Felix Fortuna (Worm/HP)
- Thread starter Chartic
- Start date
- Location
- Around here
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I suspect not (or that we wouldn't find out), purely because it would obliterate the plot, but... it's possible?
Abao
Le Halpful One
- Location
- Theocracy of Derpism
Imagine if it would be Fortune.So the real question is who will he look like?
Flavia or Fortuna?
After all, he has limited access to people.
Then imagine if a unknowing Fortuna pathed to "not losing points for Gryffindor" earlier, which made her do something to avoid getting polyjuiced as, so King George the Fluff turned into a real dog or something else whose hair just happened to be there.
- Location
- Massachusetts
...jeez it actually might, shards are dumb enough to fall for that.
- Location
- A M E R I C A
If it does work itll end in a completely different power than Fortunas. As seen with bonesaw biological clones arent the only vital part, Different memories or personality results in either failing to trigger or triggering differently. Triggering the same way resulted in variation changes even, as seen with the Siberians clones mostly being projections of Manton rather than his daughter.
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Horcrux and death magic targeting seems to fixate around souls. Between identical twin capes and cluster trigger power boosts, we have a strong indicator that Shard targeting is based on the physical genes.
Liquid Ink
Contains Sleep Deprived Rambling
I think, unless an individual were to undergo a trigger event while polyjuiced, it's would be unlikely for someone to get PTV directly. The powers developed would be tailored to the individual's circumstances and mental state, etc anyway. Polyjuice alters the body, not the contents of mind and memory or the soul. It changes the container, not the contents.
I do wonder how polyjuice would interact if the donor and the drinker triggered together, though. Would they be treated as twins? How would a shard perceive the situation, and how would situations like Case 70s resolve?
I do wonder how polyjuice would interact if the donor and the drinker triggered together, though. Would they be treated as twins? How would a shard perceive the situation, and how would situations like Case 70s resolve?
hillo315
Intact but Tactless
- Location
- Somewhere. Somewhere else.
Sure, it can't copy souls, but it probably copied the scar. It definitely can copy non-genetic traits, if Crouch Jr. and Moody's eye socket is any indication. So I think the Corona Pollentia (and Gemma) is fair game. I'm not sure what that means for shards, though.
- Location
- Massachusetts
The problem is that Fortuna's powers are an almost entirely unrestricted shard without any of the instructions or rules that guide Eden or Zion shards. It might legitimately grant only the one power, after all it clearly gave Contessa all it had to give.
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Isn't chocolate poisonous To dogs?
- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
Yes. How bad it is depends on the kind of chocolate and how big the dog is. The less chocolate content, the better, and the larger, the better. Sources on his size and what chocolate frogs are made of is sketchy; the best I can find is a dubious citation for chocolate frogs being "70% Croakoa." If they're as big as the size seen in the film, considering the amount that becomes dangerous a dog the size of Sirius would probably be fine. Still not a good idea.
My guess is that Sirius will pick Flavia, or otherwise not get access to PtV. Fortuna doesn't know enough about the whole Harry/Voldemort thing to solve it, but Sirius knows enough to start asking questions, at least, and with PtV that would be enough.
Unless they go for full comedy-of-errors where Fortuna doesn't solve everything fir the reaons we know; and Sirius gets PtV for an hour but doesn't use it, simply because he doesn't know how it works.
The overall problem is that if he gets to use PtV or understands what exactly Fortuna could do, the cat's out of the bag and all he has to do is convince Fortuna to give enough of a shit to topple the Dark Lord, or at least prevent him from coming back. Not that the story couldn't go that way, but I'd bet against it.
I'll be interested to see what his plan is. Polyjuice takes awhile to brew, and he seemed like he was getting ready to reveal himself.
But he seems to have had an idea, and stealing the Polyjuice seems a lot more fun and dramatic than revealing himself first and asking for some, but I could see it going either way.
You'd think the girls would definitely notice if they came up short on Polyjuice, and could put two-and-two together if they encounter their own doppelganger running around Hogwarts.
Unless they go for full comedy-of-errors where Fortuna doesn't solve everything fir the reaons we know; and Sirius gets PtV for an hour but doesn't use it, simply because he doesn't know how it works.
The overall problem is that if he gets to use PtV or understands what exactly Fortuna could do, the cat's out of the bag and all he has to do is convince Fortuna to give enough of a shit to topple the Dark Lord, or at least prevent him from coming back. Not that the story couldn't go that way, but I'd bet against it.
I'll be interested to see what his plan is. Polyjuice takes awhile to brew, and he seemed like he was getting ready to reveal himself.
But he seems to have had an idea, and stealing the Polyjuice seems a lot more fun and dramatic than revealing himself first and asking for some, but I could see it going either way.
You'd think the girls would definitely notice if they came up short on Polyjuice, and could put two-and-two together if they encounter their own doppelganger running around Hogwarts.
- Location
- Britain
It probably doesn't copy the brain in a useful way though. If it copies it perfectly then it has to magically control it because you've copied the full brain of another person so you likely don't even connect to the Corona. And if it does copy the Corona it might not actually be connected to the Shard.
Actually can Polyjuice copy other larger creatures? I.e. could someone Polyjuice themselves into Hagrid or a troll to enjoy enhanced strength and magic resistance? Because it might consider Fortuna and the Shard one living thing and copy both. It doesn't screwup your internals by not copying gut bacteria after all.
