Harry Potter: Don't touch

200 gems = bonus chapter

Fully support the story at:

patreon.com/FanFictionPremium

***

In his three and a half years at Hogwarts, three and two ninth years to be exact, Harry had learnt an incredible variety of different spells: useful and useless, situational and universal, combat and household. Potter couldn't explain to himself exactly why he was doing this, because Moody had told him at their first meeting that the emphasis should not be on spells, but on defence against the dark arts. Perhaps his 'obsession' with spells was due to the fact that when he had bought his second wand he had got one that was good for them. Perhaps it still happened at his first spellcasting lesson, where Professor Flitwick, unlike the other teachers, had shown himself to be on the bright side and told him that one of his psychological problems - with fire - could be safely solved by learning a bunch of different spells. Well, or Harry just thought that swinging a stick of wood and saying incomprehensible words was cool. None of that matters. None of the spells Potter had learnt could compare in usefulness to the alluring charms.

The Accio spell could be used in all situations, it could solve any problem that arose, and it required almost no concentration to use. It was enough to point at the desired thing and say "Accio", or in case the thing was not visible, "Accio+name of the thing". It was also possible to set the speed of the item's flight, make the item not fly to you, and more. Harry was already thinking about what would happen if he attracted bludgers to himself during a Quidditch game or, for example, hovered next to Cedric, said "Accio snitch" and flew away. It wasn't a bad idea - he wouldn't have anything to do with it, and Hufflepuff would finally win the championship with his help. Cedric was graduating this year, so Seeker would be someone else, and it was unlikely that any spells would work on the snitch... Although Rapido worked on the bludger, so maybe something would work on the golden ball. But Potter decided not to experiment on the Quidditch pitch, he wasn't playing clean enough as it was, and then there were these new spell combinations. Soon he might even try to write a book called 'A Thousand and One Ways to Break the Rules of Quidditch'... Or is there already such a thing?

Anyway, a tantalising spell could solve any problems.

Can't reach the textbook? Accio textbook!

Textbook flew at you with too much speed and hit you in the head? No problem! Accio first aid kit!

Can't find the medicine you need in the first aid kit? Accio "name of medicine"!

Is the medicine not working? Accio Madame Pomfrey!

Harry had mastered this spell at the end of September, and had only been using it for a month. However, Potter himself was well aware that during that month, everyone was getting really sick of things flying around the living room when he tried to perfect this spell... Still, Harry couldn't help himself. The tantalising spells were too convenient not to use, and if they could be improved, it would be something. That was what Harry thought as he used the spell fifty times a day.

Sometimes there were mishaps with it. Once Potter had decided before his astronomy test that he had Riddle's diary somewhere in his bag and, deciding not to look for it so as not to draw attention to himself, had used the tantalising spell. He only realised that he had forgotten Riddle in the Wishing Room when he crashed through the door of the classroom. He'd somehow managed to escape the room and fly halfway across Hogwarts without even hitting anyone. Probably...

On the eighth of October, Harry's flask rolled under the table in the middle of lunch. Of course, Potter didn't go after it and used Accio out of habit. And it seemed that nothing bad was going to happen, in this case everything was going to end well, but for some reason the flask decided to rush at Harry at lightning speed. It was only because of his experience as a paddler that he was able to dodge the projectile, which flew further down the Great Hall and broke the leg of the Gryffindor dining table. Well, the one that didn't fall only thanks to Professor McGonagall's intervention. She hadn't even taken Potter's points off after the incident. In fact, after Harry had passed the oral transfiguration exam with flying colours, the Vice-Principal had started to treat him very favourably.

However, that favour had to be seriously tested, because the very next day Potter was caught teaching Hagrid's rooster to fly. If it could be called that, of course, Harry was tossing it up and trying to keep it in the air with tantalising charms.

After another week of dense work on this spell, Potter had succeeded - he had perfected it. Using Runes and the verbal addition "maxima", the work of which had already been confirmed by the example of many spells - Lumos, Bombard and others - Harry got a spell that had a much greater speed of attraction than any of the existing spells. A day after the invention, as a result of a botched prank, Finch-Fletchley was unable to attend a Defence Against the Dark Arts class. An invisible force drew him to the bed and he, no matter how hard he tried to defeat the force of attraction, stayed in the bedroom.

