3.6 Creative misbehavior
3.6.1 Popinjay
Moonlit clouds swept dramatically across the enchanted ceiling, echoing the darkened sky above as the returning students eagerly awaited the opening feast and the beginning of a new school year. Candles blazed, hovering overhead as Abigail picked her way through the increasingly crowded Great Hall on the way to her usual seat at the Slytherin table.
Back to the wall and two seats door-ward from the third hanging brazier, the seat was in front of a blank wall and close enough to the staff table to stay informed while remaining distant enough to avoid casual notice. All in all, it was a prime seat by Slytherin reckoning. As she settled in to await the Sorting, Abigail exchanged pleasant greetings with her various acquaintances with a giddy smile on her face, prompting more than a few curious looks from her House-mates.
A giddy smile was hardly normal for the House of the Serpents, at least not in public.
For her part, Abigail wasn't even aware of the broad smile plastered onto her face; rather, she was still exhilarated from her trip through the forest, which had been an amazing, if brief, experience. It was the first time Harry had carried her while in his dragon form... well, it was the first time she had been awake for it. Madame Pomfrey had teased her about something similar that had happened in the immediate aftermath of the troll incident. In any event, she had been awake for it this time, and it had been everything she could have hoped it would be.
Once they had escaped far enough into the trees to be out of view, Harry had smoothly resumed his native form and gathered both her and Hermione up in a single, utterly massive clawed hand, before seamlessly shifting to walk on the knuckles of his wings as he cradled both girls gently.
Just like that hug back in Diagon Alley, Harry's grip had been simultaneously brutally strong and infinitely tender. Add to that the feeling of being utterly enveloped in his presence as the forest whipped by — a breathtaking sight in the gathering twilight — and that impromptu trip cemented itself in Abigail's mind as a treasured memory for years to come.
Perhaps the dragon thing wouldn't be a major issue after all.
Unfortunately — at least by Abigail's reckoning — Harry had made excellent time, reaching the clearing behind Hagrid's hut, carefully depositing the two girls on their feet, and flowing back into human form just as the first of the thestral-drawn carriages carrying the other students had arrived at the main gate of the castle. All three friends had been seated at their respective House tables with time to spare before the Sorting.
And, speaking of the Sorting, the Deputy Headmistress had just announced the beginning of that event, prompting Donald, the disreputable looking Sorting Hat, to awaken.
The Hat seemed rather unusually startled, glaring out over the assembled students as if it had expected a different scene, though Abigail had no idea why that would be the case. Regardless, that lasted but a bare moment before the magical headwear visibly set aside its surprise in favor of resuming its usual routine, only a lingering air of minor annoyance to mark the event.
While the sight of a miffed hat was quite unusual, the Sorting itself was not. Only two incoming students stood out from the gaggle, and neither had been sorted into Slytherin. Ravenclaw had received Luna Lovegood, noteworthy as the sole daughter and heiress of the only completely independent publishing house remaining in wizarding Britain. Over the last two centuries, the Ministry-controlled Daily Prophet had either forcibly acquired or otherwise driven all others out of business.
The second noteworthy, Ginevra Weasley, caught Abigail's interest solely because of the sheer number of Weasley siblings currently attending Hogwarts. Hogwarts had already hosted two of the redheaded siblings when Abigail herself was Sorted, and she had now seen five more Sorted during her tenure as a student.
Magical families rarely produced so many children so close together. By Abigail's reckoning, at the time this youngest girl was born, there would have been five magical children under the age of five packed into one house — and a tiny one at that, if the Weasley reputation as an impoverished House was accurate. Conventional wisdom in the magical community called that sort of scenario a deathtrap due to the potential hazards of accidental magic. The scenario of one child's accidental magic startling another into their own episode and touching off a cascade of panicked magical children was a very real and very frightening one. Formal magical schooling started so much later than its non-magical counterpart for precisely that reason.
Abigail frowned in thought. Had the Weasleys taken an unconscionable risk and simply gotten lucky, or had they discovered some way around the problem?
And, if they had, what implications would that discovery hold?
It was enough to make the seventh-year wonder if Harry might be facing some competition in his quest to take over the wizarding world. Her friend was planning to lead with economic conquest and introduce other methods as they became necessary, but it looked like the Weasleys might be trying to overwhelm the opposition by out-breeding them. Abigail chuckled at the notion for a moment before she trailed off with a frown.
On second thought, that might actually work. It'd be slow, to be sure, but eventually...
Maybe they were on to something?
That would probably be a good failsafe plan, she'd have to bring it up at her next meeting with… following that train of thought to its ultimate conclusion brought her giddy smile back full force as she sipped at her water in an attempt to calm herself back down. Perhaps not the next meeting, then, but when he got a little older they could…
She clamped down on that line of thought, and it seemed it was time to change the subject again. Casting about for something else to occupy her attention, she noticed the Headmaster standing to make an announcement.
"Good evening to you all!" the elderly wizard proclaimed, his voice carrying to every corner of the room with no evidence of strain. "It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you for another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I sincerely hope summer vacation proved relaxing, and that you are all ready to commit fully to your academic pursuits. On that note, you may have noticed a new face at the staff table. Please welcome your new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Gilderoy Lockhart."
As the room dissolved into applause, Abigail noted that the cheering had an unusually high pitch, as if a disproportionate number of girls were involved. Perhaps the man was famous for something? Though, she frowned thoughtfully, considering the audience… he was probably on one of those asinine Witch Weekly Most Charming Smile Awards or some such. Abigail scoffed, useless rag. The few girls in her House who read the thing usually stuck to the Most Eligible Bachelor lists; you had to choose your target carefully, wouldn't want to sell yourself off to someone poor, heaven forfend!
