-A better class of detention

Milicent, Fred, George, Harry and Colin Creevy were in detention with Minerva McGonagall. Harry knew why he was here, he accepted that in general Fred and George found detention to be their natural habitat, but the presence of a smirking Milicent Bulstrode and embarrassed looking Colin Creevy surprised him.

Professor McGonagall looked down sternly at Harry Potter, Goblin Champion and frowned her fiercest frown.

"Mister Potter, while I am willing to make allowances for differing cultures of our students, such as our Muggle born, and yourself as a goblin, there are limits! Limits like public decency!"

Harry scowled back. "Goblin's do not wear shirts to war. It's either full armour or bare skin. If it cannot stop a dragon's claw, a cutting curse, or goblin silver blade then it is worthless. Let the enemy see my strength and my scars and know fear!" Harry was almost shouting by the time he finished the line that had been drilled in him since he was a toddler.

McGonagall gave a half smile. "Mr Potter, while it does me good as an educator to know you have both read and can quote the works of King Heartfang Bloodaxe, ancestor of the very Gringott who founded the bank that binds our two peoples together in relative peace, let me remind you, goblins as a race do not ride brooms."

Harry blinked, his mind faltering as McGonagall went off his rehersed script for anti-goblin oppression into unknown and therefore dangerous conversational territory.

McGonagall sighed. She reached into her spacial expansion top drawer and pulled a large poster from her desk. She frowned at Harry and unrolled the poster. On it, Harry Potter rode his broom, flared to a stop then threw and banished his dagger through the dragon's leash.

"Mr Potter, I removed no less than three of these posters from the female dormitories of Gryffindor House. I trust you will see how this violates Hogwarts student code of conduct?"

Harry blinked as while he had obviously lived it, he hadn't seen if from the viewing stands, ahead and somewhat below his broom as he turned and flared, causing his basilisk skin kilt to catch the air. His bare bottom was shown as he manfully flexed to power his broom around, and for an instant something was visible hanging below the broom.

"Merlin's balls!" Harry swore.

Milicent had her head tilted and was obviously examining the poster closely. "Pretty sure those aren't Merlin's Harry."

Fred and George laughed.

"Miss Bulstrode, may I remind you why you are in this detention?" McGonagall asked sharply.

Milicent smiled. "While continuing to profess my innocence, I choose to accept administrative non judicial punishment without issue, to keep my permanent student record clean."

McGonagall gave her a long hard stare that Milicent returned with a look of such innocence that Harry checked to see if his wand and coin purse were still on him. McGonagall turned to examine Colin Creevy who fingered his ever-present camera guiltily.

"Mister Creevy, perhaps you would like to enlighten Mr Potter as to why you are here?" McGonagall asked with sweetness that had enough acid in it to dissolve a troll far larger than Mr Creevy.

Colin attempted to repeat Milicent's speech, but did so terribly that he eventually gave up and muttered soflty. "Freedom of the press. I'm being oppressed!"

Fred and George laughed again, and McGonagall sighed, and gave each of them lines to write out a hundred times. Harry's was actually enough to make him feel embarrassed.

"A senior student is expected to act in such a manner as to impress upon his or her juniors the very real dignity and honour of the position of witch and wizard, and instill in them the very real desire to always and ever be worthy of the magic with which they have been gifted."

Harry felt his Hufflepuff shame kick in, at being a bad example to his juniors. Say what you will, and Harry said a lot, about the Headmaster, his pet Inquisitor, and the Ministry, the House system of Hogwards relied on older students to teach the ethics of wielding their growing powers responsibly and for the good of all.

"I'm sorry professor. Goblin's don't wear anything under their kilts." Harry muttered his defense. "I never thought about how it would look upon a broom."

McGonagall sighed and ruffled Harry's hair not unkindly. "So Filius Flitwick explained to me in the staff room. Pomona Sprout assures me the Hufflepuff girls have already owled your mother to determine a properly goblin answer to underwear that does not smack of elvish lace or wizarding pantaloons. It will be provided for the next task. I'm told Miss Granger had a suggestion that everyone seemed to approve of."

