The Marauding Champions

Chapter 8:

Diverging Stories

George Weasley woke to a soft swaying motion, as if he were in a rocking cradle. For a moment he entertained the possibility that he was lucid dreaming and reliving a memory from his infanthood, before he opened his eyes to see the familiar red canopy and curtains of his bed in Gryffindor tower. The smell of salt water also dissuaded him of that idea.

He then experienced a brief second of panic at discovering he was deaf and couldn't hear the usual singing of birds outside, until he reached up and discovered a pair of earmuffs. With those removed he was met not only with the beautiful morning serenade of mother nature, but the lapping of water upon wood. If that wasn't enough to set off every prank alarm in his head then the sight of someone peaking through the curtains from the corner of his eye certainly tipped him off.

They retreated as he turned to see them but he was quick in flinging open the curtains to persue them, only to be met with three pairs of curious eyes and the vast length of the black lake stretching to the horizon.

"Er, hello there?" He greeted the mer-children awkwardly.

The small, green, scaly little-girls retreated into the water until they were submerged up to their noses. And with their mouths covered by water the giggles came up through the surface in an eerie echo. All the while their eyes never left his.

One of them mumbled something he couldn't quite catch until he lowered his head over the edge of the water until his ear practically scraped the small, choppy waves. He beckoned for her to repeat herself.

"Can we keep you?" Her voice, muffled by the water, pleaded with all sincerity.

This was getting weird; Fast.

"Keep me? Whatever would the three of you want with a pillock like me?" George asked in his child-talking voice.

They burst into another fit of giggles and he took a moment to examine them. All three had dark hair and the same almond eyes, though they were each slightly different shades of green and one was chubby. The oldest couldn't be more than than seven.

They were also all completely naked, which would make him uncomfortable in any other situation, but with them swimming in the lake they reminded George of a simpler time when Ron and Ginny were their ages and still happy to let their older brothers bathe them. Moreso Ginny than Ron, he was always a pain to coax into the tub.

"We want you so we can play Rescue The Prince properly."

With a bit of encouragement they explained that 'Rescue the Prince" was a game in which one of them would play the prince be tied to a post, a second would play the role of guardian to hide the post and prince(ideally in a dangerous part of the lake) and try to stop the third person from rescuing them within the hour. The prince player would sing to lead the heroin to her blushing husband to be, the guardian would set up obstacles and the heroine had to get to the prince within the hour.

This being George's first foray into mer culture couldn't have been the best introduction.

"Okay... But why me?" He finally asked after learning the rules of the game

"Because, you have the same hair as that beautiful man who was brought down during the task." The chubby one, who had been quiet up until then, admitted.

"He was rescued with the pretty silver birdie by the green-eyed one." A second said.

"We tried to use kelp as wigs, but it just wasn't the right shade of orange red. You would be so much better." A third explained.

Then it all clicked into place.

Apparently his little brother had made quite an impression on the female populace of mer-people within the lake. Which presented a perfect opportunity to escape this potentially dangerous situation.

"I can do you one better." He told them mischievously. "That beautiful man from the task was none other than my youngest brother, and he would be overjoyed to be your prince once again."

He may as well have just delivered them the location of the lost city of Atlantis - a city merfolk were even more obsessed with finding than Muggle or wizard archeologists - for how happy that little offer made them. Now all he had to do was somehow get back to shore and figure out a way to convince(blackmail) one of the tournament organizers(Percy) into coughing up the potion they had used to put the hostages under water. Then it was only a matter of kidnapping his bath-hating twerp of a little brother and delivering him to the scaly heroines.

His conniving thoughts were interrupted as another bed floated into view near his own, not ten feet away.

The sight of his brother laying in it was no surprise. The mermaid laying beside him caressing his hair with a finger did. For a short moment George felt slightly envious at the fact his brother got a full grown maid cooing over him instead of three little ones. But being above water the cooing was more of a clicking sound. It reminded George of that time they snuck out to the cinema to watch a movie about a buff Austrian man fighting some alien hunter in a rainforest. She sounded just like that alien.

On closer inspection Fred was not only awake, but had a smile that was all cheek but no teeth. The kind of smile that projected relaxation and smugness, to the point George was surprised not to hear purring coming from his better half. The only thing lacking from the scene in front of him was for the mermaid to be feeding him grapes.

