Chapter 12

"Well that was a disaster," George complained, slumping into the ratty couch they'd acquired somehow for the hideout under the orchard.

"What even happened?" Fred agreed, unshrinking a few other pieces of fourth-hand furniture they'd gotten to make it a real clubhouse. "We missed most of it."

"Lockhart and then the Malfoys," Ron growled, joining George on the couch. "Pompous gits, all of them. Lockhart dragged Harry up front to get his picture in the paper."

"He said together we rate the front page," Harry complained, perching on the couch's deteriorating armrest. "He practically dragged me out of the crowd as soon as he saw me!" He paused and said, "He's our new defense professor, by the way."

Ron continued the story, "Then as soon as we got out of that, Malfoy showed up to insult Harry about loving having his picture taken. Ginny stuck her nose in, Malfoy made a crack about her being Harry's girlfriend, and that made it all worse."

"I didn't even get a chance to ask if he had a girlfriend," Harry shook his head. "It worked on my cousin." He hadn't had the chance because Ron had joined in, and that gave Draco an avenue for moving on to insulting Ron about being poor.

"Well, then our dads got involved, Mr. Malfoy insulted us, and it got to a fistfight that Hagrid had to break up," Ron finished.

"We didn't even get to check any books to see if they were skill books," Harry sighed. "Barely got out with our schoolbooks."

"Classic Weasley family outing," George joked.

"Did you at least get a wand?" Fred checked.

"Yeah," Ron smiled, showing off his new and improved wand. "Works much better!"

"So Lockhart's the professor, huh?" George asked.

Fred said, "Bet he's like a level twenty Monster Slayer/Gardener the way mum talks."

Harry shook his head. "He's only level eight. Mage/Entertainer class. Isn't even up to a hybrid class. And his only guild other than being Hogwarts staff is that he was in Ravenclaw. I guess he looks pretty young, but that seems low. I think he might just be a writer, you know? We should probably figure his books are just fiction."

"Better tell Hermione that," Ron suggested. "Practically had little hearts in her eyes for him."

"He is a pretty man," Fred agreed.

"Find out anything else interesting?" George asked.

"Hagrid's level sixteen and also in the Order," Harry said. "He explained that it was a group Dumbledore ran to fight Death Eaters. Which Lucius Malfoy definitely is. He's level… twelve, I think."

"Mum fought Death Eaters?" Ron boggled.

"You've never seen mum use her wand for more than household charms," George smirked. "She's fierce. I can bet she'd be a terror if it wasn't just us she was casting at."

"And I think that's how her brothers died," Fred remembered. "Vigilante work in the war. Bet all the Prewetts were involved."

"Even Aunt Muriel?" Ron checked.

"Probably not Aunt Muriel," Fred allowed.

"Oh, right," George said. "Do you have the stuff?"

"Yeah," Harry said. He opened his inventory and started taking out all the prank items that Fred and George had slipped him before Mrs. Weasley checked their pockets on the way home. "I need more storage."

"You should have gotten a trunk or bag with undetectable extension," George said.

"We'd get one, but they're pricey. We're trying to work out how to enchant them ourselves. Then we wouldn't need you to smuggle stuff."

"I didn't even know that was an option," Harry grumbled. "It's bigger on the inside?" They nodded. "I wonder if I can mail order one. That sounds dead useful."

Ron had been thinking and asked, "We've got two weeks until school. What are we going to do?"

"Study?" Fred suggested, and then laughed at his own joke.

"Finish setting up the hideout?" George said, finally getting off the couch to go help his brother arrange furniture.

"Did you have something in mind?" Harry asked.

"Well, you said you were getting rewards and experience from just doing stuff around town, right?" Ron asked. Harry nodded. "What if we went looking around town for more quests? We could earn more pocket money, even if it's muggle money, and maybe we'd get something useful."

"Will your mum let us?" Harry checked.

"As long as nobody calls the aurors, she doesn't mind us going into town," Fred shrugged.

George explained, "We've taught her it's safer than if we're being quiet at home."

"Then I'm okay with it," Harry agreed. "But I do want to do some studying. Or at least get you two to help us practice spells. My Combat Magic is still naught, and I don't like it."

"Are you suggesting you want to duel?" Fred asked.

"We've actually got the space for it," George agreed, eyeing the room as a dueling arena.

"And since in an instance we can cast spells without getting in trouble…" Fred figured.

