AN (21/07/10): It's been a while huh? Well to be fair, my cat ate my laptop, and then my pet beta-reader died on me... Meaning that if anyone is interested in taking her job (which mostly consists in nagging until I write something and then make sure it isn't too hard to understand) feel free to contact me. Hope the chapter isn't too bad, even if I know it can't make up for the long wait no matter what.
000
I give the pile of homework on my desk my harshest glare. Unfortunately, it isn't as effective as I'd like it to be… that, and I can't seem to shake the feeling that it's glaring right back. I hate my life. Well, not really… I'll settle for hating adults for now I think, with maybe a little extra for my professors. It's not that I can't do the damn thing, I am a genius after all, but either they realized it too or they are that much of a bunch of bastards. I sigh. It's so unfair! Just when I get the hang of manipulating students, too! Of course, a lot of students are angry with me too, but it's manageable. T is taking care of Hufflepuff with admirable skill, Ravenclaw just doesn't care as long as Hogwarts is favoured (I'm guessing that they'd turn on me if they knew that the task will be twice as hard for Hogwarts because of my participation, but hopefully that won't come up until we destroy the competition in the first task), Slytherin is divided between smugness and jealousy, and Gryffindor… well, Gryffindor is fairly against me with the notable exception of the twins, but that's pretty much the way it is since the sorting.
That and they are, quite frankly, the least dangerous house there is around here…
Anyway, the teachers appear to be trying to bury me in pointless and time-consuming assignments. Thank God, the old flame isn't like that! I shudder when I think about just how much room there is for that kind of abuse with potions. Why, just listing all known ingredients from gardening will easily take me well into the next year… What really pisses me off is that most of the load comes from professor Show-off. I mean, I totally understand the gardening professor being irate at the poor, orphaned, firsty that obviously must have used his vast experience to cheat his way into the bloody (in both sense of the term) competition where he'll likely die. It makes perfect sense for her to make that sad soul waste his time doing meaningless things when he could be training and hopefully becoming less of a burden, therefore becoming less likely to drag her prefect in his death.
What do you mean by no it bloody doesn't?
But anyway, why is the head of Gryffindor even nastier to me? Well, there is my house of course… kind of disappointing to see that even after eighty years in this place she's still prejudiced, even if I can't say that I'm all that surprised. Next I guess that there is the blatant disrespect of the rules thing, while I definitely find it flattering that she thinks I can tamper with the Goblet of Fire without destroying it and without alerting any paintings, there is the little issue of it being impossible to make the thing pick four champions! The last thing I guess that could be enough of a reason for the disgusting pile of useless essays-to-be in front of me (because I simply won't admit that anyone could be so evil as to wish me this fate over not paying attention in class) is the way I played the crowd when my name came up. Which is actually a valid reason since I wanted to appear self-centered and arrogant in front of Dumbledore.
But she still gets to be on my people-I'd-gloat-in-front-of-if-I-ever-was-there-when-they-happen-to-die list.
In the meantime I'll have to settle for redirecting most of the paint-wildlife hopping around to her personal quarters. It'll do her good to practice her vanishing and cleaning charms. Can't always rely on house elves after all… You never know when they'll turn against you. But it's good exercise anyway, if I may say so myself. I laugh some thinking about how sweet it will be to see her in class and at meals with a look that says that someone shoved yet another stick up her backdoor, knowing that vengeance was served. Of course, I do stop when I remember that she'll take that anger on me if I give her the slightest excuse. Still, it's not like I actually intend to do all this crap they are throwing at me anyway.
Who did you take me for?
It's not like they can expel Harry James Potter, defeater of the most evil and ugly Dark Lord in written history (or so they think since that ghost teacher guy doesn't even mention the others there was if T is to be believed), for not handing his homework over… Well, maybe if they had a couple of years to smear my name and show that I'm an evil-spawn and all that but the issue would be dead by then. So, technically speaking, they can either throw more pointless stuff at me (in which case I won't be handing those over either), revoke privileges (if I had any), or give me detentions. And well, lets say that I don't think I'd mind detention all that much. For one, it'll take a lot less time and for two I can skip those too if the need is dire enough. The only truly annoying thing is that it will probably be a good opportunity for Snape and Dumbles to take a peek at my mind. Which means more occlumency and therefore more being a cocky, if skilled, moron who loves fame and Dumbledore.
