Master of Death, Lover Witches

The early morning was very dark, quite cold, and a tad wet as five drowsy teens and a drowsy man staggered up a grassy green hillock. There was another boy with them, but he hardly qualified as drowsy; in fact, he seemed so excited about something or other that he was belting out a song.

"The wheels on the Night Bus go round and round, round and round, round and round!"

His head lolled from side to side as he sang, and somehow, the massive backpack he wore seemed to weigh nothing at all. He skipped side to side, all while the others struggled to find a firm footing in the uncut grass.

"What do Portkeys properly look like?" Hermione asked Mr. Weasley.

The others had the distinct sense that the question was to provide some other kind of noise, to counteract the off-key singing. All of them were thankful for it.

"Well, they're ordinary things, Hermione," answered Mr. Weasley. "The sort of stuff a muggle would look straight past. An old drink can, perhaps, or even a sock or shoe."

"Does it hurt?" she had to ask.

"Not at all," Mr. Weasley assured her.

"Just feels strange," said Ron. "Like Mum's yanking you the whole way by your nose."

They crested the hill, and by that point they were breathing hard enough not to want to talk unnecessarily. Mr. Weasley had them fan out to search for their ride, but just as they began two figures called out to them. One waved.

"Over here, Arthur!" he shouted. "We've… Well, we found what I really hope is the Portkey."

It was Amos Diggory, and his son, Cedric. Cedric gave Harry a funny look for the singing as they approached. Harry hardly noticed, what with how many of those he collected back at the Burrow. He even made a game of it, keeping score in his head for how many he got off each person. So far Hermione was the breakaway leader.

The ministry wizards shook hands and started to chat. Harry reached the end of his song… mostly because he was shooting glances at the object Amos Diggory held by his side and giggling, which didn't allow for particularly good (or even decidedly average) singing.

Seeing a chance, Ron Weasley leaned closer to him.

"How do you have so much energy, anyway?" the redhead asked, eyeing his friend jealously under half-lidded eyes.

"Why wouldn't I?" Harry asked. "I've been awake for ages."

"But you got up when I did!"

"Got up, sure. But woke up? That was hours ago."

Ron gave him a strange look. "Still don't know how you look that happy. If it was me awake in the middle of the night, I'd have been glaring at everything that moved!"

But Harry was hardly listening. It had been easy enough, sneaking out of the Burrow in the middle of the night and finding this very hill. From there, he'd just worked a bit of magic. The old shoe that whisked them away in his first and second lives disappeared, replaced by the object Amos was holding now. And then Harry had gone back to bed.

"Is that the Portkey there?" Mr. Weasley asked his acquaintance.

Amos Diggory looked down, and right away confusion blossomed across his face.

"I think so," he said. "I mean, I'm pretty sure. But… what is it?"

The man lifted a phallic, one-foot purple dildo for all to see.

Hermione gasped. The twins began snickering, and Cedric looked away slightly. But Ron, Mr. Weasley, and Amos himself seemed stumped.

"Fascinating!" said Mr. Weasley. "It must be some kind of muggle contraption!"

"It is!" chorused the twins. 

"It looks like a cock," Ron noticed.

"Ron!" Mr. Weasley said. "Don't speak that way just because your mother's not here. Any… slight resemblances are I'm sure entirely coincidental…"

"Yes!" said Hermione a tad too loudly. "Complete coincidence!"

Harry leaned over to her, behind the others.

"That's a nice one isn't it?" he whispered.

"Harry!" she whispered back. Just his name with a shocked inflection, her scandalized way of telling him to shut up.

"It's big enough to have come out of your collection!"

At that, Hermione pulled a wonderful tomato impression, becoming bright red and incredibly silent. Harry straightened, smiling.

He'd forgotten how fun it was to tease her at this age. Too many years around him had dulled her wonderful reactions in his last life, but at this age it was all too easy to make her blush. He could imagine why in this situation, too. The portkey was an exact replica of one of Hermione's favorite 'toys'.

Yes, one of. It had come as quite a shock the last time around, when he first discovered Hermione's collection. By that time there had been dozens. She collected them slowly, in all shapes and sizes, even bringing them to Hogwarts. The quiet ones, as they say. The only thing she enjoyed more than a session with one of them was when Harry was on-hand to use one on her himself.

