Author's Note - I have run into a little bit of a writer's block for this story, so my updates will be mostly of my Displacement story for a while. Again, any suggestions are appreciated. If you haven't noticed yet, this story is going to be a little ridiculous because I feel like there aren't enough situations where Harry Potter has to have fun after all those years of life and death. As I said with my other story's author's note, the reviews of stories get clumped together, so leaving a me a chapter number or plot summary to find what you are referringto will allow me to respond easier.
Harry Potter and the Last Hunt
Chapter 1 - Birthday Celebrations
Part 2 - Auror Approved
"Yes!" Susan cried out as she dropped to the floor, apparently still unable to break the curse on her, "damn this curse is annoying!" Harry slowly climbed to his feet and chuckled, "I guess this means you can skive off during the test." A few laughs came from the crowd that neither had noticed surrounding the dueling shield and Susan blushed. "Nah don't yah go thinking thah Ah'll let yah take things easy, even if yah are the director's niece," Auror Gerden spoke up. He continued as he circled the dueling shield and poked it a few times with his wand to test it. Susan cleared her throat and brought down the shield.
"Now thah the rest of yah are here. Ah will go over what is happening." Auror Gerden spoke loudly to get everyone's attention before continuing just as loudly, "First thing, get in a line when Ah address yah!" There was a shuffle as the twenty trainees lined up, Ginny and Susan ended up next to Harry. He quietly turned towards Susan and asked her what that last spell was. She quickly responded, "A Buddhist Restraining spell woven into a Banishing Charm with a presence trigger on the ground."
The auror continued talking, not noticing the quick explanation about the spell, "When ah speak, yah lot will listen! No complaining! No questioning! If ah address yah, yah will answer with a yes sir!" He paused and waited.
Susan, Harry, and few of the older applicants caught on first and loudly responded, "Yes, sir!"
"Good! Now tah rules. Don't point yah wand at anyone unless you mean to cast at 'em! If yah hear meh say 'stop,' yah stop. End of story. If anyone gets hurt worse than broken arms or legs, alert me with like so," he demonstrated by lifting his wand and a whooping sound rang out.
"Do not alert meh without cause. If any of yah will have compunction about killing, leave now," he ordered. No one moved from the line. "Ah'm partnering yah up. Aurors' work in groups, pairs at least, so yah better get used tah it!" When he walked in front of Susan and Harry, he stopped and spoke, "Ah know how well yah two will work together, so let's mix it up." He gestured to Ron and Susan with each hand, "These two redheads together, and, let meh see, yah'll be with be with him." Auror Gerden pointed at the oldest trainee. Harry moved next to the thirty year old man.
Their instructor gave them a moment to familiarize themselves with their partner. Harry learned the man was in fact Florence Fortescue's son, Phineas and was joining the Aurors as way to seek justice for his father while his younger brother and his wife were taking over the ice cream parlor. Phineas, occasionally going by Neal, explained how he was particularly good with defensive spells, especially shielding spells and counters, but lacked the conviction in Hogwarts to learn any of the more potent offensive spells. Harry did his best to explain his combat methods of high mobility and creative use of spells and how he preferred overpowering more common spells to using the more difficult and dangerous ones, though he could cast some tough ones. They quickly worked out a few basic strategies for engaging people: one had them pair up with Phineas on defence and Harry on offense, the second had Phineas acting as a decoy to open them up for Harry, and last had Harry appearing vulnerable with Phineas hidden and defending Harry. They started to work on tag-team spell combinations when auror Gerden called the ten pairs over to him.
"Now that yah have acquainted yahselves, We're gonnah play an adult game of Kings and Knights." There were few confused looks from the first generation magicals in the group. Apparently bothering Seamus enough to raise his hand. A quick glare came from Gerden before he asked, "What's Kings and Knights?"
"Well, Finnigan, it's ah magical game of tag. Yah pair up like yah are, one is the king and one is the knight. The goal of the pair is be the last pair unmarked by ah paint spell. Only ah knight gets tah cast at opposing kings. In this version, the goal is tah capture all opposing kings with the cuffs while not letting yah's get caught, with only the knight being the allowed to capture kings. Ah knight can attempt to rescue their king. Do yah best tah not get hurt. Once yah picked who is the knight, he gets this belt pouch. It contains nine pairs of auror-grade handcuffs."
A few of the younger trainees look a little disarmed, both at the fact Gerden knew who Finnigan was and that he was effectively throwing them into combat and seeing how they react. The auror continued his instructions, "After everyone is all set, ah'll activate the training room and ah'll give yah five minutes to get ready and then yah have an hour to do yah best."