McGonagall looked satisfied at the practical muggleborn's involvement, but Harry and Milicent knew how Hermione's practicality often ignored social norms the way bludgers ignored gravity and human weakness. He feared this would not be his last clothing related task detention.

"

When McGonagall got called to the door by one of her Prefects with a problem involving Ron Weasley being caught stealing and eating a foot stool that hand been transformed into a birthday cake, said transformation being temporary, and due to reverse shortly, inside said Mr Weasley, she had to leave the group alone in detention to help stop one of her Gryffindors from being detonated by cake related furniture accident.

"So, Milicent, why are you in the slammer with us?" Harry asked, "I thought don't get caught was rule one of Slytherin."

Milicent smirked. "Those are basic rules for starter snakes. We get way more devious once we get comfortable. I am in the slammer because wee Colin here rolled on me as the person who took his amazing photo and monetized into the hottest selling poster in Hogwarts. I have sold more copies of that than the first year exams."

Harry blinked. "But you should have been smart enough to escape detention. I mean there is lots of stuff everyone knows you did but no one can prove."

Milicent started pulling out posters from her spacial expansion bag at her waist. "But Harry, I needed time with you, a desk, quill, and plausible deniability for you to autograph these posters. I mean, I didn't have Ronald eat a footstool for no reason."

Fred and George grinned and high fived. Of course she would hire Fred and George to turn a footstool into a birthday cake and leave it in the same room with Ron, having instructed him loudly and publicly not to touch it. Ron was as hard to figure out as a switch, and just about as easy to manipulate.

Harry began signing the posters, looking at the notes about how to personalize each of them. It was best not to argue with Milicent about things related to money or revenge. Still, if McGonagall was just hearing about Ron and the cake-related near death experience now, what were they in detention for.

"Fred, George, if McGonagall doesn't know about the cake, why are you in here?" Harry asked, knowing he would regret it.

Fred smiled. "Milcent's fault obviously."

Geroge argued "Or Neville's."

Fred agreed "Definitly Nevilles."

George continued. "But it was our dear queen who made it all possible."

They beamed at Milicent who smirked.

Harry signed another poster and broke down to ask.

"Made what possible?" Harry asked.

Miliicent explained. "I helped them with their Animagus transformation of course. My young lions are actually young lions. Still not house broken, but they are Gryffindors, and they aren't really happy if you totally civilize them."

Harry stopped. "Wait, McGonagall is a Transfiguration Master, and the Animgagus transformation is one of the most difficult transfigurations possible. She is an Animagus. She should be over the moon that you both mastered it. I mean, the last Gryffindor's to do it were the Marauders, and before them just her in the last century. I mean even Dumb-as-a-door never did it."

Milicent laughed happily. "They got detention for debasing and abusing their gift for purile and juvenile purposes."

Harry blinked, and tried to follow that one. "What did you do? It's not like a pair of rogue lions are exactly stealthy inside a ruddy school."

Fred and George dropped to their knees and clasped their hands together as if in prayer.

Fred shouted "We follow the prophet Neville."

George cheered. "Long be his bottom."

Fred closed his eyes in happy memory. "Walked into the common room as lions."

George sighed. "Big furry cats with ginger hair so soft you could."

Fred smirked. "And did"

George concluded "Get every girl in the Gryffindor common room to stroke at once."

Fred sighed. "Heavy petting from all three Gryffindor chasers at once."

Harry shook his head. "Is this what you and Aunt Narcissa mean about a Gryffindor headache?"

Milicent smirked and shot Harry a thumbs up. After all, there was just no housebreaking Gryffindors.

Harry wrote his lines in the sure and certain knowledge that besides Colin Creevy who meant well but had zero restraint with a camera in hand, he was still the most innocent in the room.

