-8-
"Are they staring at you again?" Melissa asked Harry quietly as they ate breakfast at the Ravenclaw table.
Harry didn't take his eyes off his meal, but he nodded. Melissa shook her head. "Why are they staring at us like that? Why can't they just come and speak to us?" She demanded irritably.
"I don't know," Harry replied when he managed to swallow.
It had been eight days since the Ilvermorny students arrived at Hogwarts. Eight days, and the Ilvermorny students had begun branching out, making friends among the three other schools, learning about the differences between all of them, especially at Hogwarts, and logically they sought out the Houses that matched; Horned Serpent, Ravenclaw; Pukwudgie, Hufflepuff; Wampus, Gryffindor, and lastly Thunderbird, Slytherin.
A part of Harry was worried the separate House tables here would make them lose perspective that they had friends back home, but he doubted it would cause that kind of problem since the attitudes here were ingrained.
Hogwarts was fairly nice. It was easy to see why Isolt Sayre had been desperate to attend school here, and it conjured some extremely fascinating alternative realities of the Ilvermorny founder being educated here, and Harry had even talked with Melissa, Ursula, and the others about it at length.
In one world, it was possible a Hogwarts teacher tried to persuade Gaunt into letting Isolt attend and had to flee because of the dark witch's insanity; only to return with aurors after contacting the Ministry of Magic.
Gaunt would be arrested. Isolt would be freed. The young girl would then be educated in Hogwarts, sorted into a House, and then become a powerful witch who made friends and interacted with others. Isolt's sad history was well known and taught at Ilvermorny; they knew her life had been a living nightmare, for twelve years before she mustered the courage to steal her twisted aunt's wand and learn enough magic to escape.
But in this world, Gormlaith chased Isolt out of Britain, to America.
In another world, it was possible one of Isolt's other relatives became worried about the young girl and confronted Gormlaith and was powerful enough to beat the twisted bitch until they could free her. Maybe in that scenario, Gormlaith would come back, and then again Isolt might have been taken back to her hell. Or maybe she had learnt enough magic to beat her aunt.
But, House tables aside, Ilvermorny and Hogwarts weren't dissimilar.
Both of them were fairly traditional, complete with ghosts, and floating candles, even if even in Ilvermorny, there were floating crystals and orbs of light. The lessons were also on par with each other, but there were enough professors between the subjects.
Life went on for the American students, of course; their teachers were making sure they kept up to date with all of their coursework and everything else.
At the same time, to help Harry, the students were taking part in mini tournaments onboard the zeppelin, to hone their spell repertoires and everything else. There was one later today.
Fontaine was even talking with the Headmasters into permitting Ilvermorny students to take part in their lessons, to give them a taste of what Durmstrang, Beaxbatons, and Hogwarts offered; while Durmstrang had a very unsavoury reputation, their students learnt the same basic spells every magical school taught. Harry personally thought it was a good idea on Fontaine's part, since he knew a lot about dark magic, but some teachers likely knew a lot more.
Fontaine was also working with Dumbledore, Maxime, and Karkaroff to take part in the tournaments. That was another good idea since it would help Harry work out how strong Delacour, Krum, and Diggory were.
Eight days and Harry was still no closer to finding out who had put him in this Tournament and why. Harry had worked out a while back someone must have gone to Privet Drive, found some dried blood and concentrated enough of it to make the contact work since no magical hospital would ever keep any magical blood because of the dangers of misuse. Blood was an extremely important magical substance, it could easily be misused and used for curses, rituals, and other spells that were extremely hard to break. Harry doubted many people would find it hard to find out where he had been.
But that was only one option, he couldn't be sure.
But why was he even in this tournament in the first place? Why make him compete against Charlus? What was the point, what was going on?
At the same time, Harry was trying to learn about the Tasks. He hadn't found out much, but he was looking to Ludo Bagman for help. Well, help in the sense Harry would find the man, stun him, knock him down and then pump him full of veritaserum, and discover what was going on.
Harry didn't trust Bagman; it would be good for him to pull his weight.
In any case, cheating was a part of the Tournament, and if there was one thing Harry was not afraid of doing, it was cheating. Harry had learnt a long time ago that to fight back, you had to be dirty and willing to do whatever it took. He'd used that lesson to protect Holly from the Dursleys, but later on he realised, if he wanted to be great, there would be times when he could not be honest.
"I don't know," Harry said quietly to his girlfriend. He was answering both questions.
Ursula had told Harry and Melissa a few days after they'd arrived she had seen the elder Potters staring at Harry from across the Great Hall; when he turned to face them, they suddenly looked down at their food, but they would always stare at him when he went back to eating or generally hanging out with his friends. It was creepy, and it was becoming annoying even if Harry did his best to ignore it.
Harry had cast a nifty spell on his eyes to let him enhance his peripheral vision; it had taken him a while to get used to that, but it did become disorientating after a while, so he usually always took it off after meals, but it was useful.