Thankfully his brother was still fully clothed in his pyjamas.

"You know George." Fred called out to him as he cracked open an eye. "I reckon it might be time to beg the new Marauders for a ceasefire."

George glanced around at the vast length of water surrounding them and the castle far into the distance. They had floated so far downstream that they had nearly exited the lake into the river that drained out to sea. If they'd woken up an hour later their return trip to Hogwarts would have taken an entire day.

"I reckon you might be right, Fred."

Hermione wandered the room of hidden things in a daze.

She had never been one to believe in fate, or destiny or anything to do with divination really. But this, Marauder Curse and complimentary Rival Curse was very real. Destined to foil one another, and in her case, marry one another.

One one hand Hermione was ecstatic to learn that she was destined to wed her fuzzy boyfriend, that was solidly in the good news. Hell, even a wide-eyed, socially awkward pre-pubescent Hermione fresh off of the Hogwarts express would have taken one look at the curly locks on Viktor's chest and declared 'I like that! And I don't even know why yet.' Fortunately Hermione wasn't a preteen schoolgirl, she was deep in the throngs of puberty and the maelstrom of hormones that came with it. As such, she knew exactly why she liked that.

She parsed through the piles of hidden journals and diaries detailing experiments by prior generations of Rivals. They detailed experiments in spell creation, potion invention, ingredient preparation and much much more. Failed experiments outnumbered successful ones 12 to 1, but wasn't that the point of experimenting? If she were in the right frame of mind she would be pouring over them and testing the methodologies of her predecessors with the same fervor with which she would run her fingers through those aforementioned chest curls, if he would only let her.

Sadly, she wasn't in the right frame of mind, why?

The fate of the Marauders.

Harry was doomed to either die at the hand of a fellow Marauder, commit suicide, kill one of them or be estranged from them all. He was probably safe from the terrible fate of marrying her, Viktor was most assuredly condemned to that sticky end, but that was little consolation.

Strangely enough she was pretty sure Harry wasn't in any danger of being killed by a fellow Marauder. But that came with the caveat that the reason she believed such was because all of the other outcomes would hurt him so much worse, or in the case of suicide, seemed so much more likely.

Her wanderings took her to a section of the stadium-sized room that was filled with busts and in-tact furniture for sitting and reading.

The sweet, heart-on-sleeve syndrome boy with the saving-people-thing had lived a hard life. She sometimes caught him staring off into space as his mind dovetailed into that dark, dusty cupboard under the stairs. But it wasn't his tendency to fall into periodic depression that made her concerned for potential suicidal tendencies. No, he was too resilient, and too strong of heart to fall to his own inner demons.

In her apsent-minded rifling of objects she discovered a stash of lost or stolen jewelry and began searching through it for something that suited her. She had enough frame of mind to realize some of it may very well be cursed, and snatched up a piece of silk laying nearby(telling enough, the most ideal material for handling cursed objects) before continuing.

Her reasons for being concerned for potential suicidal tendencies was much simpler. Ending his own life to save another was EXACTLY the kind of thing Harry would do. Images of Harry ripping out his own beating heart to put it into Ron's open chest in the middle of a battlefield, or removing his own head to meet the demands of a Death Eater in exchange for the lives of hostages haunted her as she picked up a lovely silver diadem.

More hauntingly were the other possibilities brought on by this curse.

Logically suicide seemed the obvious choice, but the fact that being forced to kill his lover or friend, or worse, be estranged from them were such worse fates for him to suffer made her feel - not think, feel - that they were more likely. Sometimes reason and evidence budged and made way for superstition informed by experience to take the lead. Fate's tendency to bend Harry Potter over the most uncomfortable surfaces and ream him in the most delicate of orifaces told her that those terrible ends were what awaited her best friend.

"But vut I don't understand is vut the two of you have to do vith this curse." Poliakoff interrupted her musings. "Mister Filch I can understand, you are surely a former rival yourself, but Peeves is a poltergeist. You were never alive to begin with."

The topic was such that it caught Hermione's interest enough to bring her out of her increasingly morbid musings. Lost in her own mind she hadn't even noticed that Poliakoff, Peeves, Filch and Mrs Norris had been following her through the stacks. She tossed aside the silk cloth and myriad of jewelry contained within it and added her own two cents.

"Indeed. Poltergeists are the manifestations of the collective mischief within a place. How are you involved in all of this? Wouldn't you be a companion to the Marauders? The greatest source of mischief in history?"