Because of Potter and this experiment, Hufflepuff lost twenty points, and Ernie Macmillan, at Professor Stebl's insistence, even had a discussion with him about how badly he had done to his friend. Ernie stated that all bad deeds come back later. However, this particular act came back in a strange way. The next day, Finch-Fletchley, to whom Potter had of course told everything about the invention, repeated Harry's trick, only already with Macmillan.

This time the Hufflepuff lost thirty points at once, but such punishment did not stop Justin, and he, encouraged by Potter's "marvellous invention", that same evening told Fred and George about the new improved alluring charms, as well as how it could be used to make "attraction traps". Within a couple of days, everyone seemed to have mastered the technique, and a war of attraction began in Gryffindor. Soon the Ravenclaw faculty joined the battle, who were obviously only too happy to learn something new about a spell they were familiar with.

However, that was the end of it, Dumbledore himself had to intervene, and he personally invented a counterspell for Potter's invented Accio Maxima.

By the way, after that, Hufflepuff, or to be more precise, Potter was charged with fifty more points for incitement. Harry started to resent that the punishment was unfair and he was just experimenting and didn't mean anything by it, but he didn't get his points back. McGonagall and Flitwick, the deans of the faculties where the riots had occurred, were on his side, but the head of Hufflepuff, Steble, whose voice regarding Hufflepuff students was valued more highly than that of the other deans, did not trust Harry much and thought that he had set the whole thing up on purpose. The situation could have been fairly resolved by Professor Snape, but he spoke in his own way, suggesting that Harry be kicked out of the school, lest he do something else.

Potter took offence at this injustice and, so to speak, retaliated by telling Fred and George about how to cheat the Goblet of Fire, and now they intended to take part in the Tournament... I wonder if Durmstrang and Beauxbaton would take offence at Hogwarts when it fielded five champions instead of one?

At the same time, Harry kept trying to refine his invigorating spell. The progress was barely noticeable: Potter had three failures to his credit, and he thought he had accounted for all his mistakes and everything should work, but the verbal wording "Aveik" stubbornly refused to make the spell work. Alas, modifying an existing spell was much easier than inventing his own. Because of his failed attempts, Harry was often up at night and would often sleep through his History of Magic class. One day in the middle of class he was woken up by a loud shout of "Constant Vigilance!". This woke Potter up instantly and in a panic he launched a stunner roughly where the sound had come from. Getting hit by the spell was unlucky for Susan Bones. Even though Potter had immediately used the Enervite counterspell, from that day onwards the girl had tried to sit as far away from Harry as possible.

And Potter had once again managed to get away with the incident. Professor Beans hadn't even noticed that in the middle of the lesson, one of his students had stunned another. The source of the shout of "Constant Vigilance", as it soon turned out, was Tonks' gift - a talking eye, which Potter had already forgotten about. Fred and George had been interested in the eye, and Harry had sold it to the restless couple for a couple of Knuts.

At two o'clock in the morning on Saturday, just before the other school's students arrived, Harry successfully completed his spell under Riddle's guidance. This he immediately decided to notify Finch-Fletchley about. It wasn't the best idea, since it wasn't his first dream, but Potter didn't think about that at the time, he wanted to share his long-awaited success.

- Justin, wake up, I've invented a spell. In fourth year! I don't think even Dumbledore achieved such success so early!

Finch-Fletchley threw something akin to "Piss off, I want to sleep," but it didn't reassure Potter.

- Aveik! - He exclaimed, pointing his wand at Justin. - You don't want to anymore! Pretty cool, huh? Accio!

Finch-Fletchley flew out of bed and found himself in front of Harry. He stared at Potter in surprise.

- Wow... It's really working! Not a wink of sleep in sight! - Finch-Fletchley also appeared impressed and genuinely pleased with Harry's success. - It's like... I don't even know what to compare it to. It's really working!

- Guys, stop shouting," Ernie said, keeping his eyes closed. - Go to bed, we have to clean the school tomorrow before the foreign students arrive.

- Aveik! - Harry pointed his wand at Ernie. - Get up and stay awake!

After a ten minute discussion of the prospects, Finch-Fletchley asked Potter to cast a counterspell on him so he could still sleep. And that's where one unaccounted-for problem came to light.

- Wait a minute... I take it you don't have a way to undo this invigorating heresy, do you? - the coolest thing in the world turned into heresy in a second.

- Well, it turns out there is," Harry admitted. - I hadn't thought of that. I could try finite. Finite! Finite! Did it work?

