Harry Potter and the Gem of Grogonous

Please read this before moving on to the story or you will all go completely off of your onions!

It is I, the one and only PezMaster! I know how much you want to start reading this fantastic piece of literature which lays before you, so I’ll stop rambling on and get strait to the MOST IMPORTANT tidbit of background information: A new character is introduced in a very odd way (*Readers moan, mumbling curses under their breaths*). No, no, don’t worry; it’s fine. I wrote this story as if the new character was in the rest of the Potter books. That means all the regular characters know her and interact as if she was there from the beginning. (So don’t freak out if some new chick just simply waltzes into the story unannounced)
So who is this ‘new character’, you ask? Read . . . you’ll figure it out . . .
Thanks for being patient with my stupidly chaotic creative process!
Cheers!
From,PezMaster


* * * * *

“It may not look it, but falling off of a roof is an extremely painful experience . . .”

-- He-Who-Is-An-Absolute-Idiot

And-Shall-Remain-Nameless

* * * * *

Chapter 2

Fiasco On The Rooftop

The next couple of days seemed to be drawn out over a period of several years. Time crawled by as if, by doing so, it knew it was making Harry’s stay at the Dursleys' more painful then ever before. Harry himself had purposely sot out ways of avoiding his aunt and uncle; even going so far as to miss mealtimes, substituting his aunt’s bland cooking with cakes and sweets his friends had sent him for his fifteenth birthday. He would have almost gone without complete Dursley contact, too, if he hadn’t run out of eatable food. On Friday the only morsels he had left were rock-hard fudge from the Hogwartian grounds keeper and a sad looking birthday tart from Harry’s godfather (who’s only available tart making materials, Harry suspected, had been packing mud, week old sandwiches, and the occasional dead rat).

Stomach growling profusely, Harry gradually made his way downstairs and into the small kitchen. Uncle Vernon was sitting at the head of the table, reading his newspaper with a large cup of black coffee in one hand. Aunt Petunia was sewing a pair of trousers and speaking to Dudley, who was too busy stuffing his face full of food to notice, let alone listen.

Harry stood at the door of the kitchen for a moment, wondering if Uncle Vernon would give him what for as soon as he sat down at the table. Very slowly, careful not to make any sudden moves, Harry slid into his chair. After a moment of dead silence, Harry’s stomach took the opportunity to give a disturbingly loud growl which seemed to echo throughout the small room. Uncle Vernon coughed once and turned a page in his newspaper; Aunt Petunia took a sip of her rosemary tea then placed the cup back on the table; Dudley chewed thickly on his lunch, trying to remember to breathe between the bites of danish.

Thinking he was home-free, Harry pulled a bowl of soggy cereal from the middle of the table towards him. Not one of the Dursleys glanced up, not one even acknowledged the existence of a forth body in the room. Mentally thanking each and every one of the Dursleys for their prat-like ways, Harry looked up at the kitchen clock while taking in a spoonful of mushy cereal. It was twelve thirty-two. In exactly one hour and twenty-eight minutes he would be on his way to Hogsmeade with the Weasley brothers.

Nothing could stop him now.

As if on a horribly ironic queue, something small and grey came flopping through the open kitchen window. It circled around the table several times, trying to find the most inconvenient place to land. Finally making up its mind, the grey ball of fluff dived head-first into Harry’s bowl of soggy cereal. Milk flew everywhere, splattering everything within a three foot radius.

The first thought that flooded into Harry’s head was to run. Fast. Run really, really fast. Before Harry had a chance to get the hell out of there, however, Uncle Vernon absolutely burst:

“BOY!!”

The veins in Uncle Vernon’s meaty neck began to pop out, turning his face even more crimson. With milk dripping down his cheeks and bits of cereal matted in his hair, Uncle Vernon plunged his hand in the remainder of Harry’s bowl, pulling out the small fuzzy creature. The overwhelming urge to run like hell flooded Harry’s bloodstream again as he suddenly recognized the grey animal caught in him uncle’s porky hands:

Pigwidgeon . . . Ron’s dwarf owl had tried to bring Harry a letter . . .

Harry slowly looked up at Uncle Vernon, whose beady eyes narrowed into a withering glare. Before he could open his mouth to curse his nephew out of house and home, Harry decided to bravely break the horrible silence.