Well, that and the makeup tips.
In any event, the name meant little to her, though it sounded vaguely familiar — something about her book list, if she remembered correctly. The new addition was a wizard in his late twenties with a medium build, flowing blond hair, and dressed in flamboyant silk robes. He was handsome if you were into that sort of thing, she supposed — Abigail preferred a more rugged and practical sort, strong rather than pretty — though, even she was into that sort, the blond hair would have ruined the effect for her... and probably for most of the current crop of Slytherin girls, too, come to think of it.
The distaste stemmed from a common cause, after all.
As the man stood up, a broad smile plastered itself on his face with a practiced air, as if he had spent hours rehearsing the expression in front of a mirror. The mannerisms were unique, but the overall effect reminded her of someone, a resemblance that she couldn't quite place...
"Thank you, thank you," the blond man said with the air of a man who firmly believed that he needed no introduction. "Now, now, calm down, I shall be here all year, there will be plenty of time for us to get to know one another."
As she listened, the picture started to come together for Abigail. The carefully coiffed hair, the smug self-assurance, the absolute certainty that he was both the smartest and prettiest person in the room… that was it! He reminded her of a more attractive and genteel version of Draco Malfoy.
That realization left Abigail hoping her appetite would recover by the time the food was distributed. Many of the other girls in the audience, however, seemed to be lapping up the performance, even a few of the firsties wearing green and silver... only the firsties though, thankfully for Abigail's continued faith in humanity. By contrast, perhaps two thirds of the males looked thoroughly unimpressed, among them Albus Dumbledore, who was still standing where he had been before the new professor had hijacked his introduction.
None of which seemed to do anything to discourage Gilderoy Lockhart.
"I have graciously accepted the position of Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts," the puffed-up man continued in his overly polished voice, his satin robes gracefully trailing his extravagant hand movements. "It presented an excellent opportunity for me to pass at least some few of my many skills on to the younger generation, a long-standing goal of mine — which many of you may have read in my autobiography, Magical Me."
Wait... that title was on the reading list for this year! That was where she had seen his name; he'd written half the book list!
...and one of those books was apparently the man's autobiography.
New information in mind, Abigail's eyes narrowed at the pompous and self-serving monologue. She had already tagged the man as a self-important fop, but he might still have had something to teach; talent came to all sorts after all. If he was merely treating this as an excuse to sell more of his books to a captive audience, however… well, she would have to wait and see what he was like in class, but this augured poorly for her NEWT in Defense.
While Abigail had been thinking, Lockhart had continued with his performance, managing to mention seven of his own books in the short interlude. Minutes passed as the dandy droned on with his book promotion masquerading as an introduction only to have his spotlight quietly and unintentionally stolen by a small figure entering through the main door and catching increasing amounts of attention from the student body as it purposefully made its way across the Hall.
The visitor, only slightly taller than the recently-Sorted first-years, was a sharply dressed goblin carrying a leather portfolio in one hand and a wizarding camera hanging about his neck. As he made his way towards the Hufflepuff table, more and more of the students turned their attention to him until Lockhart was nattering away almost unnoticed in the background as the goblin came to a stop next to Harry Potter.
Abigail's currently human-shaped friend turned to the goblin and offered what appeared to be a warm greeting — the details of which were unfortunately inaudible from across the room, drowned out by Lockhart's ongoing speech — before accepting the leather portfolio. She saw her friend's wonderful green eyes widen as he examined the contents and a broad smile stretch across his face only for the goblin's camera to flash as he took a picture of the boy's reaction.
It figured it would be the flash of a camera that finally caught Lockhart's attention.
"Mr. Potter!" the man protested, sounding horribly put out but somehow still managing to smile at the same time, "This is hardly the time for a photography session. It is very rude to interrupt."
The Headmaster chuckled quietly at the irony implicit in that statement where he stood at the staff table.
"What photography session? Corporal Steelhammer was just delivering something for me," Harry asked as he looked up in bewilderment, not having noticed the flash due to his intent focus on the contents of that portfolio. In short order, he caught sight of the camera Steelhammer still held, and his gaze narrowed slightly in suspicion, only to close entirely when he was hit with another flash. "Hey! What are you taking pictures for?"
"Orders, sir," the goblin said simply. "The Vice-Chairman requested pictures of your reaction to the completion of your first major acquisition."
"Really?" the young dragon asked.
"It is something of a milestone, sir," the goblin explained. "I understand humans do similar things in certain circumstances: graduations, weddings, and the like."
"Oh, okay," Harry said, nodding agreeably before dismissing the issue. "So, everything is finalized?"
The sharply dressed goblin nodded, quiet voice carrying clearly in the suddenly silent Hall, "Yes, sir. As of ten o'clock this morning, the publicly held Hogs Haulage, PLC has been dissolved and reincorporated as Hogs Haulage, Ltd. under your sole ownership, sir."
That revelation had every eye in the Great Hall focused on the tableau of boy and goblin.
"Good," the boy-shaped dragon nodded firmly, "and the new personnel?"
"Are you certain you wish to allow such information into the public sphere, sir?" Steelhammer glanced significantly around the crowded room.
"It shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't mention names," Harry waved off his concern. "It's not like there's a competing magical rail company at the moment to try to hire them out from under me."
"Very well," the goblin acknowledged. "In that case, I am happy to report the new personnel mostly confirmed, sir. Four are currently out of contact, but we anticipate confirmation within the next two days, possibly a week for the one currently employed in the PRC. After that, it will be a question of waiting out their current contract requirements — management should be ready within two weeks; the engineering personnel may take a month or two. When they arrive, we will alert you."