Though now that I think about it I could try to skip these meetings too…
I nibble ever so slightly on my everlasting sugar quill while I consider adding the fossilized foe on the sugar allergy list. This stuff is really good but I can't help but feel wary of it since I don't actually know how it works and never had the chance to ask the vendor since it's (and some other sweets) from the twins as a thank-you-for-this-amazing-prank-we-are-going-to-benefit-from gift of sorts. And of course, since they sell it there are a lot of obscuring charms on it. In fact, the last one I tried to cast a magia revelio the subject of the experiment (nothing alive, don't worry. wait. do chocolate frogs count as alive?) just melted and lost all magical proprieties. I guess that I could try sensing its magic, but I'm not trying to replicate it, just understand how it works. Of course, most people who don't plan on churning out magical sweets don't care much about the hows…
Well, like I always say, most people aren't smart (and even less people are geniuses).
There are only two ways to explain how the quill may work that I know of. Either it regenerates itself, or it refuses to dissolve while still giving flavor (though if there isn't any actual sugar coming from it then it's a threat to magical dentistry and is kind of a not-sweet and thus a disguised robbery). But either of these explanations raises a lot of questions. If it's a kind of regeneration then what else can it be applied to? How about living things? I'm pretty sure that no simple spell can actually regrow whole limbs (as demonstrated daily by professor Halloween-rules/ Robot-pirate). But just a self-repairing door would be something impossible to blast past and therefore interesting to try and come up with. That aside, what would happen in either hypothesis if I were to swallow a substantial piece of the quill?
It's not unbreakable; I've tried and succeeded in breaking parts of one.
If it's the never-dissolving thing, then what? You stay with the sugar chunk in your stomach until you die or contact a muggle surgeon? And if it's a regenerating thing? Would the charm still work on both parts? If so would one have sooner or later a whole quill in the stomach? And even if the bit stayed that way then would you be consuming sugar all the time and therefore be plagued by weight disorders and diabetes? And what about the permanent sugar rush? So yeah. Wizarding candy really puts me on edge. But what can I do? I'm out of reach of regular sweets until such a time when there's no psycho mass murderer after my hide… and they don't last long enough anyway.
Unfortunately, my staring contest is interrupted. No matter, I'll vanquish that unholy thing later today (well, not really since that would involve boring work, but you get the meaning).
"Potter. It appears that I was right to think that you needed to be reminded about the meeting with prefect Tonks, which is about to start. Try not to debase our house's reputation further than what Malfoy already achieved, with your lateness." I still don't get how D came up with her condescending tone. It's the best I was ever subjected to. Period. Still not enough to get at me though. I blink at her a couple of times just because I know how irritating she finds it. "Indeed? My, how time flies…" I cut the bullshit pretty quickly all things considered. In fact, the secret technique to get her really riled up is to stop just before she goes physical and then attack from a totally opposed direction. "You know, I could say that I enjoy talking with you so much that I waited on purpose, hoping that you'd come fetch me. It wouldn't even be a lie…"
Seeing the shade of red going from angry to cute is quite literally fascinating, but I've got experience and I keep my concentration.
"But if I am to be totally honest with you, I guess that I'll have to admit that the fact there are at least three people in the common room that have been keeping an eye on me influenced as well." I pause just long enough for the red to turn from the-guy-I-have-wet dreams-about-is-talking-to-me red to a solid embarrassment red before going on. "I know what you are going to say, and yes… I am a dashing young man with a stunning personality, amazing intellect, and substantial bank account. But, it took that into consideration. I counted three people observing my goings without counting the girls. If I start to take them into account then we'd have at least a good twenty suspects." And here is the angry red again. That's something similar between D and Vernon… neither will ever need to wear a mood-ring. "Anyway, that's hardly the main point here. You see, I simply refuse to believe that there could be so many gay pedophiles sleeping in the same place as I do. Doing otherwise would just kill the few hours of rest I do manage to catch each night."
I nibble on my quill again.
"You think I'm bad now? Factor this: even regular people go crazy real quick without sleeping. What do you think would happen to someone like me? I'll give you a clue, you don't apply the reverted theorem." I think that the occlumency thing started to mess me real good because I'm pretty sure that there was a time when telling a little manipulator in training that I'm certifiably insane would have at the very least bothered me. If you add to that the fact that I'm doing it just for the fun of being witty… well, maybe taking real lessons in the mind arts from B would be a good idea. "So if they aren't madly in love with me, which they aren't, then I must conclude that all of them are horrid little spies!" Or would be if one of them wasn't something like 1m90 to the shoulder, but telling that out loud would kind of break the vibe I'm going for… "Foul creatures they are, hear my words! But I won't give them the satisfaction of finding anything to report to whomever! Not today and not in a thousand years! Hahaha! They thought that they could best the great Harry Potter Sir? Well, too bad, so sad! All I need to do is to never leave this room again and by extension they won't ever be able to exit the common room!"
