Harry Potter: The Witty Wizard

As the real Harry, now with everything set up, turned away from the pensieve and went to the lounge, he loudly replied, "Damned straight!" Then picked up his novel, turned and carefully sat on the lounger, before then swinging his legs around to lie on it.

"I'm ready!" he loudly declared, opening the novel and lying back to read it.

"Alright!" declared Memory-Harry, from where it looked like it was watching him. It turned back to 'face front' facing the judges table, drew his wand and held it to swear an oath. He intoned, "I, Harrison James Potter, swear on my magic and my life that the memories you're about to see played over the course of the beginning of my first task of the 1994 Tri-Wizard Tournament are a true account of my actual memories. As I say, so I swear, so let it be written!"

Real-Harry looked up for a moment, gave a snort, and returned to reading his book.

"Now that the oath is out of the way," said Memory-Harry, tucking his wand away again. "Let's get on with them.

"Since this is going to take quite a while you should all know before we begin that there is no time limit on completing the task. I can take as long as I want. And I intend to do just that.

"So, if you had plans on leaving within the next fifteen minutes or so, I'll disabuse you of that belief right now. You're going to be sitting there for a while.

"If you need to visit the loo, do so. Just don't make a scene or any noise while you do. Leave and return... quietly. Remember, if you distract me, it may cost you your magic."

Memory-Harry let that hang for a moment before he continued. "Many of you, at least those who were students during that year, have been left wondering just what happened in Hogwarts during the last few weeks of the 1991-92 school year. You've probably heard a great deal of rumours. For example, what really happened to Professor Quirinus Quirrell? You may even have started one or two of them yourselves. Now you're going to learn the truth. Watch as I show you Harry's... my... memories of just what happened.

"However, before we get to that and keeping this part of things chronological, I'm going to show you a few scenes of what happened during the year leading up to that."

"First is the troll incident of Hallowe'en, 1991. This is what happened in the Great Hall during the Feast."

The memory was a short 'clip' of the students and staff all enjoying the feast when Quirrell ran into the Hall and wailed about a troll loose in the dungeons, before then fake-fainting. Then all the students panicking and Dumbledore standing up and roaring for silence. The students calming down. Dumbledore ordering the prefects to lead the Houses back to their common rooms. And the students beginning to file out a lot more orderly than there were only a few seconds earlier.

"Right," said Memory-Harry, coming back. "What's wrong with the scene you just watched? First: When Quirrell apparently fainted, the first thing I wanted to do was laugh. Why? Because he's supposed to be our DADA Professor and he's fainting because he saw a troll? Yeah, right. And, secondly, the way he supposedly fainted was so fake I thought he was performing comedy. People, included witches and wizards, do not faint like that. They topple forward like a bloody tree. And when it's on a hard surface like the flagstones of the Hall, they'll usually break their nose, teeth, jaw or similar.

"Next, Dumbledore ordered the prefects to lead their Houses back to their common rooms. If I wasn't so stunned as to the absolute stupidity of that I'd have probably laughed right there, irrespective of laughing at Quirrell's comedy faint. 'Dumb-dumb-dore' obviously couldn't care less for the safety and well-being of the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, because he'd just ordered the prefects of both Houses to lead their housemates into the dungeons seconds after being told that's where a bloody troll was!"

Memory-Harry allowed that to percolate through the minds of the audience before he continued.

"Now while we Gryffindors were being led back up to the Gryffindor Tower by that pompous arse, Percy Weasley - and there's a young man who has his head stuck so far up his own arse it's amazing he can see anything - I already knew that my House- and Year-mate, Hermione Granger, had not been at the feast. Therefore, I easily deduced she would not be aware of the danger. I had also earlier overheard two of my housemates say she was in the girls' bathroom on the second floor, crying her eyes out.

"So, I grabbed the person who was responsible for her crying her eyes out in the first place - Ronald Weasley - and dragged him off in search of her, once we reached the second floor.

"Just as we reached the second floor... Well, watch for yourselves."

Memory-Harry faded away again and up in the same space began the memory of that incident, starting with the two boys running down the corridor towards the bathroom.

It caught the sound of Hermione screaming in terror; the two boys running into the bathroom; a quick plan to try and get Hermione out of there and out of danger; Harry managing to scramble up on the troll's back and shove his wand up its nose; Ron levitating the club and dropping it on the troll's head, knocking it out; and the teachers turning up a few seconds later. It ended there.

Memory-Harry popped back up and said, "And that's how we became three."

There was a slight pause while he let that cogitate before moving on.

"This next one is a detention Hermione, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy and I received after the first two and I were helping a friend out late at night. Draco Malfoy received his because Minerva McGonagall justly realised he had to also be out of his common room past curfew to have seen us to dob us in to her.

"At that point I thought McGonagall might not be as dumb as most wizards and witches had already proven to me they were. However, her detention proved she actually was as dumb as I think most magicals are, after all. And this is what happened."

The image changed into the four first years with Hagrid and his dog, Fang, going into the Forbidden Forest to find what was killing the unicorns; them splitting up under Hagrid's orders; Harry and Malfoy coming across 'something' feeding on the blood of an injured unicorn; it attacking them; and the immediate aftermath with the centaurs, before fading away.

"Now, colour me wrong," said Memory-Harry. "But, I was under the impression the Forbidden Forest was, in fact, forbidden. So, what the bloody hell was going through the minds of the staff of Hogwarts to have the school gamekeeper, a man no longer permitted to use a wand, take four eleven year olds with little to no magical education and trudge through the Forbidden Forest... at night... and going after something dangerous enough to injure or kill unicorns?

"Is it any wonder that, by then, my opinion of adult magicals left a lot to be desired? Even back then, as far as I was concerned adult witches and wizards are stupid!"

"Professor McGonagall told us, while we waited in the antechamber off the Entrance Hall before our Sortings, that our Houses would be like our families. If that's the way families treat each other in the wizarding world, I find myself relieved I'm an only-child orphan!"

Pausing for a sigh, he continued, "Moving on! We now come to a few days short of the end of the school year. This is what had most people wondering what had happened to Quirinus Quirrell. And, what the bloody hell was down that out-of-bounds third floor corridor.

"We start from just after Hermione, Ron and I have entered that corridor. We were under the mistaken impression Severus Snape was trying to steal what we'd already learned to be Flamel's Philosopher's Stone being protected in that corridor."