-Rotten Eggs

Harry, Hermione, Neville and Milicent sat around his egg ready for anything. They were in the chamber of secrets, trusting its wards to keep what they did secret and contained. Sura the basilisk was looking up from a pile of her children who where sleeping in a ball with her in the middle as her Speaker and his closest did strange, wizard things.

Noodle was some distance behind, not trusting his wizard to keep him safe, but also not trusting his wizard to stay safe. Honestly Speaker was going to make him grow grey scales, which snakes did not do, but no other snake had Speaker for his familiar, so Noodle might well be the first snake to go grey with age.

Harry finally opened the egg and screeching that was worse than a Hag dragging her claws down a chalkboard while under the Sonorus sound amplifying charm came out.

Harry slammed it shut as everyone screamed.

Hermone shook her finger at Harry. "You clearly broke it. Nothing makes that kind of noise on purpose."

Milicent shuddered. "Not true. It sounds exactly like Pansy Parkinson when I introduced her to leg waxing. Probably shouldn't have started with the Brazilian, but I didn't know she was opera trained at the time."

Neville looked confused as to what leg waxing, and Brazilian referred to, but Hermione just patted his arm to let him know that he was too Nevill for some discussions, and he let it go. Still he looked at the egg.

"Harry, you are a goblin, and they do those puzzleboxes, right? Maybe it's not broken, maybe it's just not being opened correctly. Why don't you try opening it every way you can think of, and we will see if they sound...better."

Noodle looked at Speaker, and realized the silly mammal was actually going to do it. Do it again and again and expose his delicate reptilian hearing to that noise again.

Angry hissing came from the nest where mother and brood of basilisk had been disturbed, so Harry knelt down and inscribed a quick sound ward on the nest so his kids would not be disturbed, then set back to figure out how many ways this could be opened.

Noodle, being a wise and clever reptile slithered off the platform and decided to go decrease the local frog population in the moat that surrounded the Queen's bower in the Chamber of Secrets.

To his surprise, the sound of the egg echoed oddly in the water, and he could hear a song.

"Come seek us where our voices sound,

We cannot sing above the ground,

And while you're searching ponder this;

We've taken what you'll sorely miss,

An hour long you'll have to look,

And to recover what we took,

But past an hour, the prospect's black,

Too late, it's gone, it won't come back."

Noodle had solved the mystery. Secret Agent Noodle was again the hero of the story and only reason his mammals still existed. He thought about Speaker's Hufflepuffian tendencies and that riddle and decided to let his mammals suffer a little more.

"We've taken what you'll sorely miss."

Speaker was not a complicated mammal. This would either result in Mouse Giver or Noodle being drowned on some sort of time delay for the silly mammal cup. Those who died would have their soul's enslaved forever to the Tuatha DeDannan.

For the crime of endangering the immortal soul and the life of his beloved Mouse Giver and the all important Secret Agent Noodle, he decided to allow them to suffer in the screaming until he ran out of frogs, or Mouse Giver showed the first sign of distress. Speaker should suffer a little. If Mouse Giver drowns, Noodle was going to bite him. Not to death, but probably daily, or at least every time he was reminded that Mouse Giver was endangered for his mammal games. Honestly, it's enough to make a grown reptile cry.

MMmmmm. Tasty, tasty Chamber of Secrets frogs. He swore Salazar Slytherin had some of Mouse Giver's magic to enhance prey beasts. Slytherin favoured Frogs, but nothing like that ethnic food to switch things up.

The egg rang like a bell as someone used a stunner on it to shut it up. Well, Noodle would let them play a little more before he took pity on them. They needed to remember how helpless they were without him. Otherwise, they might follow their own judgement, and no good could possibly come from that.

He would have to ask them for some wizarding way to not drown. He was not trusting the Liar of Light to keep him or Mouse Giver safe. Besides, Death Eaters, Man who smells like two men, and Liar of Light all have reasons to sabotage the challenge. Noodle would need to make his mammals prepare for treachery.

