Some shit goes down
They rushed upstairs, at the speed of light, at least Gilbert and Vlad did, as the rest walked into the hall at the speed of normal people. Vlad and Gilbert had somehow decided without words, to split up and badger separate people for peak efficiency.
"Lukas! Lukas!" Vlad said as he bounced around him, while Lukas pointedly ignored him, nose buried in some dusty old Norwegian book that he would have to use valuable mental energy to translate. Vlad, not Lukas.
Only the boy sitting next to Lukas poked his eye with a pronounced concern, did he pick his head up and dully said, "What?"
"Did you hear that something was stolen from Gringotts on the day that us and Harry were there?!"
"D'you think I don't read the news, Vlad?" The Norwegian asked as he raised his eyebrow.
Romania decided against answering that question and moved on to the next one.
"Ok so why are you not surprised?" He quietly said, " I know literally nothing surprises you, but seriously!"
Lukas said nothing and proceeded to continue reading and Vlad huffed, not liking to be ignored so he started to walk off but for some reason, the boy sitting next to Lukas poked Vlad's arm because ✨social skills✨ and asked "Do you know Lukas, and if you do please tell me if he is possessed or something, we are worried for him now?"
"Of course, I know him, I've known him for centuries!" He winced at his rather large mistake but he hoped sincerely that the Ravenclaw would take it as a joke. "Anyways what's your name anyway?"
The boy did a dramatic bow and said "Terry Boot, at your service, and who may you be, young squire?"
Vlad chuckled and said, "Good morning to you too, for my name is Vladimir Popescu and I come from the fabled land of Romania."
Someone down the table muttered something along the lines of "Freaking weirdos." (The person beside them also called them out for not being brave enough to say the actual word.)
Lukas got up and smacked them on the head with the book and said, "Yes, but only I'm allowed to call them that."
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At the Slytherin table, Gilbert was being Gilbert and attempting to annoy the absolute hell out of both Arthur and Ivan, to make them listen to him of course, not just to annoy them.
Heheheh.
Eventually, after an admirable amount of self-restraint from the both of them, Arthur grabbed one of Gilbert's arms and clenched it while Ivan did the same. Most of the Slytherin table thought that he would die then and there because a few of them had already been at the receiving end of their wrath.
Surprisingly Gilbert remained existent even though both of the Slytherins looked ready to murder when Gilbert snatched his hand away and said "Calm down you two, the awesome me just wanted to tell you that the bank was robbed on the day that we were there. Well, the robbery was attempted but the vault was empty so..."
"Gilbert, do you honestly think I don't read the news?"
Gilbert was dumbfounded for a second, but then snapped out of it and contemplated going, "Alright, but hear me out," and pulling some MatPat game theory worthy explanation, but hey, that's just a theory. He decided not to and started to exit before a pale pointy faced boy pulled him and harshly whispered.
"How did you survive that!?"
"What do you mean, and who are you?"
"Malfoy, Draco Malfoy. I don't usually talk to Gryffindors but I see you survived talking to those two and I would like to know how."
"They aren't that scary are they?"
"Fuck they are, I tried to stop the tall one because he was snoring like a fog horn and it didn't work! I used the magic of all things and it is incredibly rare that that charm doesn't work."
"Maybe, you just suck at magic," a random voice said in the corner.
"Arthur just scares me because he challenges Ivan at every turn and he almost broke my arm that one time. But they work together in potions and manage to impress even Snape, which is a huge achievement, by the way!"
Gilbert sighed and said, "I only know how to do this because I've known them forever and they can be scary, but they're clearly not trying and if they did, half the school would probably be, well, dead."
The albino just walked off and Malfoy was not reassured in any shape or form he shuffled away from the two because he could feel them staring into his soul. Somehow doing it worse than his father which he didn't even think was possible.
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The rest of the day would have passed rather slowly but a few people nearly died because Gilbert found out about how people talked of him behind his back (E/N: we won't say what, because you'll have to tune iN NEXT TiME FOR–), Draco being amongst some of the people talking about him and he almost got his arm broken for the second and third time that week and when he got back to the Slytherin Dungeon he approached both Ivan and Arthur. Neither of them had heard of the flip out of their fellow Nations so they were slightly confused as to why Draco was approaching them, since he usually avoided them like the plague, and even more concerned since he looked absolutely mortified and was holding his wand arm like it hurt. Was a surprise that they didn't hear Draco going on about suing whoever did hurt his arm.
He came up to them and began to rant in an albeit rather scared way "I may have said something about your stupid Gryffindor friends and now they are hunting me and a few others."
He expected sympathy but he regretted what he said almost as soon as he said it because he could feel the anger around the two, he almost choked when they both trained their eyes on him, with Ivan looking down on him and Arthur, who was shorter than him, mind you. Looked up at him, it would have been comedic if it wasn't for the fact that you could literally see the rage around both of them.
