Chapter Twenty
Shortly after the Second Task, we received an owl from Sirius asking to meet up with him and Andromeda on our next Hogsmeade weekend.
“It’ll be so good to see them,” Harry said.
We nabbed a large booth at the Three Broomsticks ahead of the usual rush Hogsmeade weekend student rush and set up a handful of anti-eavesdropping spells. Sirius, Andromeda and Dora walked in after a little while.
“Hi Andromeda, hi Dora. I didn’t know you were coming,” Hermione greeted as Harry got up to hug Sirius.
“I’m meeting up with my friend Jennifer at the Hog’s Head, so I’m just dropping in to say hi,” Dora said.
“Jennifer the prostitute?” Andromeda asked, a hint of judgement in her tone.
“Wait, there are wixen prostitutes?” I asked, interrupting Dora’s doubtless scathing rebuttal.
“Uh, yeah. There’s like a whole alley off of Knockturn full of brothels,” Nymphadora said.
“Of course there are wixen prostitutes. I’m such an idiot,” I exclaimed.
“We do not have enough free time for a prostitutes’ rights movement,” Ron said.
“What? No. I mean yes, we’ll circle back to that, but no. Do you have any idea what an untapped source of information prostitutes are? I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before,” I gasped.
“What do you mean?” Harry asked.
“People will be a lot more open to talking about stuff after they have sex, I think it’s called pillow talk. And if prostitutes get lots of important clients, such as Ministry officials or nobles who are also Death Eaters, then they have easy access to lots of information. Dora, do you think you could set up a meeting with your friend?” I asked her.
“Yeah, I’ll talk to her today. She’s muggleborn and might be willing to get involved if you think she could make a difference. Or if she doesn’t want to get involved, she probably knows some people who would be interested,” Dora said, thinking. Andromeda looked vaguely contemplative and Sirius looked absolutely floored.
“Thanks a bunch,” I said.
Dora headed out to meet up with her friend. Andromeda politely inquired about our classes and Hermione excitedly told her about how much she was enjoying History and Potions now that they were being taught by Lupin and Slughorn.
The idea of forging a pre-emptive mutual defense treaty with the European countries was going poorly. The majority opinion among the Wizengamot was that Albion did not need the help of the other countries, especially not against an internal threat such as Voldemort. This was only encouraged by the Death Eater lords on the Wizengamot.
While a handful had indicated they would be open to discussions of an alliance should the threat of Voldemort be too great, they would not do anything when Voldemort’s return was still a mere hypothetical. Of course, it would take time to even get the Wizengamot to agree to reach out to the other countries for discussion and even more time for those discussions to take place. We had time now, but we would not have time in two years. Not to mention that we could get more favorable terms and be on more even ground with another country when Voldemort was a hypothetical threat instead of when we were in the middle of a very real civil war.
Sirius, at Harry’s request, had gained legal custody of him in light of the possibility of Ministry interference. Informally, Molly and Sirius had already established some sort of shared custody agreement for the summer which was made easier by the fact that we all were going to be staying at Order Headquarters.
Andromeda had helpfully provided me with a bunch of information about the emancipation process, which I was considering. It appeared alarmingly easy. Being emancipated would obviously fix the whole trying-to-stay-under-magic-CPS’-radar issue and would have the added benefit of being able to legally cast magic and own property. Except I already owned property because Gringotts considered me an adult, given the whole time travel thing and the Ministry didn’t really keep records or regulate that.
Point was, emancipating myself would fix my jumble of a legal situation and I wouldn’t have to deal with the possibility of the Ministry finding out my situation and trying to stick me in the orphanage or some Death Eater noble trying to legally take me in, kill me and claiming I ran away into the forest and got eaten by wolves or something. That was the main concern of the whole skirt-under-the-radar-despite-being-rather-well-known problem. Since Harry was fixing his situation by becoming Sirius’ ward, I might as well emancipate myself over the summer. It couldn’t hurt and as a fifteen year old with financial stability, it would be easy enough.
After saying goodbye to Sirius and Andromeda, we split up, Harry and Ron getting candy from Honeydukes while Hermione and I got vegan parchment, ink and pencils. Then we hurried back up to the castle before the Hogwarts Army meeting began at 3:00.
This week we were working on duelling, pairing everyone up by age group and having them try to cast expelliarmus at each other. A decent amount of people ended up ducking instead of deflecting, causing the spell to hit someone behind them and it took a while for us to get everyone’s wand back to them.
