A Much Deadlier Tournament: Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Chapter 6:

The Hollow Wars: Reignited

-

Harry and Sue followed Dumbledore back up to the castle where alarms were blaring and not a living soul was to be seen. Plenty of unliving ones, though, as every corner of every hallway was stood a ghost or suit of armor at the ready.

The Bloody Baron approached them.

“Report.” Dumbledore said.

“All students, save for those present, have been successfully escorted back to their common rooms and the entire castle is in the process of locking down.” Said the Baron. “Minerva is activating the barriers as we speak and the last of the patrols are getting into position.”

“There is no need for the barriers around the school. The assailants are either dead or fleeing and we will want the Aurors to enter unimpeded.” Dumbledore instructed. “But do keep the students tucked away until the place is secured by the proper authorities.”

The Bloody Baron bowed before going on his way, then they went on their way.

They made it all the way to the Headmaster’s office without interruption, where the gargoyle leapt aside without a password to reveal the staircase already risen. They climbed into his office where he deposited the still twitching Rita into the least comfortable of the chairs, before retreating to a bookshelf behind his desk.

Harry and Sue sat on the remaining chairs.

“Miss Li, if you would be so kind as to enervate Mrs Skeeter.” Dumbledore asked.

“Again, what man is so vile as to marry that woman?” Harry asked aloud as his girlfriend did as he asked.

“A mister Skeeter, I would presume.” Dumbledore said in a bored tone from his book shelf.

That was such a dry, sarcastic joke that Harry almost missed it. He didn’t miss Rita jerking back into consciousness and having a full ten-minute panic attack in half as man seconds as she scrambled to catch her bearings in her chair. He assumed she also tried to transform, but whatever Dumbledore cast on her was surely still in effect.

“Welcome back Rita.” Said Albus as he returned to his seat, book in hand.

“Headmaster.” Rita greeted stonily.

“Before we begin, Mr Potter, if you would please describe the events as you experienced them.” Dumbledore invited.

“Went up to the owelry to send a document to the DMLE. Wall Exploded. Weird ninja-looking fucker with a ruined invisibility cloak demanded something called “The hollow”. Sue and I kicked his ass as we chased him to the forbidden forest where we discovered similarly dressed indibividuals to him. You know the rest.” Harry summarized boredly.

Albus nodded.

“And miss Skeeter?” Albus invited.

“I saw and heard everything exactly as he described.” She admitted, still sitting up straighter than seemed healthy for one’s back. “It was my intention to latch onto Mr Potter or the kidnappers so as to follow them wherever they were headed.”

She had a thousand-yard stare to rival a world war one veteran. Harry, for his part, believed her. If that had gone differently she may very well have been the person to save his life, and then made a mint off of spinning the story afterwards.

Dumbledore seemed for skeptical.

“I see.” He said with a dangerous edge to his voice. “Does anybody have any questions before I begin?”

“You could start with what a hollow is, who that assassin was, why he thought Harry would have it, and what we should do from here.” Sue said.

Dumbledore nodded.

“That sums up exactly what I was planning to lecture you all on. Do you have any other questions before I do so?” Dumbledore consoled.

When they all remained silent, he began his tale.

“A Hollow refers to one of three objects, known as the Deathly Hollows. Powerful artifacts that, according to legend, gives the possessors power over Death itself.”

He revealed the book he had brought along. It read ‘Tales of Beedle the Bard’. Harry didn’t know who Beedle was, but he assumed he was a bard. Damn it! How Dumbledore’s humor was rubbing off onto him.

“Oh! Fuck you!” Sue and Rita said in unison.

The incredulity in their voices shocked him almost as much as somebody cussing out Dumbledore. More shocking was Dumbledore accepting the cussing out with bemused smile.

“You seem doubtful. I understand. I was too, once.” Dumbledore said. “But the man who attacked you is what we collectively call Questers. People who believe the fairy tale of the three brothers and quest for the Hollows.”

Both ladies facepalmed at the explanation. Harry felt no explanation had even been given yet.

“I’m sorry, I’m not well-read on wizarding fairy tales. Could you explain the myth these lunatics are trying to hunt down? They’re like Verneans or something, right?” Harry asked.

“Oooh! Good comparison.” Dumbledore complimented. “Well, no harm in reading the story to you now.”

He opened the book and turned to bookmarked page, but Sue cut him off.

“Three brothers cheat Death. So Death, the person, tricks them into taking three cursed gives. A super wand, a rock that can rip the souls of the dead back from the afterlife, and his own cloak of invisibility.” Sue explained. “These lunatics think your cloak is the cloak from that tale.”

