Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Fools Rush In
Disclaimer: I own nothing...well except for what I actually own, but I own nothing to do with the Harry Potter books.
Summary:
In the last chapter Harry finally performed a ritual to free himself from the majority of spells attached to him helped by Grammy and the headmaster of a former magical school in Ireland, Professor Conaghan. There is a possibility that the highly illegal and immoral spells attached to his wand have also been effected by the ritual but a test is needed to prove this-all these questions and more shall be answered in the below chapter...or will they?
Chapter Seven
The day after the ritual, the three teens set out for Frathum Wharf, a dock that had a large magical market on Tuesdays, every Tuesday for over 600 years. Harry was quite sure that on the Tuesday coming the market would be in session seeing as it had been business-as-usual even during the famed rainbow gerbil stampede of 1631. This most memorable occasion had been celebrated occasionally for years afterwards by the release of large amounts of drunk rodents. Unfortunately, this practise had to be halted when some drunk lemmings, a species that happen to be prone to violent bouts of angst when drunk, made a suicide pact and the implementation of said pact was recorded by some bemused Muggles.
This lead to vicious rumours about lemmings. This, in turn, resulted in the formation of the first ever rodent variation of alcoholics anonymous by some even drunker wizards.
It was soon declared illegal to give any sort of narcotic to large groups of rodents of any sort, as the drunk wizards who formed EMO, (the ridiculously nonsensical and overly long name of the society against feeding rodents alcohol was commonly abbreviated to EMO) were very, very annoying. Far more annoying than a few drunk and/or suicidal rodents.
The law against feeding rodents alcohol was actually only implemented to stop such a large amount of drunken idiots congregating. Such occurrences were only truly tolerated on feast
days or in celebration. Amusingly, EMO were so annoying that there was a brief counter-group initiated whose focus was campaigning to have all those in EMO ‘put down for the good of the community as a whole’. It had quite a few followers.
On arriving back at Seamus’ and taking a nap, Harry (on his third attempt) had correctly re-brewed the revelation potion. Unfortunately it showed that the spells that had been cast on his wand were still active, but to a far lesser degree, while everything else had been nullified. Annoyed, Harry realised the only way to completely get rid of the spells on the wand was either through certain spells or potions that were illegal in almost every country in the world, as even the most basic theory behind casting spells on a wand was highly classified and the topic considered taboo in most circles.
Nevertheless, Harry believed he could buy a charm of some sort aimed at negating the effects of the spells on a soul, something that should, in theory, work on his wand also. A theory that Grammy agreed with and even suggested a shop of a somewhat dubious reputation where he could buy such a charm, for the right price of course. He just had to promise he would not bring Seamus anywhere near the shop, a request she made with not a trace of amusement on her face, an expression Harry had come to learn was very unusual.
‘You, my boy, are incredibly cynical and dis-illusioned. Dumbledore,’ she had spat the old wizard’s name as if it left a foul taste in her mouth, ‘has an unfortunate tendency to sacrifice the few for the many. You were one of the few, and, from stories I’ve heard of your experience in Hogwarts, you, unlike both Dean and Seamus, have sacrificed your childhood innocence long, long ago... For the greater good, of course.’ She made this statement with such bitterness that Harry dared not ask, and that was the end of the last long conversation Harry had with Grammy.
Seamus was most enthusiastic about their proposed trip to Frathum Wharf claiming Harry ‘desperately needed to experience a magical culture not seeped in ridiculous English magical ideals’ as Seamus put it. Of course Seamus called every other non-Irish magical community something similar. Most noticeably, he remembered Seamus commenting at the Quidditch World Cup that the Bulgarians were ‘a bunch of pussies who couldn’t keep a Quaffle even if it were glued to their arses’.
Harry vaguely remembered some random student commenting that the Bulgarians had caught the Snitch, Harry believed that student had woken up in the hospital wing three weeks later due to ‘unusual and unexplainable injuries’. In a magical school where people often had a variety of odd things, ranging from tentacles to extra body parts growing where they shouldn’t, he considered causing someone ‘unusual injuries’ quite impressive.
