A Mugiwara Goes to Hogwarts

By: WhiteFang72

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece or Harry Potter or any of the related characters. Also, this story takes place right after Skypiea in the One Piece universe and during the fourth book in the Harry Potter one.

Ummmm, long time no see... O.o

…

The walk to the Headmaster's office was a long one. Usopp's legs had refused to stop shaking and his headache was pounding his cranium with a vengeance. By the time they reached a stone Gargoyle, apparently their stop, Usopp was thoroughly tired of Hogwarts. He watched with disinterest as Hermione spoke the password. He didn't flinch as Ron tried to glare him into submission. He didn't even react much when he saw a large, red and gold bird, like nothing he'd ever seen before, perched on the back of the Headmaster's chair.

Professor Dumbledore, dressed in bright red robes with stylized fire on the edges, shot them happy looks as he conjured a few extra chairs into the small room. Usopp sank into his with relief. His headache lessened a bit. Both Ron and Harry, however, sat on the edge of their chairs.

Ron looked ready to pull his wand out at a moment's notice. Only Hermione seemed calm. Once Usopp had settled down, he noticed the other occupant of the room. Professor McGonagall stood next to the Headmaster, one hand on his chair and her stern face set into an expression of surprise. She glanced from Dumbledore to them, and made a move as if to leave. The Headmaster stopped her. He folded his hands and studied them all a moment, his smile gone. "Hmm, it seems that there is a problem here. What has happened?"

Ron tried to speak up before Hermione butted him with her elbow. She spoke. "Headmaster, Professor." she paused and nodded at Professor McGonagall before turning back. "Headmaster, you told us to report to you if Usopp displayed behavior that could be dangerous to the school or its students. Well... we found that Usopp has acquired a wand. He was practicing with it," she faltered, played with the hem of her sleeve, and then forged on. "Using the Expulso spell, when we interrupted him."

Usopp stared down at the ground and tried not to care that the Headmaster was looking at him. He could see the edge of a disappointed frown on the man's face. Usopp stared at the carpet and dangled the blackened wand in his hand. The professor sighed and held out his hand to confiscate the weapon. "Where exactly did you find this wand?"

Usopp handed the item over quickly, but hesitated over what to say. Even for Hogwarts, the excuse, "I found it in a room no one but me seems to know about," sounded lame. He decided to start with explaining himself. "I didn't take the wand to hurt anyone, especially not Hermione, Harry, or Ron. I took it because-" The Headmaster interrupted. He set a bulky thing, like a glass top, down on the desk. It stayed perfectly balanced, though it looked top-heavy.

"I think it may be best if I use a Sneakoscope for this conversation. I've had it tuned to just this room and just the things said aloud, and I think it more fair than Veritaserum. I am very sorry m'boy. Times are becoming difficult indeed."

Professor McGonagall shook her head, though she averted her eyes. "I think it necessary, Albus."

The Headmaster smiled kindly, "Mr. Potter, Ms. Granger, Mr. Weasley. It would be a help if you could stay silent for the duration. Please," he gestured to Usopp, "begin again."

Usopp repeated what he'd already said. He tried to maintain eye contact with the Headmaster, but every time someone shifted or a sound came from outside, birds and Quidditch students seemed especially lively today, he felt himself looking down and trying to become invisible. He began, "I took it because I thought it would be useful. That maybe I could help people with it. I, I didn't think about it's use as a weapon, sir. Only it's use as a tool. I thought I could be more helpful if I mastered it and it...it looked fun."

The Professor nodded, and then glanced at the glass top. He nodded again. "And where did you happen to find the wand?"

Usopp shifted. "I found it on the seventh floor. In a room that, uh, was opposite a picture of some trolls. The room had a podium in it. The wand was there. It didn't seem like anyone's property."

The Headmaster frowned and stroked a hand through his beard. He glanced back at the Sneakoscope. Usopp noticed that the old man's face took on a puzzled cast after glancing at the object. Usopp wondered what it was supposed to do. "I have been there a few times but have never seen a room that matches that description."

Professor McGonagall simply shook her head. Her accent thickened as she stated, "There is no room in that corridor. I'm quite sure of it."