Apparently, people were protective of their friends and former underlings, who would have thought. Certainly not a prick like Malfoy apparently.
They left Draco with a very ominous and very much concerning message: "Threaten any of us and you will have nothing in your pants tomorrow."
They both rushed off to find the two and first found a very irritated Belarus sharpening her knife threateningly while Vlad was threatening Ron in the background because he apparently was in on the bullying.
None of them could find Gilbert anywhere, but that didn't exactly stop them from looking, they knew that Gilbert, as proud as he is, cared a lot about his appearance. Mainly due to the annals of history, making him hate his appearance, he was seen as a ghost or a demon and burned a couple of times because of it.
They also wanted to make sure he hadn't gone off and murdered someone because he had a tendency to destroy things when upset, nation habits.
What they did not expect was to find Gilbert chopping a large piece of wood with his sword and giving the wood to Hagrid who stored the wood for fire and fuel and was hovering around him to make sure Gilbert did not injure himself. (E/N: note that it's his sword. Not sure how he brought it in undetected. Also, why a sword, at least use an axe or hatchet, but I mean he's just that cool.)
"GILBERT!" Vlad yelled and ran towards him.
"EEEEE!" he yelled and swung the sword with such precision that Vlad dodged it just with the skin of his teeth, any non-nation would have been beheaded. Or a demigod. Or– I'll stop here.
Hagrid slammed the door open and looked around wildly only to find a very harried looking Gilbert getting strangled by Vlad. The half-giant physically deflated when he saw that lucky no one had died and there was just a vampire-looking dude-climbing all over Gilbert in the most child-friendly way possible. (E/N: That part sounded... questionable if taken out of context. The editor refuses to elaborate any more on this context.) (A/N oh that was purposeful.) (E/N: Wait what.) (a/N hehe hehe) (E/N: I'm scared.)
Completely normal in Hagrid's experience, especially if the vampire-looking dude is Vladimir Popescu and the Gilbert in question was (the) Gilbert Belischmidt and their gaggle of friends were there and alive. Though two of them looked like they were having a short and decently traumatic flashback, and once again that was perfectly normal.
"Good, I thought Gilber' had murdered one of you!"
After clambering off Gilbert, Vlad asked, "Hagrid, since when was Gilbert here and what is the best way to kill a large number of people."
"Hmm, he's been here since abou' maybe 12 o'clock and I don' think I'm legally not allowed to tell you that."
Hagrid could very clearly see Arthur holding himself back from mothering Gilbert, he for some reason did that sometimes though he seemed to be the youngest out of the six.
Just then a Potter and a Granger came rushing to the half-giants house, pulling a very afraid Weasley behind them, who paled seeing Gilbert's sword and tried his very best to run away but failed and was forced to apologise.
Mainly terrified by all of them because Vlad looked murderous, and Arthur looked like he would kill you with a spork. Big spork, very intimidating. And the sword too, I guess.
Natalya always looked terrifying, her multiple knives added to this visage and she treated them like her children, but instead of using violence in this case she just said "Ducks can engage in cannibalistic behaviour when simply bored. This is a threat. Interpret this however you want."
That was directed at Ron of course, who somehow paled even further and started pushing on Hermione to let him go, and after a knowing look from Natalya, she pushed him onto her.
"No one bullies Gilbert without something happening to them..."
Ron decided to speak up "H-Hey it wasn't just me. A bunch of the Slytherins and Gryffindors were doing it too."
Almost nonchalantly and almost at the exact same time Arthur and Ivan responded with "We know, we have taken care of that."
Hagrid was just watching all this play out with mild amusement and a decent dollop of concern but just thought it was normal child behaviour (A/N I wouldn't know). But he was slightly miffed that a gaggle of children had invaded his garden.
They stood in silence for a bit and it was getting increasingly uncomfortable, that was until Hermionie realised that Gilbert had a fucking sword.
"GILBERT IS THAT A SWORD!?"
He tried to hide it behind his back but couldn't because he was now small and it was rather hard to hide a whole ass sword, plus he expected it to be confiscated.
Instead, Hermione asked if she could see it and started admiring the hilt of the sword and asking Gilbert questions so quickly he could not answer properly.
"How old is the sword?"
"Old."
Where'd you get it? What's it made out of? How sharp is it?"
"Sharp."
What country is it from? What do the inscriptions read? It's German, isn't it? Why can't I read it?"
"Because you haven't taken The Study of Ancient Runes yet. Also fun fact I don't think it's in English... Wait, I'll check one more time, just in case."
Natalya grabbed Hermione and shook her for a moment.
"Child, mortals must breathe during speech."
"Yeah, it's not English," Gilbert called out.
She took in a deep breath and first asked. "Gilbert, why do you have a sword?"