“Er . . . I’ll take the owl back to my room.” Harry said cautiously, trying to draw attention away from Ron’s letter which was tired to one of Pigwidgeon’s legs. “It’s probably just a message from Hog -- er, my school . . .”

Uncle Vernon’s face spasmed, his moustache twitching furiously. “Your school, eh?” he scathed. “I’ll tell you right now, boy; your school has no right sending rabies-infested animals into myhouse.” On that bitter note, he ripped the letter from Pigwidgeon’s leg then threw the poor owl out the window.

“Oooo . . . read the letter, Dad!” Dudley demanded, the owl-induced farce amazingly drawing his attention away from his food. “I bet it’s telling Harry to turn us all into frogs!”

“He better bet his life it doesn’t,” Uncle Vernon muttered, his eyes scanning the bit of parchment. A deep purple colour flooded into his face. “From your school, is it? Think again, boy!”

Uncle Vernon slammed the letter face up on the table so that everyone could clearly see Ron Weasley’s chicken-scratch handwriting.

“Bugger,” Harry mumbled under his breath.

“So your freakish friends think they can storm in here any time they please, do they?” Uncle Vernon continued ranting. “You can tell them I never want any of your kind within two feet of this house!”

“They’ll come anyway,” Harry said, trying to intimidate his uncle. He had grown quite fed up with the Dursleys talking about his friends as if they carried the black plague. “You read the letter; they’re coming back to get me.”

Face going a brilliant maroon, Uncle Vernon wailed like some half-crazed animal and shredded Ron’s letter with his bare hands. “Petunia!” he ordered, “Get me my hammer and wood!”

He then turned, glaring intensely at Harry. “I’ll be damned if I let something like - - like that go on in my house,” he spat spraying Harry with a mist of saliva.

As Uncle Vernon raced out of the room to wizard-proof his house, closely follows by Aunt Petunia and Dudley, Harry sat back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. He knew it was too late; it was twelve fifty-three . . . he’d only have to wait for an hour and seven minutes.

Ron was coming to get him.

* * * * *

It took Uncle Vernon a good half an hour to secure the opening of the fireplace, nailing as much wood to it as humanly possible. When two o’ clock rolled around, he happily declared that nothing could get through the fireplace this time. Feeling absolutely secure from the entire wizarding world, Uncle Vernon ordered everyone down to the living room to see his handy work in action.

“I’d like to see those bastards get through this,” Uncle Vernon beamed, patting the blockade with proudly.

“Are you sure it’s safe, Vernon?” Aunt Petunia asked meekly, clutching Dudley tightly against her chest. “After what they did last year—”

“Of course it’s safe, woman,” Uncle Vernon barked. “It’s made out off one hundred percent Dursley ingenuity.”

Harry snorted thickly. He doubted the ‘Dursley ingenuity’ could even manage to make a simple tomato sandwich, let alone create a sound fortification dividing them from the rest of the world.

“Yes, yes, yes . . .” Uncle Vernon continued, breathing a great sigh of relief. “Not one of the boy’s freakish . . . relations are going to be able to get within ten feet of him. I’ll stomp out all this nonsense if it’s the –”

Quite suddenly, there came a loud explosion from over top of the house at number four Privet Drive, cutting Uncle Vernon’s speech short. Two dull bangs followed, making the roof creak and groan. Next came the low creaking noises; something was trampling around on the house’s thin rooftop.

“What is it?” gasped Aunt Petunia, who was staring, terrified, up at the ceiling above. “Oh, Vernon . . . It’s not - - them, is it?”

Uncle Vernon opened his mouth to answer, but was cut short by more clamour from above. Straining his ears, Harry could faintly hear voices coming from the other side of the ceiling:

“The roof, Lee? The roof?!”

“Can it, Alex. At least I got us here.”

“Oh, yes . . . the roof - - the living room . . . Same difference.”

Harry smiled widely, getting up from his seat. Ron and his chaotic ‘entourage’ had kept their promise . . . soon Harry would be far away from the Dursleys and his life in complete anguish and misery. Uncle Vernon, on the other end of the spectrum, still held his beliefs.

“They’re . . . they’re just on the roof . . .” he stuttered, a crazed look flooding onto his face. “There’s no way - - No way in high hell –”

“Oh God, Lee . . .” came one of the voices from the roof. “What about Ron?”

“What about Ron?” answered the second voice.