"Great!" Harry replied enthusiastically. "Thanks! And please pass my thanks to Mr. Slackhammer, too."
"Of course, sir," the sharply dressed goblin acknowledged before turning smartly and making for the door without further ado.
The goblin managed to make it out of sight before the students exploded into conversation, Lockhart's speech forgotten. After all, the children had just learned that one of their own was now the sole owner of the Hogwarts Express, a perennial icon of the Hogwarts experience; for the moment, that far outweighed what some new teacher had to say — no matter how pretty he was.
On the other side of the room from her friend, Abigail could do little more than watch from afar as her friend fielded questions from his friends in Hufflepuff, so instead she turned her attention to the rest of the room, reasoning the dispositions of some of the children might give her some clues to what challenges might come for her future employer — though, judging by Malfoy's vacant scowl as he stared hungrily at his still-empty plate, she might have been giving her fellow students too much credit. Most seemed oblivious to the potential ramifications of their classmate's purchase.
With no benefit to be had from observing the student body, Abigail turned her attention back to the staff table only to be forced to choke back her own laughter once more. The new professor, that Lockhart fellow, still stood exactly as he had been minutes previous, only now he looked forlornly out over the sea of children who had forgotten he existed.
A quiet giggle managed to squeeze itself out of her despite her attempts to choke it down. Harry couldn't have arranged a better prank on the smugly self-important dandy if he had tried! It was much funnier than anything the Weasley twins had managed over the years, to Abigail's way of thinking. In fact, their reactions to being upstaged would be sure to be memorable. Her gaze flitted over to the Gryffindor table searching out the redheaded menaces to get a look only to find… nothing.
The twin menaces were nowhere to be found!
Abigail frowned. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen the Weasley twins at all during the train ride, nor during the Sorting. She did see their elder brother who seemed at ease, turned around from the Gryffindor table and talking quietly with Clearwater at the Ravenclaw table. He was one of the Gryffindor prefects, and it was part of his job to keep track of the pair. If their brother wasn't worried about them, then at least they were probably safe, though it begged the question…
What horrors were those two brewing while out of sight?
Just as that realization began to set in, a shout from one of the younger students abruptly pulled Abigail away from her downward-spiraling train of thought.
"Look, up in the sky!"
Her eyes snapped to the ceiling of the Great Hall. The vaulted stone was enchanted to be transparent from the inside, showing a beautiful view of the night sky and the sparse moonlit clouds... and shooting across that beautiful scene, below those moonlit clouds, was a flying automobile.
Abigail sighed. At least that answered the question of what the Weasley twins had gotten up to. It was simply inconceivable that anyone else could be driving that car in this situation.
It was quite the spectacle, but as the seconds ticked by, Abigail had to wonder... what was the punchline?
Then her eyes snapped shut reflexively as the night sky lit up like high noon.
3.6.2 Ungraceful arrival
Clouds raced across the moonlit sky as the twin brothers drew close to the end of their harrowing voyage.
When the twins had decided to 'borrow' the family car, they hadn't realized just how much of an ordeal they were signing up for. It had been a long, exhausting ride, packed full of uncertainty and a certain degree of low-key terror.
Despite the brothers' experience with brooms, the enchanted saloon was an entirely different animal. Broom flight was intuitive, essentially involving hauling the end of the broom around where you wanted to go and letting the enchantments do the rest. Advanced broom handling involved 'willing it' to go where you wanted and as fast as you wanted it to go there. A good broom responded so quickly and so intuitively that it might as well be an extension of the rider's body.
By contrast, the Ford Anglia handled like a pregnant whale swimming through a sea of treacle. Lateral steering used the steering wheel just like it did on the ground; speed was controlled by the accelerator, just like it was on the ground; but altitude was controlled by means of shifting gears into either 'up' or 'down' and using the accelerator. Of course, that meant that you couldn't control your forward speed while changing altitude — a nuance which Fred learned by trial and rather distressing error while attempting to fly for the first time in that narrow alley. To make matters worse, pitch and yaw — not that the brothers knew enough about aviation to know the proper terms — were 'controlled' by not turning too fast and hoping for the best from the cobbled-together stabilization charms.
All told, the control schema led to more than a few hair-raising mishaps early in the flight.
Once they managed to get into the air, the main issue had become one of navigation. The Express was long gone by the time Fred and George had managed to bring their wild first flight under control and return to the station, so their original plan to stealthily tail the train had to be scrapped, leaving the twins scrambling for an alternative. They had eventually remembered that fold-out map they had acquired previously for the prank, and after managing to set down on a rooftop to retrieve it from Fred's trunk — leaving skid marks which would greatly confuse maintenance personnel in the process — George tried his hand at navigation.
Armed with the knowledge that Hogwarts was somewhere in Scotland on the south shore of the Black Lake, the fourth-year applied his limited knowledge of geography — and a rudimentary translation charm the pair had learned expressly for a prank candy that hadn't panned out — to settle upon Loch Morar as their likely destination. From there, using George's wand and a point-me spell as a compass, the intrepid duo set out on a north-northwest heading at best speed — only to quickly realize that 'best speed' meant they were going to be driving for at least eight hours.
Of course, eight hours turned out to be an optimistic estimate. George's navigational inexperience led them to slowing and descending often to read the road signs along the way and correct their course. About nine hours into the flight, the car's magical reservoir ran dry, leaving the aggregator runes to power the vehicle directly. Even with two adolescent wizards in the cabin, the demands of flight left the engine sputtering and missing strokes and the boys firmly convinced they were seconds away from falling out of the sky.