Harry had already lost most of the information she just shared, save for that relating to his cloak. He chewed on it for a few moments before he decided he knew what was going on. He turned on Dumbledore with his own desbelief.

“You gifted me an object belonging to the god of death and didn’t tell me?” Harry demanded.

“Indeed.” Said Dumbledore. “It was yours to begin with, and I had no right to keep it from you any longer. And I know of nothing that could be more effective at keeping you safe than the most powerful invisibility cloak in existence.”

“But still, why didn’t you warn me that I needed to keep it a secret?” Harry asked.

“Because. You were an eleven year old that I could not trust with the secret. You not knowign the secret meant you could not share it. Up until now, for you and everybody else, it was just an invisibility cloak. I could not have predicted Mrs Skeeter revealing its nature to the entirety of the planet.” Dumbledore explained.

Oh yeah. That did make a lot of sense. If Dumbledore had told him what it actually was, the secret would have been out much sooner.

Wait… Was Harry’s ignorance of so many things to do with the wizarding world a deliberate concoction to keep him safe? He was starting to suspect it was.

“I’m sorry. I seem to have entered the twilight zone here. Are you actually telling us that his claok is that cloak, from the tale?” Rita asked.

“Well, I have no evidence or reason to believe it ever belonged to Death himself. But it did belong to Harry father, and his father before him, and the ownership of it has been passed down for many centuries. In fact, the earliest known user of the cloak, as documented by the Potter family records, was one Ignotus Peverrel. A man with two brothers, the three together being widely regarded as the progenitors of the tale in question.” Dumbledore said.

Sue and Rita both slouched in their chairs. Rita moreso than Sue. In fact, she was growing paler with every passing word.

“And now all these death cultists know I have it.” Harry summarized.

“Oh, the cultists don’t seem to have gotten involved yet. Those particular factions are more isolated and it takes longer for news like this to reach them, but it will.” Dumbledore said. “And they will be worse than the ragtag team of Questers you encountered today, for they are more numerous and practice strange magicsi n their temples to Yama and Azrael.”

This time Harry slouched into his seat.

“So, it’s war then?” He said.

“Indeed. A war that I personally ended with my defeat of Gellert fifty years ago.” Dumbledore said. “He and his followers were questers, and the real purpose of his ally-ship with Marxist Russia, Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan was to do research into creating new Deathly Hollows by rediscovering the strange magic which begot the originals, magic of mass death and burnt offerings. He had gathered most of these madmen under his banner, and I scattered them to the wind. In the decades since they seem to have organized into splinter groups. I have received little news of them, but it has trickled to me all the same.”

The room went quiet again after that.

Harry took a long time to parse these words and their implications. But when he did he sunk even lower.

“There are more than three, aren’t there.” He asked.

“Oh yes. Many objects that are related to your cloak in the same way your wand is related to miss Li’s, or Mr’s skeeters. All of the same magic and art. But from a time long forgotten, when magic was so much more potent and alchemical.” Dumbledore said.

“And these people will do anything to get their hands on it.” Harry continued.

“Yes. It really is war that Rita has brought upon us with her negligence and malice.” Dumbledore said.

“Then destroy it.” Said Sue. “Simplest solution is often the best. The protection and usefulness it provided for Harry up until now is now fully counteracted by the danger it presents.”

Rita outright facepalmed at Sue’s declaration.

“Oh, you sweet summer child. Your naivety would be adorable if it weren’t so horrifying.” rita said, rubbing her eyes with the fat of her palms. “What do you think he was trying to do for those ten years it was in his possession?!”

Harry and Sue both stared at Dumbledore.

“Indeed. No magic I know of can destroy such artifacts. I spent those ten years researching the cloak to the best of my ability hoping to understand it better, so as to find that magic. I gleaned nothing. It conceals its own nature better than its wearer.” Dumbledore explained.

“Oh, you have to do better than that Headmaster.” Rita said. “Because these children really don’t understand the gravity of this. Listen, Potter, Li. Everyone knows these things. Not the specifics, but generally. We know there are magics that ought not to be toyed with. And we know they were toyed with in times past. We know witches and wizards wielded magics fueled by the ritualistic murder of their own babies in burning effigy to terrible gods. We know that all magic wielded just a few short millennia ago was evil, and soaked the whole of the earth in blood and horror. We erased that past because we don’t. Want. To remember it! We want to believe in magic as we present it today. Whimsical, beautiful and good. But we all know deep down the truth of the matter.”