I think that D is almost scared of me right now…
A lot of philosophers discussed the whys of the human fear of things so blatantly crazy, but it can be shortened to just one sentence in the end. You never know what a really crazy guy might do next. I cast silencing charms at the door to the common room and sit on my bed with a smile. D looks at me strangely. "What is going on Potter?" My smile gets a little larger. "You didn't figure it out? Well, if there really are spies in the common room, what would screaming that I know about them in such a fashion achieve?" She thinks about it for a couple of minutes. "I guess that they'd spend the next couple of hours thinking hard about what they should do about it…" I grin and nod. "Exactly! Let it not be said that having no social skills apart from insults is the same as having no skills in manipulating people. Now, all I have to do is to put a notice-me-not charm on me and without their minds focused on their task, I'll easily slip between them and go see T before she gets too mad."
She tries hard to hide it but I can tell I impressed her.
"I'll pass along to B and to you what I can after the stupid end of diner announcement about the first task." I apply the charm and have to actively restrain myself from skipping on my way to the unused classroom where T and I agreed to meet. Nothing brightens a day after a confrontation with an evil pile of semi-sentient homework like running circles around the poor non-genius people. Well, maybe a vivisection of said homework in the hopes of finally grasping the secret of magical imbued sentience would top it, but I'm unsure about how I'd go about that. I mean, sure… I can see how I could cut a magical painting in tiny bits and run diagnostics spells all over it (which I plan to do as soon as I find an annoying enough portrait)… or even how I could do the same with a chess set (which will happen to the pompous little things that B uses, regardless of need of knowledge)… but how do you destroy homework? It isn't enough to burn the damn scrolls. They are just a representation of that Evil in the material world. After all, just because you kill every single priest there is and burn every and each church you find, you won't kill God. Well, in theory, you may be able to end Him if you kill everyone that knows about him if you follow that old paradox of the tree falling alone in a forest, but you'd have to kill yourself too…
I stop that line of thought before things start getting out of control. T really doesn't like people making her wait…
That and, while Hogwarts isn't tripping me or that kind of thing anymore, I'm still hearing that voice coming from the walls that likes to make really colourful threats from time to time. And I know for a fact now that Black is in the castle sometimes. So stopping to think in the middle of a dark corridor doesn't sound like a very bright idea these times… Now that I stop to think about that, it's a bad idea most of the time. The exception, of course, being when you're the one doing the ambush… But I don't think I am comfortable with ambushing people right now… maybe in a couple of occlumency experiments, who knows? Even as distracted as I am, it doesn't take long to reach the rendezvous point where T is waiting. She doesn't look too pleased with my lateness. I-argh! "What the hell?" She is smirking now. So having my severed fingers drop on the cold floor is enough to make her happy? Good to know. "Good afternoon my cute apprentice! Since you took your sweet time to come, I thought that we'd get into the subject at hand straight away and make up for the lost minutes!" I give her a stare. "Of course. So you took my fingers away. Is it some kind of most ancient auror training technique? Like blindfolded fight for martial artists maybe? Learn to cast without thumbs and you are that much closer to wandless magic?"
I don't need to say that I get a stinging hex for my trouble.
"Cheek Mr. Potter. And stop crying like a big baby, it's just a dark disarming curse. I'll counter it in an instant." I nod. That's rather interesting, I admit. Much better than the classical disarming charm since it prevents the target from going for a back-up wand. I can see why it would be useful for an auror. Which doesn't mean that I really appreciate having it used on me, even if there's no real pain involved. Thus I melt the bottom part of her trainers. It doesn't take long for her to trip after that. "Very funny." She undoes the damage, repairing her shoes. Huh. I thought that it only worked for broken things… "Now, Hannah and Susan explained what you are all doing with Lockhart… or at least what I assume you are all doing since you aren't in the same class… Which reminds me, why exactly are you wearing one of our house's ties?" I blink. Huh. You don't tell. I actually am wearing a Hufflepuff coloured tie! "Oh yeah… I remember now… Well, I guess it explains why I had to send three upper years to see Pomphrey since that day…" Couldn't the guys be a little more specific with their anger, really? I mean, there's only so much that even a genius-child can deduce from invectives like Potter, you disgrace!
I can't very well be asked to remember all those insignificant things by myself after all… No I wasn't asking, it's a statement. I can't.
