"Don't come near them." Janet said, in her heavily accented English.
"I saw the whole incident." On of the Ravenclaw girls said. "Luna and Michelle stood there and took verbal abuse from those assholes for almost twenty minutes until Potter arrived. They put six guys in hospital and dropped another four in about three seconds flat. With the shit those guys were saying, I would have taken to their groins with a cutting hex first chance I got."
This caused quite a stir amongst the occupants of the room. Most had not heard how long they had endured the insults, or how quick they had taken the boys down.
"Are all my Ravens, the house of the intelligent, really this naive?" Professor Flitwick asked from the entrance.
"But Professor…" someone began.
"Quiet." The diminutive professor said, his tone indicating he would not take kindly to any interruptions. "For the record. Yes, four seventh years and one sixth year Ravenclaw boys, along with five sixth and seventh year Slytherin boys did accost Sergeant Lovegood and Private Waters. Yes, six of them ended up in the hospital wing and the other four were incapacitated. Three of them have subsequently been expelled, including our own Mister Anderson. Two of whom will be spending the next four years in Azkaban. As a result of the incident, both Ravenclaw and Slytherin have lost 500 points. Mister Jones has been stripped of his position as Prefect, and we will need to find replacements for Peterson, Sidle and Cook on the Quidditch team."
Silence, apart from a few groans, fell under the Professor's gaze.
"Now for a reality check, to use a Muggle phrase." Flitwick continued. "Every single second year and above in this room, with the exception of the Beauxbaton students, owes their life to Sergeant Lovegood, who intercepted an assault on this school by Death Eaters last year. In the carnage of the Quidditch World Cup, Sergeant Lovegood, Private Waters and others in the Order saved hundreds of lives."
"Do not forget that Sergeant Lovegood and the Grand Marshall saved Seventy-three children aged four to eleven from brutal sexual assault and slavery." Fleur added.
"Indeed." Flitwick replied. "Our world is under assault. Not just from Death Eaters, but also from a force that is brutal, efficient and very lethal of which we know very little. The only ones equipped to face this assault is the Order. I want you to think very hard on two things. One, what you want out of your education here at Hogwarts, because if I hear anything more about isolation or bullying by members of this house, the offenders will no longer have a place here. And two, when the time comes, do you want to have to face an attack alone or with the Order beside you. And yes, I said beside you because I believe that if any of us want to survive what is to come, we will all need to fight for what we believe in."
Flitwick's eyes swept over the assembled students to make sure that they got the message, and that the two who were living embodiments of the message were ok.
"Now everyone, off to bed." The professor declared.
Michelle nodded her thanks to Fleur and Janet as students started to head off to bed. Several students, including Cho Change, paused to apologise for their previous actions, to which Michelle replied "Prove it."
TBC…