We cast a bunch of duelling wards so that each pair could practice in their own protective bubble, which was slightly better. A lot of the older years started duelling intensely with a variety of spells, but as long nobody was seriously hurt it didn’t really matter.
On Sunday, Hermione insisted on a Renegades meeting in the Room of Requirement, which didn’t seem all that different from the four of us hanging out in the RoR.
“April is coming up and we need to begin planning for the Enchantlympics,” Hermione announced, summoning a large chalkboard.
“We should spread it out over a week, one event each day. Last year was way too hectic,” Ron said.
“We should also allow the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students to compete,” Harry said. “Especially because they all came to put their name in, so everyone here wanted to participate in the Tournament and might enjoy another lower stakes competition.”
“I think we should also review our events and maybe put in a new one. Something that’s more brainy and intellectual than sportsy. The Scavenger Hunt is good, but I think something about like casting spells or making stuff although I’m not sure how to judge that,” I said. “ I also think we should expand the Scavenger Hunt.”
“What about an Invention Fair? Those were really popular in the 1700 and 1800 hundreds, but have one for students. They make a magical invention, nothing plagiarized from muggles, and even though there’s only one winner, everyone gets to show off their thing,” Hermione proposed.
“Ooh, I like that. We could also invite representatives from the Guilds. A lot of students who are applying for Apprenticeships after Hogwarts could show off their stuff to the representatives, give them something to mention in their applications,” I said.
“What would we be removing then, to keep the number at seven?” Harry asked.
“I say we toss the two candy events, Bubble Gum Blowing and Pepper Imp Fire Breathing,” Ron said.
“That would put us at six. What about a duelling competition?” Harry asked.
“Like a standard, everyone faces off against an opponent, whoever wins moves on to the next level, until there’s only one opponent left type competition?” I asked.
“Yeah, that would probably work best,” Hermione said.
“Then we would keep the other five?” Ron asked.
“Yeah, but I think we should expand the Scavenger Hunt. We can put it one of the tow weekend days, stretch it out for the entire day, make it harder, maybe allow the teams to get to know each other and strategize in advance,” I mused.
“So we put it at the end of the week, make it the finale and have the teams chosen at the start of the week?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, then we could put the Invention Fair at the start, assuming we’re doing a Sunday to Saturday, because that would take all day. The others could be fit in after classes and before dinner,” I said.
“We can get Lee to do commentary again. Since we’re not in the middle of the Prank War, we can have just the four of us be judges, and give out prizes and awards at the end of each day during dinner,” Hermione said.
With the big picture decided, we spent a few more minutes hammering out the smaller details and deciding when to announce it.
“Attention, students of Hogwarts, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons,” Hermione called out as we entered the Great Hall at dinnertime on April 1st in our Renegade outfits.
McGonagall looked vaguely annoyed, Dumbledore looked thrilled, the foreign students highly confused and the Hogwarts students eager, suspecting what this was about.
“Last year, we hosted the Enchantlympics during our Prank War with the Weasley Twins, consisting of seven competitions and we are pleased to announce that we will once again be continuing the Enchantlympics,” Harry said.
“This year’s Enchantlympics will be slightly different from last year’s. They will be spread out over the last week of April, starting on Sunday and concluding on Saturday. Events will take place in the late afternoons, after classes and before dinner with an awards ceremony each evening. We also will be having slightly different events,” Ron continued.
“Our events will be an Invention Fair, Duelling Competition, Dodgebludger, Staircase Shield Sliding, Great Lake Swimming Contest, Broom Racing and finally, the Forbidden Forest Scavenger Hunt, in that order. The Duelling Competition will be each contestant duelling an opponent. The winner will continue on to the next level until there is a winner. The Invention Fair will be a showcase of student inventions, whether that be a spell, a potion or a magical item of some sort. While there will only be one winner, we will be inviting journalists and representatives from the Guilds to attend and view everyone’s invention. Finally, the Forbidden Forest Scavenger Hunt will be greatly expanded from last year’s. Our teams will be revealed at the start of the Enchantlympics, so everyone can plan in advance for a week’s time and the hunt itself will be harder, taking the entire day. For more information, please come see one of us,” I explained.
“The competition will be open to Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students as well. We will be placing informational flyers and signup sheets in the Entrance Hall. The four of us will be judging, Lee Jordan will be doing commentary and Colin Creevey and his team will be doing filming,” Hermione said.
“Welcome to the 1995 Enchantlympics!” we said in unison.