In fact, he thought that that particular student had had to be removed from Hogwarts, as every time he heard any word beginning with the letter ‘F’ he would immediately curl into the foetal position and rock slowly. No-one ever worked out what Seamus did and how he did it, but the twins had followed Seamus around for weeks begging him to help them eliminate the letter ‘S’ from the languages everywhere. Snape had given them a month long detention.
The other, and only slightly more important reason in Harry’s opinion, that he had to go to Frathum Wharf was that he had to pick up a few essentials for the camping trip he was about to go on with Dean and Seamus. They had decided that Harry had absolutely no understanding of magical culture and they would travel from magical community to magical community in Ireland, and believe me there were a lot. This also helped keep them from being tracked by either of the old and creepy English wizards and their minions, something quite important as the ritual had not been as successful as they had hoped.
There were many different entrances to Frathum Wharf scattered around Ireland, all of which could only be accessed on a Tuesday from sunrise to sunset, apart from the main entrance, accessible any time as many of the vendors also lived in Frathum Wharf.
A quick Portkey journey and the three landed on a secluded pebbled beach. The entrance was on a crumbling pier only a short distance away from their landing site. To enter the gate one must be invited by someone who was already a memberI. In this case, Seamus was inviting both Dean and Harry. Seamus walked to the end of the pier and cut his finger, motioning to the other two to do the same, he let a few drops of his blood fall on the top step.
‘I, Seamus Oisin Finnegan, do hereby invite my magical brethren, Dean Andrew Thomas and Harry James Potter, to the most secret entrance of Frathum Wharf. May they trade in honesty, or not be caught if they are damn lying cheating scum.’
The blood was absorbed into the stone, vanishing without a trace as the entrance was revealed. Harry followed Seamus' gaze to see the water on the lower steps being washed away to expose a twisting stone passage that could not have possibly been there before. As they watched the water streaming off the steps, Seamus passed around a healing salve they all dabbed on their fingers. It was never smart to leave your blood easily accessible in the magical world.
They walked down the stone passage lit by globes of flickering green light, giving the impression they were somehow under water. After a few minutes, they reached a large circular wooden door inscribed with runes and characters Harry couldn’t even begin to interpret. Without hesitation Seamus pushed the great iron ring on the door, which swung open as if it were weightless.
They were almost hit with a wall of light and sound after the cool dim passageway, and Dean and Harry could only gape in what they were later informed by Seamus looked like Crabbe and Goyle’s thinking faces. Harry resolved to tell Hedwig just exactly managed to slip laxatives into her owl pellets.
Frathum Wharf was everything Harry expected it to be, and more. It was crowded with witches and wizards of every age and size, not to mention liberally scattered with magical creatures most of which Harry had never heard of, let alone seen before.
The stalls ranged from a plank of wood, to elaborate tents Harry was sure could fit the whole of Hogwarts within. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the market was that it was many stories high. The stalls on the higher levels floated beside each other, occasionally jostling their neighbour, which led to what seemed to be huge screaming fits and occasionally small magical explosions. On each level the walk-way was a semi transparent gold road and Harry could see people turning off the roads onto odd disks that seemed to function as lifts to the levels below and above.
Harry shuddered in relief while imagining the chaos his familiars would have brought to the market, and was glad that despite their incredibly cute puppy-dog eyes (how an owl managed them was quite beyond him), his resolve had not crumbled and he had left the two behind to sulk and hopefully not plan a revenge that was too painful.
Many hours were spent wandering the market just to see the odd goods on offerI. In one instance, Dean was chased by a gnome in his floating stall for a good hundred metres after he had spent ten minutes inspecting some paint and then decided not to buy them. Harry and Seamus had nearly wet themselves laughing.
Ditching Dean and Seamus was quite easier than he thought it would be from his experiences with Ron and Hermione.
‘I have to get something from a place I promised your grandmother I wouldn’t take you and where I don’t think either of you should go. It should only take a few minutes.’
