Well, as you can see, I’ve decided to go along with twice a week posting. However, this will only last for my first semester of school, which ends in January. After that, it's out of my hands if I post twice a week or only once. If I can finish the trilogy before that, it's twice a week, and if I don't, it might be only once, though I hope and expect to have it done by then. We'll see. Also, when I post on Wednesdays will vary each day, but it will always be after school and might even be right before I go to sleep. It just depends on the week.
For anyone curious about my writing of the third story, I’ve got most of sixth year written, and I’ve outlined the final summer of my trilogy, though seventh year isn’t outlined yet. Finishing sixth year will most likely take me only three more chapters, but we’ll see how much time I have. When I finish the trilogy altogether, I’ll decide how often I post, but I’ll most likely stick to twice a week for the sake of my amazing Beta, Arnel.
Huge thanks to Arnel for all the editing she does on this story. Wouldn't be the same without you, Arnel! :)
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Return of an Alpha | ||||||
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Category: Alternate Universe Characters:All Genres: Action/Adventure, Angst, Drama Warnings: Death, Mild Language Story is Complete Rating: PG-13 Reviews: 409 Summary: For three years, Harry has been Becoming Alpha of Hogwarts. Now another Alpha is returning, bringing with him darkness, chaos, and battle. Watch as sides line up for war, and people and society change. Hitcount: Story Total: 169710; Chapter Total: 3893 Author's Notes: |
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“So, Harry, you never did tell us what happened with the egg,” Daphne commented in The Den a few days after Christmas. “Well, I need to figure out a way to breathe underwater for an hour,” he commented dryly, rolling his eyes as he had been expecting this line of questioning sometime soon. “What? Why?” many of his friends asked, shocked as they sat up straighter. “Come seek us where our voices sound, We cannot sing above the ground, And while you’re searching, ponder this: We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss, An hour long you’ll have to look, And recover what we took, But past an hour — the prospect’s black, Too late, it’s gone, it won’t come back,” Harry repeated from memory. Around him, his friends were staring, wide-eyed. “In the lake are Merpeople, and I’ve got an hour to find what they took,” he stated. Everyone was silent as they digested this, and Harry tightened his hold around Ginny’s shoulders, where she had been resting for the past hour before this had come up. Next to him, on his other side, was Tracey, whose hand was on his arm in silent support. “Do you have any idea what they’re going to take?” Susan finally asked. “All four of us have ideas, but we really have no idea,” Harry lied, shaking his head, purposely keeping his body relaxed, but feeling as if he was nervous. He knew that one wrong move, and Ginny and Tracey would find out the truth, which he didn’t want. “Well, there’s Gillyweed,” Neville suggested, and Harry smiled in encouragement so that Neville would go on. “Professor Moody gave me a book on water plants at the beginning of the year. Gillyweed is a plant that, when you eat it, gives you gills and webbed hands and feet for a certain amount of time.” “Great!” Harry said happily. “I’ll write to Padfoot and see about getting some. Thanks so much for the idea, Neville.” Neville smiled with a bit of pride that Harry was seeing more and more often as the years went by, especially during training. “In the meantime, I’m going to be looking through the higher level books some more; maybe I’ll come across a good charm for backup or something.” “I’m sure some of us can check the library for ideas as well,” Hermione said. “A backup plan is always a good idea,” Daphne agreed. It seemed to Harry that everyone knew he would be using Neville’s idea of Gillyweed without question, but they also knew that, as a Slytherin, he wanted to be as prepared as possible for the Task. “You should also go try to find the Merpeople before the Task, but don’t go too close until then,” Ginny said suddenly, and everyone looked at her in a bit of surprise before nodding slightly in agreement. “I’ll do that to test the Gillyweed as well as gather my bearings so the Task will be easier,” Harry said while squeezing Ginny in thanks for the idea. “Now that we’re done with that, what’s the next tournament taking place this week?” Tracey asked, pointing towards the bulletin board to distract everyone from the Tournament. Harry was thankful, especially because thinking about the Second Task meant thinking about either Ginny or Tracey being under the lake with Merpeople, and he still didn’t know which of them it would be. PRANK WAR! The second week of classes, Monday through Friday, is going to be a free-for-all prank war with teams forming and turning against one another if they wish. Rules: 1) Pranks MAY be set up beforehand, but there will be absolutely no pranking before the actual war, not even from the Weasley twins. Any pranking before the war results in prankster’(s) wand(s) being cursed. This curse allows no spells but ones necessary for classes to be used for the duration of the war. 2) Pranks cannot last beyond Sunday. 