But that was another time, in another life, and this nineteen-year-old Hermione had never mentioned to a soul where her allowance money went other than books. So she short-circuited and shut down entirely.

"Grab on, kids!" Mr. Weasley urged. "Go on, get a finger in there!"

Ginny was blushing as she did it. Despite a more muted reaction than Hermione, there were some things every girl recognized. Cedric poked a finger in, and the twins did so a moment later, reluctantly. One by one they all made some kind of contact, and at the end, Ron obliviously grabbed a good hold of the head.

As Harry was busy snickering, a voice said, "How was your summer?"

It was Cedric, standing to the right of him. Harry sobered slightly. The boy had survived his last life, he made sure of that, but still…

"Short," he said. "Hey, though, you're looking good!"

"Thanks?" said Cedric.

Harry nodded. "Yes. Very alive. Not that you looked bad dead, mind, but this is definitely a better look. You should stick with it."

Cedric smiled and nodded. Very slowly, Harry watched that smile fade. The boy looked back at him, his eyes wide.

"...Looked?"

The Portkey dragged the nine of them across the country in a rush of magic.

O-O-O

That afternoon was more fun than Harry expected. There were a great many familiar faces running around, some he'd half-forgotten and all a lot less wrinkled than he'd last seen. Why, there was Seamus Finnegan, Cho Chang, Dean Thomas, and that one random blond boy Harry couldn't remember the name of who came up and greeted him like an old friend! So many reunions!

He even got to re-meet the older generation. Barty Crouch Senior gave him a poisonous look when Harry asked how his son was. After Arthur hurriedly explained to him that Barty Junior was 'dead', Harry offered the man an autograph as an apology, which Crouch coldly turned down.

It was a better reaction than Ludo Bagman gave him. The ex-beater utterly ignored Harry when he asked to place a hundred Galleon bet on a Death Eater attack and Mrs. Roberts, the wife of the muggle camp manager, flashing a hundred thousand wizards with her knickers.

"You shouldn't joke about that kind of thing!" Hermione rebuked him later.

"I'd never!" said Harry. "Cross my heart!"

Soon it was time for the game itself. They fed into a raucous procession, following crowded paths lit by lanterns and filled with joyous singing. There was a good bit of jostling on the way to the stadium, but as they entered and climbed the steps bodies peeled away. Mr. Weasley's tickets were for the highest point in the stadium— the viewer's box each ministry's highest officials would be using.

Only a house elf was present when they arrived. There were two rows of seats in total, and Mr. Weasley led them to the front left corner, just in front of the house elf.

Harry turned around, resting his elbow on the back of his seat. "Hey there!"

The house elf peaked between two fingers, offering a tiny glimpse of its small eyes.

"Winky is not supposed to be talkings," said the elf. "Winky hopes you'll forgive."

"Oh, I wasn't talking to you, Winky," Harry said. He turned away, looking at the empty seat beside the elf. "How's the view?"

"Winky is not liking it one bits sir—"

"Still not talking to you, Winky."

Harry kept his eyes fixed on the empty seat. After a solid thirty seconds, he turned back to the field.

"I was just trying to be polite, asshole," he muttered.

Winky gasped, and Harry rolled his eyes. "Still, still not talking to you, Winky!"

The elf re-covered her eyes, shrinking confusedly into her seat.

The box gradually filled around them. The Bulgarians arrived first, followed shortly by Ludo Bagman, who seemed eager to greet everybody except for Harry. It seemed his proposed bet earlier frightened the man. Whether it was the mention of Death Eaters that got to him, or the sheer number of Galleons that was making the deep-in-debt man sweat, Harry couldn't say.

Soon there were five different ministers in the box, and Fudge was yet to arrive. Harry glanced across, looking over the assembled collection with a critical eye.

The Bulgarians were the closest. They shook with excitement, their eagerness for the game matched only by their reaction when one noticed Harry's scar. Soon they were sticking their hands over, each vying to get the first handshake off of him.