“He’s coming in right behind me – What if –”

The first voice got cut off suddenly by another large blast and loud thump on the roof. Several screams and curse words were triggered, followed by the sound of someone sliding down the roof, loosening every shingle along the way. From the front window, Harry caught a brief glimpse of someone falling downward towards earth, landing with a muffled thump into a group of rose bushes.

Behind Harry, Uncle Vernon growled like a psychopathic killer. “No way . . . no way in high hell . . .”

There was dead silence for a moment, only to be severely broken by someone jabbing at the door bell several times. Looking back at the Dursleys, who were in no condition whatsoever to stop him, Harry walked to the front door and opened it.

A lanky, boy of fifteen dizzily stood on the front doorstep, complete with cheesy grin and lively eyes. He had several twigs and leaves sticking out from his bright red hair; a number of thin scratches and bruises (mementoes from falling off of a two story house into a yard thick with thorny rose buses) were scattered randomly over his severely freckled face.

The boy nearly had to duck to get underneath the door frame and into the house; he grazed an even six foot two, a product of one of his famous ‘über-growth spurts’.

“Hello Ron,” Harry gave his friend a warm smile, though slightly unsure of the Weasley’s current condition. “Are you . . . all right?”

“Oy! That was not a pleasant experience,” Ron replied, rubbing the back of his head. “Oh sure, I’ve fallen off a roof before . . . but never into a field full of bloody thorns.” He glanced off-handily at the Dursleys, who were all huddled in the far corner, whimpering like little baby animals.

“Er . . . Hello again,” he offered.

Dudley let out a shrill squeal and bolted into the kitchen as fast as his chubby little legs could carry him. Aunt Petunia promptly fainted while Uncle Vernon let out a meek, puppy-like growl, trying to look somewhat threatening.

“Don’t mind them,” Harry told Ron, glancing up at the ceiling; the calls and scratching noises were still coming in strong from the other side. “Who d’you bring with you?”

“Lee and Alex,” Ron said, picking out a leaf from his disheveled hair. “They wanted to practice their Apparation. Got their learning permits, they do.”

Harry raised un eyebrow, slightly impressed. “So how’d you get here?”

Ron’s mouth hung open for some time before answering delicately: “Er . . . uhhhh . . . they brought me along?”

Harry snorted. “You Apparated?”

“Of course not!” Ron replied airily, putting a hand over his heart as though Harry had mortally offended him. “Alex and Lee just let me . . . tag along.”

“So you Apparated,” Harry finished, smirking evilly. “Isn’t that illegal if you’re underage?”

“Er . . . slightly,” Ron remarked, his cheeks tinting a guilty red. “Could you look over all of this when you get to my house? My mum would absolutely slaughter me - - then kill Lee and Alex afterwards. Their not suppose to Apparate without an adult. Mum’s scared stiff that one of them is going to go and splinch themselves. Oh God, you should have seen her when Fred and George passed their Division of Junior Witch and Wizard Apparation Test at the Department of Magical Transportation. She almost went into cardiac arrest.”

Ron then looked up at the ceiling and rapped on it with an open palm. “You two should come down!” he called up to his entourage.

“How?” retorted someone above. “Dear God, I’m not coming down the way you did.”

“Go down the chimney.” Harry offered the marooned roof-dwellers. “The fireplace is blocked, but I’m sure you could blast through easily enough.”

Uncle Vernon gave a little snort of indignity from the other corner of the room. “That fireplace is as sound as the roof!” he snarled.

The second horribly ironic queue that day came in the form as a large crack making its way across the ceiling, bringing down a light rain of plaster. Within seconds the crack became wider, stretching the length of the living room and triggering a large groan from the stressed roof.

“Oh, bugger,” Harry and Ron muttered simultaneously, knowing perfectly well what was coming next.

At that exact moment, the ceiling’s small spilt became a gaping hole. The front of the roof collapsed; shingles, plaster, and panelling poured down into the living room. The roof-dwellers came with the last of the shingles, screaming curse words as they hit the carpeted floor with two dull thumps.

“ ‘Lets Apparate,’ he says . . . ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ he asks me . . .”

“Just stuff it, Alex, and get your bloody elbow out of my nose.”

