Chapter 9
-oOoOo-
As soon as Harry arrived at 12 Grimmauld Place, he asked Sirius if he could use a loo.
While waiting, Sirius inspected the house a bit, and asked Kreacher to prepare some tea and refreshments for them.
But as Sirius waited and waited, for 20 minutes or so, there was no sign of Harry around, so he decided to check up on him.
"Hello? My favourite godson?" Sirius shouted, chuckling at his own stupid joke, provided that he had only one godson.
But as Sirius heard yells and crashing noises, he put his wand out and sprinted to the loo.
The scene before him almost wetted his eyes, a cold chill of fear and anger running through his spine.
Not one, but two Harry Potters were fighting for a silver blade he knew belonged to Bellatrix Black. Both Harry's wore several cuts and bruises, soaked in blood. They were still trying to beat the hell out of one another when Sirius arrived.
"Sirius, help! He's an imposter trying to replace me!"
"Sirius, he's a liar! I can prove this – woof, woof, woof, woof!"
"What a bastard!" Harry gave the other Harry a punch in the mouth. "You almost ripped my mind and dared using the best memory in my life against me!?"
"That's MY memory you stole, dumbshit!" Harry returned the punch with a punch of equal force.
"Bitch, you're just jealous that I saw my father while yours is a gigolo locked in Voldemort's private prison!"
"Voldemort has screwed YOUR father, not mine, jackass!"
"BOTH OF YOU – STOP!" Sirius thundered, his wand alternatingly pointing at the two Harry's.
They stopped fighting.
But as they waited, it became apparent that Sirius didn't know what to do.
One of the Harry's suggested. "Why don't you check him for traces of Dark Mark or something? I don't think Polyjuice can hide such a dark magic."
The other nodded. "Yeah, do that to him too. But maybe you'd better stunned BOTH of us before checking anything."
"But on second thought, that probably doesn't work, since a Healer said there is some sort of dark magic in my scar too."
"But if you're so stupid that you can't figure out that I am the real me, you'd better request a back up. Maybe from Dumbledore."
"Make sure the Old Coot is the real him before you listen to anything he says."
"By the way, are you REALLY Sirius?"
"Yeah, I don't think my godfather is THIS stupid. He is, after all, a Marauder!"
Sirius listened with awe and suspicion. Something was wrong about this, very wrong, but he couldn't put a finger on it.
"Let's beat the crap out of him, shall we?" One of the Harry's suggested.
"Agreed!"
-oOoOo-
One of the Harry's pointed a stun pen at Sirius, and not before long, the ex-prisoner couldn't move his body. Sirius was still conscious. He could still hear and see what was happening, but he couldn't do a thing to save his life or honour. The newly upgraded pen had included a paralysis mode.
Sirius screamed mentally, No.. No.. No.. I'd rather die than be outsmarted by a prank of ridiculous proportions by a child. Gosh, don't tell me both of them really are Harry's!
"You bitch!" The other Harry looked furious, while grabbing a neck of a bottle, as though intending to use it as a weapon. "You dared hurting my fake godfather!"
"Shut up, bitch!" The Harry with a stun pen snapped, before smirking. "Let's see who the real bitch is!"
Suddenly, a large group of female dogs (a.k.a. real BITCHES) of a variety of breeds rushed into the room. The Harry with the bottle screamed, and in panic, he poured the contents of the bottle onto Sirius.
The bitches wiggled their tails happily, enjoying licking whipped cream off Sirius.
Sirius felt very tickling but he couldn't move one bit. It was painful, really painful in a wicked, wicked way.
"You look so wet, godfather, dear." One of the Harry's said.
"Let's change his clothes."
And so they did. One of them took off Sirius's clothes as the other poured more whipped cream on Sirius's naked skin.
Sirius cried mentally and helplessly, "No, no, no, no, noooo!," as one of the bitches' tongues moved closer to Sirius's groin area.
"Too bad," One of the Harry's remarked with a gleam in his eyes, "we don't have clothes that he can change into."
-oOoOo-
One and a half hours earlier...
As soon as Harry arrived at 12 Grimmauld Place, he made a beeline for a loo. Once inside a private space, he spun his Time Tuner.
"Jarvis, date and time?"