- Location
- Germany
On one hand, Polyjuice in canon is described as strictly a human to human transformation. On the other hand, Fleur was able to take that stuff without problems, despite being part-human. So I would guess that Hagrid would work, but a troll would result in a mishap like the one Hermione suffered when accidentially putting cat hair into it.
Abao
Le Halpful One
- Location
- Theocracy of Derpism
They'll be both until observed, then the worldline will split in two and in one universe they'll be a dog, in the other parallel universe they'll be the man.
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Epsilon Rose
The King of Unrest
He could also realize exactly what her fears of becoming the next Dark Lord mean and do everything in his power to keep her out of that position. I.E. make sure she doesn't have to deal with Voldemort, because that starts her down the road to having to deal with everything else.
Chapter 15: Character Assassinations
Chartic
Literally the Worst Human in the Fandom
- Location
- St. Paul
Saturday marked the first Quidditch match of the year. Students had shown up to breakfast festooned in their house colors, partly as a show of support for their team, but mostly to fight off the growing winter chill with additional layers of clothing. Fortuna had been excited to attend and see the team she'd someday be joining in action, but detention called.
Professors Snape and McGonagall had thus far been handling their detentions (the separation was, they had been informed, part of their punishment), but no head of house was going to miss Quidditch to wrangle a pair of unruly first years. So they'd passed the honor of handling their detention to a nakedly gleeful Filch.
The curator grumbled at length about not being allowed to scourge miscreants or put them on the rack in these latter days, and begrudgingly settled on hard labor. It was the only way he could get even with students, whose very existence offended him.
Fortunately, the bathroom she and Flavia were scrubbing was warmer than the storm outside, if no drier. It was a seemingly simple task complicated by the fact a ghost had decided that a life of undeath would be best spent haunting the school's sewage system. She had also apparently decided to share her misery with others as she made a huge mess of the bathroom every time they came close to finishing.
Fortuna could have made her leave with a sentence and driven her to seek exorcism with another three, but Flavia was interested in her so she held her tongue while her friend worked to earn the ghost's trust—with mixed results.
"And what did it feel like?" she asked. She kept her gaze fixed on her quarry while ineffectually pushing loo water around with her mop. "To die, I mean?"
The ghost, Myrtle she called herself, swelled with a self-importance that exceeded Percy's. At least she had a better haircut than he did, though it was several decades out of date.
"It was simply dreadful," she answered, softly, reverently. She paused for dramatic effect—not to spare anyone from the sound of her voice, but to allow fresh tears to well up. "I was just so distraught because I'd been driven to absolute misery because Olive Hornby had been mocking my glasses, and when I came in here to sob my heart out—"
Flavia's impatience got the better of her. "I did not ask you how you died, I asked you what dying felt like."
The interruption seemed to offend the ghost, and Flavia, sensing her misstep, hastily began to elaborate lest she flounce into the nearest U-Bend.
"I used to enjoy lying in coffins to get a feeling for what it must be like to be dead," Flavia said. This was partially a lie; she still enjoyed lying in coffins, and Fortuna resolved to ask her about that later. "Nobody in my family has ever become a ghost, and I had to forego asking the source in favor of visualizing things by myself. So, how would you describe the process of death?"
The ghost pointedly turned her back on Flavia and melodramatically prepared to make an ostentatious nosedive back into her preferred basin. She was going to flood the bathroom again and Fortuna wasn't keen on having to clean up the results a sixth time.
"You're the only ghost we've met who's interesting to talk to," she said, intervening with her power. "We tried with Nearly Headless Nick, but he only drones on and on about how he doesn't fit in with all the other beheaded ghosts. I bet you can tell us something that nobody else will."
Myrtle waffled between her tantrum and their flattery before making her decision. She affected an air of great woe and sadness as she turned back to face them. "I froze," she said. "I seized up and I was floating, floating, floating…"
"Where did you float to?" Flavia asked. She abandoned her mop to rummage in her pocket for a quill that wasn't there because she hadn't brought a notebook to detention. "Above your body?"
The ghost vaguely gestured at nothing in particular. "Away. But I came back to remind Olive Hornby that I died because of her."
The conversation continued, but Fortuna was arrested by the possibility her parents had become ghosts. Were they as stuck as Myrtle was, chained to their ruined house and condemned to forever dwell on their deaths? Her stomach lurched. The Bloody Baron and Nearly Headless Nick bore the wounds that had killed them; was her father's slashed throat perpetually spurting? Was her mother—
She wrenched her mind away from that path, and it obliged by barrelling down a worse one. Her parents' last act had been to delay the attackers long enough to secure her escape, but they hadn't lived to confirm that she had. They wouldn't know she was safe. Would they know she could have helped them and didn't? Had they spent the last several years wondering about failure, theirs and hers?
The tendrils of fog that had been creeping in at the edges of her vision solidified, and she brought herself back to the present. Her socks were wet. She'd frozen in place while she'd been thinking and had neglected to stay out of the way of Flavia's mop.
"It's usually quite cold," Myrtle was saying, "But mostly what I feel is emotions. That stayed the same, though it's hard to feel anything but sad."
"That's only right," Flavia said. "You've had a hard time and being sad about that makes sense. Thank you very much for helping advance scientific inquiry. I'm sure we can figure out where you went if we work on it together."