A momentary grim expression had slipped across both Dean and Seamus’ faces
‘Do you know where to go?’ At Harry’s nod Seamus continued, ‘Well then, meet us here in an fifteen minutes,’ he hesitated a moment ‘... be careful, and be sure the price is worth it’.
And with that, the two were off, Dean throwing a concerned glance over his shoulder at Harry.
The stall Harry had to go to was a large and brightly coloured tent full of families displaying what seemed to be toy brooms from the main entrance, and an empty room from the back but for a plain wooden bench.
Harry tapped the nail on the right upper corner with his right thumb and whispered ‘freckled sandwiches’, the password Grammy had given him before he left. Nothing seemed to change to the naked eye, but Harry swept open the curtain leading to the main apart of the tent to reveal, instead of all the happy families, a silent room with a few hooded and heavily cloaked people of indeterminable species or sex inspecting a number of glass fronted cabinets.
No-one looked up as he entered, as he was as heavily cloaked and concealed as them, thanks to Grammy. The rule seemed to be that if you didn’t see anything, you couldn’t be asked about it later and so everyone was ignoring each other at a respectable distance.
Harry strode to what seemed to be the cashier’s desk and held up a piece of parchment stating what he wanted and how much he was willing to pay. One sacrificed money for such secrecy.
The staff member, as heavily concealed as the customers, read the parchment briefly and then nodded and strode off into the back. He came back a few minutes later with a closed wooden box and Harry handed over the sack of gold. The staff member accepted the gold with a bow and placed it on an old fashioned set of scales. With another small bow he handed over the box to Harry, who tucked it safely into his sleeve. With a nod of thanks, Harry left.
The whole process had taken less than five minutes in total.
Harry noticed a distinct look of relief on both Dean and Seamus’ faces as they both gave him a quick glance over to make sure all his limbs were still attached. The rest of the day was spent much more enjoyably, shopping for essentials for their camping trip, such as a set of Dursley voodoo dolls for Monster and Hedwig as Monster’s Dudley doll had been shredded mysteriously – Hedwig had looked especially guilty – and trying odd new foods from the different stalls.
The three spent the rest of the evening packing, planning their route, and enjoying a celebratory meal.
They ended up not heading out till late morning as Dean discovered Seamus had filled the camping bags to almost the point of bursting with tea bags, something especially impressive with the huge capacity of the magically expanded bags. This meant Seamus had to be sent to sulk in the corner as the other two unpacked and re-packed the bags, checking Seamus’ bag to make sure it contained more than tea bags. A wise decision, as apart from a lone sock and three buttons, his bag had only contained tea.
Just as the three were about to set out, Grammy had taken Harry aside told him that it was likely that all those spells and potions tuned to his blood, cancelled by the ritual had immediately and noticeably failed.
Dumbledore, and likely others, now knew Harry was on the loose somewhere and running hard. The hunt was on.
The three young wizards spent the next few days travelling around the countryside, sometimes walking and sometimes using the pre-programmed portkeys to travel to the next magical enclave.
As they left the Finnegan’s, magically expanded back-packs on their backs, Harry felt the urge to break into song; namely ‘we’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz’. He manfully suppressed it though.
Unfortunately he seemed to have unconsciously given into the urge to sing the song a few days later as they ambled slowly along a country lane. There was an odd silence and Harry turned to look at his two travelling companions, to check that yes, apparently he had sung that aloud. The awkward pause was broken by Seamus.
‘Harry, you have many talents, super-evil-wizard slaying seems to be one of them. Singing is not.’
‘Oh Seamus’ Harry replied in a high pitched falsetto ‘I guess you would know all about my talents. Oh no! I should not have let Dean know about our kinky affair; you two are in that committed long-term relationship aren’t you? Although I do know you pine for your butt-buddy Snape.’
They paused and there was a communal shudder.
‘Too far mate, too far.’ Seamus replied, his eyes showing how deeply disturbed he was feeling
‘You’re right. I apologise. I know I shouldn’t use the S-word. Especially in relation to any situation where everyone is not fully clothed.’