"Harry Potter," George spun, drawing his wand and raising it to guard position. "I challenge you to a duel!"

[ACCEPT DUEL?]

"Woah, that triggered something from the game," Harry explained, drawing his own wand and matching George's stance. "Okay. I accept?"

[FRIENDLY DUEL: TEMPORARY CONSEQUENCES]

"Well that sounds helpful," Harry said, then explained, "It says since this is a friendly duel, any consequences are temporary."

"Does that mean… we can go all out?" George beamed.

"I've got next!" Fred announced, producing an old glove from somewhere and lightly swishing it across Ron's face.

Harry tried, "But I don't know much–"

"Expelliarmus!" George yelled, and Harry barely dodged the spell he didn't know. "Rictusempra! Immobulus!"

To everyone except Harry's delight, the spells he was dodging evaporated before hitting the walls or furniture, just like in a real warded dueling space. Harry barely noticed, as frantically as he was diving out of the way. He didn't even have time to get his own spell off before Fred finally landed a jinx that stuck him to the floor and then managed to disarm him.

[DUEL COMPLETE]

Sure enough, as soon as he lost, his feet came unstuck. "Can we go a little slower next time?" Harry asked.

"We'll see," George shrugged.

Fred grinned as he announced, "Ron, we're up!"

They amused themselves the rest of the day dueling, and despite constantly being trounced by the twins, Ron and Harry were learning a lot. He finally got that elusive first rank of OWL Combat Magic, and was beginning to pick up a few of the more difficult spells the older boys were using. Through frequent time diving to the floor, he'd also picked up two ranks in a new Basic Dodging skill. With his enhanced Agility, even in the smallish room it was starting to get hard for the twins to land spells on him without having to work hard for it.

On Thursday, they finally tried out Ron's plan, venturing into Ottery St. Catchpole. The ancient village was, in the modern day, pretty much just a bedroom community for Exeter. At least by virtue of being nearly as old as Hogwarts, the buildings were a much more interesting setup than Little Winging, for all that the town didn't have any more amenities. Pretty much all it really had going for it was the nearby giant old church, and a whimsical road network that flowed and whorled like river branches rather than adhering to any sort of grid system.

It only took a few days for the locals to start to notice that there was a gang of adolescents (mostly redheaded) who seemed to have shown up to their quiet hamlet to do good deeds and be helpful, which was a pretty strange occurrence with the youth of the 1990s. It was also pretty clear that they were not the wealthiest bunch (at least Harry had vetoed a few of the more insane thrift store clothes they thought were muggle-appropriate). Eventually, the gossips of the town uncovered that they were locals that didn't come into the village much, and were trying to entertain their Cousin Harry for the summer.

Ron was right: the quest rewards were small but decent.

Since being fed wasn't a problem with Mrs. Weasley cooking, they weren't getting fast food meals the way Harry had been, but had picked up quite a few nice cuts of meat from the butcher and vegetables from various locals that Molly had used to make delicious lunches (and she was only getting slightly suspicious about how they were doing odd jobs around town and getting paid in ingredients). They'd racked up a fair handful of muggle money, and the twins had discovered that miscellaneous tools and herbs from the home and gardening supply stores would substitute just as well as wizarding supplies for a lot of their crafting plans. They'd also all rounded out their muggle wardrobes, which was always a help for growing boys used to hand-me-downs. Perhaps their biggest prize was for a quest they'd done for the local cobbler, who'd made them all extremely comfortable walking shoes due to all the wandering around town they'd been doing.

Harry's discovery of the map had made it even easier to find quests, since he could see the exclamation point markers on his map much further across town than he could with just his normal vision: it let him find people that needed help inside of buildings and even on nearby streets.

There was one quest marker that was always just at the edge of his map as they walked on the lane past the church, and finally Harry decided he had to check it out the Sunday before they were to head back to Hogwarts. "I'm not even sure how we'd get to it. It looks deep in the church," he explained. "But I think they'll probably just let us go in if we attend service?" Fortunately, their new clothing included button-downs and slacks dressy enough for Sunday best.

Somehow three redheads that had never given a moment of consideration to muggle religion and a boy who'd actively been kept from any kind of social event by his guardians made it through the service without embarrassing themselves. Mostly they just knelt when other people did, glanced at what others were doing with their hymnals, and tried to bow their heads when everyone else did. Molly Weasley would have been very surprised how non-disruptive her boys could be when their objective was stealth.