It took a moment for the air to clear. Harry, coughing madly from the plaster dust caught in his lungs, squinted through his dirty glasses, glancing over the debris to see the total extent of the damage. Beside him, Ron groaned, slapping his forehead with an open palm. He was still standing, but a thick white dust covered his hair, making him look like he had just stuck his head in a tub full of peroxide. Uncle Vernon’s mouth was left agape, forming an extremely bemused expression on his face; the unconscious Aunt Petunia in his arms.

There came a hacking noise from the middle of the room, catching Harry’s attention. Lee Jordan was sprawled across the collapsed coffee table, staring up at the gaping hole above. Another figure was next to him, staggering to her feet and picking out a splintering shingle from her tangled hair. She glanced up, finding both Harry’s and Ron’s eyes.

“Didn’t quite make it to the chimney,” she remarked. “The roof kind of collapsed on our way there, causing us to plummet to a near-death experience.”

“We noticed, Alex.” Ron commented darkly. “We were fatefully placed under your plummet.”

“It’s fine, though.” Harry gave Alexandrea McKay a smile, taking off his glasses to clean them with the sleeve of his shirt. “You didn’t kill anyone down here.”

“Oh good,” Alexandrea replied airily, as if making a roof collapse was a common, everyday occurrence. She returned Harry’s friendly smile, showing her missing eye tooth as she did, then tilted her head and squinting upwards. “Well, Harry, your aunt and uncle just got one hell of a sunroof.” Something tinged in her speech-pattern. She had always had a hint of some foreign accent; definitely home in the Western Hemisphere, maybe to go so far in saying North America. Harry had always been meaning to ask her where she picked it up from. As far as he knew, Alexandrea had been born and raised on the island, never leaving the country of Britainlong enough to pick up an accent.

“Sunroof custom made by Jordan and McKay Inc.,” Lee Jordan slowly got to his feet, wincing as he rubbed his sore back. “We really get into our work, don’t we?”

Alexandrea promptly smacked Lee upside the head in retaliation for the awful pun, knocking a cloud of dust off of his dreadlocks. Set off from the new plaster particles, Alexandrea’s crooked nose scrunched up mechanically and let out a monstrous sneeze, making even Uncle Vernon grimace in complete disgust.

“Erm . . . sorry ‘bout that, Lee,” Alexandrea sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“No problem, mate,” Lee replied sarcastically through gritted teeth. “I simply love being physically abused and then plastered by your nose oysters. It’s such a pleasure, it is.”

Before Alexandrea had a chance to smack Lee again, Ron stepped in, knowing perfectly well that a battle like this could turn into a full fledged war. “I think Harry wants to get out of here as soon as possible,” he said, turning towards his friend. “Where’s all your luggage, Harry? Let’s go get them.”

“Er . . . they’re upstairs in my room,” Harry answered, eyeing Lee and Alexandrea. From past experiences, he knew it wouldn’t be wise leaving those two alone in a room with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia.

“Don’t worry about them,” Ron said to Harry in an undertone as if he was reading his friend’s mind. “Lee and Alex are on a real tight leash already. They won’t pull anything else today.”

“It’s not Lee and Alex I’m worried about,” Harry replied as he and Ron climbed the stairs to his bedroom. “It’s the Dursleys.”

Sure enough, as Ron and Harry were handling the luggage and owl cage, Uncle Vernon snapped out of his weakened state. His curses could be heard throughout the house:

“ – MILLIONS OF POUNDS IN DAMAGE! YOU AND YOUR BUMBLING GAUCHENESS COULD HAVE KILLED US ALL! FORGET THE STUPID BOY AND GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! IF I EVER SEE ANY ONE OF YOU WITHIN TWO YARDS OF MY FAMILY, I’LL CALL THE POLICE AND HAVE YOU THROWN IN—”

Uncle Vernon’s rant was suddenly cut short by forces unknown to Harry and Ron. As Aunt Petunia, who had apparently regained consciousness momentary, screamed ‘bloody apocalypse’. The two boys came rushing downstairs to see what chaos had resumed, dragging Harry’s luggage behind them.

“Dear God, we leave you alone for two seconds . . .” Ron muttered, sounding frightfully like his mother. He dropped the case he was carrying as he suddenly noticed what had gone on.

In the middle of the room lay Uncle Vernon, his arms stiffly at his sides and jaw clenched tightly as if it was held together with a terribly strong bonding glue.

Harry’s mouth twitched violently as he tried to stifle the overwhelming urge to double-over with laughter. “What did you two do?”