Those runes — designed to collect ambient magic from the surrounding environment and slowly charge a magical reservoir from which other spells drew their energy — generally worked well for light duty in magical areas, often serving to power magical appliances and even light-duty wards. Vehicles, however, tended to draw too much power too quickly to be widely practical. Too many of them could easily drain the ambient magic in an area to the point where the slow trickle of collected magic effectively ground to a halt.
For grounded vehicles, this was only a minor inconvenience, but for flying vehicles… well, in the course of his job with the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department, Arthur had confiscated the vehicle from its original owner for purposes of public safety, and he had driven the car to King's Cross rather than flying it for much the same reason.
Needless to say, those enchantments were not sufficient for cross-country marathons through the low-magic majority of the United Kingdom.
That said, between what little could be siphoned up from the environment and the magical output of the two mildly terrified adolescent wizards in the cabin, the enchanted automobile managed to scrape by. All told, it took the boys nearly ten hours to reach the shores of Loch Morar and then another hour slowly puttering along the south shore to locate the castle.
"Oh, thank Merlin!" Fred exclaimed from his position behind the wheel on seeing the towers of Hogwarts gleaming in the moonlight. Eleven hours of driving an unfamiliar vehicle on an unfamiliar route to a place you weren't sure was where you thought it was while terrified that you could drop out of the air like a stone at any moment made for a harrowing ordeal, indeed. "George, next time I come to you with an idea like this, punch me."
"You got it," the other twin replied, perfectly serious for once. "Same to you, brother. Where should we land this thing?"
Fred looked critically at the castle grounds, "How about by the lake shore? There's enough open space there."
"Sounds good," George said weakly, looking out the passenger window at the castle arrayed on the left of the car. Seeing one roof in particular, spoke up speculatively. "Hey, Fred, I've got an idea, and it just might make the whole flying car thing worth it."
"What is it?" his brother asked, tiredly.
"You remember the charms on the ceiling of the Great Hall?"
"The ones for transparency?" Fred confirmed, too exhausted to follow through on his brother's reasoning from the hint alone. "What about 'em?"
"Well, how about we buzz the roof first before we land?" George asked, mischief in his voice. "They've probably just started the feast by now, so everyone'll be in there…"
That prompted a tired grin from the driver, "You're right, that would make all this almost worth it. I'm in." And with that, Fred swung the car around for one last maneuver, flipping the headlights on for effect.
As the brothers approached the castle, they grinned with renewed enthusiasm. It was going to be spectacular.
They were right.
3.6.3 Automatic misunderstanding
As the flying car approached the castle, long-dormant wards roused from their centuries-long slumber. Hogwarts might have been on peacetime footing for most of living memory, but some of its wartime defenses were sufficiently specialized that there was simply no need to turn them off — they cost little to operate on standby and were unlikely to interfere with normal school activities. This one — designed to protect against magical artillery — was one such always-on ward. It scanned the sky above the castle battlements for sufficiently dense masses of magical energy, compared them to the ward's list of allowable magical signatures, and attempted to disrupt any such object not permitted access to the castle.
The enchantments on the Ford Anglia fit the bill admirably.
Admittedly, there were also two authorized signatures attached to the interloper, but — unfortunately for the twins — that also fit a previous threat profile. Back in 1143, the then-contemporary Dark Lord had attempted to fool the school's defenses by tying a kidnapped student to his ward-breaker. The brutal gambit had worked, temporarily taking down the Hogwarts wards for the first and only time in the history of the institution. After the Dark Lord had been put down in a suitably bloody fashion, updates were made to counter the tactic. After all, the kidnapped student back in the twelfth century hadn't survived the impact anyway, so what difference did it make whether the poor sap died from the counter battery fire rather than the final impact?
So it was that a magical device, roughly analogous to a modern anti-missile battery, prepared to fire on the unsuspecting family saloon.
However, that analogy was quite rough. Unlike their non-magical counterparts which tended to be comparatively simple in design due to various practical considerations, the complexity of magical artillery was limited only by the twisted imagination of the mind that created it. Predictably, among the first improvements made were countermeasures for various interception methods, making the choice of an appropriate counter-spell critically important.
During the times when such spells were in common use, the development of artillery countermeasures and counter-countermeasures was a constantly evolving dance, greatly limiting the utility of general countermeasures — the only kind which could reasonably be built into wards.
Of course, limited utility was quite distinct from no utility.
The seemingly decorative finials adorning the peak of every tower on the campus lit up with an eldritch glow.
In the absence of clever solutions, the Hogwarts warders had returned to the reliable simplicity of brute force. With access to an effectively unlimited well of power tapped from the local ley lines and stored in the collection of house-sized ward stones hosted in the deepest, long-since sealed, sub-levels of the castle, the ward designers had chosen the most general, most widely-applicable method of disruption possible.
Just throw magic at it.
Lots and lots of magic.
And the anti-artillery ward — abruptly awakened after long centuries of dormancy — threw magic.
Lots and lots of magic.
3.6.4 Look at the pretty lights
Scattered across the campus, forty-two towers lit up with brilliant magical discharges — looking for all the world like unnaturally long-lived lightning bolts — simultaneously arcing from the towers to strike a comparatively tiny flying car as it puttered over the roof of the Great Hall.
The enchanted vehicle shuddered under the onslaught before suddenly twisting away from its previous course and diving with uncharacteristic grace. The eldritch lightning cut off abruptly as the car passed below the altitude of the battlements, and the lightly charred saloon came to a stop a few feet above the ground. One door to flew open of its own accord as the vehicle spun on its longitudinal axis leaving the open door to hang down. A pair of frazzled and lightly smoking young wizards tumbled out to land in an awkward, undignified heap on the grass of the castle lawn.