3) DO NOT tell any professor or adult about this, even after it has started! No one willing to tell a professor about the war or a professor can see this poster. 4) If you get detention for being caught out on a prank, GO! All it does is show that you need to learn some new tricks. 5) Pranks cannot take place inside a classroom or in the Common Rooms or dorms. Only in the halls , out on the grounds, and in the Great Hall. The only other place not allowed is in The Den, which will be the safe zone outside of classes and in the evening. I would suggest not pranking in the library unless you wish to face the wrath of Madame Pince, all of the professors, and many students, but it isn’t specifically off-limits. 6) Pranks cannot harm anything but pride unless it’s something like a Tripping Hex. All in all, though, just have FUN! … All around the school, posters went up on the last day of break. Each Common Room and The Den had them on notice boards on tables, and even in some dorms. To those who were willing to tell the professors about the war or stop it as well as the professors, the posters looked like just a normal notice about another tournament in The Den. To everyone else in the school it was a poster of color that excited most people, but Harry’s friends especially. Many were afraid of what Harry, Ginny, Tracey, and the twins would do, but everyone knew it would be an amazing week of pranks that anyone could get in on. Even the foreigners were looking forward to it, probably so that they could show off a bit. Unfortunately for everyone, no one knew what Harry and Tracey had been doing over the past few months with Ginny’s help. If they had known, not even the twins would have joined in on the prank war for fear of the pranking trio. “Brillian t poster, Harry, just brilliant,” Fred said as he and George forced Tracey and Ginny away from him enough to sit on either side of him in the Great Hall. “Wonderful advertisement, mate,” George agreed with a proud smile and nod. “Thought you’d approve,” Harry said with some amusement as Tracey and Ginny pulled out their wands, silently threatening the twin pranksters out of their spots. The twins moved so fast when they saw the wands that they were a red and black blur. “Next week is going to be fun,” the twins said in sync before rushing back to their table. “They have no idea what they’re in for,” Ginny said in amusement as she picked her fork up again and began eating, Tracey and Harry shaking their heads in agreement as well as sadness. The first week of classes passed by silently, or so it seemed to the teachers. For the students, much of the time outside of classes and homework was spent preparing for the prank war. Luckily for Harry, Tracey, and Ginny, they had managed to get the Room of Requirement before either of the twins, and they had found a way to keep their planning room unreachable to anyone but them. While in the room, potions were brewed, powders created, strings and threads prepared, maps marked up, and plans made. All the while, a special new pranking helper was being perfected every hour. Finally, on Sunday, something happened in the Room of Requirement. “It’s done!” Tracey exclaimed, gathering the attention of Harry and Ginny, who had been brewing supplies under Harry’s instructions. “Let’s see!” Harry said, excited. Tracey laid a piece of parchment on the square table where they had been working on it for months, all three gathering around. Of course, there were two more off to the side, but they were ignoring them for now. In front of him, Harry was looking at their version of the Marauder’s Map. If his father and his friends had thought that was the perfect pranking tool, they were sadly mistaken, as Harry knew Padfoot and Moony would admit when Harry showed it to them over the summer. Not only did the Map show all of the passages the Marauder’s Map had shown, it showed The Den, the Chamber of Secrets — Sebae purposefully missing from the Map — a few passages the three of them alone had found over the past three-and-a-half years, and even the Room of Requirement, though it only showed the location, not who was in it. All of the passwords were on the Map, and it was even able to show them when they changed, including the Common Rooms and Headmaster’s office. Even better, they only had to tap one of those places with a wand to find out the password. Of course, while that was all good, in Harry’s mind, the final addition to the Map, and the toughest one, was the best. It was the