With a wave of his wand, auror Gerden and his trainees found themselves next to a large fountain in the middle of a rustic style village, behind their instructor the tops of trees could be seen. "Now ah don't want any of yah to attack each other until yah hear to the starting sound, now get going!" Gerden yelled, shooing the pairs away. The last pair to leave, Neville and Parvati, received some minor stinging hexes to hurry them along.
Harry and Phineas had sprinted towards the forest the moment the auror let them. They had agreed that the plan where Harry was the decoy was their best option. They had made sure Harry was the one that took the cuffs from Gerden making it seem like he was the knight when he was in fact the king. As soon as they were out of sight of the other pairs, they ducked into a house, Phineas cast a Disillussionment Charm on both of them, and they doubled back to watch the other teams set up. Quite a few teams set up defendable positions and reinforced them with magic, Luna and Alicia set up numerous traps in their area using Luna's bizarre animal hunting experience, Phineas spotted a disguised sniper tower that someone had set up, and right as the signal rang out, Harry spotted Ginny and her partner, a recently graduated Hufflepuff that he didn't know the name of.
Together, Phineas and Harry snuck up on the pair who appeared to have taken the offensive approach and were actively searching for others. The Hufflepuff, whose name they overheard to be Briar, cast a spell, Et Occultatum Revelare, and before Harry realized that it was an illusion and life detecting spell, a wave of magic was rushing towards them. He foolishly attempted to duck out of the way of the spell while Phineas stepped forward and twisted his wand about while inaudibly whispering. The wave of magic parted around the sneaking pair, sparing them from being noticed. "I've got a house and street full of illusions just ahead to the left, four grouped up pings of life around fifty meters behind us, I think someone is already fighting, and a pair of pings on the edge of my range on the roofs as well as some illusions in the street below them about a hundred meters ahead," Briar listed off.
"Let's go play the third dog to the fighting ones and see if we can take both kings while they are distracted and worn down," replied Ginny after a moment's thought, "I really don't want to deal with illusions, let some other unlucky sod stumble into them and we can clean them up later." The two turned on their heels and headed past them, as they passed, Harry quickly switched Ginny's handcuff pouch with a knock-off he had managed to transfigure. Harry couldn't bring himself to attack his girlfriend but that doesn't mean he was going to let her walk away scott-free.
"I am thinking we petrify the kings and bury them under a bush when we capture them, don't want to drag prisoners into a fight," Ginny mused. Briar nodded in agreement and cast the revealing spell again to get an update on those around them. While Harry had been stealing Ginny's handcuffs, Phineas had been working a special notice-me-not charm onto the Hufflepuff so he wouldn't have to keep countering her searching, she just wouldn't notice when they showed up from her spell.
The pair slipped away, heading towards what sounded like a trap designed to draw out the knight for an ambush. Harry dropped the Disillussionment Charm and had Phineas aporate ahead to set up a flank. Harry pseudo-stealthily made his way down the street, keeping an eye out for attacks from the roofs as well as nasty traps hidden by illusions. He had learned from a strange encounter with the twins that a taste enhancing spell combined with a detection spell Moody had taught him to detect potions and poisons allowed him to almost taste the magic of illusions and enchantments. The strange spell combination was a lot easier for Harry to maintain than actively checking for them and was less distracting than spells that let him see that type of magic, granted it did require him to flick his tongue out of his mouth constantly, much like a snake, and he could only get a general sense of where the magic was. So he used it like danger sense for traps, the closer he got to a lasting spell, the more he could taste it, magic almost tasted the same way an approaching storm smelled, and avoided the hot spots of magic.
He had managed get to the ambush location and triggered the trap by attacking the illusions of two recent graduates. As soon as he Reducto left his wand, he dove out of the way of a line of rope from a full body binding spell flying at him. The rope missed him and piled up on the road only for it to leap at him the moment he stopped paying it any attention. He hadn't expected another layer to their attack. The rope wound itself around him and he hit the ground hard, scraping his chin and skewing his glasses enough that he could barely see out of them. He really needed to remember to put a sticking charm on his glasses before this sort of stuff.
After a few minutes, he heard the footsteps of his opponents. "Is that Potter?"
"Yeah, didn't take him for one to set off the trap like that, but he is a Gryffindor."
"Shame he is a knight."
"Yeah, but better off stunning and dumping him so a pair is down their offense." By now the pair were standing over him, one of the blurs seemed to be on the lookout for his partner. Harry became distracted from their conversation by the overpowering taste of magic, it was strong enough for him to try to scrape his tongue to get the taste out of his mouth before cancelling the spells with a mumble and a flick of his hand despite it being bound to his side.