As they struggled to regain their bearings, the door slammed shut on its own, and the car spun once again — this time emptying the boys' trunks out of the boot in a similarly rough manner — before setting down gently on the lawn a few feet away from the them. The vehicle had hardly touched down before its horn blared defiantly as the engine revved and the rear wheels spun out, throwing sod and dirt on the two sputtering boys who has so misused the enchanted car before it accelerated off through the open castle gate and into the forest beyond with the loud crack of a backfiring engine.
The echoes were still fading when a strident, and ever so slightly Scottish, female voice rang through the yard.
"Whate'er is the meaning of this?" McGonagall demanded as she burst out into the courtyard at a dead run followed quickly by several of her colleagues. As she caught sight of the still smoking teenagers slowly coming back to their senses, she arrived at a rough idea of the answer to her own question. "Misters Weasley! Ne'er in all my years has one of my students gone so far as to trigger the siege wards! This was several dozen steps too far for a prank, what do you have to say for yourselves?"
She trailed off as she drew closer to the still smoking pile. "Misters Weasley?"
She was answered by a groggy and disoriented groan.
"I see," the stern Scotswoman said, voice falling back into a more normal stern tone. "Well, I suppose your punishment will have to wait until we get you both into Madame Pomfrey's care."
She motioned to Flitwick to take one of the boys while she levitated the other. For his part, Snape called for a house elf to handle the trunks.
And with that, the odd procession made its way through the castle toward to the Healer's domain. The twin siblings slowly recovered, the process somewhat retarded by their gentle, yet still disorienting, swaying under the invisible influence of the professors' levitation spells. Still, the brothers managed to come to their senses by the time they reached the doors of the Great Hall.
They were just in time to hear a godawful clamor arise from within.
"What now?" McGonagall asked the world at large as she hurried to the doorway before freezing in place, giving the pair of troublemakers a fine, if sideways, view of their handiwork.
The Great Hall was a sea of ginger.
Every student — barring a single black-haired, green-eyed Hufflepuff who had finally looked up from the contents of a certain leather portfolio and was now sporting a puzzled frown as he looked around the room — had been transformed into a perfect copy of either Fred or George Weasley, though none but the originals themselves would have been able to say which.
One Fred — who was standing near the head of the Gryffindor table and looked to have been giving a speech — reached up to grab a lock of his now-red hair and pull it down before his eyes. Staring for a moment in astonishment, he then let out a piercingly girlish shriek.
"My hair!"
"Filius?" the transfiguration mistress managed to find her voice.
"Yes, Minerva?" the half-goblin prompted; his beady black eyes focused unerringly on the increasingly shrill Fred panicking about the state of his hair.
"Is that…?" she began before trailing off, unable to find the words.
"Gilderoy?" the diminutive Professor finished for her, sounding thoroughly amused. "Yes, I do believe it is."
"I see," the stern Scotswoman managed, her voice oddly clipped, as if sternly suppressing some sort of response.
"Off to the infirmary, then?" her much more obviously mirthful companion asked.
"Aye, that we should."
Oblivious to their professors, the two still-levitated twins surveyed the results of their handiwork.
"Fred," George whispered, awestruck.
"Yes, George?" Fred replied in kind.
"That was glorious," the first twin breathed.
"It was, George," Fred acknowledged. "Truly, it was."
3.6.5 Trials of a magical education
"Well, I suppose that answers my question," Abigail sighed, her voice sounding quite disconcertingly different than she was used to.
She pulled down a lock of her now-red hair to examine it in detail as a few of the remaining staff, led by Sprout and Pomfrey, worked to restore some semblance of order to the Great Hall. As far as pranks went, this one seemed relatively benign. It was irritating, certainly, but not terribly damaging. Temporary transfigurations were a known, and sadly all too common hazard when dealing with the Weasley twins... and magic in general, for that matter.
Looking out over the confused sea of ginger, though, the seventh-year girl had to admit, the scope of the prank was thoroughly impressive. The twin hellions had managed to get almost everyone, even some of the staff. Of course, they'd dropped the ball with Harry, but she was happy to give the twins a pass on that one. Anything that could unwillingly transfigure a dragon of her friend's stature was terrifying to imagine, even as a hypothetical concept.
Imagining such a thing in the possession of the twin terrors was something she refused even to consider.
Shaking her head, Abigail returned her attention to her plate, now thankfully filled with the usual Hogwarts fare, and tucked in. No sense worrying too much about it, the prank would either wear off or the professors would figure out how to fix it. They always did, eventually. Abigail just had to hope they figured it out before it was time to hit the showers for the evening.
If they didn't, personal hygiene would necessitate certain firsts she had been hoping to save for her wedding night.
3.6.6 Staff reflections
Nearly two and a half hours later, the four Heads and the Headmaster gathered in the latter's office to briefly touch base before heading off to the usual start-of-term scheduling meeting with the remainder of the staff.
"What have you learned?" the Headmaster began without preamble; they were in a bit of a hurry after all.
The excitement of the evening had thrown a rather significant wrench in the works for the start of the term, and all but Pomona Sprout — who had stayed to watch over the students — had been forced to skip out on the feast to deal with the chaos. As a result, they were all more than a little hungry — and consequently more than a little cranky.
"The feast was rather subdued," Pomona volunteered. "Many of the students were understandably quite concerned about their transformations. Thankfully, they reverted shortly after ten o'clock. Had the effects lasted much longer, I'm quite certain there would have been a great deal of panic. Do we have any idea of what happened?"