Harry was both horrified and impressed by this new Rita. Who knew the vapid

“But these people, these people want to bring us back to what the muggles call the stone age. And what we call the blood age.” Rita told them. “

Harry was done with this melodrama.

“Right then. Safer in my possession for now. But we have to do something. More people will attack Hogwarts and me, which will put everybody here at risk.” Harry said. “So what shall we do.”

Dumbledore turned to Rita.

She looked horrified at the responsibility he seemed to be thrusting aupon her.

“What, am I supposed to print a retraction? Say I made it all up?” She asked. “You think nuking my career and credibility...” Harry scoffed “will convince any of these maniacs to give up on this chase?”

“It will be a start. And you don’t have a choice in the matter.” Dumbledore said ominously. “Perhaps you are the one who doesn’t understand the gravity of this situation. While I am primarily referred to as Headmaster, I have other titles. Namely, Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwomp. Both of which provides me with the means of making people disappear, even without resorting to my little militia I know you’ve heard of. But I don’t even need to go that far, you are already facing three months in azkaban for being an unregistered animagi, and the hundreds of counts of breaking and entering you could be credibly accused of would add many years to that. I own you, Mrs Skeeter. And you will do what I please unless you want to spend the rest of your days sharing a private cell with a full-time dementor roommate.”

Harry had heard some terrifying threats in his day, but that one took the cake. He was right, he had Rita thoroughly hosed. That explained hwy he brought her in to share all of these secrets. He had her so tightly by the metaphorical balls that he could reveal to her any secret from the location of the holy grail to his daily dalliances with the head girl and she would never tell a soul.

The irony of it was absolutely hilarious and Harry understood why Dumbeldore was reveling in it, but he didn’t have to lay it on so thick.

“What about all of the counts of voyeurism?” Harry asked. “I distinctly recall seeing a pink beetle in the boys showers all the way back in first year.”

Rita looked scandalized by the clearly bogus accusation, while Dumbledore looked amused.

“Not likely to lead to anything legally actionable, but the reputation damage, should I spare her the harsher punishments I am capable of, would be ruinous, yes.” Dumbledore said.

Sue interrupted their hazing of the dishonest reporter by raising a single, slender finger.

“I think…” She said. “That you are going about this the wrong way.”

They were all now looking at her. Dumbledore motioned for her to continue, and she did.

“Skeeter is write. A detraction, or even a staged destruction of his cloak with a regular one, would not convince them. They will continue to descend upon Hogwarts and innocent bystanders will die.” She explained. “So I think, instead of trying to undo the damage Rita has done, we build upon it.”

Even Rita looked confused by her line of reasoning.

“And how do you recommend we do that?” Rita asked.

-

Deathly Hollows Found

By Rita Skeeter

Hello faithfuls and critics alike. Both of you can be assured that hell hath not frozen over, and yet I am printing a retraction all the same.

That’s right! The first part of this story will be a retraction.

Early this week I reported on a collection of rumors and my own eyewitness testimony in regard to one Harry Potter and his girlfriend, Sue Li. Even what I personally witnessed I misinterpreted. In response to my article Mister Potter and his girlfriend reached out to me, not with anger or death threats, but with an invitation to lunch with the Headmaster and several of their close friends.

I learned a lot about these wonderful, but strange, young teenagers that day. The first is that their pet names for each other is to call themselves socially retarded. They regularly greet each other with “Good morning socially retarded boyfriend of mine.” and similar self-depracting jokes. The reason for doing so? They are both incredibly awkward, but kind, teenagers and are self-aware enough to take it in stride. The second was that they had been dating in secret for some time and are head over heels for each other, but were as terrible at keeping secrets as they are at flirting. Both Potter and Li have rejected their fair amount of would-be dates, especially mister Potter in the leadup to the upcoming Yule Ball. And here I cam along reporting the word of these scorned teenagers girls as if they were rote fact.

But there was one thing I reported on correctly.

He did boast seemingly impossible characteristics to his own invisibility cloak.

These claims included

1: The cloak being over two decades old, once belonging to his own father

2: The cloak did not receive damage from having spells cast on or near it.

Both claims seemed impossible to me, and yet, in the Headmaster’s office both were confirmed.

“His father did indeed leave this exact cloak in my possession thirteen years ago, and I did indeed return it to Harry on his eleventh birthday to keep him safe, which it has done excellently thus far.” Dumbledore said on the record. “Although, as a headmaster I would have been remiss to have gifted it to him without a laundry list of tracking spells so that I could catch him going about at night, which I have, nearly always near the library or kitchen. I still do not understand why students steal from the kitchen. The food is free. You cannot steal what is free.”

