Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – Danny Phantom and the Magic of Ages

By WarriorLoverInc

Chapter 7: Meanwhile

Vladimir Masters was normally a reserved, well-mannered man who looked upon situations with such an icy calm he often appeared bored, which he frequently was. Today was not one of those days.

With a growl of frustration he slammed the daily newspaper onto his expensive Brazilian mahogany desk, disrupting his seven designer pens he had so carefully organized in a line. Today's headline was the usual:

GHOSTS WREAK HAVOC

Within the newspaper was a tiny black and white postage-stamp sized square under a huge color advertisement about Nasty Burger, an article on the missing local boy, Daniel Fenton. Daniel hadn't been seen in over a month. The last reported sighting was from a batty old cat woman whom he had passed before entering the City Center Park. He had stopped to help her free one of her many cats from the clutches of a tree.

Vlad sighed in annoyance. He had paid—yes paid (it was surprising how many ghosts still had an obsession with money)—at least a dozen ghosts to search the Ghost Zone top to bottom. And over again. Several of the ghosts had been destroyed in the effort, but the important thing was, it seemed as though Daniel had vanished off the face of the earth.

Now, Vlad knew he could willingly do that at any moment, but according to his family and friends, he hadn't been acting strange before he disappeared. Daniel seemed to have no real reason to have done just that. He remembered his confrontation with the two human friends of Daniels quite well.

…

Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley were as normal as a Goth recyclo-vegetarian and a red bereted techno-geek could get. Spending a normal afternoon at the local Nasty Burger was what children like them did. Whispering urgently? Perhaps not that.

Samantha gasped as she no doubt felt an icy chill engulf her, the dark-skinned boy next to her doing the same. They were roughly pulled through the ungodly red booth they had occupied, their numerous cheap burgers and strawberry tofu shake lying abandoned on the greasy table.

Plasmius phased out of the back wall of the shameful excuse for a food joint and let the two teens unceremoniously drop to the ground and out of his black gloved grip. They landed none too gently on a mound of trash bags.

"Aw man!" he heard Tucker moan. "My baby can't take slime!"

"Tucker!" Samantha savagely elbowed him in the ribs causing him to drop his beloved "hi-tech" PDA into his lap. "Now's not the time!"

Plasmius heard the boy mutter something darkly as he stowed away his technology. Calmly folding his arms before him, Plasmius looked expectantly to the children. Whenever they were in his presence, violence was the usual reaction. Teenagers, his mind sighed, such unstable creatures.

Samantha stood defiantly and pointed an accusing finger at his chest. "We know why you're here!" she stated.

Plasmius coolly raised an eyebrow. "Really?" his echoing voice drawled.

"Yeah!" Tucker added his two-cents.

"But…!" Manson narrowed her eyes, "first! Answer one question!"

Plasmius shrugged nonchalantly, he had nothing to lose. "Shoot."

"WHERE IS DANNY!" The two humans shouted up at him in unison.

He stared coolly down at them, making sure to hover slightly higher and demonstrate just how imposing his ghostly authority was. "Funny," he narrowed his eyes as well, "I was going to ask you the same thing."

The black flower that was Samantha wilted slightly under his gaze. "You… you don't know where he is either?"

"Why would I?" Plasmius's anger flared slightly at the children before him. What was he? Some omnipresent deity? That would be nice, and Vlad couldn't say he hadn't tried, but he as of yet, wasn't. And he was so aggravated that the younger half-ghost had given him—Vladimir Masters!—the complete slip, leaving not a trace, not a clue as to his whereabouts; he was ready to burn down a city in his rage.

But not his city, not Amity Park. Mayors didn't burn down their own cities.

So, instead, he incinerated a pile of trash to the left of Danny's friends. Their eyes widened and they took a few steps away.

Plasmius turned back to them, carefully reigning in his emotions again. "So… from what I've heard, neither of you know where he is either?"

Tucker and Samantha exchanged glances, "We thought he was on some drawn out ghost fight at first. Then, when he didn't come home, we got worried and searched. We tried all the Fenton ghost trackers, even the "Boo-merang", we didn't find anything. We… we just assumed it was you. You were the only one who was ever able to hide Danny from us before."

Vlad closed his eyes; they had good reason to believe it to be himself. He was a powerful rich man with a twisted kind of grudge against the Fenton's, Daniel in particular. He nodded, asserting to himself he had nothing more to learn here.

"Very well then…" he made to fly off home and puzzle the situation over. Again.

"Wait…" Plasmius paused, glancing down at the boy who had spoken. He nervously fingered his beret. "Would… would you tell us if you find anything?"

Plasmius shrugged uncaringly, why not?

"Well… then…" a slap rang out. Samantha had struck Tucker across the face.

"Tucker…!" she hissed.

Rubbing his reddened cheek, Tucker replied, "But Sam! It might help find Danny!"

Plasmius narrowed his glowing red eyes, obviously suspecting he was not being divulged a piece of critical information.

Samantha clapped a hand over Tuckers blabbering mouth. "Go. Away." She growled at him.

Smiling, flashing his vampiric fangs in the dull sunlight of the Nasty Burger back alleyway, Plasmius watched the two teens struggling with each other. The Tucker boy broke out of the fray long enough to gasp, "The last coordinates from the Boo-merang were somewhere over Scotland!"

And then Samantha took it upon herself to personally murder him.

…

The problem was, that meant someone (or maybe even Daniel himself) didn't want the boy found. It wasn't that the Boo-merang hadn't found him; it had been lost before it could.

Vlad sighed loudly, rubbing his eyebrows in agitation. Why was Daniel such a slippery little badger?

And what had he gotten himself into this time?

. . .

Authors Note: Anybody else craving apple juice?

A special thanks to all my reviewers, and especially Mic Morrison who joined FF.N just to review my story. : )

Tuesday, December 14, 2010