Jarvis confirmed that he indeed travelled back two hours. This ought to be enough.
"Call Dudley. It was time to put his acting skills to good use!"
"Lord Pottery Lottery," On Harry's glasses screen showed a deeply bowing Dudley, "you look snappy and seemed to be planning immorality to be unleashed unto reality."
"Activate Plan B," Harry said simply, though we wondered if he really needed to plan much if he could just go back in time to buy time to think and adjust a plan according to changing circumstances.
Dudley grinned with delight. He grabbed a rucksack before asking Robot to locate Harry and fly Dudley to Harry's location.
It didn't take long.
They didn't exchange words when they met. They knew what to do, and they knew they didn't have much time. Harry gave Dudley a string of his hair to be put in the Polyjuice Potion that Dudley brought. And Harry observed Dudley drink it with fascination. After Dudley transformed into Harry, he wore Harry's spare glasses and they swapped their clothes. Harry even lent Dudley his Time Tuner, which was central to the plan of having two impersonating-Harry Dudleys at a time. Finally, Harry retrieved a syringe from the rucksack. He wanted to know if Polyjuice changed just appearance or the drinker's DNA too.
Harry and Dudley looked at remaining contents from the rucksack: fake blood, fake cut and bruise cosmetics similar to those used on Hollywood actors, a duplicate of Bellatrix's dagger modelled after what they saw in Sirius's memory, a bottle of whipped cream, and spare clothes. They exchanged devilish grins.
-oOoOo-
Dudley still lived in Privet Drive to stay close to Petunia. At first he had used a special Portkey (only usable by Dudley and anyone else could not tag along) to commute between home and work. But things changed when Harry asked him, after Dudley used the Portkey for a few days, if he was the same Dudley, for the Boy-Who-Lived was not sure whether a Portkey could really transport people, or it destroyed people and then created an exact copy at the destination.
Dudley was so horrified that he refused to go to work until Harry gave him Knight Bus advanced tickets. Needless to say, the driver was so careless a man that had made Dudley puke his breakfast every day for a week. Dudley got used to it now, but still... Dudley felt like something had to be done to pay back.
He would love to do something very devilish, but instead decided to pay back for a clever remark with sheer stupidity. After having participated in Harry's last prank, Dudley learnt not to mess with his boss, or his reality would be much less surreal.
"Master," Dudley was on his knees, "I disappoint you again. I- I am a stupid scumbag bringing disgrace to the scientific community. I deserve nothing but death penalty! Please penalise me, Master!"
Harry rolled his eyes. He always wanted a bit of drama now and then, to make life a bit more colourful. But asking a lab assistant to spend 20% of his time to watch movies and attend acting classes (fully subsidised by Harry, of course) may have been a mistake.
Dudley stood up and waved his hand dramatically in a half-circle, as if receiving a command from Heaven. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image!"
Harry's eyes followed Dudley's arm motion until he saw a Pensieve. "Does it work?"
Dudley was on his knees again. "I deserve death, Master! I tried duplicating the amazing movie artefact at a molecular level, yet I failed at duplicating its magical effects. I-I failed you!" Dudley rubbed onions below his eyes to produce some tears.
Harry crossed him arms, reading lab reports that were laid out on his desk before him. "So all material, energy and entropy scans suggest that this built-by-Dudley Pensieve is identical to the one at Madam Malkin, is it not?"
Dudley got up and danced, swinging his belly stomach as though he was playing an invisible hoola-hoop. "Yeah, yeah, yeah... ahhhh!"
Harry was not surprised, but still a bit disappointed. If whatever bits of magic were indeed present in a magical artefact, maybe they ought to try another way to separate magic from energy and matters that already they knew. This reminded him of another work-in-progress project. "Have you succeeded at identifying the matter or energy that makes Hogwarts ghosts?"
Dudley looked a bit annoyed. "If you know how to catch one of these buggers, please let me know!"
Harry blinked. Usually he offered research participants some form of monetary compensation, yet he had no idea what sort of compensation was appropriate for ghosts, or perhaps he needed a totally different recruitment tactic. "Javis, once Robot found enough information on ghost psychology, report back immediately."
"Understood."
"You are unusually quiet today, Harry," Dudley observed.