Shuddering, Usopp lifted one heavy arm to run it through his hair. His fingers almost became tangled in the straps of his goggles. I know there was a room there! This is their castle. Shouldn't they know it too? Harry and Hermione were looking at each other. They seemed to be saying something, Usopp couldn't tell what, but they weren't speaking anything out loud. Ron, though, huffed and nodded in a justified way, like Usopp had just been named Public Enemy Number One and he'd known it from the beginning. Usopp wondered when Hermione was going to mention his slingshot. When she'd leave him with nothing at all to protect himself with. He needed to demonstrate that he wasn't lying. He needed to... "I can show you," he blurted out. "I didn't see it at first either."

It took him a second to lever himself out of the chair, especially because he didn't want anyone to see that he felt like passing out. Hermione seemed to think his jerky movements were stress related, and averted her eyes. Everyone else was too busy talking about the current goings on to notice his lack of coordination. Thankfully, walking actually helped, and by the time they'd made it to the seventh floor Usopp was feeling better. Unfortunately, feeling better meant Usopp was also thinking about what was going to happen to him, which fueled his headache, gave him the jitters, and made him feel worse again. I just can't win. It was when he stepped up opposite to the troll painting, and still couldn't see any door, that he started getting very nervous. I wonder what they do to juvenile offenders here?

Once Usopp pointed out the wall, the Headmaster wasted no time searching it. He tried spell after spell, while Professor McGonagall tried her own series of incantations on it. Nothing budged. No door appeared. Ron, Harry, and Hermione had followed them up the corridors and were sitting beneath the gaudy trolls, watching. For a second, Usopp snidely felt like asking them if they wanted popcorn to go with their morning entertainment, but he stopped himself. He could understand why they'd turned him in.

It didn't mean he had to like it, but he understood it.

After five full minutes of waiting on the very railing, just watching for the anchor to drop and sink him, Professor Dumbledore turned back to him. The man spoke. His voice was apologetic. "I'm afraid we haven't found any evidence of a door here. I'm sure you know how important this is, so I'm going to ask you, what, exactly, you were doing when you found the room."

"Well, um..." Usopp put his trembling hands behind his back. "I remember sitting down by this wall," he indicated the wall across from the trolls who were now doing some strange version of Swan Lake. "And I got up and paced a little. When I turned back around, there was a door there."

Ron snorted and lowered his voice to a whisper. Usopp though, could hear the word "barmy" in whatever he said. Hermione shushed him.

Professor McGonagall seemed dubious too, but the Headmaster rubbed a cloth over his half-moon glasses. There was suddenly a gleam to his eyes that Usopp hadn't seen before. He spoke again, almost to himself, "Ah, pacing. That reminds me—" He cut himself off. "What exactly were you thinking as you did this?"

"Thinking?" Usopp felt his face flush red. The bridge of his nose burned in embarrassment, but he knew there was no getting out of telling the truth, not if he wanted to stay out of a possible jail cell. "I was...I thought it was useless. My being here. I wished there was some way to help my friends back home. Some way to do something besides sit around, ya know?"

Dumbledore smiled kindly at him. Usopp carefully didn't look back at the others, not wanting to see the clear suspicion he knew he'd get. Then Professor McGonagall surprised him. She was gazing at Professor Dumbledore, but she said, "Could you try it again? Try doing everything exactly as you did it then."

Her stern face was tempered with excitement. So, resolve hardened, Usopp nervously motioned the trio out of his way and sat down again. He tried to bring his previous thoughts to the forefront of his mind. He blocked out the peeling, rough carpet under his hands and the confused glances of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. He brought back the feelings he'd tried to suppress all year. They were easy in coming. Then he paced a couple of times across the corridor. On his final turn, all the air rushed out of him.

The door was back!

Inside, underneath the blue-green light of stained glass, lay a heavy-duty slingshot and a couple of metal pellets. Usopp wondered if the room somehow knew that coming up with another wand was a bad idea. Then again, maybe his thoughts had simply been a little different the second time around. It took awhile for everyone to calm down and finish examining every detail of the room. It took even longer for them to stop coming up with ideas for new rooms, because every time someone came up with one, it appeared in just as much detail as the one Usopp had originally found. By the afternoon, Usopp had been allowed to walk free. However, the professors' had given him stern warnings about his behavior. Professor Dumbledore had taken him aside and told him in no uncertain terms that calling up any wand or weapon was forbidden. He also kept the blackened wand Usopp had been practicing with. The professors' had made sure to stop exploring rooms when classes got out, so no one else had noticed the new discovery. They stayed behind while Usopp and the trio started the walk back to their dorms.