‘Yeah, if anyone is a three bagger it’s Snape. I bet he’s never gotten laid, and if he ever has I bet they insisted he was fully clothed, except for the relevant bits. No potion or amount of alcohol on earth would ever make anyone, even some one blind want to be in the same country, let alone room as a naked Snape.’
‘For the love of God will you stop talking about Snape doing the nasty, because gods know anything involving Snape not being fully clothed is nasty. You two know I can’t help but picture it now that you’ve said it....and it burns!’
The other two briefly turned to sympathise before continuing their conversation.
‘So do you think every portrait asked to be moved out of his private quarters?’ Harry asked.
‘Well most bedrooms and bathrooms and the such-like have only landscapes or some sort of non-sentient being in the paintings or sculptures, if they have them at all. You really wouldn’t want some-one or something to be watching you all the time unless you were some sort of exhibitionist. But yeah, the landscapes probably asked to move out in some sort of weird landscape language, that or the magic in the painting forcibly and violently committed suicide in desperation.’
Seamus and occasionally Dean had continued to educate Harry on the subtle nuances to everyday life in the wizarding world, and Harry could not believe the amount he had managed to miss over the years.
‘Let us all take a moment to remember the courage of our fallen comrade,’ Harry intoned gravely.
After the brief moment of silence from Harry and Seamus, and Dean’s not so very muffled sigh of relief at what seemed the end of the topic, Harry restarted the conversation.
‘Well I for one have nothing to be ashamed of, unlike some other people I could name, cough Seamus, cough. I bet the portraits would ask to be in my room.’
‘I knew it. The great Harry Potter a pecker-checker!’
‘Oh please, you have nothing to check, I on the other hand am a god in every aspect of my life. Even Grammy thinks so.’
‘You know, someone’s grandmother thinking you are hot is kinda creepy’ interjected Dean. ‘Especially if that is someone is related to Seamus. I mean come on, look at him’
Seamus flexed his arms and winked.
‘Sorry ladies, but only the real ladies get a piece of this. You know, the ones with boobies, I love boobies’ he finished in a wistful tone.
‘Yeah boobies are great,’ Dean agreed and Harry nodded in a bemused manner as the other two seemed to drift off with visions of boobies dancing in their heads....possibly...if the lecherous grin on Dean’s face was any indicator or Seamus’ squeezing imaginary boobs in the air in front of him.
Honestly, sometimes he worried about the people around him
As the two continued to drift in their hormone induced trances Harry mused over their travels around Ireland.
Again and again, Harry was surprised at the vast difference between Irish magical society and what he knew of English magical society. There was a different feel altogether in Ireland, as England had only one completely magical village, whereas Ireland was liberally scattered with small towns and hamlets completely cut off from the muggle world. He noticed that it had become increasingly common for young wizards and witches, muggle born, half-blood and many from the more tolerant wizarding pure blood families to wear muggle clothing as casual wear. It seemed the previous war against Voldermort had brought about the belief that tolerance towards muggles and muggle born wizards was best shown by encouraging the next generation to adopt some aspects of muggle culture.
This was compounded by the fact many of the ancient houses had been eliminated or greatly diminished in the wars against Voldemort and Grindewald to a lesser extent, the Blacks and Potters to name the few most relevant to him.
The three wore travelling robes as they wandered around from wizarding community to wizarding community. The robes were styled in such a way as to allow easy movement, and contained many concealed and enlarged pockets, they even had three different pocket-holsters for wands. Furthermore, the robes were charmed for a whole range of situations, they were water-proof, burn resistant to a certain temperature, and, most usefully, they had a built in notice-me-not charm around muggles. In England Harry knew it would have been fruitless to wear their common travelling robes as the prevalence of muggles would have worn out the notice-me-not charms in a few days, and they would just have ended up looking like some weird cross-dressing muggle teenagers to everyone they passed. Inconspicuous, I think not.
Harry did not really have to worry about being recognised as they entered the wizarding conclaves. Unlike in England, where paranoia was rampant, wearing the hood up on your cloak was fairly common as many enchantments only worked in that situation.
Although the wizards in England did have a reason to be suspicious of cloaked individuals, what with their ever-so-peaceful history with the oh-so friendly masked and cloaked members of society. I mean what’s a little torture and murder between friends?