- No!

- Then how are we supposed to go back to sleep? - Ernie stared sadly at the bed.

- Well..." Harry thought for a moment. - Not for the next five hours.

- Great! - Finch-Fletchley characterised the situation and left the bedroom.

Still, despite the little misunderstanding, Harry's friends were genuinely happy for him.

Finally, on the thirtieth of October, the Beauxbaton and Durmstrang students arrived at school. They appeared epically: the French came in a flying carriage, and the students from the 'Whereabouts Unknown' came out in a ship... From under the lake? Harry saw no other explanation for the appearance of the Durmstrang students, but he soon wondered how the ship could have ended up under Hogwarts Lake, and surmised a few more possibilities. However, he still didn't see how it was possible: to move a bunch of people a great distance at once.

Because of the cool appearance of the foreign students, Harry expected them all to be unusual too. However, here he was in for a major disappointment. The headmasters, Madame Maxime and Karkaroff, were ordinary people - half-humans? - who could hardly compare in unusualness to Dumbledore. Of the students, Potter liked the French the best: all the boys were different from each other, and the girls were in beautiful robes and attracted attention. He even held his gaze on one of them for thirty seconds and could only take his eyes off her when she was out of sight. Immediately afterwards, Potter felt ashamed and guilty in front of Zhou, who had fallen ill and had been in the Hospital Wing for a day and a half.

The Durmstrang students, on the other hand, were wrapped up in warm clothes, and for the most part, they didn't look much different from normal students. One of the boys, however, turned out to be a famous Quidditch player, one Victor Kram. Ron Weasley had successfully alerted everyone to this. Potter had never heard of him and was mildly interested, but when he found out that Krum was a Seeker, not a corraler, he quickly lost interest. Seekers stronger than Zhou didn't exist in this world anyway.

Still, Potter wasn't too disappointed; yes, Tonks and Moody were still the most extraordinary individuals, but the appearance of the students had revitalised the atmosphere of Hogwarts. And instead of the usual selection of food, there were unusual overseas dishes. Harry had great fun trying different mismatched dishes together. He spotted a sweet green powder with an obscure foreign name and decided that he would ask Naudia to make it for him and the Elemental sometime. Soon dessert was served, which Potter unfortunately didn't have room in his stomach for and was bored for a while, but Finch-Fletchley had inadvertently mentioned that because of his aristocratic background he had been taught many languages, French being one of them. So Harry dragged Justin to the claw table to socialise with the Charmbatonians.

Harry enjoyed socialising with older students from another country. During that evening, Harry had learnt twenty-six French words and learned seventeen new French spells from his new friend, one Evette Roux, who also intended to participate in the Tournament of Three Wizards. She, like Harry, wanted to practice, so the latter had offered to do a magical duel in a couple of days and... been turned down.

Justin, on the other hand, was... Justin... He spent most of the time just translating Harry's sentences, but somehow he managed to get into a fight with two Beauxbaton students - they didn't like the joke about white napkins being placed so that the French could wave them around in case they were attacked by Hogwarts students. And with the very French girl that Harry had glared at, and with whom he had not risked socialising, he had even made a bet in which whoever was chosen by the Goblet to take part in the Tournament would win. Then Finch-Fletchley started saying something loudly in French, and the story didn't much please all the Charmbatonians sitting around, even the rather soft-hearted Evette Roux threw in something not very nice - probably - in French. So Harry made the decision to evacuate Finch-Fletchley back to the Hufflepuff table in an emergency. With that, the introduction to the French ended.

After the meal, the official opening of the Tournament took place: what Harry already knew was explained to everyone. But the forbidden line that had been drawn by Dumbledore himself and the information about only twenty-four hours to decide whether or not to participate in the Tournament came as a rather unpleasant surprise to Potter. Moody hadn't told him about any forbidden line! And twenty-four hours wasn't enough time to figure out a way around it. Especially since it would be necessary to throw the name into the Cup at night - no one should see them.

How to solve this problem, Harry still didn't understand. He arranged for Fred and George to meet him outside the hall at three o'clock in the morning; thanks to the invigorating spell, staying awake until then was no problem. Potter had also decided to bring an invisibility cloak, because if someone like them tried to put their name in the Goblet deep in the night, they would be in trouble, but this way they could always hide under the cloak. The four of them... Okay, that would probably be a problem too.