The silence was almost frosty. Ron glared at him and muttered things under his breath, more fervent about protecting his friend than he'd probably been before he'd abandoned Harry himself. Hermione wouldn't even look at him, but she was really careful to walk behind him. Even Harry, whose mind was probably revolving around the imminent Second Task as well as everything else, seemed wary of talking with him. Finding that the room was real didn't seem to have helped Usopp's case at all. Yeah, they probably don't like the fact that I had knowledge their professors' didn't. I don't blame them, I guess. Still...By the time the others split off for the classes they hadn't already missed, Usopp was exhausted. They hadn't insisted he go with them, which meant they were going to be discussing him and didn't want him nearby to hear it. There were still hours left in the day, but he decided he'd head back to his own room. The faint nausea roiling in the acid of his stomach and another migraine behind his eyes told him bed was a good idea. He rubbed his eyelids as he came closer to his own room, but stopped still when he heard voices coming his way from the corridor ahead. One was raised in anger and had an oily, thick accent to it. The other was softer, even with the deep voice of the speaker. Usopp casually dropped his bag and pretended to have an enormous need to rifle frantically through his stuff. He tried not to look obvious as he put his ear to the wall.

The oily voice said, "I cannot believe I'm just hearing about this! This is an out-rage," the "r" was hissed out in an explosion of soft fury. "Just wait until the judges, no our minister himself, gets a hold of this—"

The deeper voice spoke up, and the footsteps approaching Usopp got louder. "I'm sure it's not—"

"Oh, it is! It is! There have been rumors apparently. For a while, there have been rumors among the little Hogwarts brats that the new 'student' is here for the task. But if I wouldn't have spoken with that Goyle child I'd have never known! That Dumbledore has kept this a secret is beyond the pale. It's outrageous."

"Did you get a description, then?" The other voice asked quietly.

"No, Viktor. Unfortunately, the little snitch wasn't of the intelligent type. Couldn't remember his own class schedule. Lost in his own school. I had to show him the entrance to the grounds!" The man made an odd, satisfied cough in the back of his throat. "It just goes to show...But I'll get it. From someone else if need be, I'll get it. The tournament should have been held at my school in the first place."

"But what if it is just a new student?" The voice got softer and muttered, the huskiness of it making it barely intelligible, something that sounded like, "we get them sometimes too."

Usopp fumbled with the strap of his bag as the painting across from him, of an old woman in some Victorian wig, began glaring at him in suspicion. The voices had stopped their conversation for a second and Usopp wasn't grateful. Now, he could hear his heart pounding. They're talking about me! If they kick me out of Hogwarts I'll have nowhere to go. No way to get home. The sound of footsteps had halted too. They started up again just as Usopp resolved to interrupt them and get back to his own corridor.

"No, some new 'student' just happens to apply at this time? No, no, no. It's too much of a coincidence. There is no student. There's only a spy or an English ministry puppet. Someone's been put on the inside to influence this tournament. We'll never find whether the ministry did it of course, the damn nationalists, but at the very least they'll throw their inside man into Azkaban for getting caught and it'll be one more" Just as the man was getting going, Usopp noticed the Victorian woman's mouth slowly open, poised on the edge of a questioning shout. He stepped around the corner before she could alert the two speakers.

The people, Professor Karkaroff and, if Usopp remembered rightly, Durmstrang's champion, Viktor Krum, jumped as they saw him. Karkaroff narrowed his eyes at him in anger, while Krum shot him a half-hearted nod. Usopp passed them and tried not to shake too much as their last words hit home. Prison. Azkaban's gotta be a prison. And since I'm not a ministry spy, there's only one other conclusion people will come to if word gets out.

That I'm here to hurt Harry.

Crap.

Usopp's fingers itched to snatch off his goggles, knowing that they made him stand out too much. He didn't, though. He could feel the silver-haired man's eyes on his back.

They were studying him.

Usopp awoke to a harsh pounding on his door. He remembered making his way back to his dorm, but he wondered when he'd passed out.

...

Author's Note: Hello everyone (people that are still reading this anyway)! I'm trying to add more tension and danger to the story.

Oh, but I also have a question for everyone. Would it be awful of me to include a more playful chapter, perhaps with Fred and George, after this one? I already have the "next" chapter (on the Second Task, and I think it's really good) written and ready to go, but the story may be getting too serious (even without enough danger in it). So, I'd really like everyone's input. :) Also, tell me if the story is working so far, k? Thanks for reading!