Weighing of the Wands Mayhem
Since Harry had taken up the annoying habit of skipping everywhere, no one was surprised when he skipped into the next potions class late. What did surprise them, however, was the very amused third year student Colin Creevey stood next to him.
"Mr Creevey, why are you not in your own class and interrupting mine?" Snape asked silkily, eyebrows raised.
"He's with me. Apparently the big blue bumblebee told my best friend Colin here that the wasp told him I have to get wand weighed! My bet is 50 grams." Harry explained, very unclearly.
"I bet it's 23 grams." Said Ron. "10 Galleons."
"Deal." Said Harry seriously. "Anyway, I do have to go. Such a shame, I was looking forward to learning to bake treacle tarts." Harry said sadly.
"Okay, fine." Snape said, and Harry turned to leave with Colin. "And Potter?" Harry turned around to face the potions professor, giving him a questioning look.
"See me and office at 8 tonight. To catch up on todays lesson, it's an important one."
"Yes Sir, treacle tarts are super important!" With that, Harry skipped out of the room, Colin chasing after him in a fit of giggles.
Colin, as expected, did not leave when Harry arrived at the empty classroom they were told to meet the judges in. Instead, Harry once again handed him the invisibility cloak and told him to stay quiet and keep his eyes peeled for anything "sus".
"I'm here!" Harry sang as he entered the room, hugging Fleur. The blonde witch grinned and patted him fondly on the head. The two had grown close quite quickly, and their friendship was one of the many rumours about Harry going around the school.
"Aha, just in time!" Bagman said cheerfully, reaching out to shake Harry's hand. Harry accepted but pulled away abruptly, letting out a shriek.
"It stung me! The wasp stung me!" He cried, pointing at Bagman with an indignant look on his face.
"Harry, I-"
"Ignore him, Ludo, I've heard the boy is off his rocker." Crouch said grumpily. "Let's get this over with, shall we?" Harry stopped paying attention, standing next to Cedric as he watched the blonde woman in emerald green robes. He'd seen her eyes light up when Crouch mentioned he was crazy, and he had a feeling she was a reporter. Maybe she would be a good person to add to his little gang of mischief makers? He would try and talk to her after his wand weighing. In the meantime, he gestured slightly towards her, hoping Colin got the message and was keeping his eye on her.
"Harry Potter?"
"AAARGH!" Harry exclaimed, jumping a mile in the air.
"10 points from Gryffindor. Harry my boy, you really should be paying attention." Dumbledore said, sounding disappointed. Harry didn't really care.
"Sorry Gandalf." He said, turning away from Dumbledore. "When did he get here?" Harry hissed loudly to Cedric, pointing at Ollivander.
"Ages ago. You zoned out completely. It's your turn, you're the last one." Cedric said, nudging him forwards a bit.
"To do what?"
"I need to see your wand, Mr Potter." Ollivander said in his really creepy tone. Harry skipped forward and handed his wand to Ollivander.
"Ah yes, I remember this wand better than any other." He said simply. He didn't make any other comments, instead silently casting a spell that caused a fountain of red wine to burst from the tip.
"In fine working order. I believe that was everyone, Headmaster Dumbledore?"
"Wait!" Harry exclaimed. "You didn't weigh it!" Ollivander raised an eyebrow, but cast a spell on Harry's wand with his own.
"23 grams." He said. "Quite light for a wand."
"Noooo!" Harry groaned. "How on earth did Ron guess that? Now I owe him 10 galleons!"
"Harry Potter, yes?" The blonde witch Harry was watching earlier asked, before Dumbledore could tell Harry off for being disruptive again.
"Yes. and you are?"
"Rita Skeeter, journalist for The Prophet. Can we go and have a little chat?" Dumbledore opened his mouth, probably to decline, but Harry got there first.
"Sure! Lead the way Madam Skeeter." He offered her his arm.
Skeeter chuckled. "Aren't you a charming lad? Come along then." She led him out of the room and to a nearby classroom, an empty one.
"I have a preposition for you." Harry said before she could talk.
"Oh, really?" She looked faintly disappointed, but her interest soon got the better of her.
"I'll pay you 50 galleons per story you write for me, exactly how I ask you to." Her eyes lit up, and she nodded vigorously.
"Deal."
"And I don't want to be made to look evil, because I'm not."
"Done."
Harry blinked. "Well, that was easy. Okay, here's what we're going to do..."
