Much Deadlier Tournament Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Chapter 4:

Public Animosity

-

Monday afternoon saw Harry enjoying lunch at the Gryffindor table with Sue in his lap. Nobody seemed to be mind the raven in their mist, nor how chummy they were being.

“You know I can feed myself, right? Been doing it for years.” Harry complained.

Sue answered his complaint by forking another chip dipped in buffalo sauce into his mouth. And he let her.

“You two seem oddly happy to finally be showing off your relationship in public.” Hermione said with a suspicious glare. “How long have you been keeping all of this a secret? Even from us?”

“Yeah mate.” Said Ron. “I know you’re a private guy, but this seems like a bit much.”

“Oh we’ve been dating for years.” He lied.

“Harry Potter.” Sue warned coolly.

“We first got hitched around the time you got petrified, and I needed another brainy beauty by my side.” Harry went on.

“Harry Potter. You tell the truth right now.” Sue warned, less coolly.

“We started hanging out in the library a few weeks ago. Hogsmeade was our first date.” He said. “And we’re only being so public about it to make people uncomfortable.”

“Including ourselves.” She added. “But we are fighting a war on the social front, so we will fight with all our might.”

And here comes the enemy planes, carrying munitions to drop onto his lunch plate. Owl after owl carrying venomous payload after venomous payload. Each missile landed in front of the coupe, disorganized save for the writing declaring their intended recipient, it was difficult to tell which letter was for whom. There were so many letters for each of them that it took some time to tell.

“Why would people be writing so much to me?” Sue asked. “I haven’t killed any dark lords. Or basilisks. Or Dragons. Or…”

“We get it, I’m death incarnate.” Harry cut her off, picking up a familiar red envelope. “Now let’s see how these clowns make a fool of themselves, shall we?”

He ripped open the seal to the envelope and the howler came to life.

“Harry Potter! Do you have any idea how much damage you have done with the destruction of that single dragon you have caused?! I spent over a hundred thousand galleons funding the Romanian program to bring back the ridgebacks and horntails back from the brink of extinction, yet with three waves of your wand you brought all of my works to naught!

So much effort into getting horntails to court and breed in captivity and you ruined it in less than a minute! I am ruined because of you! Thirteen horntails killed! Three decades of work, thrown away, solely because you wanted to show off how skilled you are. Good job. Their species may very well be extinct now. I hope you’re happy.”

He was indeed. Mostly because Sue was there feeding him more potatoes and chicken based snacks which made the show all the more enjoyable.

“Thirteen dead?” Harry asked

“Other mother’s will not nest abandoned eggs.” Ron told him. “So the twelve eggs may die before hatching. It’s too early to know if going the Hagrid route of nursing them manually will work.”

Ouch. Harry actually felt bad for that now. Good thing the judges at the time probably hadn’t known that or else he’d be dead last in the tournament behind Krum. Not that he cared about winning, of course.

He noticed Sue trying not to laugh at the letter she was reading, and so he peaked over her shoulder and gawked. It was a letter of sympathy detailing some woman’s woes over past abusive relationships. It ended by detailing a short list of domestic violence shelters.

“Geez. That seems like a bit of an overreaction, even if you believe every word of Rita’s article.” Harry said.

“You’ve never met women like this before, have you?” Sue said, indicating the letter. “Crybullies. Narcissists. Abusers themselves who cry crocadile tears for sympathy and to hurt the exes they abused. Never believe a sympathy leech like this.”

Harry blinked at the unexpected description and venom behind it. It sounded like she was speaking from experience. She then burned the letter to away without her wand even drawn. Now she could cast wandless magic?

“It’s actually really easy to do, lighting things in your hand on fire.” Susan told him. “It’s consideredl little magic. Like whistling to summon fairies. Stuff like that.”

You could summon fairies by whistling?! He assumed there had to be such creatures around, and that there was a trick to it, but damn that sounded cool. Useless, but cool.

The rest of the letters were just more of the first two. Criticisms of Harry and sympathy for Sue. His criticisms were three-fold. Most were for his emotional abuse of a sweet young girl and his womanizing ways, one even calling him a gash hound, which was such a crude insult he had to gag at it. The rest were for killing the dragon, but those were split into two camps. This first camp was angry at the death of such a rare and valuable magical creature. The second was deeply offended by his method of killing. Those ones were always signed with military ranks at the end.