Summary:
In the last chapter Harry finally performed a ritual to free himself from the majority of spells attached to him helped by Grammy and the headmaster of a former magical school in Ireland, Professor Conaghan. There is a possibility that the highly illegal and immoral spells attached to his wand have also been effected by the ritual but a test is needed to prove this-all these questions and more shall be answered in the below chapter...or will they?
Chapter Seven
The day after the ritual, the three teens set out for Frathum Wharf, a dock that had a large magical market on Tuesdays, every Tuesday for over 600 years. Harry was quite sure that on the Tuesday coming the market would be in session seeing as it had been business-as-usual even during the famed rainbow gerbil stampede of 1631. This most memorable occasion had been celebrated occasionally for years afterwards by the release of large amounts of drunk rodents. Unfortunately, this practise had to be halted when some drunk lemmings, a species that happen to be prone to violent bouts of angst when drunk, made a suicide pact and the implementation of said pact was recorded by some bemused Muggles.
This lead to vicious rumours about lemmings. This, in turn, resulted in the formation of the first ever rodent variation of alcoholics anonymous by some even drunker wizards.
It was soon declared illegal to give any sort of narcotic to large groups of rodents of any sort, as the drunk wizards who formed EMO, (the ridiculously nonsensical and overly long name of the society against feeding rodents alcohol was commonly abbreviated to EMO) were very, very annoying. Far more annoying than a few drunk and/or suicidal rodents.
The law against feeding rodents alcohol was actually only implemented to stop such a large amount of drunken idiots congregating. Such occurrences were only truly tolerated on feast
days or in celebration. Amusingly, EMO were so annoying that there was a brief counter-group initiated whose focus was campaigning to have all those in EMO ‘put down for the good of the community as a whole’. It had quite a few followers.
On arriving back at Seamus’ and taking a nap, Harry (on his third attempt) had correctly re-brewed the revelation potion. Unfortunately it showed that the spells that had been cast on his wand were still active, but to a far lesser degree, while everything else had been nullified. Annoyed, Harry realised the only way to completely get rid of the spells on the wand was either through certain spells or potions that were illegal in almost every country in the world, as even the most basic theory behind casting spells on a wand was highly classified and the topic considered taboo in most circles.
Nevertheless, Harry believed he could buy a charm of some sort aimed at negating the effects of the spells on a soul, something that should, in theory, work on his wand also. A theory that Grammy agreed with and even suggested a shop of a somewhat dubious reputation where he could buy such a charm, for the right price of course. He just had to promise he would not bring Seamus anywhere near the shop, a request she made with not a trace of amusement on her face, an expression Harry had come to learn was very unusual.
‘You, my boy, are incredibly cynical and dis-illusioned. Dumbledore,’ she had spat the old wizard’s name as if it left a foul taste in her mouth, ‘has an unfortunate tendency to sacrifice the few for the many. You were one of the few, and, from stories I’ve heard of your experience in Hogwarts, you, unlike both Dean and Seamus, have sacrificed your childhood innocence long, long ago... For the greater good, of course.’ She made this statement with such bitterness that Harry dared not ask, and that was the end of the last long conversation Harry had with Grammy.
Seamus was most enthusiastic about their proposed trip to Frathum Wharf claiming Harry ‘desperately needed to experience a magical culture not seeped in ridiculous English magical ideals’ as Seamus put it. Of course Seamus called every other non-Irish magical community something similar. Most noticeably, he remembered Seamus commenting at the Quidditch World Cup that the Bulgarians were ‘a bunch of pussies who couldn’t keep a Quaffle even if it were glued to their arses’.
Harry vaguely remembered some random student commenting that the Bulgarians had caught the Snitch, Harry believed that student had woken up in the hospital wing three weeks later due to ‘unusual and unexplainable injuries’. In a magical school where people often had a variety of odd things, ranging from tentacles to extra body parts growing where they shouldn’t, he considered causing someone ‘unusual injuries’ quite impressive.