T gives me a look that I feel holds some kind of deep meaning. I stare back. Oh wait, is she waiting for an actual answer? "The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing young prefect. Which is why it should be used sparingly." I nod to myself. She nods back. "Yes, that much is true. Which kinds of goes against what you just said… which would kind of make it a lie… Maybe I should ask this Daphne girl about her opinion on such matters?" Why must people around me always resort to basic violence or to threats? It's barbaric, really. "Now, lets not be hasty. See, I surrender? No need to involve torture at all." Unfortunately, her smirk only grows bigger. "My, my… why would you say that, I wonder? She is such a terrific girl!" I can't help but mutter an answer. "More like terrifying…" Yeah, I know. That's just more fuel to the fire, but like I said, it couldn't be helped. It's simply not in my nature to let an offensive pun pass by me like that.
She fakes a sigh.
"Poor Harry, things are happening too fast for you, aren't they? In a couple of years you'll be all too happy to be the center of the attention of a bunch of girls like this. I'm not sure about your housemate, but I'm pretty sure that Susan and Hannah wouldn't mind playing with you a couple of times at least. It'd be a package deal though…" You know, two nights ago, I dreamed I was sitting on a bench in some kind of park, talking to a random man about the weather. It was wonderful. Just having a normal conversation like that… "Didn't you say that we were making up for the lost time? I not sure about how discussing you being a deviant qualifies…" Not half as good as I can shoot in top form, but then again, having my fingers scattered across the room really did disturb me. Go figure. I give a tiny sigh of relief when T fixes me up with a smile. "There you go!" She sits on the ground. "We won't really cast anything today anyway. We'll just be discussing standard auror spells and techniques for the time being since you are so quick to learn the practical side of magic." I ponder about telling her just why I can do that, but even B doesn't know about my ability to sense magic, so maybe later. She pauses and drops her smile. "I've had access to manuals that should be a great help to anyone trying to become an auror. Stuff I shouldn't have, really."
She takes a worn little book out of her bag.
"I know most of what's inside of this one already, and knowing how smart you are there's no point in teaching you any of that if you can pick it up just as fast by yourself. So study it when you can and we'll have a go at each other. See if we can get a little experience under your belt." I take great care in ignoring her wink and skim through the contents of the small manual. It's a guide to auror tactics, which is gold in itself since I don't suppose that they give those to just anyone (not unless you are a heavy briber at least), but there are a great deal of extra annotations about useful tricks and tactics that were obviously made by the previous owner. Or owners as a matter of fact, since I can distinguish two separate handwritings. Just how old is this anyway? I take a look at the cover. Printed in 1824. Recent stuff then. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing but a couple of paragraphs had changed since then. That's good. On the other hand, the stuff just under the date of publication is a little worrying.
Propriety of Cepheus Corvus Black.
To my great grand nephew, in the hopes of seeing him soon in he corps and finally being able to use the influence I gathered over the years for something other than bailing drunk relatives from jail. With moderately warm affection.
C.C.B.
PS: Please don't read it were that bore Phineas can see you. I'm afraid that his time as headmaster of Hogwarts did little to smooth the edges of my older brother.
Propriety of Sirius Orion Black.
I take a couple of minutes to remind myself that panic is never the answer. Or not the correct answer at any rate. "T dear?Would you mind explaining why the name of the escaped mass-murderer that wishes to end my life is present on the, admittedly thoughtful, gift you brought?" She gives a wince. "Humm… because… that's not a very easy question, is it?" I force myself to calm down. It's not like the book can actually hurt me as far as I can tell. Still, it's upsetting. "How about you start with a basic answer and we go from there?" A small nod. "Basic stuff, huh? Well, saying this without an extra explanation is going to make you flip out, but my mother's maiden name was Black." Metamorphmagus and Seer? Now, isn't that fucking impressive? "And well, cousin Sirius wasn't always a psycho, you know? In fact, as far as I was told, he was one of the more decent guys in the family until that mess with your parents." At some level I know that it must be true. My parents wouldn't have been friends with someone who didn't at least appear to be alright. But I can't help but look incredulous. "Oh, don't look at me like that! It's not like you don't have Black blood either!" I relent. "Ok, but that still doesn't explain why you have it." I stop myself from killing her when I only get a shrug as an answer.
Good (well, more like skilled) minions are hard to come by after all. And there are no troops around to impress either.