-Great Hall for breakfast the next day

Fred and George grabbed Cedric, who grabbed an emergency sausage before he was carted off down table to "accidentally overhear" things he could not be told.

Milicent descended on the Ravenclaw table and this time Fleur just held up her arms and let Milicent princess carry her to the Hufflepuff table. From the look on the boy's faces, and no few of the girls, the amazonian beater girl princess carrying the inhumanly beautiful feminine Fleur Delacour across the Great Hall would be more talked about than the next task, at least for a while.

Victor Krum was no fool, and when Noodle rose to his full height before the Slytherin table. Krum simply tossed him a sausage and rose to follow him without protest. Noodle snatched the sausage from the air and decided Wolf who is not a Wolf was also not stupid. Wolf that is not a wolf but not stupid was too long for a useful name, but the next wolf shifter he met was in danger of being known simply as Stupid Wolf.

Sitting at the Hufflepuff table among the fourth years, the champions looked amused but less surprised when Hermione handed out booklets for each of them. The fact that two Gyffindor gingers, Draco Malfoy and Luna Lovegood slid into place with the group was simply accepted by Hufflepuff at this point, even if the whispering of the Great Hall said it was still both against Dumbledore's unique and frankly indefensible interpretation of the rules, and the clear wishes of the Ministry in regard to the tournament secrecy.

Hermione, being the blunt information transmission object that she was began the conversation simply.

"To make the egg talk, you have to drown it underwater. By some coincidence the idiots putting on this tournament are going to find the one closest to you and drown them in the Black Lake. You will have an hour to get them out alive, assuming there is no sabotage, which there will be, or the Headmaster and Ministry haven't made some deeply flawed assumptions and equally foreseeable mistakes, which they no doubt already have."

Cedric looked nervous. "How are they going to pick who is closest. Is it chosen by our teachers?"

Luna looked at Cedric and took his hand. "The Cauldron of Dagda has chosen. The one you love most, the one whose death will tear your soul apart is the one it will pick. Cruelty is beauty to the fey, as is heroism. Either you will be a hero and please them, or the one you love will die before your eyes, and please them."

"He's going to kill me." Cedric whispered.

Harry looked confused. "Who is going to kill you?"

Cedric looked defeated. "My dad."

Hermione and Neville looked confused. "Why?" Harry asked.

Draco swore softly. "Leave it alone Harry. Just, leave it."

Milicent winced and also patted Cedric's hand.

Fleur looked worried. "I am Veela, we are creatures of air and fire. Water is hard on us, it works against our magics. Magics that are based on water do not work well on us, because it fights our magic."

Hermione frowned. "I have seen your charms work. You are far too powerful for that to bother you. A simple bubblehead, which is air magic and your strength will do fine."

Fleur hissed. "Gabrielle is eight. Her magical core is not even formed. She cannot even cast a lumous even if we broke the law to get her a wand. What will your Headmaster do? A spell or potion for a witch or wizard that is based on water magic like a water breathing potion will interfere with her magic and she will drown."

Krum's face turned to stone. "My mother is very dear to me. She is a muggle. Potions rely on the magic in her body. Father tells everyone she is a squib, at least from a magical family, but she isn't. She is just a muggle nurse who patched him up in a Muggle hospital when he was nearly killed by a dark wizard. If she is given a water breathing potion to keep her alive, she will die. She always said love was her only magic, and now it will kill her."

Neville smiled. "It's okay. I am nowhere near as smart as Hermione or brave as Harry, but I am about the best gardener you will ever meet."

Fleur looked at him oddly. "Herbology?" She asked. "Potions are stronger."

Neville smiled. "Potions are stronger because they take the magic of ingredients, the magic of the potioner, and the magic of the person drinking them to work."