“Is it just me, or is colonel really hard to pronounce when reading it?” Harry asked. “I always pronounce the L before my brain catches up and tried to pronounce it correctly halfway through.”

“Do you have occasion to read the world colonel aloud often?” Hermione asked.

“I might soon, if colonel Brestovskey keeps sending me hate mail for being so inconsiderate as to risk the lives of bystanders with “the most horrific means of killing good men ever devised” with detailed descriptions of what it feels like to breath in chlorine gas.” Harry said.

Everyone except Sue made a face at that one. His girlfriend actually peered over with what could only be macabre interest to read said description, but he turned the letter away from her and crumpled it up. She gave him what passed for a smirk on her face, something he suspected most people wouldn’t recognize as being different from her usual non-expression.

“Alright. I guess I have work to do.” Harry said. “The amusement is ended, and now it’s time for war.”

He removed Sue from his lap and stood up.

“If either of you brainiacs would like to join me in the library for research it would be much appreciated.” Harry said to Sue and Hermione. “And Ron, if you would be so kind as to create a big sign to post at the entrance to the great hall later, I would appreciate it.”

“Going to tell us what you have planned?” Ron asked.

“I’m just going to make my problem everybody’s problem. When that is done, it will be solved much quicker.” Harry told them.

-

Harry had set Sue the task of researching wizarding law for what he wanted to do, while he and Hermione worked on learning the charms necessary to craft a howler.

It wasn’t difficult. He assumed the sender had to actually “record” their voice into the envelope. Turned out, you just had to imagine your own voice and cast the vocalizing charm on the envelope. Whatever is written on a later placed inside will be read aloud. The other charm is a simple animation to make the envelope flaps move like a mouth. The book even detailed the flap movements so as to immitate the mouth positions for different syllablers. Apparently you can create the sum totality of the human language with 7 ‘shape keys’ for the mouth.

This all left him with one question though.

“Does it have to be your own voice?” Harry asked Hermione.

They shared a look.

“Myrt’s bathroom?” Hermione asked.

“Myrtle’s bathroom.” Harry agreed.

They meandered through the stacks in search of Sue and found her reading a tome on noise complaints as he had asked.

“Hey Sue.” Harry got her attention, continuing when she looked up. “Hermione and I are sneaking off to the abandoned bathroom to experiment. Wanna join us?”

She broke down into a fit of uncontrollable laughter at the unintentional double entendre. Instead of asking for an explanation, she waved them away as she tried to smother her beautiful giggling down to a library-appropriate chuckle.

Harry and Hermione shared a more embarrassed look this time as they fled out of the library. They passed an irate Madame Pince who looked to marching in search of whoever was laughing so hard in her peaceful library.

They ran up to the second floor to the abandoned bathroom without and to do and got to work.

“Can we control the volume?” Harry asked. “You know, so we don’t blow our ears out with the echoes?”

“Of course!” She said.

And so, they experimented. Hermione had to leave for her classes, but he practiced for the remainder of his Tuesday, with her occasionally returning to help him out. Sue did not join them, so there was room enough beneath his invisibility cloak for the duo to sneak back into Gryffindor tower. There, then began mass-producing pretty red envelopes.

-

Harry, Hermione and Sue were yawning more than usual the next morning as they met up in front of the great hall, backpacks in hand. There, in front of the great double doors, stood Ron and Dean beside a large posting board they had crafted.

“You going to tell us what we’re doing?” Ron asked.

“Yes. Sue has some sign-up sheets. Pin them along the board, with the document on top hidden behind the rest.” Harry instructed.

They both looked at him suspiciously when Sue handed them said sign-up sheets. They were long, four-foot lengths of parchment. The very top was a legal document, folded backward so as to be hidden behind the sheet. But, they read over the document and understanding came to their expressions.

“Alright. I leave that to you, while I go do my part.” Harry told them.