Thankfully she finally adds a comment. "Because it had to go somewhere? Prisoners aren't exactly allowed to bring their personal libraries with them to Azkaban, you know… I guess that they gave his stuff to the nearest relative with a dirt-free reputation." After a small pause she continues forward. "And well, since it isn't cursed and since it's a real help with duels…" I give a reluctant nod. This is gold. In addition to neat tricks like the dark disarming curse T just showed me there are other much more ruthless (if legal) pieces of magic like modified core piercers and even hat to anvil transfigurations… Plus, I guess that I can't go wrong following that old know thy enemy line… "Ok, so what are we doing right now? A mock battle? Or are we actually going to attend that stupid announcement in the hall?" I idly wonder if she got her wicked smirk from her cousin while waiting for her worded response. "Well, it would be pretty funny to see the face of Dumbledore realizing that his own champions didn't bother to come listen to his ramblings about the tournament, so I gue-" I think I should come up with some kind of onomatopoeia now, but my hears can't seem to settle on a particular one at this moment in time. I'm kind of busy being thrown to the ground by the shockwave of whatever just deafened me anyway.
Guess that's that for sound magic. Never really had any talent for it if those guitar lessons I tried to take last year are any indication, but it still pisses me off.
"What. The. Hell!" I was going to be a bit more complete about it, but it's fairly close to what I had in mind. It's good to see I am in tune with my lieutenant-to-be at least. "Indeed. I vote for going see what happened… or at least for you to get your bum out of my elbow before I find myself forced to dabble in how to enchant artificial members…" Nothing like a quick little pique to feel alive after a near death (well, not really, but you get the idea) experience. I make witty comments therefore I am. "Did you just imply that I am fat?" Of course there's the reverse to consider… best be on my way. "Come on, I'd like to know if the castle is about to collapse on our heads. You know, so I can weep and moan about the unfairness of it all for a bit before it does." T nods. I take the Map from my pocket.
.
"That can't be good." Indeed, she's right, it can't. I would probably go as far as saying it's bad and not in a badass way either. More in a bad for your health way actually. The map is mostly a jumble of shifting lines and erratic dots with only a few lonely island of serenity here and there. The good news is that the room we are in is obviously part of those. The bad news, aside from the whole imminent death thing, is that the headmaster's office is exempt from the storm too… "I'm afraid that I'm going to have to take that vote back… but staying here just doesn't seem like a very good idea either…" It's a bit of a conundrum really. Thankfully the decision is taken out of my hands as stone blocks start to fall from the ceiling all around us. T doesn't hesitate. She grabs my arm and start running for the exit and I only have enough time for putting the map away before being dragged. As I suspected, bad was a gross understatement of my part to describe the situation outside the room we just left. I sigh mournfully as I say goodbye to the faint hope that the explosion had only messed up with the map.
I know it was a long shot, what with the rain of stones being widely recognized as a bad omen… but what can I say? I'm just an optimist!
On the bright side, bits of masonry aren't being thrown at us now that we are running down (or up? I'm having a hard time telling) the corridor. The downside being that everything else seems to be fair game as far as projectiles go, from armor suits to tapestries, passing by the odd (and startlingly swelled) house-elf. T isn't being much help on the blasting past the flying obstacles front and I'm often forced to stop junk wandlessly at the same time I'm casting reductos the regular way. Truth is that with the way the room is moving around randomly, I'm impressed that she isn't on the ground already when you take into account her balance problems. "There! Lets jump from the window!" She's yelling but I can barely hear anything over the noise of all the collisions and the shrieking of the house elf (is it me or is it getting even fatter?). I do my best to reach for the window and try to remember of a way to not die from jumping down an untold number of floors (while it was most likely told at some point, the place is looking more and more like a Dali painting and for all I know we are already deep under the surface).
"Shit!"
Yeah… that's probably my fault. Really shouldn't have commented on how amazing it was that T wasn't tripping just earlier. Should have remembered about how much of a jinx that can be… And now we are about to be crushed by two converging walls and the window is nowhere in sight. For a second I think about making good on my joke and really moan that this is unfair and that I'm too handsome to die but once more I can't get to finish my thought process before being interrupted (funny how often that happens in life or death struggles, isn't it?). Something is yanking me by the back of my robes and straight through what I thought was a mirror. No time to dawdle; this is most likely our best chance to escape, so I pull my panicking companion with me. She doesn't come willingly though; I don't even want to think of how tired I'd be right now if she was a boy. As it is I feel fairly faint… While I am being dragged by whatever just saved me and T I start to wonder idly if it's the transition between the corridor and the passage that is dimming the sound of madness as well as the light or if I'm blacking out. I know for a fact that something is dripping from the top of my head where half a filling cabinet brushed against me, so option two has got a strong base to it.
Maybe it's not that important… I'm really tired right now… passing out looks more and more appealing in fact and at least it'll settle the matter… so tired…