Fortuna's first impulse was to tell Flavia to work on that once she'd finished scrubbing the grout, but Filch would undoubtedly be furious at their performance no matter how much effort they put into cleaning. It was why he had chosen this bathroom, after all.
Instead she turned on Myrtle. "I know that hanging around after you should have gone is a habit of yours, but we need to finish our work and can do without you moping around ruining things. Unless you can pick up a toothbrush and make yourself useful?"
Myrtle wailed. Since she didn't have to breathe, she could sustain it for dozens of seconds, and it ended only with a plunge into her toilet.
Fortuna, who hadn't deigned to watch the performance, resumed mopping with significantly more force than necessary. She could feel the weight of Flavia's stare on her back, but continued her work.
"Why did you do that?" Flavia said at last. She spoke evenly, but her words were clipped and Fortuna could hear the underlying anger.
Fortuna faced her friend. "We were both thinking it."
"Actually, I was thinking of what my mother experienced when she died," Flavia snapped. She took a step forward, her fists clenched and eyes blazing. "You interrupted me just to, just to—" She cast about for the most contemptuous possible characterization of Fortuna's actions. "Just to whinge."
Fortuna was forced to recognize the justice of the accusation. She let out her breath, squared her shoulders. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that's what you were doing."
The attempt at placation fell flat, and Flavia advanced on her, coming close enough that Fortuna was forced to back up, and her voice began to rise as she gave vent to her fury.
"What other reason could I possibly have had? It was my best lead, it took me hours to get that far, and you just went and ruined it."
She ended with a screech and was left panting in the echoes of her yell.
"I'm sorry," Fortuna said before Flavia could catch her breath. "I was thinking how unfair it is that my parents are gone and she—well. There's no excuse. I should have known you had a reason and let you work."
Flavia's anger ebbed as abruptly as it had arisen. She frowned as she paced around the bathroom, heedless of how damp the hem of her robes was getting. Finally she leaned against the sink. "Fortuna… if your parents were anything like you, they wouldn't have ever become ghosts."
Fortuna waited, aware of the possibility her family was being insulted.
"I forget you're Muggleborn sometimes," Flavia said, unconscious of the prejudice she was betraying. She tilted her head in the direction of Myrtle's stall. "She thought her grudge was too important to give up. So she stayed here, and just look at her now that Olive Hornby's graduated."
"And all ghosts are like that? Pathetic?"
"Yes. It's part of why you can't get them to talk about it in any concrete terms. You heard the world's most flushable drama queen. Breezed right by the choice she made so she could talk about Olive Hornby."
Fortuna thought back over the conversation and remembered that Myrtle had said she'd floated away and come back. She'd wondered about it at the time, but hadn't bothered to ask her power. Now that she did, it drew a blank—but not the same kind of blank as the fog. There just wasn't an answer. "I see," she said. "Which means that there's something wrong with people who become ghosts?"
"That's what some people think. If that's true, it's why we—the de Luces, I mean—choose not to." Flavia rolled her eyes heavenwards. "Though Feely and Daffy told me Harriet only left because I was too horrible to look upon."
Fortuna recognized the shift in tone as a signal that Flavia wanted to change the topic. She went along with it, solemnly raising a hand. "I swear by every drop of bilge water we have driven and will drive from this bathroom that I will find you another ghost, a better ghost, before the year is out."
"I'll hold you to that," Flavia said, equally solemn. But she couldn't keep from cracking a smile.
When Filch finally arrived to unleash his disapproval, Fortuna deflected most of the metaphorical spittle (though, regrettably, hardly any of the literal spittle) with her power. She didn't want him to ask McGonagall to turn the rest of their stay in detention over to him.
The detention had worn them both out, but they still summoned some energy for a conversation on the way back to Gryffindor Tower. Both of them wanted to fill the aftermath of their fight with something else, and Flavia settled on their mission.
"We need to be more aggressive," she said. "We can send him an owl and you can steal a broom and follow it."
Fortuna considered it. It would be simple if she had the right broom, and any one of the seven Nimbus 2001s in the Slytherin dungeons would be more than up to the job in her hands. "I could," she allowed cautiously.
"But?"
"I've only read about owls being intercepted, not followed. Would the owl's magic allow it to deliver a letter if its recipient didn't want to be found?"
Flavia sighed. "I suppose if that worked, it would already have been done. 'Dear Mister You-Know-Who: I hope this letter finds you in ill health. Please accept the attached bomb. Only kidding, it has already exploded, ha ha. Yours faithfully, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore.'"
The mood in the common room was as morose as the bathroom they'd just left. Fortuna gathered that the Quidditch team—which was notably absent—had lost and picked up on a few darkly humorous jibes being passed between a few of the older students. Not only had they been flattened by Hufflepuff, they had been flattened by Hufflepuff because Harry Potter had fainted instead of catching the Snitch.
Her power guided her to follow behind Flavia while she replayed the game in her head, leading up to the point where Harry Potter was swarmed by Dementors and fell from his broom.
She held herself back from asking about the particulars of what he'd seen and heard; she remembered from the first time she'd asked about him that he'd witnessed his parents' murder, and she knew that was personal.
Having direct access to his mind was cheating in a way, but she thought that other people should be able to remember that their world's most famous orphan was an orphan and be able to extrapolate from there.
