"We should do another prank." Draco declared.
Harry looked up from the chess board in surprise. "Where did that come from?"
"The Weasleys made half the staircases slippery last month and we haven't responded yet." Draco reminded him. "We haven't done anything all year."
"We pranked Luna's nargles." Harry pointed out, as he returned his attention back to the board. "Rook to D1."
"Yes, but we didn't own up to it." Draco argued. "People are starting to think that we graduated last year."
"Really? Who told you that?"
"Bishop to G4." Draco commanded. "I heard a second year telling some of the first years about it."
Harry studied the board carefully. "So, what do you want to do?"
"A Star Wars prank." Luna answered quickly, from behind her book. "We haven't done one of those for ages."
"The problem with Star Wars pranks, is that only the muggleborns understand them." Harry pointed out. "Which leaves over two thirds of the Hogwarts students and the Durmstrang and Beauxbaton students confused."
"So we do a Star Wars prank that is still funny even if you don't know about Star Wars." Draco told him. "Luna and I were thinking that we could charm people's robes to play the Imperial March whenever they walk."
"Knight to B5." Harry decided, before looking between in two friends. "Everyone's robes? Or just a few select people?"
"Just the Champions." Luna answered, lowering her book to reveal a sly smile
"But I'm a Champion." Harry reminded her.
"All the better to throw people off the scent." Luna told him sweetly.
"Knight to A6." Draco looked up from the board. "Besides, we normally prank ourselves."
"Only because we're pranking the entire school." Harry protested. "Why can't we do it to the adults involved in the Tournament?"
"Can you imagine Madame Brusilova's expression?" Draco asked with a small shudder. "That woman is terrifying."
"True." Harry turned his attention back to the board. "Queen to B7."
Draco frowned down at the game. "That was quick."
"Come on, Harry." Luna bounced in her seat. "It'll be great!"
Harry sighed. "How would we do it?"
"That we don't know yet." Draco admitted, his attention still on the board. "We will need to find a way to store the music in a spell."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "That sounds incredibly complicated."
"We know." Draco agreed. "But think of how smashing it would be."
Harry nodded slowly. "We could possibly use Runes. I remember reading something about a connection between Runes and music."
"Wonderful!" Luna exclaimed. "I knew you would think of something."
Draco was still frowning at the board. "Queen to E4."
"It will take a while though." Harry pointed out. "So you might want to do another prank while we figure it out."
Draco narrowed his eyes. "Why might we want to do a prank? What will you be doing?"
"Preparing to take part in the Tournament." Harry replied unapologetically. "I'll help with this musical one, but I won't have time to work on two pranks at once."
Draco nodded reluctantly. "Alright."
"Queen to A6." Harry commanded, smirking slightly as his Queen smashed Draco's Knight into pieces.
"Bishop to E3. Check."
Harry waited until Draco's Bishop had finished destroying his own Bishop. "King to B1."
"Queen to C5."
"Queen to B7."
"Bishop to D1."
"Queen to A8. Check."
Draco scowled at the board. "I miss the days when you were terrible at this game."
Harry tried not to smirk too smugly.
19-19-19
When Harry met Sirius for duelling practise after classes, Sirius suggested that they move the practise to the Room of Requirement. Harry thought it was a great idea, partly because it meant they wouldn't be destroying Remus' classroom every week and partly because it was more private. If he was going to practise his Parselmagic he wanted as much privacy as he could get.
Harry's stomach was squirming nervously at the thought of practising his Parselmagic. He'd only ever tried a few spells and, while he hadn't found them very hard, he hadn't ever used them in a duel before. He had also never used Parselmagic in front of anyone before, and he didn't think he had ever spoken Parseltongue in front of Sirius. His godfather could still be a little squeamish about magic that was labelled 'dark', though he had been getting a lot better.
But Sirius had agreed to the idea and Harry could hardly back out now. It was the perfect opportunity to become more adept at Parselmagic and, hopefully, to prove to Sirius that Parseltongue was nothing to be afraid of.
