The Accidental Invasion

by computerneek

Chapter 31: Busy Week?

Bonbon raised an eyebrow as Hailey started digging in her bag almost as soon as she’d sat down. It was once again time for the Student Instructor Program Management Meeting, or the “Sippum”, as Lyra liked calling it. She had about two inches of pages in front of her; the largest other deck was in front of Twilight, at almost an inch; she must’ve sat in on a class.

Then Hailey produced her stack, still smiling and everything, and dropped it on the desk with a heavy thud normally reserved for the final report’s arrival on Dumbledore’s desk.

It was a good four inches thick.

Everyone went silent, staring at it.

Bonbon let them stare for about two seconds, before she sighed, and spoke. “How many pages?” she asked.

“Six hundred ninety-seven,” Hailey answered cheerfully. “Sat in on two classes this week, in addition to two of Lockhart’s, and we figured out the diary’s secret. It showed us a memory, and basically proved that Tom Riddle opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago- not Hagrid, who he framed for it.”

“We?” Bonbon asked, raising an eyebrow. “That your changeling friend?”

She nodded silently.

“Alright then,” Bonbon nodded sharply, looking around the room. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

After talking with Hailey about it, over the last month or so, she’d been talking with everyone else around the room, starting with the concept of a friendly changeling- and now, just about everypony in the room knew Hailey had an anonymous, friendly changeling friend, and was prepared to protect them both from discovery. Morning Sun had seemed highly amused when she’d spoken to her- perhaps she already knew? She knew Morning and Hailey were close friends, after all.

---

Dumbledore sighed. Bonbon had just given him the normal weekly report- with a conspicuous absence of Defense Against the Dark Arts information. “How about Defense Against the Dark Arts?” he asked.

Bonbon smiled amusedly. “Hailey’s been busy this week,” she informed him. “She sat in on two of Lockhart’s classes, which bore no real difference, reviewed two other Student Instructor-led classes, one first year, the other second, and interviewed twenty-eight different students, one from each house in each year through seventh. Lockhart’s classes are universally agreed to be useless, even by upper-year students- which have all also agreed, with the exception of only the sixth-year Slytherin, that the optional supplement we’ve been providing for the upper-year students is, ahh, ‘good stuff’.

“Additionally, not too long ago, she discovered the diary of one Tom Marvolo Riddle, and has since been trying to figure it out. Well, this week, she did it. After a short conversation, the Diary showed her a memory of Riddle ‘catching’ Hagrid opening the Chamber of Secrets- but according to her, and all twelve others that also viewed the captured memory, the memory actually proved Riddle’s guilt, and Hagrid’s innocence.” She sighed, tapping the plastic card lying on top of the pile. “The recording she captured is tied to this; bend it, slightly, to view it. Our experts have verified the memory’s authenticity.” She looked up at him. “Which brings me to the question: You appear, however briefly, in the memory. Do you know anything about Riddle?”

Dumbledore nodded slowly; Hailey really must have been busy. “Not many know that, before he went out into the world, Lord Voldemort went by the name of Tom Riddle.”

Bonbon raised an eyebrow. “So, the Riddle that accused Hagrid was actually Voldemort?”

Dumbledore nodded. “It was indeed. So what about this diary?”

She shook her head. “It was apparently stolen from her bedside cabinet while she was sitting in on Lockhart’s sixth-year class. We have not been able to identify the thief.”

---

Hermione let out a sudden gasp upon receiving her newspaper from the owl at breakfast on Monday.

“What is it?” Ron asked.

She laid it on the table between them in response. Hailey, glancing over from Hermione’s other side, spotted the headline.

Hogwarts gamekeeper framed by Lord Voldemort fifty years ago!

“Yeah, that was a fun one to discover.”

Hermione looked at her. “Discover?”

She nodded. “Remember Riddle’s diary? Turns out Tom Riddle was Voldemort’s younger self.”

“But-!” Silver asked, sitting on Ron’s other side, and holding her own copy of the Daily Prophet. “How did you get the Daily Prophet to print Voldemort’s name?”

Hailey looked up. “You know, that’s a good question. Maybe there’s something in the paper?”

Silver looked down, and turned a page. “Oh, yup, there it is, page two. Rita Skeeter unafraid of the Dark Lord, written by the Editors of the Daily Prophet. Let’s see… Many readers will probably have noticed that He Who Must Not Be Named’s name appears in this morning’s headline- and indeed in Rita’s riveting story a good six more times. As usual, we didn’t have much to do on her story, though we did have to ask about the name, to which she answered: ‘I guess I’ve been associating with Hailey too much’. When asked who Hailey was, her answer was that ‘She’s a student at Hogwarts, and she’s so incredibly unafraid of Voldemort that her fearlessness kinda bleeds off onto everyone around her. To use her words, it’s a word, what are you afraid of?’ Rita stonewalled any further attempts to discover Hailey’s identity.” She sighed, and looked up at Hailey. “You’ve been talking to Rita Skeeter?” she asked.

She nodded. “Very friendly, too. Well…” She shrugged. “After I dropped her on her face, at least.” She laughed. “She said I’m a terrifying duelist.”

“What’s an acromantula?” Ron asked, finding the word at the end of the snippet on the front page.

“A giant spider,” Hailey answered him. “Hagrid still visits Aragog every once in a while, deep in the Forbidden Forest, but Aragog- despite sensing the Monster of the Chamber of Secrets moving around the castle, and knowing what it was- would never speak its name. Almost like the Monster of Slytherin is some kind of monster Voldemort.”

“Or spider Voldemort,” Hermione commented, following the ‘see full story on page 9’ note to the main story. She scanned down it quickly, then peered at where it was continued on page ten and finally finished on page eleven, before looking up at Hailey. “When did you meet Aragog?” she asked incredulously.