Unfortunately it did not seem that others agreed. She spent most of that evening listening to Romilda Vane and Louisa Amica speculate about why Harry Potter was so weak. The breakfast table was filled with students gossiping about Potter's problems. Jokes were tossed around the hallways, sneers were distributed by Slytherins, and with every word, glance, and giggle Fortuna felt herself grow more intolerant.
She stabbed into a plate of bangers and mash, violently tearing the sausage skins apart.
"You're upset," Flavia observed, not that it required an intellect like hers to make the deduction.
"Yes," Fortuna said, continuing to shred her sausage. "I am."
"Not because we lost the match?"
She turned her attention to reducing the second sausage into its constituent parts. "Because they are making fun of someone for reacting to Dementors."
The other Gryffindors would get over it, since all they really cared about was points and there would be other Quidditch matches. But the humiliation would stick with Harry, and it was a wound that others in his year, particularly Draco Malfoy, would pick at for the next several weeks. Malfoy would be supported by a Greek chorus of Slytherins and other students who wanted to curry favor with him or see Gryffindor or the Boy Who Lived taken down a peg.
"Flavia," she said.
"Fortuna," Flavia said.
"I require your assistance."
"I am eager to provide my assistance."
"It seems that Draco Malfoy believes taunting Harry Potter is an acceptable passe-temp. The honor of our house has been outraged and requires satisfaction."
"Shall we poison him?" Flavia asked.
Fortuna nodded. "We shall."
They waited to strike until the following Monday at Fortuna's suggestion, which she made because she meant to twist the knife. It would be simpler to slip something into Malfoy's food on a weekend, but doing it on a weekday ensured that nearly everyone in the school, including all the teachers, would be in the Great Hall to see it. Doing it on the first weekday meant that it would dominate the school's weekly gossip cycle, not to mention disrupt Malfoy's entire week. Once she and Flavia were through with him, he'd need to spend the rest of term playing catch up.
Then there was her long-term plan of rendering the Malfoy family irrelevant. Feeling that perhaps she had overreacted to the awkwardness Fortuna had engineered a few weeks ago, Narcissa Malfoy had decided to make amends. She had instructed her son to play the debonair diplomat and work to mend things with the Greengrasses junior. He and Daphne Greengrass would meet during Monday breakfast to pretend to be adults and act out some facsimile of their parents' politicking.
Allowing them to succeed this wouldn't impede her plans, which were supposed to take effect over the course of several years, but she didn't feel like giving them an inch.
It was with these thoughts in mind that Fortuna walked over to the Slytherin table to say hello to Jessica and Astoria. A vial of a bluish liquid concocted by Flavia sat like a cocked gun in her pocket. Malfoy was a few seats over from Jessica, bragging cheerfully to his cohorts about the responsibilities his father was placing on him and how pleased his father would be to hear about his inevitable success. Equidistant between the two of them was a heaping platter of cinnamon rolls.
She had considered pre-poisoning his food by going to the kitchens and tampering with the roll she knew would end up on Malfoy's plate, but had determined the act would draw too much attention—from Flavia. Her detective friend would know that Fortuna had done something somehow and would attempt to pick it apart. Better to have an obvious show of action than leave Flavia guessing until her mind struck paydirt.
Fortuna could feel some older Slytherins' eyes on her as she strode towards her friend and Astoria, though she acted as though she were unaware of them. Behaving as though a Gryffindor socializing with Slytherins was perfectly normal went a little way to making it so.
Astoria and Jessica, on the other hand, didn't notice her until she was leaning over them.
"Did you remember to write your Transfiguration essay this time?" Fortuna asked, palming the potion in her left hand.
Jessica pretended she wasn't embarrassed—which was easy, as she very nearly wasn't. "I forgot one paper, not the bloody Magna Carta. Don't come over acting like I'm clueless as Candi."
Astoria brought the cinnamon rolls closer to herself. "Socially maladroit though Candidus may be, he can at least be relied upon to complete his assigned tasks," she observed, and selected an especially gooey bun.
"I wanted to make sure we would get work done this study session and not have it devolve into another round of dueling." While she spoke, Fortuna casually pushed the platter back to where it had come from, letting the vial in her hand turn over one pastry in particular as she did. The liquid lost its blue color as it sank into the sugary glaze, rendering the poison indistinguishable from the rest of the icing.
"Can't get a cob on because I'm bored out of my mind," Jessica grumbled.
"Yes," Fortuna said, without the faintest idea of what would constitute putting on a cob, "I can." She dismissed her vague mental image of roasting corn cobs on a grill in favor of advising Jessica not to bully Angelique with disarming spells anymore.
This accomplished, she made her way back to the Gryffindor table and sat down beside Flavia before she could attract any undue attention.
A minute or two later, Percy Weasley arrived and chose a seat nearby so he could cast baleful glares on them throughout his meal. They were firmly cemented as troublemakers in his mind, and he had selflessly taken it upon himself to preemptively reprove them at every turn. His watchfulness would seal their alibi tighter than a thirty year old bottle of port.
The Weasley twins soon entered in high spirits that dampened everyone else's. They'd lately taken to experimenting on both themselves and younger children, and their good cheer signaled danger for anyone in their vicinity. When they saw Percy, they sat at the opposite end of the table—which coincidentally faced the part of the Slytherin table that Malfoy and cronies had occupied.