He looked up and spoke seriously. "Herbology is my best subject. It isn't potions, where we make things found in nature do what we want. It is old magic. Ancient magic really. Herbology is about finding the magic that the plants draw from the earth, the sky, the sun, the water, and the spirits of each. This magic is drawn slowly, shaped and woven into every fiber of the plant, so that each part of the plant displays a different combination of those magics.

We learn to find those magics that do things that we want, and isolate them from the portions of the plant whose magics do things we don't want."

Krum frowned. "Still just a more limited form of potion."

Neville shook his head happily, proud he could defend one of the least admired branches of magic to champions of all three schools. "No, potions need your magic to work. Magic plants already have all the magic they need, and they will work as their magic dictates no matter who or what eats them. They would work the same on a Veela, a witch, a cow, a muggle, or an ogress."

Two of the champions relaxed visibly, but Noodle's gaze was fixed on Cedric Diggory. The boy's face was a grim line, and his fists were balled so tight his knuckles shone white. Noodle would have to watch the Hogwarts champion, something in this task Cedric did not expect to survive, and Noodle did not know what it was.

-Tea Party before the challenge

Draco and Neville flanked Luna as she wove flower crowns for the various fairy creatures that shared her table this night.

"Is it always like this?" Neville asked in a whisper as he took a cup of tea with a polite bow from a Green-hag whose seaweed hair, terrible black claws, and shark like teeth argued she was better suited for drowning fisherman and sailors than high tea. Neville bowed to the Green-Hag reflexively, for any child raised by Augusta Longbottom would rather die by fire than be impolite to a lady over tea.

Draco shuddered. "You have no idea."

The Silver Lady looked on angrily, as Luna poured ghostly tea into her cup.

"Luna, why can you not go to my tower? Why can you not return to your dormitory?"

Luna looked up, and her wide innocent eyes clouded for a moment.

"It seems someone has accidentally warded the door to the common room against me. I see my hairbrush is left by the Eagle of the doorway, so I guess they used my hair to ward it. I can't pass the door to enter the Ravenclaw dormitory unless I shave off all my hair." Luna said.

Draco and Neville hissed.

Neville half rose before Draco stopped him. He spoke up anyway once he sat down.

"You have to go to professor Flitwick about this, it is bullying. You cannot allow it to just continue." Neville argued.

Luna let a single tear fall. "That won't make anyone like me. Ravenclaw is lost as her diadem. The House isn't whole, and someone has to fall through the cracks. At least, I have you to take tea with."

At that point the Banshee screamed, and Luna clapped when the Banshee finished screaming and picked up a scone and buttered it happily.

Luna beamed and hugged the Banshee. "That is marvelous Mavis! Thank you so much."

The Banshee patted the Ravenclaw girl on the back as Draco and Neville looked on in alarm.

Luna hugged each guest in turn before settling down onto her seat and lifting her tea cup.

"Mavis screamed, but didn't cry. That means that even though some people die, none of them are children!" Luna cheered, and raised her cup. The fairy and Draco all raised their cups and drank, leaving a shocked Neville to follow behind.

Draco looked at Neville and shrugged. "Harry's fine, and if Gabrielle really turns out to be Fleur's hostage she is going to be fine. If Cedric's hostage turns out to be a younger sibling, they will be fine too."

Neville tried not to shout. "But what about everyone else?"

The Green-hag laughed, and picked up a minced meat tart, holding it before her eyes and smiling with her terrible sharp teeth. "Well boy, someone has to do the dying!"

The Green-Hag bit into the minced meat tart with obvious enjoyment and all the fairy creatures at the table laughed with the sound of so many gentle bells and trilling birds.

Neville looked at Draco shuddering and wondered how the Slytherin was brave enough to face these tea parties multiple times a week. Neville was sure he would either have broken, or stormed the Ravenclaw tower.

Eyeing the weeping Silver Lady, the Ravenclaw ghost, he knew that it wasn't only the Hufflepuff at the table who could not bear to see how Ravenclaw treated its own.