In fact, he thought that that particular student had had to be removed from Hogwarts, as every time he heard any word beginning with the letter ‘F’ he would immediately curl into the foetal position and rock slowly. No-one ever worked out what Seamus did and how he did it, but the twins had followed Seamus around for weeks begging him to help them eliminate the letter ‘S’ from the languages everywhere. Snape had given them a month long detention.
The other, and only slightly more important reason in Harry’s opinion, that he had to go to Frathum Wharf was that he had to pick up a few essentials for the camping trip he was about to go on with Dean and Seamus. They had decided that Harry had absolutely no understanding of magical culture and they would travel from magical community to magical community in Ireland, and believe me there were a lot. This also helped keep them from being tracked by either of the old and creepy English wizards and their minions, something quite important as the ritual had not been as successful as they had hoped.
There were many different entrances to Frathum Wharf scattered around Ireland, all of which could only be accessed on a Tuesday from sunrise to sunset, apart from the main entrance, accessible any time as many of the vendors also lived in Frathum Wharf.
A quick Portkey journey and the three landed on a secluded pebbled beach. The entrance was on a crumbling pier only a short distance away from their landing site. To enter the gate one must be invited by someone who was already a memberI. In this case, Seamus was inviting both Dean and Harry. Seamus walked to the end of the pier and cut his finger, motioning to the other two to do the same, he let a few drops of his blood fall on the top step.
‘I, Seamus Oisin Finnegan, do hereby invite my magical brethren, Dean Andrew Thomas and Harry James Potter, to the most secret entrance of Frathum Wharf. May they trade in honesty, or not be caught if they are damn lying cheating scum.’
The blood was absorbed into the stone, vanishing without a trace as the entrance was revealed. Harry followed Seamus' gaze to see the water on the lower steps being washed away to expose a twisting stone passage that could not have possibly been there before. As they watched the water streaming off the steps, Seamus passed around a healing salve they all dabbed on their fingers. It was never smart to leave your blood easily accessible in the magical world.
They walked down the stone passage lit by globes of flickering green light, giving the impression they were somehow under water. After a few minutes, they reached a large circular wooden door inscribed with runes and characters Harry couldn’t even begin to interpret. Without hesitation Seamus pushed the great iron ring on the door, which swung open as if it were weightless.
They were almost hit with a wall of light and sound after the cool dim passageway, and Dean and Harry could only gape in what they were later informed by Seamus looked like Crabbe and Goyle’s thinking faces. Harry resolved to tell Hedwig just exactly managed to slip laxatives into her owl pellets.
Frathum Wharf was everything Harry expected it to be, and more. It was crowded with witches and wizards of every age and size, not to mention liberally scattered with magical creatures most of which Harry had never heard of, let alone seen before.
The stalls ranged from a plank of wood, to elaborate tents Harry was sure could fit the whole of Hogwarts within. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the market was that it was many stories high. The stalls on the higher levels floated beside each other, occasionally jostling their neighbour, which led to what seemed to be huge screaming fits and occasionally small magical explosions. On each level the walk-way was a semi transparent gold road and Harry could see people turning off the roads onto odd disks that seemed to function as lifts to the levels below and above.
Harry shuddered in relief while imagining the chaos his familiars would have brought to the market, and was glad that despite their incredibly cute puppy-dog eyes (how an owl managed them was quite beyond him), his resolve had not crumbled and he had left the two behind to sulk and hopefully not plan a revenge that was too painful.
Many hours were spent wandering the market just to see the odd goods on offerI. In one instance, Dean was chased by a gnome in his floating stall for a good hundred metres after he had spent ten minutes inspecting some paint and then decided not to buy them. Harry and Seamus had nearly wet themselves laughing.
Ditching Dean and Seamus was quite easier than he thought it would be from his experiences with Ron and Hermione.
‘I have to get something from a place I promised your grandmother I wouldn’t take you and where I don’t think either of you should go. It should only take a few minutes.’
A momentary grim expression had slipped across both Dean and Seamus’ faces
‘Do you know where to go?’ At Harry’s nod Seamus continued, ‘Well then, meet us here in an fifteen minutes,’ he hesitated a moment ‘... be careful, and be sure the price is worth it’.
