FicWad

World of Warcraft sucks up a lot of time.





5pm, Monday night, Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. Delores Umbridge waddled up to Harry with her wide mouth stretched into an unpleasant smile. "Mr Potter, you're going to be writing some lines for me tonight. No, not with your quill-" She corrected as Harry leaned down toreach his bag. "-you'll be using a rather special quill of mine. Here you go."


Picking up the long, thin, unusually sharply pointed quill she'd gently deposited in his desk, Harry turned it over in his hand, examining it in favor of punching the smarmy bitch's lights out.


The ugly little witch smiled sweetly as she dropped a thick pile of parchment onto the desk in front of the young wizard. "I want you to write; 'I must show the proper respect to my betters'. Off you go."


Harry arched an eyebrow curiously. "How many times do I have to write it?"


Umbridge smirked. "Oh, just keep writing until it sinks in."


Shaking his head and putting quill to paper, Harry was just about to start writing when he noticed the painfully obvious. "Uh, do you want me to use my own ink?"


"Ink?" And there went that breathy little laugh. "You won't be needing ink!" Still laughing, she strolled to her desk at the front of the room and planted herself behind it.


Cautiously, Harry began to write, moving the quill across the paper.


'I mus'


Stopping mid-word, Harry glared at the shiny, dark-red 'ink'. He'd been cut enough times over the years to recognise blood when he saw it. With deliberate effort he pushed down on the quill, hard enough to make it-


*SNAP*


Umbridge, who'd been watching the whole time with a smug look on her butt-ugly face, scowled darkly and stormed from the front of the room to where Harry was seated. "What did you just do, boy?"


The winged Prefect shrugged carelessly, holding up the broken writing implement for inspection. "It's no big deal; quills break all the time, after all."


The Ministry stooge exploded. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW EXPENSIVE BLOOD-" Biting her tongue, Umbridge stalked back to the front of the room.


Harry waved behind his back, and as the squat witch stomed back towards him - a quill identical to the first held before her like a tiny banner - he tapped his desk twice with his index finger.


A series of blinding flashes and sharp bangs dazzled Delores, who shrieked and staggered about, rubbing her pouchy eyes furiously even as the door to the classroom was flung open with a bang, and footsteps could be heard leaving the area in a hurry.


Harry - completely unaffected since his back was to the flashes - frowned thoughtfully. "You know, that almost looked and sounded like the flash going off as someone took pictures with a camera." He grinned. "It looks like you've got a secret admirer, Professor!"


The witch cursed colorfully...you know, as in swearing...and stabbed one of her stubby fingers towards the open door. "Get out, Potter! OUT!"


Harry saluted as he stuffed the bloodied parchment into his bag, slung his bag over his shoulder, then strolled cheerily from the room.


Umbridge slammed the door shut behind him, then scurried to her office to use the Floo...





"Mimbulus Mimbletonia."


The Fat Lady nodded primly and swung open, revealing the Gryffindor Common Room. As Harry stepped in he was immediatley accosted by a hyper, mousy-haired second-year wizard. "Hey Harry! Colin is developing the photos right now, and I've already put your special cloak back in your trunk!"


Harry grinned, but spoke softly as he threw up a simple privacy charm not unlike the one used by the Patil twins. "Excellent work! First Hogsmeade weekend, you two are getting brand new, top-of-the-line cameras, as promised."


To the amusement of the spliced teen, Dennis was now bouncing in place exitedly. "Thanks Harry! What are you going to do with the pictures we took?"


"I'm going to see what kind of damage they'll do when I send them to the Daily Prophet and the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement." Harry became slightly concerned when the tiny twelve-year-old looked like he was about to explode from excitement. "Uh...you knows those photos are going to have to anonymous contributions, and that you'll have to keep your hobby low-profile for a while, right? If Umbridge finds out that it was you two taking those photos, she'll have your heads on a platter."


"It doesn't matter, our photos are going to be in the paper! I'm gonna go tell Colin right now!" That said, Dennis shot off like a rocket to the boy's rooms to share the news with his older brother.


Chuckling at the shutter-bug's antics, Harry strolled over to the table Ron and Hermione were seated at and dropped himself info a spare seat. "Hi guy and pretty gal."


Both Hermione and Ron jumped, having been too absorbed in their homework (willingly or otherwise) to have noticed his arrival. Slipping a bookmark into the tome to mark her page, Hermione closed her textbook and turned to fully face her fellow Prefect. "That was an unusually short detention. How did it go?"


"She wanted me to write lines, but before I even finished the first one she had a massive hissy-fit and kicked me out." At their incredulous looks, Harry just shrugged. "Anyway, what are you two up to?"


Ron grimaced distastefully as the answer slowly forced itself out of his reluctant mouth. "Homework."


Hermione rolled her eyes at his distress. "Honestly, you haven't got that much work, Ron; a foot for Defence Against the Dark Arts and half a foot for Potions, both due on Thursday, a foot for History due next week, and...ugh, a foot of homework for Divination."