Harry cleared his throat as he saw one of the blurs point his arm at him, "You know, the first thing every muggle knows about magic tricks is it is all about misdirection." Before the pair could question or stun him, two bolts of red struck the blurs and they crumpled. Unfortunately, the one with his arm pointed towards Harry fell on top of him. "I'd say this is going well," Phineas commented as removed his Disillussionment and plucked the pouch of cuffs off the unconscious knight. "Ugh, this isn't a restraining spell, it's conjured rope that has been animated to tie me up," complained Harry as he struggled against the bindings, "would've disappeared the moment the caster went down otherwise, clever really."
"Hold still while I cut the rope, I told you aggressive spells aren't my strongest suit and I don't want to cut you," Phineas said with a grin. After freeing him, Phineas used the pairs own handcuffs on them, commenting, "We have enough cuffs between us to lock up everyone." They proceeded to tie up the graduates using their own trick, stuck them to the ceiling with a charm, and threw a notice-me-not on them before heading out.
The rest of the hour was a series of small skirmishes, they did their best to avoid any encounter they didn't have the advantage going in and were quick to flee when things turned south. A few of the times they were forced to flee, they managed to steal the cuffs from their opponents.
By the time the hour was up, Harry and Phineas both sported a number of minor cuts and bruises and had managed to capture three kings, but Luna had promptly rescued Alicia from them and their first had been found by another pair, held three knights, one of them being a very upset Ginny who kept saying only kings were supposed to be captured, and had stolen around forty sets of handcuffs. Susan had managed to end the match in control of three kings, including Ron. She had used Vsevolozhsky's Enchantment on the kings, a Russian curse that turned them into wooden nutcrackers, and stuffed them into a conjured pack. She had used the curse accidentally on Ron when he went charging into fight that Ginny and Briar had scavenged successfully. The curse was too tedious to break under attack and she was too embarrassed to attempt to remove it with the built in failsafe, a kiss from someone who cares, to turn Ron back.
Before Gerden addressed the group and gave them his appraisal, Susan had explained her predicament to the instructor who proceeded to quickly and roughly kiss each nutcracker without a hit of shame, changing them back and dodging out of the way of a the stunner Ron had been in the middle of casting when he was cursed. He dusted himself off and cleared his throat, "Now don't think that just because yah didn't capture a king or lost yah's doesn't mean yah didn't do well. The point wasn't tah win but for yah to do yah best and let me see what yah are capable of."
He went to each pair and gave them an assessment. Not a single one was wholly good or bad, all contained suggestions for improvement. Gerden had enjoyed Susan's use of spells to permanently remove hostiles from the situation, Phineas and Harry's use of deception, stealth, and theft of the handcuffs, "Always a good idea to take the weapons from yah opponents" he commented to the entire group, and he had thoroughly enjoyed and complemented Dean and Seamus's strategy of the sniper tower with Seamus as their king tossing explosions at anyone that wasn't his partner. "Remember," he told the trainees after talking to all the pairs, "yah want to play tah yah strengths and yah foes' weaknesses."
The group took a short break to recover before auror Gerden informed them that their next test was a bit of a round-robin tournament. The pairs would be randomly teamed up together and then they would spend the next forty minutes trying to subdue their opponents. During the rest, Harry managed to get Ginny to forgive him for capturing her with only a few punches to the shoulder by convincing her that she was enough of a threat that he couldn't just let her roam free, not-so-subtly stroking her ego. He also learned that auror Gerden had endured a piercing curse that cut through his cheeks and severed most of his tongue, and that even after having it reattached, it was never quite right. He claimed the quack of a healer must have stuck it on upside down or that it was the wrong tongue because he distinctly remembered getting back at his attacker with a well timed blasting curse into his mouth.
Luna had been an unexpected powerhouse during the round-robin. She cast spells at such an alarming rate that only a continuous shielding spell could stop one from hitting someone. It didn't help that the more often than not her wand movements, spells called out, and effects didn't match. Her Reducto throughout everything had spewed forth bubbles, been a tripping jinx aimed at another target, a summoning charm, conjured a small coyote wearing a sandwich board sign, and a singular large bubble that exploded violently when it popped being some of the more memorable examples. That last one had gotten Harry and his team after their ignored it, thinking it was one of the spoof spells of hers to throw them off.