Harry allowed Sirius to visualise the room that they required, but wasn't surprised when he walked into a replica of the Duelling Room at Grimmauld Place. It would do nicely.
They started with a few basic warmup drills, before Sirius declared them ready to begin. Harry moved to stand on one of the two starting markers, his fingers clenching nervously on his sword and wand.
He and Sirius bowed to one another, before each bringing up their wands and casting their first spells.
Harry had meant to cast the Parselmagic equivalent of the Stunning Spell, but at the last second found himself casting the Disarming Charm instead. He brought his sword up to block Sirius' Cutting Curse, all the while berating himself.
"Densaugeo!" Sirius cast again, having batted Harry's spell away with his sword.
"Immobulus!" Harry returned, grimacing when he realised that he'd failed to cast a Parselmagic spell again.
"Locomotor Mortis!" Sirius stepped out of the way of Harry's spell.
:Stun: Harry hissed, his wand twirling out the proper movements.
Just as the purple spell left Harry's wand, Sirius' curse hit him and forced his legs together. Harry toppled over, only barely managing to avoid landing on his sword.
Harry twisted around, so that he could see Sirius and blanched at the sight of a red spell racing towards him. "Protego!"
As Sirius' spell splashed harmlessly against his shield, Harry quickly cast the counter-curse at his legs. Then, after having rolled out of the way of another of Sirius' spells, Harry clambered to his feet.
:Stun: Harry hissed again, ducking out of the way of Sirius' next spell and picking up his sword. :Stop:
Sirius blocked the spells easily with his sword, while aiming more spells at Harry. "Obscuro! Levicorpus! Petrificus Totalus!"
Harry blocked the first two spells with his sword, before stepping out of the way of the third. :Stun:
Sirius waved his wand and, despite the fact that he hadn't said anything, a yellow spell sped towards Harry who quickly blocked it with his sword.
:Trip: Harry hissed, bringing up his sword to block the orange spell that Sirius sent at him next. :Stun:
The duel went on for a few more minutes, before Sirius eventually defeated Harry with a Disarming Charm. Harry, who had been too busy trying to block Sirius' previous spell to even notice it, grimaced as his wand flew out of his hand.
"Nice work." Sirius commented, throwing Harry his wand back.
"I barely lasted five minutes." Harry argued. "It was terrible."
"I was going a lot harder on you than I usually do." Sirius grinned unrepentantly.
"You've been going easy on me?" Harry exclaimed in horror.
"Of course I have." Sirius answered. "I might not be a prodigy like you, Harry, but I have over five years of duelling lessons under my belt – not to mention the three years I spent duelling Death Eaters with the Order of the Phoenix. It would be a pretty sad thing if you could already match me after just two years of practise."
Harry grimaced in disappointment. It made sense, sure, but he'd thought he'd been getting good at duelling.
"Which isn't to say that you're not far above average." Sirius added. "Remus wasn't going easy on you, you really did beat him, and you could beat most witches and wizards. Just not the ones who have been trained like I have been – not yet, anyway."
"What do I need to do better?" Harry asked determinedly.
Sirius grinned. "First, tell me what I did differently this time."
Harry thought about it. "You cast your spells quicker."
"I did." Sirius agreed. "There's no point in waiting for your opponent to block your spell before sending another one. The best duellers can cast one spell per second."
Harry couldn't imagine what that might look like. "How?"
"They learn to tie their wand movements in together." Sirius explained. "For example, if I cast a Disarming Charm…" He acted out the movement. "My wand finishes here, which is the perfect place to start casting the Severing Charm, after which I can continue the wand movement around to cast the Langlock Curse. Put them all together, and you can cast three spells in just a few seconds."
Harry watched in awe as the three spells left Sirius' wand. "That's amazing."
Sirius smiled widely. "I know. The problem is that it's very tiring and can exhaust you in just a few minutes, so you need to use it wisely. What else did I do differently?"
"You didn't incant most of your spells." Harry remembered. "The only warning I had that you had cast a spell was the sight of it racing towards me."