Harry smirked and jabbed himself in the chest with a thumb. "No Divination for me, I dropped that class like a sack of flobberworm dung. From now on, if I want to know the future, I'll do the sensible thing and consult a Magic 8-Ball."


The brunette Prefect beamed, immensely pleased that one of her friends had decided to follow her example. "That's wonderful, Harry!" Processing the rest of his declaration, she frowned. "But most people don't place their trust in Magic 8-Balls."


Harry waved off the comment. "You've been hanging around me too long; your views on what's normal and abnormal are clearly distorted." Ignoring the mild glare the brunette sent his way, Harry chuckled as he had an amusing thought. "I'm getting Professor Trelawny a Magic 8-Ball for Christmas. She'll love it!"


Ron, feeling a little left out, spoke up as Hermione descended into a fit of giggles. "What's a Magic 8-Ball?"


The spliced Prefect slapped him across the back cheerfully. "It's a highly revered muggle Divination tool. I'll get you one for Christmas, too, because it'll probably be on the lesson plan by January."


As this conversation was clearly prolonging Hermione's giggle-fit, Ron decided to pull it away from the whole 8-Ball thing. "So you're really dropping Divination?"


"Already dropped it, actually. I think I'll use the free time to check out Hermione's Ancient Runes and Arithmacy books; see if either of those looks interesting."


Wiping her eyes and still chuckling, Hermione rejoined the conversation. "Of course you can read through my books, Harry! My notes, too. It's too late for you to take the classes, but you can still do independent study and take the NEWT tests for them in Seventh year."


Ron shook his head. "Taking the NEWTs when you're two years behind on the lessons? You'd have to loonier than Lovegood. I'll stick with Divination, thanks."


Shrugging, Harry didn't really disagree. Glancing around the Common Room, he almost immediately noticed a conspicuous lack of identical redheads. "Have you seen the Twins? I have a couple of questions for them."


Ron pointed to the stairwell to the boy's dorms. "They're in their room with Lee. I'd be careful going up there if I were you; they looked really excited about something."


"Gotcha. Be back in a minute."





Knocking on the door to the seventh year boy's dorm, Harry waited patiently for the muffled sounds of the shoving away of various objects died down and the door to open, revealing Lee Jordan, perpetually dreadlocked commentator for the Hogwarts Quidditch games. "Hey Lee! The twins in?"


"Yep." The dark-skinned boy turned back to the room. "It's just Harry, guys! Come in."


The older teen opened the door and stood back, letting Harry into the room before closing the door behind him. The twins looked to be in the process of dragging out their hastily-shoved-away supplies. "Am I interrupting something?"


One of the redheads yanked a number of flattened scrolls out from under the bed. "Just crunching some numbers, right Fred?"


Fred nodded, pulling a small cauldron and a rack of vials from the cupboard, setting them on a small desk and heading back to the cupboard. "Testing a couple of ideas for potential products."


Harry stepped closer to the desk and studied one particular vial with a small amount of molten-gold liquid in the bottom. "What potion is this?"


The twins answered with identical grins. "Felix Felicis. We won it in Potions class for our kick-arse Draught of Living Death."


The phoenix/panther man's head whipped around to face the duo. "Felix Felicis? Good luck in a bottle?"


Three sets of eyebrows rose, and Lee spoke up from where he was sifting through his trunk. "You've heard of it?"


The twins crossed their arms and frowned disapprovingly. The twin on the right - Fred - spoke up. "That Hermione is such a bad influence."


"Snuffles told me about it. Apparently, Snape made some when he was still a student, and Sirius ruined it right at the end by dumping his boxers into the cauldron. Honest-to-Merlin lucky underwear."


"...your Godfather is awesome."


Chuckling, Harry turned back to the vials. "So what are you planning on doing with this?"


"We were trying to make a Wheeze out of it-"


"-something like 'Good-Luck Gob-Stoppers', but it's no good."


"Too complex for mass production-"


"-or to add to any sort of candy. We even tried taking a tiny sip of the potion before working on the problem, but we couldn't do squat to fix it. We kicked Lee's arse at Gobstones, though."


The twins split up, one gathering up all of the notes and dumping them into a scorched metal bin, then setting fire to the whole mess. The other twin tipped the golden potion into a tiny vial, stoppered it and charmed it to be unbreakable, then threw it to Harry. "Here, catch!"


Snatching the vial out of the air, Harry waited a couple of seconds for his heart to slow back down before speaking. "What are you giving this to me for?"


The trio of seventh years shrugged. "It's illegal to use it for Quidditch-"


"-can't use it for tests-"


"-and what kind of pranksters would we be if we had to rely on a luck potion to pull off a prank?"


Lee finished off. "In other words, we don't need it. We figure you're going to get up to more crazy shit this year, so you can use that to keep yourself a couple of steps ahead of You-Know-Who."