And with that, the two were off, Dean throwing a concerned glance over his shoulder at Harry.
The stall Harry had to go to was a large and brightly coloured tent full of families displaying what seemed to be toy brooms from the main entrance, and an empty room from the back but for a plain wooden bench.
Harry tapped the nail on the right upper corner with his right thumb and whispered ‘freckled sandwiches’, the password Grammy had given him before he left. Nothing seemed to change to the naked eye, but Harry swept open the curtain leading to the main apart of the tent to reveal, instead of all the happy families, a silent room with a few hooded and heavily cloaked people of indeterminable species or sex inspecting a number of glass fronted cabinets.
No-one looked up as he entered, as he was as heavily cloaked and concealed as them, thanks to Grammy. The rule seemed to be that if you didn’t see anything, you couldn’t be asked about it later and so everyone was ignoring each other at a respectable distance.
Harry strode to what seemed to be the cashier’s desk and held up a piece of parchment stating what he wanted and how much he was willing to pay. One sacrificed money for such secrecy.
The staff member, as heavily concealed as the customers, read the parchment briefly and then nodded and strode off into the back. He came back a few minutes later with a closed wooden box and Harry handed over the sack of gold. The staff member accepted the gold with a bow and placed it on an old fashioned set of scales. With another small bow he handed over the box to Harry, who tucked it safely into his sleeve. With a nod of thanks, Harry left.
The whole process had taken less than five minutes in total.
Harry noticed a distinct look of relief on both Dean and Seamus’ faces as they both gave him a quick glance over to make sure all his limbs were still attached. The rest of the day was spent much more enjoyably, shopping for essentials for their camping trip, such as a set of Dursley voodoo dolls for Monster and Hedwig as Monster’s Dudley doll had been shredded mysteriously – Hedwig had looked especially guilty – and trying odd new foods from the different stalls.
The three spent the rest of the evening packing, planning their route, and enjoying a celebratory meal.
They ended up not heading out till late morning as Dean discovered Seamus had filled the camping bags to almost the point of bursting with tea bags, something especially impressive with the huge capacity of the magically expanded bags. This meant Seamus had to be sent to sulk in the corner as the other two unpacked and re-packed the bags, checking Seamus’ bag to make sure it contained more than tea bags. A wise decision, as apart from a lone sock and three buttons, his bag had only contained tea.
Just as the three were about to set out, Grammy had taken Harry aside told him that it was likely that all those spells and potions tuned to his blood, cancelled by the ritual had immediately and noticeably failed.
Dumbledore, and likely others, now knew Harry was on the loose somewhere and running hard. The hunt was on.
The three young wizards spent the next few days travelling around the countryside, sometimes walking and sometimes using the pre-programmed portkeys to travel to the next magical enclave.
As they left the Finnegan’s, magically expanded back-packs on their backs, Harry felt the urge to break into song; namely ‘we’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz’. He manfully suppressed it though.
Unfortunately he seemed to have unconsciously given into the urge to sing the song a few days later as they ambled slowly along a country lane. There was an odd silence and Harry turned to look at his two travelling companions, to check that yes, apparently he had sung that aloud. The awkward pause was broken by Seamus.
‘Harry, you have many talents, super-evil-wizard slaying seems to be one of them. Singing is not.’
‘Oh Seamus’ Harry replied in a high pitched falsetto ‘I guess you would know all about my talents. Oh no! I should not have let Dean know about our kinky affair; you two are in that committed long-term relationship aren’t you? Although I do know you pine for your butt-buddy Snape.’
They paused and there was a communal shudder.
‘Too far mate, too far.’ Seamus replied, his eyes showing how deeply disturbed he was feeling
‘You’re right. I apologise. I know I shouldn’t use the S-word. Especially in relation to any situation where everyone is not fully clothed.’
‘Yeah, if anyone is a three bagger it’s Snape. I bet he’s never gotten laid, and if he ever has I bet they insisted he was fully clothed, except for the relevant bits. No potion or amount of alcohol on earth would ever make anyone, even some one blind want to be in the same country, let alone room as a naked Snape.’