They'd possibly be back later, now that they realized what a giant venue for pranking there was so close to their house.

As the service was concluding and everyone was getting up and conversing, the boys managed to dodge interested parishioners (several of whom recognized them as the helpful lads from the village the last week or two) and make for the quest marker in the southern edge of the vast room of ancient stonework. The whole place really reminded them a lot of Hogwarts. The quest marker was sitting right at a large square… clock? The blue-backed device had a sun, moon, and star that seemed designed to travel around three concentric, numbered rings. But it wasn't moving, or was moving so slowly they couldn't tell.

"You're checking out the astronomical clock, I see?" one of the junior priests said, walking over.

[MICHAEL COLEY

Reverend, Level 10

[CHURCH OF ENGLAND]]

As he got closer, the yellow exclamation mark appeared over his head, and Harry gave the nod toward him that they'd practiced all week for him to indicate quest givers. Reverend Coley continued, "It's one of the first ever mechanical clocks. Built in the 1300s!"

"Is it broken, sir?" Harry asked.

"Well," the man frowned, "it's been having its issues. Missing a few parts, and they were handmade, so they're a bit difficult to replace."

"We could try to find the parts?" Ron suggested, catching on. "Who took them?"

"No one believes me," the man sighed. They looked at him, waiting, until he admitted, "I think it was the pixies."

The boys didn't laugh. They just looked at one another and nodded. That seemed totally reasonable. "Do you know which way they went?" Harry checked.

"Well, we have the Pixie Day in June, where we pretend-reenact chasing the pixies off to the hills like at the founding of the church," Michael explained. "And this year I swore I saw a few tiny blue men fluttering about. They hid in the clock because they blended in, you see. I must sound mad."

"Could have been some kind of big bug, sir. But we'll find them," Harry agreed. "You think they went off toward the hills?"

"Honestly, I think they may still be nesting in the building. I swear I've seen them out of the corner of my eye from time to time all summer," he shrugged.

[PESKY PIXIE PATER NOSTER

Retrieve the clock mechanism pieces (0/3)

and drive off the pixies (0/9).]

"We're on it, Reverend," Harry nodded, leading the boys off so he could relay the quest text to them. He also explained, "There are some yellow circles on the map around the church. Maybe we should look in those areas."

"Makes sense. It's funny, that quest name almost sounds like spell we found for dealing with pixies," Fred explained.

"Doesn't work, though," George said. "It turned out to be a joke spell. You can just use immobulus, though."

"Learned that from a defense teacher that was worth anything?" Ron asked.

"Nah," Fred said. "Just caught some pixies our second year to use in a prank."

George grinned, "That was part of how we got the detention that led to us finding the Map in Filch's office."

With their good deeds around town and Reverend Coley's permission, nobody said too much about the four boys wandering around the church, poking into back rooms and balconies. It only took them about half an hour to find all nine pixies, conveniently in nests of three, each with a shiny piece of the clock pushed away along with some muggle and wizarding money. And, with Harry's instancing, they could quickly handle the pests by magically immobilizing them.

"Worse than nifflers, I swear," George complained, as they retrieved the last piece.

"Think we can treat nine stunned pixies as a bonus quest reward?" Fred grinned, having ideas.

"Here are your pieces, reverend," Harry said, handing the three pieces of clockwork to Michael.

"Oh, my word. Thank you so much!" the priest exclaimed. "I've been hearing such good things about you boys. Hope to see you around more often."

"Well, we're going back to school this week, but maybe next summer," Ron shrugged, and all four boys looked expectantly at the priest.

"Well, so you don't forget us, let me get you each a rosary," he suggested, coming back with four beaded wooden necklaces.

[QUEST COMPLETE

50 XP Earned

Quest Reward: Blessed Rosary]

"Thank you, sir. See you around," Harry said, inspecting his rosary as they left. He explained to everyone else, "It says that these make it easier to meditate and concentrate if you hold onto them, and that they might ward off Dark creatures."

"Plus, we each got like a galleon and a half from the nests!" Fred said, enthusiastically.

"I'm almost sad to be going back to school," George agreed. "This has been a very productive summer."

"Just think of the quests we'll be able to find at Hogwarts!" Ron suggested.

They all nodded, thoughtfully. It might turn out to be a really lucrative year.