addition that allowed the three of them to see where every single prank and trap was placed, whether by them or someone else, and a tap of the wand showed a description of the prank on the side of the map. The one problem they had had was figuring out how to detect potions and spells without showing what ones were in the classrooms. Eventually, they had decided to not show any magic or potions in off-limits areas, though they showed them in The Den and Common Rooms just to be safe. It meant there would be random flashes of spells at times in Common Rooms, dorms, and hallways, but those wouldn’t be terrible unless they were long-lasting. “Let’s get to work, then,” Harry said with a grin, turning back to the last batch of supplies so that they could pack up their pouches full of supplies for the upcoming week, knowing that it would be like a war zone full of pranks instead of actual fighting. Harry pulled out his Map and slowly made his way around the school, dodging traps, putting counters on himself where he had to, and setting up his own traps for him, Ginny, and Tracey all the while. It took many hours of the day, but by the time dinner came along on Sunday, the traps were all placed and ready to set off. No one would know what was coming. Harry watched as the twins walked into the Great Hall and immediately looked at him and his friends. The disappointment on their faces was evident. If they had thought a simple prank right outside the Slytherin Common Room set yesterday in the early evening would actually get him, they were sadly mistaken, Harry thought, smirking as he saw on his Map that was on his lap that the twins had both been hit with a prank set specifically in a route he knew they would take. Pretty soon, both boys were snakes, hissing as they slithered over to Harry. Luckily for them, he could understand them, even if he wasn’t going to do anything. “Change us back!” they hissed as Harry raised an amused eyebrow at them. “Please! We know it was you. Plus, we can tell you can understand us.” “Never said I couldn’t,” he replied in English so that those around him could understand. “Sorry boys, but I don’t know the counter for this as I didn’t do it. Maybe it’ll wear off with time.” That was all the twins needed to realize that it was a short-term prank. Of course, that was also the moment it wore off, leaving the twins in their underwear by Harry’s table as their clothes were over where they had been sitting. Fred’s boxers had been changed so that they were bright pink with “Princess” written on the bum while George’s were purple with pink poka-dots. Both boys rushed over to their clothes before running out of the Hall, everyone laughing at them. Meeting the girls’ eyes, Harry saw they were thinking the same thing: This was only the beginning. Over the rest of Monday, people were tripping all over, changing colors, and some even turning into animals for a minute or two. They all quickly learned not to move if it was the animal one, else they’d end in only their underwear, which was magically changed each time, on after it wore off. The twins set off fireworks in abandoned classrooms, charmed to go off when someone passed by the room. They were also using some of their prank food at meals to turn people in canaries and make their tongues grow until someone stopped the growth. One of the carefully placed traps was supposed to change Harry and Tracey’s robes into Gryffindor dress robes of the opposite gender while just changing the gender of Ginny’s robes, but it was easy to cancel the trap and replace it with Slytherin in mind for another person to walk through. Tuesday was when the older students started adding in transformations and turned the random bricks of the stone walls into animals out of nowhere, scaring the younger ones until they realized the animal couldn’t move. Sometimes the portraits were pranked to follow people around, singing to the person or flying off the wall. Of course, potions were on all kinds of surfaces including tables, chairs, walls, even the floors and doorways. Some shrunk people, some made them grow, a few were swelling potions, and a bunch had their body parts changed in color or shape. A typical potion was one to make hair grow amazingly fast. Harry could only appreciate the basic potions that changed a person’s color while simultaneously doing something like growing the hair or making them shrink. The twins were slowly being driven crazy as the trio’s traps of things like suddenly being frozen in place, being unable to talk for an hour, instant hair-loss that took a full day to re-grow even with a potion, and certain body parts suddenly becoming so numb that they were unmovable. What made it worse on the duo was that not a single prank they were setting was being tripped by the trio. In fact, the only things that worked were the Tripping Hexes and other sudden spells used in the halls, not that the twins had worked that out yet. Wednesday