Not long after they'd settled in, Draco Malfoy reached for the cinnamon rolls that she had pushed his way, seized the tainted one, and took a healthy (or unhealthy) bite out of it. True to Flavia's word, he didn't seem to taste the difference—though even if they had made a mistake in brewing, the sticky blanket of cinnamon and sugar would have hidden any off taste. Draco chewed his way through it, and he finished just as Daphne Greengass entered the room.
He wiped his hands off, though not so thoroughly he didn't get a flake or two of icing in his hair as he smoothed it down, and proceeded ("walked" was insufficient to the pomp of the occasion) towards the young lady. She waited for him with all the regal seriousness a thirteen year old could manage. This was important business indeed.
Fortuna caught the corners of her mouth starting to turn up and hid this betrayal of her emotions by shoving half an orange into her mouth.
The scion of the house of Malfoy bowed to the scion of the house of Greengrass and she returned it with a gesture approaching a curtsy. He drew his shoulders back arrogantly, opened his mouth, and let loose a loud "Hee-HAW!"
Daphne recoiled. Draco covered his mouth and looked around for what he imagined was an assailant with a wand. All he saw was everyone was looking at him; he didn't see that they were looking at the long velvety ears sprouting out from the sides of his head.
But even he noticed when legs turned into a donkey's hind quarters and a layer of fur spread over his skin. All the appearance of Pan without any of the talent. Then a long tail burst from the seat of his pants and the force of the transformation made him pitch forward. He threw his hands out in front of him to break his fall, and they turned to hooves before they hit the ground.
There was utter silence for a few long seconds.
Then Malfoy, whose face by now fully resembled that of a donkey's, brayed again.
The twins started to laugh, which was perfect because the moment the authorities' attention turned to them, there wasn't a chance it was going anywhere else. As the rest of the hall followed the twins' example, Fortuna could see McGonagall's eyebrows knitting themselves a blanket for winter and Snape leapt into action. He didn't run towards Malfoy, but he moved with purpose.
Instead of doing the sensible thing, which was to stand still and wait for the professor to examine him—or doing the natural thing, which was to flee the hall entirely—Draco ran up and down the length of the Slytherin table heeing and hawing in blind panic.
"I don't see the issue," Flavia whispered, eyes gleaming at the result of her hard work. "We only revealed Draco for what he already was."
Fortuna smiled back, finishing her partner's joke in her head. An ass.
***
I would like to give my whole hearted thanks to @BreezyWheeze who supports me on patreon. I cannot thank him enough for his support! Bottles of beer don't buy themselves you know!
Professors Snape and McGonagall had thus far been handling their detentions (the separation was, they had been informed, part of their punishment), but no head of house was going to miss Quidditch to wrangle a pair of unruly first years. So they'd passed the honor of handling their detention to a nakedly gleeful Filch.
The curator grumbled at length about not being allowed to scourge miscreants or put them on the rack in these latter days, and begrudgingly settled on hard labor. It was the only way he could get even with students, whose very existence offended him.
Fortunately, the bathroom she and Flavia were scrubbing was warmer than the storm outside, if no drier. It was a seemingly simple task complicated by the fact a ghost had decided that a life of undeath would be best spent haunting the school's sewage system. She had also apparently decided to share her misery with others as she made a huge mess of the bathroom every time they came close to finishing.
Fortuna could have made her leave with a sentence and driven her to seek exorcism with another three, but Flavia was interested in her so she held her tongue while her friend worked to earn the ghost's trust—with mixed results.
"And what did it feel like?" she asked. She kept her gaze fixed on her quarry while ineffectually pushing loo water around with her mop. "To die, I mean?"
The ghost, Myrtle she called herself, swelled with a self-importance that exceeded Percy's. At least she had a better haircut than he did, though it was several decades out of date.
"It was simply dreadful," she answered, softly, reverently. She paused for dramatic effect—not to spare anyone from the sound of her voice, but to allow fresh tears to well up. "I was just so distraught because I'd been driven to absolute misery because Olive Hornby had been mocking my glasses, and when I came in here to sob my heart out—"
Flavia's impatience got the better of her. "I did not ask you how you died, I asked you what dying felt like."
The interruption seemed to offend the ghost, and Flavia, sensing her misstep, hastily began to elaborate lest she flounce into the nearest U-Bend.
"I used to enjoy lying in coffins to get a feeling for what it must be like to be dead," Flavia said. This was partially a lie; she still enjoyed lying in coffins, and Fortuna resolved to ask her about that later. "Nobody in my family has ever become a ghost, and I had to forego asking the source in favor of visualizing things by myself. So, how would you describe the process of death?"
The ghost pointedly turned her back on Flavia and melodramatically prepared to make an ostentatious nosedive back into her preferred basin. She was going to flood the bathroom again and Fortuna wasn't keen on having to clean up the results a sixth time.
"You're the only ghost we've met who's interesting to talk to," she said, intervening with her power. "We tried with Nearly Headless Nick, but he only drones on and on about how he doesn't fit in with all the other beheaded ghosts. I bet you can tell us something that nobody else will."
Myrtle waffled between her tantrum and their flattery before making her decision. She affected an air of great woe and sadness as she turned back to face them. "I froze," she said. "I seized up and I was floating, floating, floating…"
"Where did you float to?" Flavia asked. She abandoned her mop to rummage in her pocket for a quill that wasn't there because she hadn't brought a notebook to detention. "Above your body?"