"I know the Weasley twins did something at King's Cross," Minerva explained. "Though, I must confess, I was unable to follow their explanation of how they managed to accomplish the results they did using a potion of all things." The Scotswoman shook her head. "If only they applied themselves so well in class…"
"Oh, they will," the sallow Head of Slytherin proclaimed darkly. He had been privately fuming since he had listened in on the explanation in the infirmary. "I will make certain of it."
"Oh?" the transfiguration mistress asked her colleague in surprise. "It is unlike you to take such a personal interest, Severus. What has changed?"
"Those two irresponsible, cack-handed buffoons recklessly endangered the entire student body — even many of their parents!" the man bit off the words with his even-whiter-than-usual lips, clearly incensed. "They modified the portal using a customized polyjuice variant of their own concoction."
"However did they manage the application?" Albus spoke up curiously as the potions master paused for breath. "As I recall, the maintenance access is heavily warded, and the security sweeps would have…"
"They used contagion," Snape spat.
The headmaster's normally calm eyes widened in shock for a moment before his expression darkened. "On the portal enchantment?" At Snape's nod, he sighed. "Will a quarantine be necessary?"
"For the portal? Most certainly — I have already taken the liberty of alerting law enforcement. As for the victims, thankfully not," the dark man said, "but only by the grace of whatever deity is puerile enough to waste its time watching over this pathetic society. Between their choice of a lunar trigger and several odd substitutions I can only assume were made due to budgetary constraints, the effects will fade before the next lunar cycle can reinforce them."
The aged headmaster collapsed back into his chair with an explosive sigh of relief.
"What exactly do you mean by 'contagion', Severus?" Flitwick asked curiously. "The term is familiar, but I am afraid the context is not."
"It is an obscure method used only very occasionally in potioneering," the dark man explained. "The potion is deliberately left in an incomplete and volatile state and is then brought into contact with an active magical construct. The interaction between the two produces the final effect, essentially imbuing the targeted construct — and anything with which it comes in contact — with the magic of the potion."
The half-goblin winced. "That sounds… unpleasant to deal with. Wouldn't that burn right through most containment spells?"
"Almost all of them," Snape agreed flatly. "And the effects themselves can be enormously intractable for similar reasons. For example, if we make the very strong assumption that every other part of the procedure would remain unchanged, we can conclude that had the twin menaces not used the lunar trigger — thus building an off-switch explicitly into the magic rather than relying on the body's natural resistance to expel the effect over time as normal polyjuice does — the transformations would have been practically irreversible, with the contagion rewriting the body's magic to retain its new form of its own accord."
Heedless of his colleagues' collective wince, the potions master went on, "Worse yet, had the potion been even slightly more potent — a circumstance which was likely avoided only due to the perpetrators' dismal lack of funding — the effects would have lasted long enough to trigger again on the next lunar cycle, reinforcing the effect."
"Self-reinforcing on a lunar trigger… so, we might have had…" Sprout trailed off, unwilling to voice the obvious conclusion.
"Yes," Severus said flatly, "we narrowly avoided the creation of were-Weasleys — in all likelihood complete with an infectious bite, given the volatile nature of contagion. It is still an open debate in the potions community whether lycanthropy is a naturally-occurring disease or the result of an ancient incident very similar to this one."
"It should come as little surprise that most potions masters go far out of their way to avoid ever even peripherally touching on the subject," the sallow man continued. "The practice is spectacularly unlikely to work as intended simply because of the complexity of the interactions involved, and even when it does, the slightest oversight in planning can have devastating results. As it is, the Misters Weasley appear to have had several distinct aspects of their folly interfere constructively to our benefit."
"Where on earth did they come across such a dangerous technique, anyway?" McGonagall asked. "Given your reaction, I hardly think they would have learned it in one of your fourth-year lectures."
"Contagion is most often used in cursebreaking as a means of corrupting existing wards away from their original purposes, opening them up to manipulation by other, more reliable means," Snape explained. "In that case, the targets are usually so optimized that nearly any shift away from their intended purpose will result in a simpler situation for the cursebreaker, and when the desired result is simply 'anything different from what it is now' even something as unreliable as contagion can be a useful tactic. However, 'reliable enough for cursebreaking' is a far cry from what most anyone else would consider sane. After all, most everything involved in cursebreaking…"
Flitwick, already nodding along, completed the statement, "…is exceedingly dangerous — particularly when performed by a pair of amateurs in a crowded train station involving a portal through which hundreds of children will pass during the course of the day."
The room fell silent for a moment as the three Heads who had not known the stakes from the word 'contagion' came to fully appreciate just how lucky they had been.
"What are we going to do with those two?" McGonagall asked, her lips thinned and nearly white with disapproval. Her initial exasperation had only worsened during her colleague's explanation of the risks inherent in the situation. "Detention seems wholly inadequate in this case, yet I am reluctant to expel the boys…" The Scotswoman turned to her sallow-faced colleague who was normally quick to jump on any mention of expulsion, particularly regarding pranksters and troublemakers.
The man in question's visage twisted with a pained grimace. "As odd as the reversal of our usual roles is in this case, Minerva, I am afraid I cannot recommend expulsion. This last action, foolish and ill-advised as it was, has proven that the little monsters are sufficiently talented that cutting them off from further instruction would simply make them more dangerous, not less. They are accomplished enough to cause major damage, and with this they have proven they are thoughtless enough to barge into such course of action with nary a thought to the potential consequences. I refuse to allow any student of mine to pass from my hands in such a state."
The bearded headmaster spoke up from his contemplative silence at hearing his subordinate's tone. "What then do you suggest, Severus?"