involved lions, snakes, badgers, and eagles all over the school in the school colors, though they never did anything more than force a student to the ground before leaving the person alone and finding a new target. The trio was proud of that accomplishment. Through all of this, the professors knew who was setting off a majority of the pranks, but they couldn’t pin anything on them. Whenever the five of them were asked to turn out their pockets, not a single thing besides a wand was found, and there were always only spells used in class when the wand was checked. Of course, no one outside of those in training knew about the pouches that were hanging invisibly on their belts full of supplies. Wedne sday evening, Harry and Tracey were hanging out in the boys’ dorm, sitting on Harry’s bed with their special Map open in front of them and pranking supplies within grabbing distance. “What are you two up to?” Theo asked as he entered the room, and Harry quickly tapped the Map and muttered, “Prank Planned,” which was how their Map was wiped clean, purposely made differently from the Marauder’s Map. “Planning, of course,” Harry said as he rolled his eyes, placing the Marauder’s Map on top of their own Map as Tracey got up to kiss Theo, distracting him while also greeting him as they normally did. “And can you please not do that in front of me?” he begged once it was done, rolling his eyes in disgust. “Why do you always say that, Harry?” Theo complained lightly as he put an arm around Tracey, pulling her to sit down on his bed which was next to Harry’s. “Because she’s basically my sister, and it’s so not cool to see anyone kissing her,” Harry suggested, and Tracey smirked slightly. Of course, they both knew that she felt the same way about Harry and Ginny kissing, which was why Harry kissed his own girlfriend in front of Tracey whenever she kissed her boyfriend in front of him. “Get over it,” Theo groaned. “How would you feel if you had to watch Blaise and Daphne snogging?” Harry asked, and Theo shuddered before realizing what he meant. “Yeah, it’s the same thing with watching the two of you.” “Fine, fine, but what are you planning this time?” Theo asked. “Pranks, of course,” Tracey said, pulling away from Theo, much to his disappointment, to go back to Harry’s bed to write down a final note in her Journal before making a scroll of it. She copied the scroll and passed it to Harry, who read the final addition with a smirk before nodding in agreement and putting the scroll in a pouch on his bed. “I don’t want to know what that said, do I?” Theo asked rhetorically, but Harry and Tracey answered anyway. “Probably not.” “Great, just great, another huge prank,” Theo muttered with a groan as he shook his head. “Of course,” Tracey said with an innocent smile while pulling him from the room. She winked at Harry before leaving him to put the finishing touches on the prank before setting it up. “Come on, come on,” Harry muttered under his breath, much to the girls’ amusement, though they were just as anxious as he was. It was the next morning at breakfast, and all three were sneaking glances at the Head Table from time to time. The prank for this morning was on the professors, including Madam Maxime and Professor Karkaroff. Of course, just as Harry finally turned back to his meal, a huge bang went off. Grinning internally, he looked back up at the Head Table with a bit of pride. Their prank used ideas from all over the prank war, using the basics that others had been using. Not a single professor could move because of a sticking charm on the table to hold their arms in place and another carefully placed on their chairs. All of them had been hit with hair-growth potion along with a color-changing charm. Even better, their silverware was now snakes, their goblets eagles, napkins badgers, and plates lions, all the same size as the object that had been changed. All around the Hall, students began to snicker at the sight of their professors covered in so much hair that the only difference between them was the color, and even then their hair kept changing from color to color. Finally, students began to laugh as the animals began nesting in the hair; it was impossible not to laugh. Within half an hour, which was enough time for the professors to eat and get to classes, the professors were back to normal, if not a bit upset by the prank. Unfortunately, not even Dumbledore, who was truly trying, could figure out who had done the charm work, or at least, they had no proof. “Which part of that prank did I interrupt last night?” Theo asked softly as they all headed to their first class, Herbology. “Deciding what charm to use for the snake,” Harry informed his friend in amusement while expertly waving his wand at a specific part of the floor in front of them and muttering a spell. Before their eyes, a hidden string appeared. Quickly, Harry sent a stone at it, and the stone suddenly had female clothes covering it. Rolling his