Smiling graciously, Harry shook the minister's hand first. He was a big man, with a very wide face that could've been hewn from icy rock if it weren't for the fat in his cheeks. He had only one wide eyebrow, and his beard was thick enough to hide a week's worth of past meals in a pinch.

"Yes, yes," Harry said. "Very nice to meet you." The man continued babbling in his native language, mouth opening repeatedly, and Harry wrinkled his nose. 

"Say, they do have hygiene charms in Bulgaria, don't they?" he asked. "I mean, I somewhat assumed you people would stink, but you've completely outdone my expectations. I know Durmstang spends more time teaching its students how to rape and pillage than it does on actual magic, but you're in the civilized world now. A modicum of effort wouldn't go amiss."

The Weasleys were gaping at him, and Ludo Bagman too, who seemed to have forgotten all about his mission to pretend Harry did not exist. Two hands grabbed Harry's shoulders and spun him around.

He found himself staring into the rather frightened, extremely scandalized face of Hermione.

"What on earth are you doing?" she asked shrilly. "You've been strange all day, but that's too far! Thank Merlin he doesn't understand English!"

The Bulgarian minister was smiling at Harry, his unibrow quirked up in the middle, doing his best to pretend he got anything at all out of Harry's barrage of words.

"Yes," he said in the thickest of accents, "I agree!"

Harry blinked. He frowned, concern blossoming across his face.

"You're right, Hermione," he said. "What got into me? I don't know what I was thinking. I'll make this right."

He turned to the Bulgarian minister, and repeated every word he'd said, verbatim, in flawless Bulgarian.

There was quite a great clamor then from the Bulgarian section, but it was at this point that a few of the veela mascots made an early entrance, distracting the outraged officials.

"You speak Bulgarian?" Ron asked, getting right to the important questions.

"And Mandarin," Harry said.

"Killer!" said the redhead.

"What has gotten into you, Harry?"

Harry was sure Hermione had to be running out of shocked exclamations by this point, but up to now she was still going strong.

"I'm just trying something new, Hermione."

"You're being an ass!"

"Exactly!" said Harry. "When I woke up this morning I got to thinking. I have this whole Boy Who Lived thing going for me, and it's fantastic for getting my foot in the door of the child-soldier-hero market. But the decision to go into it was made for me, and a very long time ago I might add. So I'm testing the waters with a few new personas. Today, I'm giving racism a try."

Lucius Malfoy entered the box behind them, Minister Fudge at his side and Narcissa and Draco trailing them. Draco's ugly little eyes landed on Hermione, who had turned to berate Harry, and a smirk spread on his lips.

"Look," he muttered as they passed, "a mudblood."

"Damn straight!" Harry barked, pointing to Draco like he'd just passed him a game-winning assist. Draco himself looked dumbfounded, but his father quickly pulled him along.

"Look," said George, "we're all for a bit of fun. But don't you think this game is a little dangerous?"

He inclined his head as he spoke, nodding toward the Bulgarian contingent. The stray veela were still blowing the crowd kisses far below, but officials were working to wrangle them back to the others for their proper entrance. The further away they got, the less glass-eyed the Bulgarians became. A few were beginning to grumble and give Harry dirty glances.

Harry shrugged. "I'm the Boy Who lived. I'll get away with it."

The twins looked at each other.

"He's right isn't he?" said Fred.

"Lucky bugger," said George.

Hermione wasn't moving anymore, and in truth, it looked quite like she'd forgotten to breathe.

"Oh relax," Harry told her. "What, do you think these Eastern European trolls are actually going to do anything about a few unfriendly words?" He pointed past them at the next delegation over, who was speaking exclusively in rapid-fire Italian. "I could call those ones a bunch of spaghetti slurping, beak-nosed failed Romans, and I'd still get off fine. Or I could call them—" he pointed to the French delegation in the far corner "—a bunch of rude frog-munching snail-licking lazy degenerates. Or I could call them—"

He stopped, staring at a dark skinned witch in a dress, sitting amid her own delegation. "Sorry, what delegation is that?"

He got no immediate answer, for Hermione had passed out in her seat during the middle of his rant.

"Those are the Germans, Harry," Arthur said very quietly.

"And I'm Lord Voldemort," Harry said. "Very funny. Who are they really?"