Both Filch and Peeves grew increasingly wide, and increasingly disquieting grins as she finished phrasing her question.

"You are mistaken, Mister Poliakoff." Filch informed her fellow rival. "I too am a poltergeist, as is Mrs Norris."

Hermione could do nothing more than blink at him

"But, but you're nothing like a poltergeist!" She practically yelled. "You're grumpy, and obsessed with corporal punishment and catching rule breakers!"

"Ah!" Said Peeves, holding up a knowing finger. "But you see, you are also mistaken, but only in your understanding of what a poltergeist is. What you just described is a very particular, and the most common, type of poltergeist. It is as accurate as describing a plant as a living organism incapable of locomotion, green in color, and which reproduces by means of fruiting flowers."

"Meanwhile there are plants whom are red in pigment and reproduce by fragmentation, like certain breeds of algae, or who resemble what Peeves just described save for the lack of flowers, like ferns." Filch explained.

Hermione digested this new information, reworded it and paraphrased it in her mind in as many ways as she could conceive of, and tried to expand on the ideas it brought up.

"So, like Peeves, you are the culmination of some abstract force in the school." She declared, and to which both of the poltergeists nodded. "But instead of mischief you're the rules and the intend behind them made flesh."

Filch clapped and gave her the first genuine smile she had ever seen on his face.

"That is exactly right! Save you missed that I am the misery, shame and resentment of students caught or punished for misdeeds." He expanded.

"What about shame and remorse for the bad deeds?" Poliakoff pressed.

"There has been about enough of those two emotions during all of the detentions in the last ten centuries to fill a thimble." Filch answered with a perfectly straight face. "If even that."

Even Hermione couldn't bring herself to argue against that irrefutable fact.

"And Mrs Norris?" She asked.

"This may seem a little abstract, but she is the nature of tamed and broken animals. The collective domestication of the cats, owls and toads within these walls." Peeves offered.

Now that the cat's nature was pointed out to her she couldn't unsee the chimerism. Those big, yellow, unblinking eyes like lamps in the night could have been plucked from Hedwig's skull and transplanted, and her ability to turn her head at a one hundred and eighty degree angle like an owl. It made sense her appearance would most resemble a cat, the most common pet brought to Hogwarts, and an owl, the second most common. Toads were so rare that Hermione was sure the only way to find any features she shared with the amphibians would be to pet her and check for bumps or warts.

"She has a twin, the hidden and caged wildness and internal feral nature of all the pets in the castle. He usually sleeps all day unless you poke him." Peeves explained. "But BOY is he a riot to be around once poked."

It didn't sound like a being Hermione would like to encounter.

"We keep him locked up in a hidden corridor on the third floor." Filch added. "We used to let him out on the school grounds at night to guard the school. Those were funner days. But he killed one too many students who were out after hours."

Oh... Hermione imagined a giant spirit of a three-headed dog would be a good defense from thieves, wpuld-be-kidnappers and assassins.

"I thought Fluffy belonged to Hagrid?" Hermione pressed.

The three poltergeists all blinked at her in surprise to learn that she knew of Fluffy.

"He might as well." Mrs Norris answered; the sound of her high pitched voice, not to mention the revelation that she COULD speak making both Hermione and Poliakoff jump in surprise. "They met one summer when the students and their pets were away. Without them here both my brother and I revert to much weakened forms. And I assure you, as a puppy the size of a pumpkin my brother does justice to the name Rubeus bequeathed him."

Hermione merely stared at the talking cat. This new information could be registered and filed at a later date.

"He thought the poor thing was an actual Cerberus pup that a student smuggled into the castle and abandoned. They bonded instantly, and the lovable oath has come closer to taming him than any other person in history." Norris continued. "But then again, nobody else has ever tried. Albus had to train Rubeus in lying in order to tell that higswallop about him buying it from a Greacian. All subsequent attempts to teach Hagrid how to lie have met with failure."

Okay, the novelty of a talking Mrs Norris had worn off. Information registered. Avalanche of questions incoming.

"How many poltergeists are there!?" She gasped.

"Hundreds." Peeves explained simply. "Some of them take the form of objects or live within portraits. Many pretend to be ghosts, like professor Binns."

That one she had to think about... Right. Ghosts can't pickup chalk and write on a blackboard, nor pick up a book and drone on about it.

