Day 4: Gaining Allies
Sitting together in the secret passageway to Hogsmede, Harry and Ron listened as James and Sirius explained what had happened to them.
"So," Harry started, a little lost for words. I mean, wouldn't you be too, if you had just met your dead father and heard such an amazing story? You wouldn't? Sure... Just keep telling yourself that, Jessi, you dirk (if you're not Jessi, ignore that last part). All right, back to Harry- "...So..."
"So what?" Sirius asked impatiently.
"So basically, some freaky bint brought you two to our time and wants you to prank Fred and George?"
"That's it in a nutshell," James answered his (future) son. "Now the question is, is what are we going to do."
"I mean," Sirius added, "we have a plan, more or less, of attack for the whole prank thing- we never can turn down a challenge, but that girl creeps me out. Freaky bint is right."
"Well, what are we supposed to do about it?" asked Ron. "Seriously, we have our own freaky bint to deal with at the moment."
"Ah, girl trouble?" Sirius inquired sagely.
"I wish," Ron replied with a snort.
"Maybe you do," Harry snapped at his friend, "but not only do I have girl trouble, but I too have to contend with the aforementioned 'freaky bint'."
"Ok," James said, confused, "which freaky bint are we on now?"
"The she-demon otherwise known as Dolores Umbridge," his son answered. "She really must have ticked someone off to have that wand shoved so far up her arse. Not to mention how bloody delusional that witch is." Only he didn't say witch.
"Now who, exactly, is this?" Sirius asked.
Harry and Ron exchanged a look, you know, the kind that says, "Should you tell him, or me?" without saying anything at all. Apparently the decision ended with Ron, as he was the one who replied, "Our current DADA teacher, if you can call her that. To be truthful, she's the anti-teacher."
"So you say," Harry scoffed. "We all know the Ministry put her here just to make my life miserable. Blimey! I'm still in pain from my last 'detention' with her. I really want to murder the person who supplied her with that blasted quill. Enable her to be sadistic, why don't ya?!"
"Ok, I'm lost," Sirius interjected.
"Yes," James agreed, "as scintillating as this conversation is, Padfoot and I have no clue about half the stuff you're talking about."
"Alright, Harry replied, "here's the some-what shortened version: You know how the DADA position is cursed, right?" When the two from the past nodded, he continued, "Well since Dumbledore couldn't find a new teacher for the position, the Ministry provided one instead. The teacher, and I do use that term lightly, is this delusional, racist bint who has it in for me.
"Right now, there's this huge controversy in the wizarding world over Voldemort. Not long after I was born, Voldemort came very close to dying. I mean, he was barely living and disappeared. Well, a lot of people thought he was dead, but last June, he came back and..." Harry trailed off and looked to his friend for any guidance as to how much to say. Ron just shrugged and gave Harry a look that pretty much informed him that he was useless.
Harry sighed, and continued, "He came back, and I saw it happen." Trying to ignore the horrified looks on the faces of his father and godfather, he trudged on, saying, "The Ministry, thinking that I'm some attention-seeking brat, is trying to avoid a scare by telling everyone that Voldemort's still six-feet-under, although to be truthful, he never really was to begin with. Dumbledore, however, believes me and is spreading the word, so the Ministry stripped him of all these titles and is having the Prophet say that he's become a senile, old crackpot.
"For some stupid, power-hungry reason, Cornelius Fudge-for-Brains, the Minister, thinks that Dumbledore wants to use the students as an army and try to take over the Ministry. You and I both know that Dumbledore doesn't want to be Minister, but Fudge-head won't listen to reason. Anyways, our new 'teacher' teaches us absolutely nothing. All we do in class is read out of this stupid theory book. They're basically trying to tell the students that there's nothing outside the school that's going to hurt them when they leave. And when I contradicted this oh-so-brilliant theory in class, I received the first in a line of painful detentions.
"As to what the detentions-from-hell consist of, I pretty much write lines. So for an hour, I'm stuck writing, 'I must not tell lies,' over-and-over again."
"That doesn't sound too bad," Sirius pointed out.
"Oh, you'd think that, wouldn't you?" Harry said with a mirthless laugh. "No, this isn't any ordinary quill she has you use. Instead, you use this freaking quill that writes with your own blood and carves the words into the back of your hand." Except Harry didn't say freaking.
He held out his scarred hand to be examined two very outraged teens. "That witch is going down!" James exclaimed indignantly.
"Oh, that witch is in for hell!" Sirius agreed, quite pissed.
Only they didn't say witch.
"Tell ya what," Ron said with a down right evil look on his face, "you help us get Umbridge, and we'll help you get Fred and George."
"My," Sirius exclaimed, "what a smashing idea!"
"We'll do it!" James agreed eagerly.
The four shook hands, sealing the deal. Summing up the feelings of the four boys, James replied, "The next six days are going to be bloody brilliant!"
~*~
"Ah," said someone, both unseen and unheard. "Four boys making a secret pact in a secret passage." She laughed rather evilly to herself. "And so the plot thickens."
~*~
Meanwhile, blissfully unaware of the plots being plotted, Neville Longbottom skipped the hallways of good ol' Hogwarts, singing random Beatles songs to himself. "It's been a long day's..."
He suddenly stopped. He could've sworn he heard evil laughter coming from the vicinity of the statue of the one-eyed witch (he actually meant witch). After pondering over all the odd occurrences of the past few days, he came to a conclusion.
"Two Harrys, Sirius Black, disembodied maniacal laughter... That can only mean one thing: HOGWARTS IS HAUNTED!!!" And without thinking that Hogwarts was already inhabited by specters, he commenced in running down the corridor, screaming his head off.
AN~ Sorry for all the back-story, but it was kind of necessary. Besides, haven't you ever wondered how James would take the news of how his son was being treated? True to Marauder form, revenge by pranking!
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