The ghost vaguely gestured at nothing in particular. "Away. But I came back to remind Olive Hornby that I died because of her."
The conversation continued, but Fortuna was arrested by the possibility her parents had become ghosts. Were they as stuck as Myrtle was, chained to their ruined house and condemned to forever dwell on their deaths? Her stomach lurched. The Bloody Baron and Nearly Headless Nick bore the wounds that had killed them; was her father's slashed throat perpetually spurting? Was her mother—
She wrenched her mind away from that path, and it obliged by barrelling down a worse one. Her parents' last act had been to delay the attackers long enough to secure her escape, but they hadn't lived to confirm that she had. They wouldn't know she was safe. Would they know she could have helped them and didn't? Had they spent the last several years wondering about failure, theirs and hers?
The tendrils of fog that had been creeping in at the edges of her vision solidified, and she brought herself back to the present. Her socks were wet. She'd frozen in place while she'd been thinking and had neglected to stay out of the way of Flavia's mop.
"It's usually quite cold," Myrtle was saying, "But mostly what I feel is emotions. That stayed the same, though it's hard to feel anything but sad."
"That's only right," Flavia said. "You've had a hard time and being sad about that makes sense. Thank you very much for helping advance scientific inquiry. I'm sure we can figure out where you went if we work on it together."
Fortuna's first impulse was to tell Flavia to work on that once she'd finished scrubbing the grout, but Filch would undoubtedly be furious at their performance no matter how much effort they put into cleaning. It was why he had chosen this bathroom, after all.
Instead she turned on Myrtle. "I know that hanging around after you should have gone is a habit of yours, but we need to finish our work and can do without you moping around ruining things. Unless you can pick up a toothbrush and make yourself useful?"
Myrtle wailed. Since she didn't have to breathe, she could sustain it for dozens of seconds, and it ended only with a plunge into her toilet.
Fortuna, who hadn't deigned to watch the performance, resumed mopping with significantly more force than necessary. She could feel the weight of Flavia's stare on her back, but continued her work.
"Why did you do that?" Flavia said at last. She spoke evenly, but her words were clipped and Fortuna could hear the underlying anger.
Fortuna faced her friend. "We were both thinking it."
"Actually, I was thinking of what my mother experienced when she died," Flavia snapped. She took a step forward, her fists clenched and eyes blazing. "You interrupted me just to, just to—" She cast about for the most contemptuous possible characterization of Fortuna's actions. "Just to whinge."
Fortuna was forced to recognize the justice of the accusation. She let out her breath, squared her shoulders. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that's what you were doing."
The attempt at placation fell flat, and Flavia advanced on her, coming close enough that Fortuna was forced to back up, and her voice began to rise as she gave vent to her fury.
"What other reason could I possibly have had? It was my best lead, it took me hours to get that far, and you just went and ruined it."
She ended with a screech and was left panting in the echoes of her yell.
"I'm sorry," Fortuna said before Flavia could catch her breath. "I was thinking how unfair it is that my parents are gone and she—well. There's no excuse. I should have known you had a reason and let you work."
Flavia's anger ebbed as abruptly as it had arisen. She frowned as she paced around the bathroom, heedless of how damp the hem of her robes was getting. Finally she leaned against the sink. "Fortuna… if your parents were anything like you, they wouldn't have ever become ghosts."
Fortuna waited, aware of the possibility her family was being insulted.
"I forget you're Muggleborn sometimes," Flavia said, unconscious of the prejudice she was betraying. She tilted her head in the direction of Myrtle's stall. "She thought her grudge was too important to give up. So she stayed here, and just look at her now that Olive Hornby's graduated."
"And all ghosts are like that? Pathetic?"
"Yes. It's part of why you can't get them to talk about it in any concrete terms. You heard the world's most flushable drama queen. Breezed right by the choice she made so she could talk about Olive Hornby."
Fortuna thought back over the conversation and remembered that Myrtle had said she'd floated away and come back. She'd wondered about it at the time, but hadn't bothered to ask her power. Now that she did, it drew a blank—but not the same kind of blank as the fog. There just wasn't an answer. "I see," she said. "Which means that there's something wrong with people who become ghosts?"
"That's what some people think. If that's true, it's why we—the de Luces, I mean—choose not to." Flavia rolled her eyes heavenwards. "Though Feely and Daffy told me Harriet only left because I was too horrible to look upon."
Fortuna recognized the shift in tone as a signal that Flavia wanted to change the topic. She went along with it, solemnly raising a hand. "I swear by every drop of bilge water we have driven and will drive from this bathroom that I will find you another ghost, a better ghost, before the year is out."
"I'll hold you to that," Flavia said, equally solemn. But she couldn't keep from cracking a smile.
When Filch finally arrived to unleash his disapproval, Fortuna deflected most of the metaphorical spittle (though, regrettably, hardly any of the literal spittle) with her power. She didn't want him to ask McGonagall to turn the rest of their stay in detention over to him.
The detention had worn them both out, but they still summoned some energy for a conversation on the way back to Gryffindor Tower. Both of them wanted to fill the aftermath of their fight with something else, and Flavia settled on their mission.
"We need to be more aggressive," she said. "We can send him an owl and you can steal a broom and follow it."