"Academic boredome personified?" She asked.

"Academic boredome plain and simple." Filch answered.

Now Hermione couldn't stop thinking about all of the possible poltergeists within the castle. From that one time she saw the ghost of a witch pick up book to read it, to how Sir Cadogen always seemed to make people more lost than they were before asking him for help.

Then there were the implications of poltergeists outside of Hogwarts. Were there beings born of the collective ideals and abstract philosophies of the entire human race? Love, lust, justice... Death? Such beings formed of the collective views and experiences of natural phenomina or strange ideas would be, simply put, gods. With a lowercase g, of course.

But then again, if belief in God with an uppercase G became as widespread as the belief in death - that is to say, truly universal - then would humanities collective belief in him make him so? Then again, it doesn't require all of humanities belief to make it real, if these god poltergeists already exist, and they surely do, then would everyone see their effects?

Then she thought about it further, and realized that they do. The Christians, synonymous with Europeans, who believe in a god that is universally good and loving, and whose ethics apply to everyone regardless of race, creed or position in life. As such it was and is within Christian and European societies that science, medicine, universal human rights and economic prosperity developed and prospered. The Hindus believe in a god that cherishes even the most humble of lifestyles, and as such they live in peace and with purpose even within poverty. On the other end there are the Muslims who worship a god they outright call "The Great Deceiver" who cherishes war and madness... Yeah, that definitely pans out. All gods are real, for good or Ill.

This certainly paints religious wars of the past in a new light.

And so her meloncholy at the news of Harry's potential fates vanished and she was finally able to properly take in the grandeur of the room of hidden things, making notes in her own journal regarding her thoughts as she did so. The following hour was filled with nothing but the sound of Hermione and Poliakoff rummaging through long forgotten briefcases of former Rivals and the turning of pages as they scoured their books.

"Our predecessors." Poliakoff eventually asked. "Did they really make all of this? Were some of them carpenters, or tailors?"

There were an unimaginable amount of clothes and furniture in here. Not to mentioned textbooks that seemed to be barely used and lacking in the usual notes and alterations of people like the Half-Blood Prince and his companion Nucifera, or others with less rediculous nicknamed like the duo "Bumblebee and Heidrun."

"The house-elves use the place too, mostly to discard of destroyed furniture, tapestries or unclaimed lost and found." Filch explained.

Poliakoff nodded at the explanation.

"I suppose that explains vhy I keep finding obviously sentimental photos and objects that I cannot imagine people throwing avay." Poliakoff muttered as he rifled through some photos.

Hermione had noticed that too, but shrugged it off.

"Oh no, most of those are the belongings of people who died and did not have next of kin to take ownership of it." Norris corrected. "The piles of paraphernalia tend to expand rapidly during times of war or famine."

Well that sobered her good mood. Poliakoff quite literally shook off the chill and pushed on into a change of subject.

"So, explain to us vut it is we must do?"

Peeves shrugged.

"Invent and innovate. Name any great inventor or innovator in British history, and odds are you will find a Rangers like yourselves." Norris said.

"Ranger?" Hermione prodded.

"Yes. That is what you are called. A foil to the Marauder's, who themselves are the foil to the authority of teachers and faculty. The possibility of those in power abusing that power made the Marauders necessary. But the question must be asked, who watches the watchers?" Mrs Norris continued. "And the answer, is you."

Oh that was such a beautiful turn of phrase. Hermione wrote that down.

"Anti-cheating quils?" Poliakoff asked.

"Invented by a Ranger. Improved by a Ranger. Improved by another Ranger. Improved again by another Ranger. Improved again by another ranger..." Peeves prattled on.

Hermione ignored him and pressed on.

"Sneakoscope?" She asked

"Edgar Stroulgar. Ranger." Filch confirmed.

"Volvesbane potion?" Asked poliakoff.

"Domacles Belby, Ranger." Mrs Norris confirmed.

"I find myself salivating at the chance to read their notes on the process they went through to invent these things." Hermione confessed.

Filch raised his arms and indicated the room of junk around them.

"Look around. It's all here. Part of your responsibility as a ranger is to leave your legacy behind for future generations." Filch said.

"And as for the foiling of the Marauders? Who are they, vat are they?" Poliakoff asked.

Oh right, he wasn't in on that.