"I shall supervise their detentions," the dark man said, with the quietly dignified air of a soldier volunteering to face the oncoming barbarian hordes alone. "Indefinitely. They will have served their punishment when I am satisfied that they are sufficiently well-trained to know better than to attempt such a thing again. Until then, I will ensure that they have no idle time to involve themselves in such pursuits."
The Hufflepuff Head let out a long whistle. "You'll have your work cut out for you there, Severus. Teaching the Weasley twins restraint seems a tad…" she trailed off searching for the appropriate word.
"Sisyphean?" Flitwick volunteered from his chair.
"Exactly," the other two Heads chorused in unison.
3.6.7 Advanced flight lessons
Though the clouds still raced across the sky driven by the tireless winds blowing in from the north Atlantic, they were no longer visible from the ground as the moon had long since set, and the vast majority of the student body had settled in to their various accommodations. After a little less than an hour and still well before the feast had ended, the transformations had ended without incident, and being students enrolled in a magical school, few bore anything more than lingering annoyance at their unexpected temporary ginger-ification.
All but one of the students went off in good spirits, bedding down quickly to sleep off the excitement — as well as the usual range of gastrointestinal consequences of their overindulgence at the feast — and prepare for the beginning of the school year.
That one student, however, remained hard at work under the cloudy and moonless sky, awkwardly puzzling over an assortment of crates strewn about a clearing in the depths of the Black Woods.
During the feast, the newly established Hogsmeade branch of Gringotts had discreetly delivered the sizeable contents of the last two cargo wagons on the Express to the clearing below Harry's Lair. Of course, without ground access to the Lair, they could take the heavy cargo no further, and the young dragon found himself awkwardly trying to work out how to get the things up into his Lair.
"Huh," Harry muttered into the darkness of the clearing. The currently moonless night ensuring that the Black Woods lived up to their name. "I hadn't thought this stuff would be so big."
Early in the summer, Harry had gone a bit wild with his newfound financial liquidity and a few industrial equipment catalogs, making several purchases that seemed useful for his continued experiments. The combination welder and diesel generator he'd been able to carry up easily enough — it had only been about the size of a compact car — but the combination CNC lathe and mill was proving to be more of a challenge.
In a fit of childish enthusiasm, the young dragon had picked the biggest and best model he could find — a selection criterion which made for a very large device indeed in the world of computer-controlled machining equipment. He hadn't realized it would be slightly larger than he was when fully assembled, and even when shipped partially assembled… well, the largest of those crates was nearly the size of Harry's torso.
Harry grabbed onto the top of that largest crate, one great clawed hand at either end of the massive wood and steel box and shifted the whole thing experimentally. He could certainly handle the weight easily enough — the box contained the main chassis, so it was mostly empty-space; it couldn't possibly weigh more than seven or eight tons — but how on earth was he supposed to take off while carrying it? It was wide enough to risk interfering with his wings if he tried.
"Huh," the dragon huffed again in consternation, sitting back on his haunches and scratching at his head for a moment before looking up at the Lair entrance over a hundred feet off the ground. "Maybe some kind of pulley so I could drag it up there? I'd bet Mr. Ronan would let me borrow some of their rope." A glance at the broken rocks at the foot of the cliff and the soft, muddy streambed before it disabused him of that notion. Dragging precision equipment through that was just begging for problems.
"Huh," Harry said for the third time.
Hermione might have had an idea, but she was already asleep in anticipation of the start of classes the next day. The only reason Harry hadn't sought his own bed was because he'd insisted on getting his new toys — tools, he meant tools — delivered that night, and he couldn't very well leave the things out in the open. What if it rained or something?
"Levitation, maybe?" he muttered.
Pulling out his wand — those auto-resizing wrist holsters really lived up to the advertising — Harry ran through the motions and levitated a small boulder from the scree at the base of the cliff. Despite the human-designed implement looking utterly absurd in his draconic hand, he managed to hold it steady for a few seconds before his control slipped, and the boulder shot off down the glen on a ballistic trajectory. Past experience told him it would probably be landing in the sound — one time he'd managed to skip one halfway to Skye.
"Not yet."
It wouldn't do to lose control when moving these things around. They were precision parts, and even the slightest bend on one of them might necessitate months' worth of recalibration and repair, tens of thousands of galleons worth of replacement parts, or — in the more likely case — both.
Harry was rich, but he wouldn't stay that way for long if he started throwing money away.
The young dragon flopped down on the ground and let out a whistling sigh of exasperation, his irritation lending a flicker of flame to the exhalation. What on earth was he going to do?
As if in response to the thought, another flame flared up in the clearing and chirped at him questioningly.
"Oh, hey, Fawkes! How are you?" Harry asked, already somewhat cheered by the arrival of the phoenix.
The living flame chirped back happily.
"Glad to hear it," Harry said warmly. "What brings you to visit?"
The avian flame pecked insistently at the still-smoldering grass which had been caught in Harry's earlier exasperated sigh before looking at the dragon leadingly.
"Oh! Sure, we can do that," the dragon said in sudden realization before he let loose with a stream of flame in earnest, the glaring blue-white inferno washing over the fire-bird, flashing off the damp grass below and behind the bird in a puff of steam and hammering the newly-bare dirt. Fawkes trilled in pleasure.
Some five seconds later, the flame cut out, leaving the merrily burning phoenix as the only source of light in the suddenly much darker-seeming clearing. Fawkes shook himself for a moment before sounding an appreciative chirp.
"You're welcome!" Harry replied enthusiastically. "I'm always happy to help out a friend, especially when it's so simple."