“Just your basic Full-Body Bind,” Alexandrea said simply as she and Lee pocketed their wands. Her dark eyes drifted over to Harry’s school trunk. “Need some help with that?”

As Aunt Petunia began to cry fervently over her rigid husband, the four Hogwartians fought an epic battle with Harry’s luggage. Ron and Alexandrea easily broke through Uncle Vernon’s barrier which covered the mouth of the fireplace. Lee started a fire within it, prodding at the emerald green flames with his wand.

“It’s all set up,” Lee said, nodding to the fire. “Since we shouldn’t go back the way we came,” (Ron’s ears tinged a guilty pink) “we might as well use the Floo system.” With that, Lee picked up Hedwig and her cage and placed it into the hot fire. “Should go right back to the Burrow.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Alexandrea yawn overenthusiastically. She had grown tired of Lee’s fire making skills and was turning her attention to prodding pieces of shingles with her wand, changing them into neon pink beetles.

“I thought you couldn’t use magic out of school,” Harry said, arching an eyebrow as a pink beetle scurried across his foot. “The body bind, the fire, not to mention the roof . . . I’m surprised the Ministry of Magic hasn’t swarmed this place and tackled us all by now.”

Lee smiled widely, as if curing Harry of his puzzlement was an extreme pleasure. “Before your last year at Hogwarts you can apply for one of these,” He pulled a small, plastic cart out from his pocket. “A Licence for Use of Magic by the Under-aged.”

Harry looked over Lee’s card with interest. It remarkably resembled a Muggle driver’s licence, minus the fact that the picture of Lee was moving, trying to smooth down a dreadlock at the time. ‘MINISTRY OF MAGIC’ was written across the top in wavy gold letters. Underneath the Ministry’s signature, it read: ‘The Department of the Use of Underage Magic and the Division of Junior Witch and Wizard Evaluation approves Ms./Mr. LEE KATONA JORDAN for full time use of his/her magic. 

“Fred, George, Lee, and I all went to pass the test and pick up our cards together,” Alexandrea said as she helped Ron stuff Harry’s trunk into the mouth of the fireplace. “Fred switched Lee’s wand with one of their trick ones to make things more interesting. You should have seen it; Lee tried to perform a simple Encouragement charm and the wand blew up in his face. Thank God the Instructor had a sense of humour.”

“Thank God I have a sense of humour,” Lee retorted. “If I had been a lesser man, I would have impaled Fred on his own fake wand.”

“If you had been a lesser man,” Alexandrea shot back off-handily, “then you would have amused George and I that much more.”

“And killed Fred in the process.”

“I certainly didn’t say humour was all dandelions and fuzzy woodland creatures. There are always sacrifices.”

“Remind me to tell Fred that his best friend would have traded him up for a cheap laugh,” Lee muttered to Harry and Ron, knowing that he could never win the battle with Alexandrea. He quickly changed the subject: “So, is that all of the luggage, Harry?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, glancing around the room to see if he had forgotten anything important. A smile broke across his face as he fully took in the sight of the Dursleys’ living room. His aunt was curled up in a fetal position, leaning against the couch and rocking herself. Uncle Vernon was still lying in the middle of a great pile of shingles, his body still under the influence of the Body-Binding spell.

‘Jeez,’ Harry thought to himself, ‘this has to be worse then last year. Even Fred and George couldn’t cause this much damage with their Ton-tongue Toffee . . .’

“Where are Fred and George?” Harry said suddenly, wondering why on earth the Weasley twins would ever pass up a chance to create some extra chaos. “Why didn’t they come along?”

Ron exchanged a long glance with Lee and Alexandrea. All three of them frowned slightly.

“They . . . er . . . were held up,” Ron replied slowly. Trying to tangent from the subject at hand, he dug into one of his pockets and pulled out a fist full of Floo powder. “Here Harry,” he poured some of the powder into Harry’s open palm. “You go first. We’ll come in behind you.”

Harry glanced at Ron, knowing perfectly well that he was hiding information about the twins’ whereabouts on purpose. Realizing that he would find out what was happening soon enough, Harry sighed and stepped into the fireplace, sprinkling some Floo powder on top of his head. Before any ash could get a chance to make its way into Harry’s lungs, he clearly said “The Burrow”; not noticing the commotion behind him as Lee and Alexandrea took the Body-Binding spell off a very crimson-faced Uncle Vernon.