He, Sue and Hermione found themselves seats with the rest of the students in their years and their houses, splitting up to the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables. Breakfast was pretty normal. The eggs were scrambled into soft gold flakes, the bread was so slightly toasted that spreading butter on it too roughly could tear them to pieces.

Then the morning post came, and as with lunch the day before a large swarm of owls converged on Harry, with another at the Ravenclaw table. Harry immediately began stuffing the letters into red envelopes, each one charmed the day before with creative and annoying voices by either Hermione or himself. Sue was doing the same over at her table.

When the letters stopped coming, and he put the last one into a new crimson container, he set the first one off.

-

“Make a noise and harassment claim here! Sign this sheet to file an official noise and harassment complaint over all these howlers!” Ron called out from beside the notice board.

“This is supposed to be a place of mourning! Not of therapy for world war one veterans, dragon humpers and ex wives to air their grievances!” Dean added.

Harry watched as angry students made a beeline from whatever route they were planning to take to their classes to instead sign what they must think was a petition. What they didn’t know was that it was a document to outright press charges for these two crimes against all of the harassers bothering Harry and Sue. That some of them had been slightly sexual could get the senders in serious trouble.

“Do you want to sign to make a noise and harassment complaint over this?” Ron asked student after student.

Each said yes, entering into a legally binding verbal contract to go with the written one. Or at least that’s how Sue explained it to him.

The signers kept coming, and several were still waiting to get in on the action even as the first bell rang for class. Apparently students were already pissed off enough to risk points and detention to get something done. And it was only day one!

-

“Alright! One hundred signatures. Now that’s a good haul.” Harry told Sue.

The pair were walking up to the owlery to mail the collected signatures and documents pressing charges to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. A few more days of this and each person mailing them would have a dozen counts of noise complaints and harassment, the latter of which could evolve into felony charges. One hundred counts of felony charges. Oh yeah.

“Don’t you have classes?” Harry asked, remembering that Sue was not, in fact, a champion.

“I have a perfect record. A first time missing or being late to a class is a warning. Second is docked points. Third and beyond is detention and lost points.” Sue told him.

Ah. And to think he and Ron had burned through their single warning on the very first day of school. Thanks castle. You’re the best!

They reached the owlery and it was strangely quiet. Most of the owls seemed to be out, which as odd as they tended to be asleep at this time. But a few were still there.

“Isn’t there an owl specifically for contacting the DMLE?” Sue asked.

As if trained to answer to such questions, an adorable little tawny with a red scarf flew down to them excitedly. The little guy sure looked speedy, and energetic, which is what you’d want from an owl meant to deliver mail to law enforcement.

“Okay. I need you to take this to the non-emergency section of the DMLE.” Susan told the little owl.

He seemed to deflate at the words ‘non-emergency’ but took the thick envelope when offered. It raised its wing to take of but never got the chance, as it was buried by rubble along with Sue and Harry when the entire north wall the owlery chattered like fine china.

The loud boom that followed its collapse was somewhat muted by the churning of stone on stone, but Harry sure felt it.

Harry picked himself off the ground, noting absently that he had somehow drawn his wand automatically. He waved it over his face and eyes and must have cast a scourgify silently, because the dirt and blood that had covered his glasses and skin vanished.

Able to see again he stood up and immediately looked about the rubble for sign of his girlfriend. He held his breath hoping to see a bit of rubble move. Then what? Could he risk removing all of the rubble from her? Would he just cause more damage.

There! Movement… from ruble closes to the hole in the wall.

He looked to see a man removing an invisibility cloak from himself to reveal a figured completely covered. He wore all black cargo clothes that were tied or taped down in place and tucked into his combat boots. He wore what looked like a kidnapping hood with a white symbol painted on it.

The symbol looked like a triangle containing a circle containing a compass line.

He lifted his invisibility cloak, which now bore an enormous tear from the blasting curse he must have cast from under it, and lit it on fire. Unlike Sue, he did it with his wand, before turning the stick on him.

“Give. Me. The Hollow!” The masked man demanded, drawing a wicked knife in his off hand.

Harry didn’t know what a Hollow was, but he was damned sure he didn’t want it in this fucker’s hands. And so, he pointed his wand back at the lunatic and smiled at him in challenge.