After a very interesting conversation where he found out his dad and godfather and the traitor Peter Pettigrew weren't the only illegal animagi to ever exist, he exited the classroom feeling very satisfied.
"Photos!" Skeeter exclaimed upon entering the room with Harry, clapping her hands together once.
The next hour was filled with hundreds of photographs being taken. Single shots, group shots, champions with their headteachers. By the time they were finished, Dumbledore told them to head straight to dinner. The four champions decided to sit together at the Gryffindor table.
At eight o'clock, Harry dutifully knocked on Severus Snape's office door.
"Potter, on time, surprisingly. Enter." Harry entered the office, sitting in the chair in front of the desk Snape gestured to.
"What ingredients do I need for treacle tarts, sir?" Harry asked.
"We want to know what you're up to." Harry jumped, turning his head to see Minerva McGonagall stood behind him.
"Minnie, you scared me! That wasn't very nice! And what do mean, 'Up to'?" Harry asked innocently.
"We saw your moment of... sanity... in the Headmaster's office a few days ago, Potter. Why are behaving like a madman?" Snape asked sharply. Harry shrugged, thinking quickly. It couldn't hurt having teachers on his side, could it? Even if Snape was a petty moron?
"Because it's fun. And I'm sick of being a chess piece." He said eventually, crossing his arms.
"Finally seeing Dumbledore for the man he is, I see." Snape said approvingly. Harry raised a brow.
"I've always seen Dumbledore for the man he is. I just played along until I had a decent plan." Harry shrugged. "Then I got sick of waiting for a decent plan so decided to go crazy instead. I'm not hurting anyone, am I? And it's giving people a laugh, something that doesn't happen much. Laughter is good for the soul, you know."
"So, you're not actually mad?" Professor McGonagall asked hesitantly.
Harry quirked a brow. "I don't know, am I?" Professor McGonagall smirked.
"We want in." She said. Snape's eyes widened.
"We do?" He asked.
"We do." She confirmed. Snape slumped in his seat. "Fine. We won't tell anyone your little secret."
"Awesome!" Harry exclaimed. "Well if that's all, goodnight professors!"
"I'll walk you back to the common room, Potter." Once the two Gryffindors left his office, Snape sighed loudly, rubbing his temples. What had he got himself into?
The next morning, Harry could barely contain his excitement.
"Harry. James. Potter. Stop. Wriggling!" Hermione jabbed him in the arm with each word with her fork. "You are making the entire table shake!"
"Sorry Hermione." He wasn't at all sorry, but Hermione didn't need to know that.
"Harry look, it's here!" Colin hissed, grabbing Harry's arm. Harry had, of course, made him eavesdrop on his and Rita Skeeter's conversation the day before, so Colin was just as excited as Harry was.
"What's here? What do you know that we don't?" Daphne asked suspiciously. She had become one of the members of the friend group since the day Harry made sure everyone celebrated Sprout's birthday, a fact that left Draco incredibly upset.
"I want my best friend back, she abandoned me for a bunch of lions." Draco had complained to Daphne, who rolled her eyes.
"Just apologise for calling Hermione a slur, making fun of Ron's family and bullying Harry then you can be friends with them too. Besides, I'm still your best friend stupid, but Harry's interesting." Daphne had retorted.
"You are?" Draco had said happily. Daphne rolled her eyes at him and scoffed.
"Obviously. Now grow up and apologise." Draco had looked incredibly reluctant, but in the end he sighed grumpily and nodded.
"Fine. They won't forgive me though."
"Honestly? I think you'd be surprised."
Daphne was still waiting for him to do so, but she knew it would take him a while, since Draco had a lot of pride to push down before he even considered apologising.
When an owl dropped a newspaper on Harry's plate and he and Colin immediately buried themselves in it, Daphne and Hermione shared a long-suffering look.
"What trouble have you stirred up now?" Hermione groaned, picking up her own copy of the paper.
Poor young orphan's name entered into the tri-wizard tournament. I got an exclusive interview with him.
As many of you know, the tri-wizard tournament, an event consisting of three tasks that 3 schools from across the globe enter one champion into, is being hosted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year. However, no one expected a fourth champion's name to come flying out of the goblet.
"It is tragic, really." Beauxbatons' champion Fleur Delacour told me in her charming French accent. "The poor boy did not ask for this outcome, he was a mess when his name was announced."
"We will, of course, support him however we can." Hogwarts' official champion Cedric Diggory added.