A very sore group of friends flooed back to home to clean up and relax a bit before Luna dragged them out around eleven to go pudding hunting. Harry could hear Ron going on and on about how brilliant it will be when he is an auror from the moment he tripped out of the fireplace until he dozed off in an armchair while waiting for a shower to be free for him to use, and even then, Ron kept mumbling about aurors in his sleep. Harry was glad his friend had evolved beyond only thinking about chess and Quidditch, having added aurors to his small list of passions.
When Luna finally came to gather everyone to go creature hunting, she let Ron sleep and instead grabbed a slightly annoyed Hermione to come with them. "I did my very best to research where find the pudding creature and made a portkey for us," Luna informed the group, "Katie was kind enough to lend me a hand with that and Daddy made up the portkey." She held up a banner of small flags that spelled out 'HARRY's BIRTHDAY!' with someone having changed the P's to R's and the 'apostrophe s' squeezed on with the 'y' in a slightly different green than the rest of the print.
"This is much better than having to huddle around an old boot," Harry marveled as he took one end of the banner. As everyone grabbed for the banner, Hermione tried to slip away but was caught by Luna by looping a section of the portkey around her wrist. Hermione started to complain, "But I don't believe in your fantasy creatures!"
"Then come for the fun!" Luna replied lightly.
"And it's in the woods!" she whined, having developed a bit of a dislike for forests after all her bad experiences. "I'd much rather just wait for…" she was cut off by Luna calling out, "Too bad!" and then "BUTTERSCOTCH," causing the room to spin as they were all launched towards their destination by the magical device.
Despite being literally swept off her feet in surprise, Hermione managed to free herself in time to let go of the portkey and land softly. Harry managed to overcome most of his normal aptitude for magical travel by rolling out of the usually rough landing instead of slamming into the ground. The twins scooped him up, set him on his feet, and spelled the dirt off of him before he even stopped rolling. "Can't let the birthday boy stay dirty," the twins chimed together, "Remember, Scourgify is the cleaning spell, and one can never forget that." The pair had laid the second part on thick with sarcasm by imitating their mother.
As the twins pulled away and checked on everyone else, Harry saddled over to Hermione and leaned in to avoid being overheard, "I'm thinking the two wheeze's are up to something, any ideas?"
She shook her head lightly as he added, "Then we should probably keep and eye out for whatever the magical equivalence to mythical creatures the twins can conjure up to prank us with."
She frowned at that idea and tried to think of some magical creature that doesn't exist outside legends and tales. After a moment she responded, "Wizards really aren't that creative; I can only think of the Ice Phoenix, which burns cold and instead bursting into flames and being reborn they, 'consume' the death of other creatures, keeping both alive." She paused for a thoughtful glance and a chin tap before adding, "Oh, as well as and their song is supposed to inspire fear the less likely and ready a person is to die and and comfort the dying."
"So what happens if an Ice Phoenix consumes the death of a regular one?"
"I can only think of two stories about the Ice Phoenix, the first describes a deaf villager witnessing everything that could hear the death knell of the bird died and crumbled to frost, including plants and him being too terrified to move as he watch the icy creature collect the frost and made what looked like an egg. The second story is about a heroic witch, Talaria the Returned if I recall correctly, that at one point in her epic helped an Ice Phoenix and in return, it brought her back to life after her rival poisoned her and attempted to turn her into an Inferni."
Harry shook his head in awe at how much Hermione managed to say so quickly without taking a breath. They turned their attention to Luna who was starting to explain how the hunt for the puddings would work when Hermione slapped her forehead quietly and groaned, "I can't believe I forgot about all of Luna's creatures!"
Luna brought the rest of group's attention to Hermione's remark by responding without missing a beat, "Hermione Granger is correct, that is why I know how this hunt will go. First we try to establish what it needs to exist: sugar, rice, eggs, milk, and fruit all mean it's an omnivore favoring farm and forest environments, which means this area where we are. Second, we think of its method of travel, no bones to support it, it will probably have problems moving around on its own, so it will be largely stationary or use magic to move, which means we have no real way to track it without constant magical detection, which is quite tiring, Daddy passed out last time he tried it. And finally we know…" She trailed off right before Angelina spoke, almost if she was expecting someone to chime in, "that they have predators because we all know pudding is delicious."
"And hunted things cause scuffles which we can look for," Luna picked up fluidly, "we can take our time and move about while keeping our ears peeled. I am sure some friendly chatter won't disturb anything."
So off the group went, hunting for puddings, which felt surprisingly like a stroll in the woods with his friends to Harry. The only real difference is that everyone was carrying various pieces of cutlery.