eyes, Harry walked towards the string, stepping over it. When nothing else happened, the others copied his move, and they all went to class while the twins watched, disappointed looks on their faces. “How do they do it?” they whispered in sync as they watched Harry leave the Entrance Hall as if nothing had happened. By Thursday evening, Harry knew that the Weasley twins were desperate to at least hit him with a single prank before the prank war was over. Unfortunately for them, they had no idea that Harry and the girls had a special prank planned for Friday evening that would last until Sunday, a minute until midnight. They would hate it, but everyone else would be amused by it. Of course, that still left another twenty-four hours for the boys to try to prank the trio. All three were being cautious when not in the safe zones and still alert while in them. It was lucky for the twins that someone had finally taken pity on them and told the pair about the trio’s one weakness, as it would allow them to put the three into a very weak trap, but that was it. The next afternoon, during the free period Tracey and Harry had because of Arithmancy and Ginny because she wasn’t in Divination or Muggle Studies, the twins hit all three of them with a Tripping Hex that sent them into the color-changing wire the trio knew was there as Harry had been preparing to disarm it. Of course, all three laughed aloud when they saw that Harry was purple, Ginny orange, and Tracey gray. “Nicely done, boys,” Tracey called, and Harry knew the twins were surprised that she was looking right at their hiding spot. “Took you long enough,” Ginny commented with a smirk. “You two owe me five Galleons each,” Harry said as if it was just a passing thought. “I called Friday, remember?” “Why do I keep on betting with you?” Ginny grumbled as she passed over her money. “I’m not sure why I do either,” Tracey agreed while tossing the gold over Ginny’s head and into Harry’s waiting hands one by one. “You — you were betting on us finally getting you?” George asked in disbelief as the twins moved from their hiding spot. “Well, yeah,” Harry said. “It’s been obvious all week that the only pranks that get us are the sudden ones, not the ones placed ahead of time. I’m a bit surprised I actually won the bet, seeing as I expected you to catch on to that like three days ago.” “You did?” Tracey and Ginny asked, spinning around to face him. “Yeah,” he said. “I was trying to give one of you an easy win with me for once, you know.” Both girls blinked before smiling slightly, seeing as Harry was actually telling the truth. “Anyway, we’ll see you at dinner.” Harry waved at the shocked twins before walking towards the library to do Ancient Runes homework, the girls following. The final prank pulled on the twins was done at dinner; specifically, the time when the most people were eating. They wanted everyone to see their prank this time. A sudden flash of light was all that gave away the prank as people spun around to see what it was this time. Fred was completely silver, which gave away who had planned this prank, while George was emerald green. It reminded the students who had been at Hogwarts in Harry’s first year of the original pranks that allowed the twins to befriend Harry. Of course, this time there was an addition: Words floating above their heads. Silver is No Longer a Pranking King Emerald is No Longer a Pranking King Each twin had the color that belonged to them floating above their head, Fred’s in gold and George’s in scarlet. The older students were the first to laugh, remembering the nicknames that had come from that prank four years ago, and the younger years were laughing just as hard once they were filled in on the background of the prank. Of course, the fact that the twins had finally lost their title in their sixth year of Hogwarts caused a lot of talk, but those closest to the twins and Harry were telling the whole school that Harry had only been playing the Prince of Pranks — all three of them had known who was really the King. Overall, the prank war had been a huge success, in Harry opinion. People had laughed constantly, the teachers were driven crazy, everyone had been involved in the end, and Harry had finally decided to let the school know who was really the Pranking King of the school, even if he didn’t show it often. Of course, Ginny and Tracey were the Pranking Queens. As Harry looked up at the Head Table, Professor Dumbledore raised his goblet and tipped it in Harry’s direction ever-so-slightly before drinking. It was his way of congratulating him on a job well done to help the school have fun. All without letting anyone else see i t. AN: As you can see, this chapter was another fun one for the amusement of you lot. I thought a prank war was needed, and it’s a bit of a filler to lead up to the Second Task. I hope you enjoyed it, and I’ll talk to you again on Sunday. |
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