Hailey smiled. “Thursday,” she answered. “I was with Hagrid, don’t worry.” Then she chuckled. “And actually, that reminds me of when Rita asked exactly the same question, in exactly the same way, after reading my report.”

Hermione blushed, but Silver laughed.

Hailey grinned. “My… two hundred page report.”

Hermione stared at her. “How- what? Even I can’t-!”

She shrugged. “Well, if you take Bonbon’s little ‘concise writing for detailed reports’ lesson, which I’m pretty sure is reserved for HSIs right now, you’ll find that writing very long reports full of important details comes naturally.”

“Happy valentine’s day,” Lockhart shouted suddenly from the staff table, making all four of them jump.

“What the-?” Ron asked, looking around wildly. “Oh. That explains the pink.” He wrinkled his nose.

---

All day long, Lockhart’s ‘card carrying cupids’, grumpy-looking, gravelly-voiced dwarves wearing crude wings and carrying fancy, cheap harps that were probably more useful as clubs, kept barging into classrooms to deliver valentines, to the annoyance of the teachers.

Of course, there were all sorts of different reactions, given the number of different students.

Any dwarf that interrupted Bonbon’s potions class was hit on the forehead by a small packet of a contact paralysis poison that wore off after two hours; those walking in on Hailey’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class found themselves stacked in the corner, magically bound and gagged with the Full Body Bind. Several, barging in on Morning Sun’s transfiguration class, found themselves turned into pigeons and caged in the corner until the class was over; the entrance to Applejack’s Herbology classroom was barred by a Devil’s Snare until class was out. One dwarf was unlucky enough to try delivering a musical valentine to Twilight Sparkle while she was in the middle of teaching her class about the next core principal of the curriculum. She picked him up and one-armed him from the room so hard the wall dented, then slammed the door so hard several people wondered aloud if it would ever open again. She’d followed it up with a quick locking charm to keep the rest of the dwarves out while she finished her class. One was even found tangled up in his own harp, after attempting to interrupt Lyra’s Charms class.

Eventually, though, one dwarf caught up with Hailey while she was between classes. She was just walking past a column of first-year students entering a Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, with the intent to walk around the corner, don her Invisibility Cloak, and use Hermione’s ‘misty step’ spell to dodge through the wall to sit in on it. She was aware Ginny Weasley was in the class, and had even waved to the girl as she passed- getting the usual deep blush and hidden face in response.

“Oy! You! Hailey Potter!”

It was a particularly surly dwarf, with a particularly deep, grunty voice and a fairly large bruise on his shoulder. Hailey noticed when Ginny, just crossing the threshold into the room, shot out a hand to catch herself on the door frame and stuck her head back out to watch.

The dwarf was elbowing people out of the way.

“Oy, You, Dwarf,” Hailey imitated, pointing. “Be nice.”

Several students laughed.

The dwarf then reached Hailey. “I’ve got a musical message to deliver to Hailey Potter, in person.”

Hailey let out a snort of laughter. “A musical message? With your voice?” She snorted again, and folded her arms. “Alright, let’s hear it.”

The dwarf paused for a second, taken aback, before raising its harp into a ‘playing’ position Hailey knew Lyra would scowl upon, and twanging tunelessly at it while he sang.

“Her eyes are as green, as a fresh-pickled toad,

Her hair is as dark, as a black-bold,

I wish she were mine,

She’s really divine,

The hero who conquered, Gilderoy!”

Hailey laughed outright. The dwarf turned and started walking away.

“Hold up,” Hailey called. “Who sent it?”

The dwarf glanced back at her. “Anonymous.” He continued on his way.

Hailey giggled. “Alright. Perhaps next time Lockhart will hire someone that actually knows how to sing.” She snorted. “I mean, I bet even I can sing better than that- like… Her eyes are as green, as a fresh-pickled-!” She broke out laughing.

Ginny giggled.

Hailey sobered quickly, and coughed into her fist. “I’m way off key, but to be honest, that sounded better than I was expecting.” She waved at the class. “Move along, now. Don’t be late.”

Ginny blushed, and vanished back into the room.

Author's Note:

Patreon, Discord. No, Discord, the old invite got deleted at some point.

Comments

[Melody Song]

Pfft-you kept the song!!!

Do wonder if it was Ginny this time, or someone else

[computerneek]

11051858
Yup! It probably was still Ginny... but in the end, who knows? I'm pretty sure this is the last we'll see of Valentine's Day... I don't remember exactly, I'm currently writing over a year in the future, per story timeline.

It was particularly interesting, since very few people (which does NOT include Ginny) know that Hailey conquered the Dark Lord... Conveniently, "Gilderoy" has the same number of syllables, while also being an informal address- and so, in that form, an insult to him.

[Melody Song]

11051866
Very clever!

I was curious if it was still Ginny as she didn't seem nearly as embarrassed as in the books. Plus, I've also seen some fans claiming that it was a joke played on Harry by a certain blonde Slytherin (or was he really just admitting his secret feelings~!). I suppose we'll never know

[computerneek]

11051886
Well in canon, Draco ended the scene by telling her he didn’t think Potter liked her valentine that much, causing her to flee back into the classroom with her arms over her face…. That’s pretty telling. But I do have to wonder how he knew?

Here, there was nobody to call attention to her as the sender, so she didn’t have that embarrassment to add to the list…. And this time, she was also right next to a convenient wall to hide behind.

[Melody Song]

11051984
Well, true

[Greenhorn]

She shook her head. “It was apparently stolen from her bedside cabinet while she was sitting in on Lockhart’s sixth-year class. We have not been able to identify the thief.”

I couldn't believe Hailey forgot to cast any security on the diary before she left for class.

[computerneek]

11052779
She must've not realized it was a risk... No doubt she couldn't believe it either.