‘For the love of God will you stop talking about Snape doing the nasty, because gods know anything involving Snape not being fully clothed is nasty. You two know I can’t help but picture it now that you’ve said it....and it burns!’
The other two briefly turned to sympathise before continuing their conversation.
‘So do you think every portrait asked to be moved out of his private quarters?’ Harry asked.
‘Well most bedrooms and bathrooms and the such-like have only landscapes or some sort of non-sentient being in the paintings or sculptures, if they have them at all. You really wouldn’t want some-one or something to be watching you all the time unless you were some sort of exhibitionist. But yeah, the landscapes probably asked to move out in some sort of weird landscape language, that or the magic in the painting forcibly and violently committed suicide in desperation.’
Seamus and occasionally Dean had continued to educate Harry on the subtle nuances to everyday life in the wizarding world, and Harry could not believe the amount he had managed to miss over the years.
‘Let us all take a moment to remember the courage of our fallen comrade,’ Harry intoned gravely.
After the brief moment of silence from Harry and Seamus, and Dean’s not so very muffled sigh of relief at what seemed the end of the topic, Harry restarted the conversation.
‘Well I for one have nothing to be ashamed of, unlike some other people I could name, cough Seamus, cough. I bet the portraits would ask to be in my room.’
‘I knew it. The great Harry Potter a pecker-checker!’
‘Oh please, you have nothing to check, I on the other hand am a god in every aspect of my life. Even Grammy thinks so.’
‘You know, someone’s grandmother thinking you are hot is kinda creepy’ interjected Dean. ‘Especially if that is someone is related to Seamus. I mean come on, look at him’
Seamus flexed his arms and winked.
‘Sorry ladies, but only the real ladies get a piece of this. You know, the ones with boobies, I love boobies’ he finished in a wistful tone.
‘Yeah boobies are great,’ Dean agreed and Harry nodded in a bemused manner as the other two seemed to drift off with visions of boobies dancing in their heads....possibly...if the lecherous grin on Dean’s face was any indicator or Seamus’ squeezing imaginary boobs in the air in front of him.
Honestly, sometimes he worried about the people around him
As the two continued to drift in their hormone induced trances Harry mused over their travels around Ireland.
Again and again, Harry was surprised at the vast difference between Irish magical society and what he knew of English magical society. There was a different feel altogether in Ireland, as England had only one completely magical village, whereas Ireland was liberally scattered with small towns and hamlets completely cut off from the muggle world. He noticed that it had become increasingly common for young wizards and witches, muggle born, half-blood and many from the more tolerant wizarding pure blood families to wear muggle clothing as casual wear. It seemed the previous war against Voldermort had brought about the belief that tolerance towards muggles and muggle born wizards was best shown by encouraging the next generation to adopt some aspects of muggle culture.
This was compounded by the fact many of the ancient houses had been eliminated or greatly diminished in the wars against Voldemort and Grindewald to a lesser extent, the Blacks and Potters to name the few most relevant to him.
The three wore travelling robes as they wandered around from wizarding community to wizarding community. The robes were styled in such a way as to allow easy movement, and contained many concealed and enlarged pockets, they even had three different pocket-holsters for wands. Furthermore, the robes were charmed for a whole range of situations, they were water-proof, burn resistant to a certain temperature, and, most usefully, they had a built in notice-me-not charm around muggles. In England Harry knew it would have been fruitless to wear their common travelling robes as the prevalence of muggles would have worn out the notice-me-not charms in a few days, and they would just have ended up looking like some weird cross-dressing muggle teenagers to everyone they passed. Inconspicuous, I think not.
Harry did not really have to worry about being recognised as they entered the wizarding conclaves. Unlike in England, where paranoia was rampant, wearing the hood up on your cloak was fairly common as many enchantments only worked in that situation.
Although the wizards in England did have a reason to be suspicious of cloaked individuals, what with their ever-so-peaceful history with the oh-so friendly masked and cloaked members of society. I mean what’s a little torture and murder between friends?
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