Harry smiled weakly. It was not often that Dudley showed his soft side. Well, Harry and Dudley appeared to hate each other sometimes, but deep down, they did care about each other in a twisted sort of way.
Actually Harry's spirit had somewhat gone downhill since Quirrell's death. Harry's nightmare regarding Quirrell's death intensified, especially after his visits to Azkaban, and just last night, Harry heard Quirrell cry for his blood. In the dream, Quirrell screamed, "What you did didn't save me. It killed me!" with an accusative stare, full of hatred, and Harry couldn't even look back due to overwhelming guilt.
Harry tried to not give it any thought, since this would be an emotional investment that offered negative return, but he couldn't shake it away. Not that he wanted to admit it to Dudley, of course. Dudley already had enough to worry about. His transition to the magical world was not easy.
So Harry shared with Dudley his second biggest worry. "McGonagall was not happy with the way I used her to promote M&P. But when I offered to terminate the contract, by removing her from my marketing campaigns and giving wrinkles back to her, she screamed and stormed away, even though I insisted she could keep the money! I don't really understand women sometimes."
Dudley grinned, having heard his share of Petunia's whining about cosmetics. "And Hagrid was happy with that?"
Harry shrugged. "He doesn't complain."
-oOoOo-
Hagrid had been asked by Dumbledore to stick to the story that his new youthful appearance was a result of accidental magic while walking in the Forbidden Forest with McGonagall. But Hagrid was not capable of lying. So he asked Dumbledore to Obliviate him. But something incredible happened: Dumbledore's magic failed on him! For the first time, Dumbledore's spell failed to work, not once but three times! So he asked McGonagall to do it, but her magic didn't work on him either! After a lot of spells cast, hypotheses tested, it was concluded that Hagrid and McGonagall were magic-resistant though they were still be able to use magic. It was just that most spells did not have any effects on them anymore.
Dumbledore summoned Harry, who said a lot of weird things Hagrid did not understand, using words like metabolism and hormones. Hagrid thought it was a different kind of magic that was cast on him on that fateful night, so normal magic didn't work on him anymore.
At Harry's suggestion, poor Hagrid had no choice but to attend acting classes so that he could be better at lying. And from there interesting things happened... because acting classes only existed in the Muggle World.
His classmates didn't believe he was Hagrid. They thought he was Andrew Garfield, an actor who played a human-spider hybrid in a movie (it took him a while to misunderstand what actors did, what movies were, etc). The fact that he brought bodyguards with him made the matter worse because they said only important people needed bodyguards. And it didn't help that Harry performed magic to change Hagrid's voice to match Andrew Garfield's before Hagrid entered the Muggle World!
The turning point took place when Dudley, one of his bodyguards suggested that he could pretend to be Andrew Garfield to practice acting. Well, Dudley was more of a companion than a bodyguard since the boy had taken these classes before. But anyway, any practice sounded good, so Hagrid agreed.
"Alright, alright guys.." Hagrid was pleased to learn that he was capable of using 'cool' phrases he had learnt. "I'm not Hagrid. I'm Andrew Garfield."
His male classmates sniggered as his female mates giggled at the admission.
Hagrid continued. "I was bitten by an Acromantula and -"
"What's an Acromantula?"
"A giant spider."
His classmates laughed cheerfully. "Of course, man." "Yeah, totally."
"And somehow the Acromantula's bite –" Hagrid made corresponding hand movements. "– was some sort of accidental magic, transforming me from an ugly half-giant into a handsome young man."
His classmates perked up, listening intently. This was getting interesting. Even Dudley looked at him with wide eyes, impressed.
Hagrid continued effortlessly. "But Uncle Ben didn't want people to seek the Acromantula and get bitten, so he invented a story of ritual magic that triggered the transformation. But I didn't like lying. So he sort of forced me to enrol at a drama school to practice lying and telling people that ritual magic is true and the story of Acromantula is total bullshit."
"Wow, Andrew, you are such a good actor!" Classmates beamed at him. "That was awesome!" "I loved the way you told the story, Andrew!" "This is the best guest lecture, ever!"
Even Dudley wanted to give Hagrid a standing ovation.
-oOoOo-
A/N: LOL!
A new school term will start soon, I promise, although not in next chapter. Can you guess who will teach Defence Against Dark Arts? :)