"Harry Potter, Fleur Delacour, Cedric Diggory and Viktor Krum. Pranksters and Animagi. The previous generation was Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs." Hermione answered. "I'll explain later, for now I want to know what we're supposed to do to oppose them."

"Simple. Prank them. Keep the pranksters humble, lest they become too brazen and thus dangerous in their schemes." Mrs Norris explained. She turned her attention from Hermione to Poliakoff. "You must be extremely careful not to reveal your existence to them. When Marauders and Rangers war the results can be dangerous. They have likely already realized that either Miss Granger or Miss Chang will be one by simple deduction, but you will be safe from too vacuous of retaliation due to your relationship with Mr Krum."

Poliakoff gave an exaggerated shiver.

"I feel strongly inadequate and ill-equipped to the task of matching the skill, brilliance, luck and perseverance of that quartet." He confessed. "Even with the help of Miss Granger. How are just two of us supposed to match the Katru-vizard Champions?"

Peeves gave a loud whoop and a laugh.

"Oh silly boy, you two are not just two! You are legion!" He screamed to the ceiling. "The castle is your ally, and the knowledge of a two thousand prior Rangers are at your beck and call!"

The chamber rumbled with his booming voice and several piles of junk came tumbling down from the force of his voice alone.

Somebody make Peeves a Quidditch mascot, because good God did he know how to give a pep talk!

"Then let us get to vork!" Poliakoff announced. "We must be ready to foil them in whatever scheme they are no doubt concocting at this very moment!"

"Look out!"

Sirius' warning came too late as the latest ball of blue flame singed right through Viktor's thick, Hungarian jacket. Harry and Cedric had the frame of mind to blast him with their fire extinguishers, as provided by Remus Lupin for this little game.

You see, Harry, Cedric and Viktor were on one team, armed with fire extinguishers. Their opponent? A fire-weilding, fully-trabsformed Veela. The goal? To extinquish the balls of flesh-melting flames before they melted the flesh off of their faces.

The potion had worked on his girlfriend in ways they couldn't have imagined. The wings jutting from her back, the feathers covering every orifice of her body, and the fires of hell itself she summoned into her hands and breathed through her nostrils were all so very impressive. Most would see her and be filled with terror. Harry thought she looked hotter than she'd ever been before. Both figuritively, and very literally.

Fleur, in her majestic, transformed state, screeched yet again and flung a pair of fire balls directly at Harry himself. Two quick squeezes of the handle later and those flames were quenched by the thick foam that erupted from the nozzle.

It is widely said that those who play stupid games win stupid prises. Harry wondered what people who lost stupid games get?

Harry wouldn't know. He was winning.

Notes and Apology:

I feel so ashamed. This chapter took a grand total of five hours to write and edit. Cumulatively. I could give you all of the excuses in the world. About how the pandemic got in the way, how I had to get a full-time job working manual labor during this crisis of idiocy and was left exhausted and unmotivated.

But the fact of the matter is, I have been a lazy shit and just writing one hour a day I would have been able to finish this chapter months ago. Well I'm now typing for two hours every day, sometimes more, despite 8 hr a day spent studying or working. Expect much more consistent writing from me people. I'm no longer a slave to my muse, she MY bitch now.

Reviews:

stevefocus Wrote:

I like this story but their marauder names are so bad every time I read them I laugh, how much did you drink before deciding on them

Response:

I have an impossibly high alcohol tolerance. I don't drink as a result, because most of it tastes like crap and I can't even get drunk. I'm sick before I'm tipsy. Viktor on the other hand? He was high as a kite when he came up with the nicknames.

H Max Marius Wrote:

Harry Turns to Victor, "Hey, where's Cedric?"

Meanwhile, Fleur and her Fireside Girls (Hermione and Cho) are all cooing over his plush pelt

Response:

I had to Google who the fireside girls were and then it took me a few minutes to figure out what Phineas and Ferb had to do with Cedric and company. Please understand, I'm 27 years old as of yesterday(Yes, I finished this chapter on my birthday. You're welcome) so Phineas and Ferb were juuuuust after my time.

MavtheMustang Wrote:

What is it with authors allowing cunts to take whatever the fuck they want from guys with no repercussions? Seriously, enough of that shit.

Response:

I'm usually more eloquent than this, but the only response I can muster to your review is "What!?"

Seriously, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Could you please elaborate?