I expect you're all on the edge of your seats wanting to hear who this mysterious 4th champion is? Well, let me tell you it was as much a shock for me as it will be for you, for the 4th Champion is none other than the Boy Who Lived, Harry Potter.
Harry swore to me he has no idea how his name came out of the goblet.
"Someone wants to kill me again!" He told me tearfully. "There's always someone out for my blood."
When I inquired further into this, he informed me of several incidents at Hogwarts over his 4 years of education that shocked me to my core. See page 7 for more details.
I asked Harry about how he felt about the tournament.
"If I'm completely honest, I'm terrified." He confided in me. "No one believes I didn't enter my own name in except my close friends and fellow champions, and without them I'd feel even more alone than I already do. Not a single adult has offered me any support except for my father's old friends, who write to me regularly."
That of course, sparked my attention.
"Your father's friends?"
"Yes, Remus Lupin and Sirius Black."
My jaw dropped. Escaped convict Sirius Black? For more details see page 4.
After talking to Harry about Lupin and Black for a long while, he also confided with me about his grief for his parents and his terrible home life.
"I think if my parents were here and Voldemort hadn't killed them, none of this would have happened." He said mournfully. "I missed growing up with a loving family because of him, and now I have to compete in a dangerous tournament without having them to turn to."
"Do you think about them often?" I asked him.
"Every day. I like to think they're watching over me, rooting for me from heaven." I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye.
"So, the Wizarding World is dying to know Harry; where did you grow up?"
"Well, Headmaster Dumbledore took me to my muggle relatives in Surrey." He seemed reluctant to open up about them, but with a bit of pushing I found out some shocking information.
"My Uncle and Aunt despise magic, therefore they despised me. My cousin is a huge bully. I hate living there. I slept in the cupboard under the stairs until I was eleven, then I moved into my cousin's second bedroom. I've begged Headmaster Dumbledore to let me go and stay with Mrs Weasley and her family during the summer, but he always insists I go back." I listened to this child with shock. Albus Dumbledore, hero of the wizarding world, sent the Boy Who Lived to live with child abusers? What is going on here? And why did Harry Potter's muggle cousin get two bedrooms whilst Harry had to sleep in a broom cupboard?
"I've heard rumours that you're going crazy, Harry. Is that true?" I said, changing the subject as I could see Harry was getting upset. He looked at me with his piercing green eyes.
"Maybe a little." He admitted. I nodded in understanding. Harry has been through so much, and the stress and grief and childhood trauma must have driven him over the edge.
"So Harry, why are you telling me all of this?"
"Well, I like to think that out there somewhere, there's another child just like me, who will read this and know it is not okay for adults to bully children, and do their best to get help." He told me earnestly.
Harry and I ended the interview as very close friends, so expect to hear from me soon with more updates on the life of Harry Potter. But for now, let's discuss the other champions!
Fleur Delacour, part-veela, is representing Beauxbatons school of Magic. Viktor Krum, Quidditch star, is representing Durmstrang Academy, and Cedric Diggory, loyal Hufflepuff, is representing Hogwarts. Harry told me he doesn't consider himself to be representing any school.
"I may not have entered my name, but it came out of the Goblet. I don't want or deserve any glory. Cedric is the only Hogwarts Champion." He told me firmly. Harry Potter is such a charming, humble lad.
"Harry, you little-" Hermione smacked his arm and them hugged him. "You slept in a cupboard? How could Dumbledore leave you there!" She sobbed. Harry patted her back awkwardly.
"There, there." He said. "I'm okay now. Besides, this article is exactly how I asked Skeeter to write it. Think of the things that are about to go down!" Harry grinned.
Ron, who had skim read the other two articles mentioned with Daphne, was smirking.
"Oh, it's going down alright!" He said. "Charming and humble? You're having a laugh!"
"Shut up Ron, I am super humble and charming!" Harry fluttered his eyelashes at him.
"You wish."
Suddenly, there was a sharp cough behind them. They turned around to see Draco Malfoy stood there, looking extremely embarrassed.
"Potter, I just wanted to..... apologise. For how I treated you. And for insulting your family Weasley. And calling you the M word Granger."
"The past is in the past, let it go!" Harry said cheerfully, grabbing his arm and dragging him onto the bench next to him. "Want some more jam?" He asked sweetly. Malfoy went pale and Daphne burst into a fit of laughter.