Fortuna considered it. It would be simple if she had the right broom, and any one of the seven Nimbus 2001s in the Slytherin dungeons would be more than up to the job in her hands. "I could," she allowed cautiously.
"But?"
"I've only read about owls being intercepted, not followed. Would the owl's magic allow it to deliver a letter if its recipient didn't want to be found?"
Flavia sighed. "I suppose if that worked, it would already have been done. 'Dear Mister You-Know-Who: I hope this letter finds you in ill health. Please accept the attached bomb. Only kidding, it has already exploded, ha ha. Yours faithfully, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore.'"
The mood in the common room was as morose as the bathroom they'd just left. Fortuna gathered that the Quidditch team—which was notably absent—had lost and picked up on a few darkly humorous jibes being passed between a few of the older students. Not only had they been flattened by Hufflepuff, they had been flattened by Hufflepuff because Harry Potter had fainted instead of catching the Snitch.
Her power guided her to follow behind Flavia while she replayed the game in her head, leading up to the point where Harry Potter was swarmed by Dementors and fell from his broom.
She held herself back from asking about the particulars of what he'd seen and heard; she remembered from the first time she'd asked about him that he'd witnessed his parents' murder, and she knew that was personal.
Having direct access to his mind was cheating in a way, but she thought that other people should be able to remember that their world's most famous orphan was an orphan and be able to extrapolate from there.
Unfortunately it did not seem that others agreed. She spent most of that evening listening to Romilda Vane and Louisa Amica speculate about why Harry Potter was so weak. The breakfast table was filled with students gossiping about Potter's problems. Jokes were tossed around the hallways, sneers were distributed by Slytherins, and with every word, glance, and giggle Fortuna felt herself grow more intolerant.
She stabbed into a plate of bangers and mash, violently tearing the sausage skins apart.
"You're upset," Flavia observed, not that it required an intellect like hers to make the deduction.
"Yes," Fortuna said, continuing to shred her sausage. "I am."
"Not because we lost the match?"
She turned her attention to reducing the second sausage into its constituent parts. "Because they are making fun of someone for reacting to Dementors."
The other Gryffindors would get over it, since all they really cared about was points and there would be other Quidditch matches. But the humiliation would stick with Harry, and it was a wound that others in his year, particularly Draco Malfoy, would pick at for the next several weeks. Malfoy would be supported by a Greek chorus of Slytherins and other students who wanted to curry favor with him or see Gryffindor or the Boy Who Lived taken down a peg.
"Flavia," she said.
"Fortuna," Flavia said.
"I require your assistance."
"I am eager to provide my assistance."
"It seems that Draco Malfoy believes taunting Harry Potter is an acceptable passe-temp. The honor of our house has been outraged and requires satisfaction."
"Shall we poison him?" Flavia asked.
Fortuna nodded. "We shall."
******
They waited to strike until the following Monday at Fortuna's suggestion, which she made because she meant to twist the knife. It would be simpler to slip something into Malfoy's food on a weekend, but doing it on a weekday ensured that nearly everyone in the school, including all the teachers, would be in the Great Hall to see it. Doing it on the first weekday meant that it would dominate the school's weekly gossip cycle, not to mention disrupt Malfoy's entire week. Once she and Flavia were through with him, he'd need to spend the rest of term playing catch up.
Then there was her long-term plan of rendering the Malfoy family irrelevant. Feeling that perhaps she had overreacted to the awkwardness Fortuna had engineered a few weeks ago, Narcissa Malfoy had decided to make amends. She had instructed her son to play the debonair diplomat and work to mend things with the Greengrasses junior. He and Daphne Greengrass would meet during Monday breakfast to pretend to be adults and act out some facsimile of their parents' politicking.
Allowing them to succeed this wouldn't impede her plans, which were supposed to take effect over the course of several years, but she didn't feel like giving them an inch.
It was with these thoughts in mind that Fortuna walked over to the Slytherin table to say hello to Jessica and Astoria. A vial of a bluish liquid concocted by Flavia sat like a cocked gun in her pocket. Malfoy was a few seats over from Jessica, bragging cheerfully to his cohorts about the responsibilities his father was placing on him and how pleased his father would be to hear about his inevitable success. Equidistant between the two of them was a heaping platter of cinnamon rolls.
She had considered pre-poisoning his food by going to the kitchens and tampering with the roll she knew would end up on Malfoy's plate, but had determined the act would draw too much attention—from Flavia. Her detective friend would know that Fortuna had done something somehow and would attempt to pick it apart. Better to have an obvious show of action than leave Flavia guessing until her mind struck paydirt.
Fortuna could feel some older Slytherins' eyes on her as she strode towards her friend and Astoria, though she acted as though she were unaware of them. Behaving as though a Gryffindor socializing with Slytherins was perfectly normal went a little way to making it so.
Astoria and Jessica, on the other hand, didn't notice her until she was leaning over them.
"Did you remember to write your Transfiguration essay this time?" Fortuna asked, palming the potion in her left hand.
Jessica pretended she wasn't embarrassed—which was easy, as she very nearly wasn't. "I forgot one paper, not the bloody Magna Carta. Don't come over acting like I'm clueless as Candi."
Astoria brought the cinnamon rolls closer to herself. "Socially maladroit though Candidus may be, he can at least be relied upon to complete his assigned tasks," she observed, and selected an especially gooey bun.