With that spell, he saw his biological parents just staring at him, with both of them talking quietly to each other, although sometimes it became heated.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the elder Potters somehow bumped into Harry nearly everywhere he went in the school, which made him question if they had something that could track them down in the school. Harry was always tense whenever he came across them, or rather they appeared out of nowhere. What made it more curious was how they acted; Lily always seemed torn between speaking to Harry or wrapping him in her arms, but she always backed off. James, on the other hand, was full of bluster and indignation.
"How's Holly?" Melissa asked.
Harry smiled - it only needed a mention of his little sister to make him smile and perk up. "She's doing great, missing me, but doing great."
"D'you think she'll be allowed to come to Hogwarts, watch you take part?"
Harry had been in two minds about that; the first task of the Tournament was traditionally set against a powerful and dangerous magical beast, and the last thing he wanted to do was give his little sister nightmares, but having her here would give him a lot of strength. "I don't know," he confessed although he was tempted to ask if she could come, and give him some clarity. He hadn't seen Holly for months, and when that happened, seeing her again, and hearing her talk was like taking a drug.
"Are you gonna confront them?"
"No. I don't want to speak to them," Harry replied. But deep down he was already preparing to do just that.
Melissa frowned. "Harry," she began carefully, "I know it hurts, but you can't avoid them forever."
Harry bit back the urge to snap. "Maybe I can. Come on, we've got a DADA tournament to do."
Melissa sighed, but she followed her boyfriend regardless. They were joined by some of their other friends while their professors and Headmaster led them out to the zeppelin.
Fontaine stood in the doorway to the duelling room. He glanced at them curiously, but otherwise let them both in without a word. His punishment stood still; she hadn't been in Harry's bed for eight days now, but while some other schools would have been up in arms about what Fontaine had done and what he'd said, Melissa and Harry had taken it in their stride.
It didn't take long in Ilvermorny before you discovered Fontaine had a condition.
Fontaine was autistic. He had enough social skills to fit the fingers on both hands, and that was it. He was extremely blunt and unaware of social cues. When Harry had first learnt about that, he'd been surprised since he had assumed only No-Maj's suffered from mental afflictions...but he was wrong. In the magical world, witches and wizards could be paranoid schizophrenics, autistic, and bipolar. It was thanks to the advanced magical checks in hospitals these details were discovered.
It was impossible to cure them, though, but with specialist potions and mental training in the mind-arts, witches and wizards could live healthily, although it would be with them forever. That was why neither Harry nor Melissa had argued with Fontaine.
Mortimus, their years' teacher in DADA, was standing in the middle of the duelling room.
"I hope you've been studying because we're going to be engaging in an in-depth lesson today," he began, "because this time next week, we will be showing what Ilvermorny can do against the other schools. In our school's history, we have done this against Wandwood, Salems, and Castelobruxo, but never against the largest schools in Europe. Right, everyone take off your outer robes, and get ready."
Everyone did as they were told, piling their robes into a corner before they began duelling. Harry's partner was a Thunderbird girl, Anita Halliwell. She was good, no doubt about that. They had frequently sparred in the past and they were good friends. The duel ended with Anita getting in a tickling spell which bounced and hit him in the leg after he temporarily blinded her with a lighting spell.
-8-
"Harry Potter and Hermione Granger," Professor Moody growled.
Harry stepped forward at the same time as a girl his age with bushy brown hair wearing Gryffindor robes. She gazed at him speculatively. He recognised her as one of his brother's friends.
Indeed…
"Knock him down, Hermione!" Charlus called.
Harry ignored the moron and focused on the girl before they got into their duel. Within minutes he found that while Hermione had a very strong spell repertoire, she wasted a lot of her time on waving her wand. He guessed it came down to reading dozens of books, he had seen her surrounded by them when they crossed paths.
With a flick of his wand, Harry conjured up shields, conjured golf balls and banished them towards Hermione, who had to dodge them. "Stop doing that!" She glared at him.
"No," Harry replied answering with his patronus, taking the students and teachers by storm since it was rare for wizards to be able to conjure one of that strength. The cougar patronus rushed towards Hermione, who stumbled only to lose her wand when Harry disarmed her.
His next opponent was against Pansy Parkinson, a Slytherin. Unlike Hermione, who had used transfiguration and charms in her spell chain, Pansy was all about curses. That was the problem with so many witches and wizards, they believed in a duel the only thing useful was curses, never anything in between. Pansy was all about power, too. Harry conjured mirrors to redirect the spells back at Pansy, forcing her to dodge them, and she didn't like it one little bit. Silently, he conjured more mirrors behind Pansy, only for her to dodge spells sent her way, forcing her to dodge multiple fronts. Harry conjured a large brick wall, which took several curses from Pansy before it was blasted to smithereens. Harry banished the pieces towards the girl, followed by a chain of high-powered curses and a few other charms before he managed to disarm her, and locked her legs together.
The duels went on.