He then demonstrated casting several charms and even curses on the invisibility cloak, only for it to be completely unaffected. It still looked as brand new afterwards as before.

I could not believe the miracle I had witnessed. Somebody in the Potter ancestry was a genius who invented the perfect invisibility cloak and, instead of capitalizing on it, kept it within his family to keep his descendants safe.

I left with Mister Potter and Miss Sue to write this very retraction to every journal I knew of, and at the owelry tragedy struck.

An explosion. Delerium. A battle to the death. A group of would-be assassins attacked the castle of Hogwarts targeting Harry Potter himself. One would pay the ultimate price for the effort, as Harry would kill the man in self-defense. Don’t feel too shocked, the man was hurling curses at him and his girlfriend and, as with the Horntail, Harry killed him with a summoning and bansihing charm, though this time without poisonous gas.

What was far more disturbing was what the man was after.

The Potter family cloak.

He and his counterparts referred to it as “The Hollow.” I would have spent the next few months of my life researching what they meant by that term if Albus Dumbledore hadn’t escorted us to the infirmary afterwards. Upon being asked what the man meant, he, as usual, had all of the answers.

“The Deathly Hollows are a name given to the objects given to the three brothers in the story by the same name in ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’. They include the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and Death’s very own cloak of invisibility. It seems our misguided friend believes, from your article, believes the Potter family cloak to be the cloak from the story. Which it is.”

Potter, Li and I had the same expression on our facesat his words as you have now, reading it. It was left to Potter to ask if he meant what we thought he meant.

“Oh heavens, no. I do not belief the god of death himself gifted this cloak to your ancestor. I do believe your ancestor invented it, and it was the cloak which inspired the story of the three brothers. After all, you are a direct descendent of Ignotus Peverell, one of the three brothers widely regarded as the progenitors of the tale. Brilliant inventors of their day. I do not believe the cloak or, should they exist, the other hollows have any connection to death or even work as advertised. Near as I can tell from examining the cloak over the decade it was in my care, it’s just a really good invisibility cloak. In fact, the best in the world to my knowledge. But such things are not as incredible to a man who has held the philosophers stone in his bare hands and owns the mirror of Erised. Such magnificent and indecipherable artifacts make the cloak seem plain in comparison, so perhaps my frame of reference is a bit skewed?”

Well, a human invention it may be, but that’s now what matters. What matters is a cult of murderous psychopaths believes it to be the cloak of death himself and are willing to do anything to get it. Hogwarts is now under seige by these madmen and it’s not only Harry Potter’s life in danger because of it.

I am calling on the international community to fight back against these Vernean lunatics, and upon the British Ministry of Magic to provide extra protection to Hogwarts against these would-be assassins and thieves.

They can be identified by the mark of the Quester. A mark made famous by their most infamous member, one Gellert Grindelwald. You will recognize it as his mark, though like the swastika it was not his, only perverted by him. It is a triangle containing a circle containing a line.

Harry was wearing the invisibility cloak over his shoulders as he read the article that Saturday morning. It was inactive and plain for everybody to see, in its perfectly silver form for all to see.

And boy, did people stare. The article was a raging success, with the only publisher refusing to make it a front page headline being some magazine called the Quibbler. The editor had been rather venemous in his refusal, saying they were being libelous in accusing Questers of any wrongdoing. He’d need to be cautious of that Xenophilius guy.

But the plan worked.

They knew they couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle. That these new threats would continue to pursue them. What Sue reasoned, and they all agreed, was the best option was to shine the mother of all spotlights on it.

Now every student, parent, government worker and bystander knew what was going on and why, and could protect themselves. Sue argued that leaving everyone in the dark was akin to making them as unto Muggles, unaware of the threat of Voldemort even as he and his followers kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered them for sport.

Knowledge is power, and when that knowledge is secret it is precarious power indeed. It is easily taken away by simply exposing the secret.

Now everybody knew. No everybody could make informed choices. There was a war now, it was up to everybody at Hogwarts to decide their involvement in it.

-

If you have ever lost a mostly-finished chapter and had to rewrite it, you would understand. It is almost impossible. Worked on the next chapter for Magic Knows no boundaries for four hours yesterday. Wrote 750 words. Spent three hours writing this chapter today, and its done.

I’ll continue to suffer writing it, chipping away at it, but I have to actually produce something for you all. So, here’s another chapter for Much Deadlier tournament. The words flowed from my fingers to the page with ease. As writing should be.