"I wanted to make sure we would get work done this study session and not have it devolve into another round of dueling." While she spoke, Fortuna casually pushed the platter back to where it had come from, letting the vial in her hand turn over one pastry in particular as she did. The liquid lost its blue color as it sank into the sugary glaze, rendering the poison indistinguishable from the rest of the icing.
"Can't get a cob on because I'm bored out of my mind," Jessica grumbled.
"Yes," Fortuna said, without the faintest idea of what would constitute putting on a cob, "I can." She dismissed her vague mental image of roasting corn cobs on a grill in favor of advising Jessica not to bully Angelique with disarming spells anymore.
This accomplished, she made her way back to the Gryffindor table and sat down beside Flavia before she could attract any undue attention.
A minute or two later, Percy Weasley arrived and chose a seat nearby so he could cast baleful glares on them throughout his meal. They were firmly cemented as troublemakers in his mind, and he had selflessly taken it upon himself to preemptively reprove them at every turn. His watchfulness would seal their alibi tighter than a thirty year old bottle of port.
The Weasley twins soon entered in high spirits that dampened everyone else's. They'd lately taken to experimenting on both themselves and younger children, and their good cheer signaled danger for anyone in their vicinity. When they saw Percy, they sat at the opposite end of the table—which coincidentally faced the part of the Slytherin table that Malfoy and cronies had occupied.
Not long after they'd settled in, Draco Malfoy reached for the cinnamon rolls that she had pushed his way, seized the tainted one, and took a healthy (or unhealthy) bite out of it. True to Flavia's word, he didn't seem to taste the difference—though even if they had made a mistake in brewing, the sticky blanket of cinnamon and sugar would have hidden any off taste. Draco chewed his way through it, and he finished just as Daphne Greengass entered the room.
He wiped his hands off, though not so thoroughly he didn't get a flake or two of icing in his hair as he smoothed it down, and proceeded ("walked" was insufficient to the pomp of the occasion) towards the young lady. She waited for him with all the regal seriousness a thirteen year old could manage. This was important business indeed.
Fortuna caught the corners of her mouth starting to turn up and hid this betrayal of her emotions by shoving half an orange into her mouth.
The scion of the house of Malfoy bowed to the scion of the house of Greengrass and she returned it with a gesture approaching a curtsy. He drew his shoulders back arrogantly, opened his mouth, and let loose a loud "Hee-HAW!"
Daphne recoiled. Draco covered his mouth and looked around for what he imagined was an assailant with a wand. All he saw was everyone was looking at him; he didn't see that they were looking at the long velvety ears sprouting out from the sides of his head.
But even he noticed when legs turned into a donkey's hind quarters and a layer of fur spread over his skin. All the appearance of Pan without any of the talent. Then a long tail burst from the seat of his pants and the force of the transformation made him pitch forward. He threw his hands out in front of him to break his fall, and they turned to hooves before they hit the ground.
There was utter silence for a few long seconds.
Then Malfoy, whose face by now fully resembled that of a donkey's, brayed again.
The twins started to laugh, which was perfect because the moment the authorities' attention turned to them, there wasn't a chance it was going anywhere else. As the rest of the hall followed the twins' example, Fortuna could see McGonagall's eyebrows knitting themselves a blanket for winter and Snape leapt into action. He didn't run towards Malfoy, but he moved with purpose.
Instead of doing the sensible thing, which was to stand still and wait for the professor to examine him—or doing the natural thing, which was to flee the hall entirely—Draco ran up and down the length of the Slytherin table heeing and hawing in blind panic.
"I don't see the issue," Flavia whispered, eyes gleaming at the result of her hard work. "We only revealed Draco for what he already was."
Fortuna smiled back, finishing her partner's joke in her head. An ass.
***
I would like to give my whole hearted thanks to @BreezyWheeze who supports me on patreon. I cannot thank him enough for his support! Bottles of beer don't buy themselves you know!
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"...Fortuna could see McGonagall's eyebrows knitting themselves a blanket for winter..."
My goodness I love this turn of phrase! Well done indeed! I must steal it for myself in future!
My goodness I love this turn of phrase! Well done indeed! I must steal it for myself in future!
Edison_Trent
Freelancer
At the same time, of course. It pays to be efficient with these sorts of things.
Epsilon Rose
The King of Unrest
I think it's important to note that Fortuna didn't actually frame the twins (at least if you don't know about PtV). From their perspective, someone turned Malfoy into a literal jackass and got away with it. Suspension only turned to them because they're known pranksters and just so happened to be near by, which is actually a credit to their reputation.
I suspect they'll be more impressed by her prank than angry about the temporary suspicion, espesially because the professors can't prove they did anything. That leaves me with three questions:
I suspect they'll be more impressed by her prank than angry about the temporary suspicion, espesially because the professors can't prove they did anything. That leaves me with three questions:
- Will they allow everyone else to continue to think they did it (boosting their reputation), or will they give credit to the actual unnamed master? (My money is on the later, out of professional respect.)
- How much effort will they put into finding the actual perpetrator? (My money is on "A lot.")
- Will they turn this phantom prankster into the opportunity for an extended prank campaign, either purporting to look for said phantom, while causing trouble, or by acting in the phantom's name to try and expand the myth.
- (Bonus question): Who is Keyser Söze and why is a first year working for him? Or, will Fortuna try to extend the myth of a phantom prankster, so she can use it as a shield and or tool.