"That's the German Minister of Magic!" insisted Arthur. "Carina Bartsch is a very established witch! She's already in her second term!"

Harry looked over dubiously for a few more seconds.

"If you say so," he said finally.

It was at this point that Cornelius Fudge finally came over. He trundled toward Harry with rosy cheeks and a beaming grin.

"Harry, my boy!"

"Great," Harry groused. "And here comes the tea-guzzling colonialist. What do you want, an unsalted cracker? Or would that be too spicy?"

Fudge was understandably taken-aback. Yet the first words to leave his mouth were, "But you're English yourself!"

"I don't discriminate in my discrimination," said Harry. "I'm not a monster."

He leaned toward the minister, lowering his voice. "Say, there's this woman a few seats that way claiming to be the Minister of Germany. Don't you think you ought to, you know, do something?"

Fudge looked that way, spotting the dark skinned woman with her hair elaborately curled.

"Oh, Carina!" he said. "Yes by gosh, I should do something. I must go over and say hello!"

He nearly tripped over his feet getting away from Harry Potter, who, he made his mind up, was decidedly peculiar today.

"Damn," Harry muttered as the man fled. "You're telling me she's really…"

"I told you so, Harry," said Mr. Weasley.

"Alright, Arthur. Nobody likes a sore winner."

Just then two latecomers caught Harry's attention. They slipped quietly in from the back, working their way to the French delegation in the far corner. It was little wonder Harry hadn't seen them in his past lives. Their entrance was timed to the exact moment the whole Herd of Bulgarian veela took the field, distracting everybody with a cock and then some the whole stadium over. Harry was certain the timing wasn't a coincidence.

A short-ish wizard with a stout frame and serious eyes walked in the lead. He pulled his companion along by the wrist, and she followed him without complaint. Her pale blond hair glittered behind her, complimenting her baby blue dress robes.

Harry stood.

"I think I'm going to stretch my legs," he announced.

Nobody responded. With Hermione unconscious and the boys unable to acknowledge anything but the dancing veela, he figured it would be some time before they noticed his absence. Absently pulling Ron back into his seat by the collar as the redhead tried to mount the railing, Harry cut his way across the box. 

He wrapped around and cut in front of the second row of seats. As he passed the empty seat Winky was saving for Crouch Senior, he stumbled.

His arm swung out — to steady himself, of course — right over the empty seat, and although it felt as if it struck something — which was impossible of course, because that seat was empty — Harry quickly regained his balance.

He hurried forward a few steps before stopping.

"Goodness!" he said. "I think I forgot my wand!" 

Though he didn't use it often these days, his phoenix feather wand was not in his back pocket any longer. That was where he'd left it, extending out a few inches, just as it had been in his first life.

He hurried back to the Weasleys, and wouldn't you know it, he tripped again in the exact same spot. But he didn't find his wand there, so he hurried to the back row again. Again he tripped in the same place, arm swinging to steady himself. And wouldn't you know it? A moment later his wand had suddenly appeared right there on the floor, directly beneath the empty seat.

Harry laughed with relief, stooping to pick it up.

"Wow!" he said. "To think it was right here, and I only had to crouch to pick it up. Losing this sure would've been a dark mark on my day! Why, I would've wanted to crawl under an invisibility cloak out of shame!"

Winky the house elf gasped, forgetting all about her fear of heights as she dropped her hands and stared at Harry. Offering the house elf a quick salute, Harry went on his way.

He finally crossed the box just as the veela far below hit the pinnacle of their performance. The Irish Leprechauns would arrive soon with their rain of false gold, but for now every man in the box was still reduced to a drooling fool.

The only exceptions were Harry himself, who long ago shed the effects of little things like veela allure, and the bearded man who entered late. Harry stopped two seats away from him, right in front of the blond he arrived with.

She was facing him before he even stopped, as if something heralded his arrival. Her blue eyes gazed quizzically at him. They stayed like that a short while, both of them remaining still.

Harry broke the staring contest first. He gestured with his hand, and the stranger to the left of her stood abruptly. He hurried off, suddenly remembering a pressing errand that most definitely really existed.

"Is this seat taken?" Harry asked.

To which Fleur Delacour replied, "I do believe it has just opened up."

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