Fawkes replied with an inquiring whistle.
"What am I doing?" Harry confirmed the question. "Well, I'm trying to get these crates up into the Lair," he gestured with one of his forepaws to the large pile of goods. "Thing is, some of them are too bulky for me to hold safely and take off with, and I'm not sure how to go about doing it."
The living flame let loose an incredulous cackling sort of sound before voicing an intricate series of clicks and whistles.
"Hovering?" the dragon said with a puzzled frown. "How would that be any easier than taking off…" He was interrupted by another rapid-fire series of clicks. "What do you mean, 'you can do that without using your wings'?"
Fawkes half-hopped and half-glided over to one of the smaller crates before gripping one of the anchor points used load it with a crane firmly in his talons. The fire-bird then firmly folded its flaming wings on its back before both it and the crate began rising smoothly into the air. Fawkes got about ten feet into the air before settling gently back down with the crate clunking on the soft earth. He hopped off and gave a one-winged gesture that could mean nothing other than "Now you give it a try."
The dragon, for his part, was looking at the phoenix with open wonder. "Wow! How did you do that?"
Fawkes chirped again impatiently.
"'I already do it'?" Harry repeated dubiously. "I'm pretty sure I've never done something like that before?"
Another chirp.
"I already do it to supplement my wings when I fly?" the dragon asked. "But how do I do it without my wings?"
The phoenix hopped up again and glided to a stop on Harry's back, right over his spine. The bird pecked at the dragon's spinal ridge, once on one side, and once on the other, before sending a pointed stare at the green eye turned back to watch what it was doing.
Harry thought for a moment. "Oh! You mean those not-rocket thingies Madame Pomfrey told me about!" The fire-bird gave a moderately exasperated-sounding twitter. "What? I didn't know I was using those already!" the young dragon defended himself. "And if I was using 'em accidentally, I have no idea how to just push with 'em! I mean, how do I just use those thingies?"
Fawkes nodded his relatively small head at that as he hunched his neck in consideration for a few minutes while pacing back and forth along the dragon's spine. Harry spent the time slowly flapping his wings and attempting to isolate what he was doing with his other flight organs at the same time.
It proved to be a fruitless endeavor for the young dragon.
Eventually however, the friendly fire-bird let out a triumphant squawk, recapturing the attention of his draconic friend.
The immortal flame had an idea.
Three minutes of explanation and another two of shuffling had the darkened clearing playing host to an exceedingly odd tableau. The phoenix had resumed his perch on Harry's spine between his wings, but now the dragon was splayed out across the of the clearing, all six limbs, neck, and tail lying limply on the grass. He looked for all the world like the most terrifying rug in all of God's creation.
"You sure this'll work?" Harry mumbled to his avian friend. "I feel kinda silly."
Fawkes gave an ambivalent tweet in response and rocked back and forth on his talons.
"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out," the currently pinned dragon opined. "Go ahead."
And with that, the phoenix pushed once more — this time in reverse — driving the silvery dragon even deeper into the loam. For his part, Harry struggled to push back without using any of his limbs, not that he could get purchase with them in any case. With his limbs splayed out as they were, he couldn't get nearly enough leverage to push back against the unnaturally strong magical fire-bird pinning him down.
As Harry fought back against the already crushing — and ever-increasing — weight of his fiery friend, he reflexively scrabbled for purchase against the soft dirt of the clearing but found none. Eventually, though, he flailed about enough to find what he was after; a slight lessening of the pressure against his breastbone let Harry know he had hit upon the right thing to do. He closed his eyes to concentrate, and he repeated it, varying his efforts slightly as he homed in on the proper effort to exert until he finally started to consistently push back against Fawkes' artificially enhanced weight.
Then, just as he managed to counter the crushing force exerted by the phoenix, Harry had the bright idea to throw as much effort as he could into this new endeavor.
As the young dragon dumped far more energy into his flight organs than he ever had before, the edges of his spinal scales reflected a greenish-white light from the glowing skin beneath as magic coursed along either side of the ridge of his spine, and Fawkes let out a startled squawk as the phoenix was suddenly flattened against the dragon's back by the unexpected acceleration.
Wind whistled around the pair as they precipitously gained altitude for the better part of five seconds before Harry finally realized he was no longer lying on the clearing floor and opened his eyes — only to see the clouds spread out below him, faintly illuminated by the stars above.
"What?" the young dragon exclaimed looking at the scene for a moment in consternation before realizing he was the better part of half a mile in the air. Harry traced a still-rising ballistic trajectory for a few seconds as he lost concentration before his wings firmed up and snapped as they caught the wind, flight organs seamlessly picking up the slack that the wind couldn't support just as they had before, with just one small change.
Now the young dragon could feel them.
It was an unqualified success!
"Thanks, Fawkes!" Harry called out to his fiery passenger, who gave a tired chirp of acknowledgement as he hunkered down on the dragon's back to stay out of the wind and rest from his exertions even as the pair glided back towards the still-darkened clearing.
As he settled in for a landing smoother than he had ever managed before, the young dragon's eyes narrowed in realization, "Hey! Is that how you always managed to win in our games of tag?"
Fawkes hopped off and shot his draconic friend an exasperated sort of glare accompanied by a honk that seemed to imply that that should have been obvious.
"Well, I didn't know, okay," Harry said defensively. "I'll definitely win next time, though!"
The phoenix sounded off with a tired, but still patronizing, trill before abruptly flaming away.
The dragon stared after the bird for a few moments before letting out a snort — a non-flammable one this time — and turning back to the massive shipping crate with a grin.
The rest of the night passed with no further frustrations.