Fred coughed. "Er, for about three hours, give or take half an hour."


George nodded. "That's about how much potion is left, so only drink it if you think you really have to, and don't lose it!" The twins glared at him until he tucked the vial into his pocket. "Anyway, what can we help you with, much-loved investor of ours?"


Shaking his head, Harry remembered the reason he'd come up here in the first place. "Hypothetically speaking, if a teacher tried to force me to write lines with a quill that used my own blood instead of ink, and I had photographic proof of her owning such a quill, could I get her arrested?"


The twins glanced at each other. "Blood quills are illegal, except for very rare occasions where they're used to sign contracts. Big, powerful contracts."


"There's rumors that you have to use one to sign one of many secrecy oaths before you join the Unspeakables. But using one to write lines in detention..."


Lee nodded. "Yeah, you could get Umbridge arrested for that. If Aurors actually caught her in the act of physically forcing you write with it, and Fudge was in a coma and unable to do anything about it, that is."


Sighing, Harry rubbed the back of his neck. "How about Plan B; sending the photos to the Daily Prophet, with a sackful of Galleons as a bribe?"


The three seventh years thought it over a bit before nodding, and Fred spoke up. "That could work. It's not something you could do through owl post, though; you'd need to send someone to the Daily Prophet to do the talking. They'd have to be a pretty smooth talker, too."


Harry pointed to several other vials of potion in the rack. "Is that polyjuice?"


The twins grinned proudly. "Yep, made it ourselves, we did!"


"Then I've got just the man for the job..."





Late at night...or possibly very early in the morning, Barnabus Cuffe, Editor for the Daily Prophet, flooed into his office with a scowl on his face. He marched straight to his desk and threw himself into his plush seat. Ripping open a drawer, he yanked out a glass and a bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky, pouring himself a hefty amount before taking a long drink. Belching a burst of flame, he coughed and growled under his breath. "Blasted Ministry."


"I'm not exactly a fan either."


Snapping his wand up, the slim, grey-haired wizard found himself aiming at a shadowy figure standing in the corner. "Who the hell are you?" The figure moved out of the shadow and into the dim light thrown out by the crackling fireplace. Firelight danced over emerald eyes behind thick glasses, and inky black hair. A lightning-bolt scar over the figure's right eye was the finishing touch. "Harry Potter? Isn't it a little past your bedtime?"


"Oh, I'm not Harry. I'm just borrowing his appearance to get your attention."


Barnabus narrowed his eyes. "Are you serious?"


'Potter' chuckled. "I'm completely Sirius. Mind if I take a seat?"


The Editor sighed and waved to the chair across the desk from him. "Knock yourself out."


'Harry' dropped into the offered seat and kicked his feet up on the desk. "I've got a story for you, if you're interested. Could be big, too."


Flicking his wand and knocking the shoes off of his desk, Barnabus growled. "Go ahead, tell me your little story."


The dark-haired 'teen' frowned. "You're not interested?"


"Boy, it's been years since the Daily Prophet was a respectable newspaper. The owner of this fucking rag should be in a psyche ward, and that fat shit Fudge has been riding me for months. Hell, I haven't even been able to look at myself in the mirror since the old bat gave that bitch Skeeter her own column." He took a deep chug of Firewhisky before continuing. "You break in here at this hour, and you'd better have the story of the fucking millenium, or I'm flooing the Aurors."


The younger wizard chuckled nervously and reached into his robes, pulling out an envelope and throwing it onto the desk. "Those were taken just this afternoon."


Yanking the photos out of the envelope, Barnabus flicked through them in seconds. "A pissed-off Umbridge in a classroom with a Blood Quill?"


"She told the student in the detention, the real Harry Potter, that he had to write lines with that Blood Quill, until the message had 'sunk in'."


"Shit." Barnabus sat back, thinking it over. "I can use this. The Ministry gave me an article to stick on the front page; they're making Umbridge the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, and they want the positive press." He tapped the photos. "Changing the heading, slapping a couple of these on the front page, and adding an extra paragraph or two at the end of the article should set off quite the shit-storm."


'Harry' leaned forward, an evil grin on his face. "Mind if I help?"


"Sure, why not? Now come on, we've only got a couple of hours before today's edition starts to print."


"Great!" 'Harry' winced as he remembered a critical step in the negotiations that he'd apparently skipped. "Wait, I forgot to give you your bribe." He reached into his robes again, and pulled out a sack that looked to be holding either a huge sum of Galleons, or a small child. "Here you go."


Barnabus eyed him, slightly nonplussed. "Er...I've already agreed to do this. You don't need to give me a bribe."


The 'teen' adopted a whiny tone of voice. "Don't make me take this back to the goblins; they're freaking creepy little bastards at this time of night."


The Editor rolled his eyes, taking the hefty sack of gold. "...fine. Looks like I'll be chipping in for my Granddaughter's Hogwarts tuition in a couple of years."





There we go, one finished chapter.



Cypher3au