"Silent casting." Sirius agreed with a nod. "Fantastic in a duel, partly because of the lack of warning and partly because if your opponent doesn't know what spell it is then they can't block it as effectively. There are a lot of spells that Protego doesn't block, but if your opponent doesn't know you've cast one of them they might try and block it with Protego anyway."
"We won't learning Silent Casting until sixth year." Harry reminded his godfather.
"Not officially, no." Sirius grinned. "But I don't think anyone would try and stop you if you wanted to start learning it now."
Harry nodded, he could take a hint. "Did you do anything else differently?"
"Not really." Sirius answered. "The only other big difference was that you were using spells you weren't familiar with, so you were a lot more distracted than you usually are."
Harry winced. "Yes, I was."
"But that's alright," Sirius continued with a grin. "Because practise makes perfect. Ready for another round?"
19-19-19
Harry spent every spare minute he had over the following days practising his silent casting. His friends, who had gotten used to the sight of his practising casting with his left hand, barely batted an eyelash at the sight.
He also took the time to discuss his idea of using Runes to create music with Remus, who had taken Runes at school, and was relieved when the wizard promised to help him work out how to do it. Remus even agreed to do the book search for him. Harry, who was fast beginning to feel as though he was drowning in work, was very grateful.
His professors all seemed singularly unsympathetic to the fact that he had just found himself stuck in a Tournament that he needed to be studying for and had all assigned his class assignments that were due before the First Task. There was nothing unusual about it of course, but to Harry it seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. He'd never understood why his classmates complained about their assignments, but he thought he was starting to get it now.
On top of preparing for the First Task (not that he had any idea what he was supposed to be preparing for), doing assignments, practising wandless magic, practising duelling with Sirius, becoming an animagus with his friends, and preparing the musical prank, Harry was supposed to be trying to get to know Daphne better.
So far they had been on two dates, but otherwise they only saw each other with their other friends. Sirius had told him that was probably a good thing, because spending too much unchaperoned time with her would only lead to trouble. Remus had called Sirius a hypocrite.
Thankfully, Daphne seemed to understand Harry's preoccupation with learning things and didn't appear to mind that they hardly an opportunity to talk.
Some days Harry wondered whether maybe he should be worried about how unconcerned Daphne was about it all. He had shared his concerns with Sirius and Remus, both of whom had laughed at him, before Sirius suggested that he write Daphne a letter. At first Harry had thought his godfather had gone bonkers, but it did make sense. So, after having done some secret research on writing love letters (research that Draco and his other friends could never ever find out about), Harry sat down to write Daphne a letter.
'Dear Daphne,
I hope that it does not seem too odd that I am penning you this letter, despite having seen you only hours ago. While I may have seen you today, I do not feel as though I have truly had the opportunity to speak with you for many weeks. A fact that I find greatly disappointing.
I had thought that we would have many opportunities to come to know each other better this year, but I have found myself tiresomely busy. I have greatly enjoyed both of our visits to Hogsmeade and hope that you will do me the honour of accompanying me again on the 21st of this month.
However, as much as I look forward to the opportunity to spend time with you, I find that the date is much too far away to truly satisfy my desire to spent time in your company. It is for that reason that I am penning this letter. I wonder if we might quicken the passage of time by correspondence. There are many things that I would wish to say to you, but find myself unable to in the presence of our friends.
Today, for instance, I want to tell you how singularly beautiful you looked with your hair falling on your shoulders. Your hair was like a beautiful, golden waterfall cascading down your back and I wish that I had the opportunity to see if it really was as soft and smooth at it looked. You truly are the most beautiful witch at Hogwarts this year, as you have always been, and I daily find myself delighted by your Father's forethought in proposing our betrothal.
You obedient servant,
Harry James Potter
Heir to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black
Heir to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Potter'
It was, without a doubt, the most embarrassing thing Harry had ever written and he almost didn't send it. It was only after having shown the letter to Sirius and endured his godfather's teasing, that Harry allowed Sirius to talk him into it.