Gilbert tried to come up with a reasonable explanation but when he couldn't he silently pleaded to Arthur for help, after a feeble who told a half-truth "through some old magic cast on his family, whenever he wants to he can just summon his great great... grandfather's sword.
Way to make me feel old... Gilbert thought, though he knew Arthur could have said when it was actually made, which was some time during the 1200s, so it could have been worse.
Everyone had forgotten Lukas was there until he jumped down from the post he was perched on and silently walked over, though that was questionable as no one heard him and seemed to float over like a ghost.
"I can read runes, let me look at them?"
Hermionie and her thinly veiled excitement were almost palpable at this point, not to say that the others weren't excited too, but you could feel it around her.
Lukas traced the runes like he was desperately trying to remember something and said, "Why are you touching my sword, stop it because the awesome nation of Prussia said to. Stop or I will use the sword on you."
Lukas looked puzzled for a moment and then slowly said "Your Great Great Grandfather seemed to be very eccentric?"
Gilbert flushed bright red and snatched the sword back, while Hermione was looking somewhere into the middle distance, not exactly looking at anything. Once she snapped out of it she inspected the sword again and said "Wait, your great-great-grandfather would be alive sometime in the 1700s, correct? But runes fell out of use in the 1300s?"
Gilbert looked at her at a loss for words before he said "I dunno, maybe he was just very cool and liked runes!"
The others knew that Gilbert was just trying to save face, but by lord was he failing spectacularly.
"Well," Lukas chimed in, "they sort of died during but were still used during the late 15th century. There were strange areas and places of Gotland in Sweden and in Iceland where the rune was a thing until the 18th century. So this could be valid. Also close, I think they started to fall out of use during the 1400s."
Gilbert was just standing there, thankful that Lukas decided to not reveal that he was around in like the 1100s by making it sound as if his ancestor was just a weirdo.
She held out her hand for the sword and Gilbert happily gave it to her, failing to see the clear danger in giving a mortal 11-year-old an ancient sword from the 1100s.
However Hermione seemed to have all the brain cells both Ron and Harry seemed to have a chronic deficiency of, she held the hilt carefully with both hands, and avoided swinging it around like a lunatic.
That did not stop Ron from getting incredibly scared and attempting to hide behind Harry, who himself was looking at the weapon with awe and a healthy amount of fear and caution.
Hagrid in the background was wondering if he should tell Dumbledore that a child has a sword but decided not to as he at school had a lot of illegal things and got expelled because of it, and Hagrid honestly doubted if bringing a sword was even illegal.
Gilbert showed Hermionie how to hold the sword correctly, though she seemed to already know how to do most of it, this should have concerned a normal human, but it seemingly did not concern any of them other than Ron and Harry.
Ivan then produced a large metal pipe from somewhere, no one knew where, but there it was.
Understandably everyone was terrified, anyone with a large lead pipe would be dangerous, but Ivan with a large metal pipe was more dangerous, but he luckily did nothing with it other than squish a couple of lizards that seemed to be collecting near his feet.
Hagrid boomed "A' Thank y', Ivan, those lizards had been terrorising th' garden!"
They started to steam and smell, smelling like burning sulphur and smoke, then disintegrated.
Harry, Gilbert and Ivan looked horrified, while Ron grumbled something about "Bloody fire salamanders, smelling like burning manure."
While they were disposing of the burning and smoking salamander bodies Fred and George ran up to Hagrid, as they wanted to do something with Ron but had no clue where he was.
When they saw a bunch of Slytherins, Gryffindors and a singular Ravenclaw disposing of some lizard bodies, it may have looked a little suspicious, but because it was Fred and George, they were not too concerned.
"Ronnie? What are you doing with all these Slytherins?" Fred, or maybe it was Geroge, asked and once they saw Gilbert and Vlad said "That thing with the magic water you did, that was truly fabulous."
Ivan walked up to Fred, wielding a shovel as if it was nothing and nearly decapitating Arthur, though he dodged it and shot a venomous glare at him.
Fred said, "Wait, aren't you two the ones that almost broke that prat Malfoy's arm?"
"Yes we are, why would you be asking?" Arthur said.
The two literally started to sparkle (magic be built different) and said "Finally someone did something to that prat!"
They started having a conversation on the best way to break, sprain or otherwise injure an arm, a conversation that concerned absolutely nobody but Harry as it was nations, Hagrid,The Weasely twins + Ron, and Hermionie, who knew way too much about human anatomy to be normal. But it seemed that the general consensus was to either tear a ligament, dislocate a shoulder or elbow, or possibly sprain the wrist.
This was interrupted by Alisdairs owl landing on Arthur's head and impatiently holding out his foot which had an envelope attached to it, after a small human-owl reunion. The owl took off with Arthur holding an envelope.
He sat down on a fencepost and opened the envelope.
There were two letters inside, one from Matthew and one from Alisdair.
Arthur quickly scanned over it and then let out a deep breath.
"I gotta go."