The next morning, when Hedwig delivered the letter to Daphne at the breakfast table, Harry felt sick with anxiety. What if she didn't like it? What if he had just made a humungous fool of himself? What if she showed it to everyone at the Slytherin Table and they all laughed at him for it?
Because of the seats that he and Daphne had chosen that morning, Harry could see her confused expression as she took the letter for Hedwig. Daphne glanced towards him questioningly and Harry somehow managed to restrain himself from running across the room and snatching the letter from her hand. Instead, he smiled reassuringly and watched as she broke the seal on the parchment.
Draco, Theo and Blaise were all looking between her and Harry curiously as she unfolded the letter and began reading it. She was too far away for Harry to read any nuances in her expression, but he was relieved to see that she wasn't laughing or exclaiming at his presumption. Instead, she seemed pleased and, while Harry tried not to stare at her while she read the letter, he was pretty sure that her cheeks were pink by the time she folded up the letter. Once she had put the letter in her bag, Daphne met Harry's eyes and smiled shyly. Harry hoped his answering smile didn't broadcast all his relief.
19-19-19
"Really, Harry?" Draco asked in obvious frustration as he took his seat beside Harry in Magical Theory. "What did I tell you about making big romantic gestures without warning me first?"
"Pardon?" Harry asked nonchalantly.
"Oh, don't play dumb." Draco groused. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. You sent Daphne a love letter!"
Harry looked away and tried to fight down his blush. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Draco snorted. "Well, you might not, and Daphne might not, but your interaction this morning did not go unnoticed by the school body. We're into our third class of the day and I've yet to come across a single witch who wasn't fawning over how romantic you are."
Harry whipped his head around to stare at his cousin. "What?"
"It's like the ring drama all over again." Draco complained. "I haven't seen Astoria yet, thank Merlin, but Theo and I passed Natasja on our way to Care of Magical Creatures and the look she gave him was…well let's just say that Theo is not particularly pleased with you right now."
Harry groaned. "Why can't people just mind their own business?"
"Why can't you refrain from big romantic gestures?" Draco returned unsympathetically.
"A letter isn't a big romantic gesture." Harry denied. "For all anyone knows I could have been…uh…asking her for homework help."
Draco snorted again. "Harry, a Hufflepuff could see through the excuse. Worse than that, a Gryffindor could see through it."
"Ouch!" Neville commented lightly as he sat in the seat beside Harry.
Draco rolled his eyes. "Come off it, Neville. Not even you could claim that Gryffindors were anything other than inept at picking up social nuances."
"Social nuances?" Neville asked slyly. "Oh, you mean like Harry here sending Daphne a love letter this morning? Because I can tell you that every single Gryffindor who saw it picked up on that."
Harry groaned. "I'm going to kill Sirius!"
"It's not all bad, Harry." Neville grinned. "If Daphne doesn't want you, I know of at least fifteen Gryffindors who would happily be the recipients of your letters."
"I hate you!" Harry told him with a glare.
"Tough luck there, Neville." Draco smirked. "Looks like you're chances of receiving a love letter from Harry just went down."
Harry had never been so glad to have a professor call for the class' attention.
19-19-19
'Dear Harry,
I cannot describe to you my delight at having received your letter. I have also found myself disappointed by the lack of opportunities to speak with you this year and am honoured that, in the midst of your business, you have taken the time to write to me.
I believe that I must apologise sincerely for having been indelicate enough that the school could guess the contents of your letter. The idea of corresponding with you in this manner pleases me greatly, but I will understand if you do not wish to continue to do so.
Please pardon my forwardness, but I must confess that I find your attention to your studies very inspiring. The character of the House of Ravenclaw has long been a jest among Slytherins. Ravenclaw is the House of the intelligent and witty, though often they seem more slothful than inspired. You, however, put this jest to shame and encourage me to, not only be the best Slytherin that I can, but also to give my studies more attention.
It would be my pleasure to accompany you to Hogsmeade on the 21st of this month. I will be counting down the days.
Your humble servant,
Daphne Greengrass,
Daughter of the Ancient and Noble House of Greengrass'
19-19-19