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SIYE Time:11:56 on 29th March 2024
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The Art of Pranking
By gryffins_door

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Category: Alternate Universe, Prank Wars Challenge (2022-2)
Characters:Harry/Ginny
Genres: Action/Adventure, Humor
Warnings: Mild Language
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 8
Summary: ***Winner of Best Overall, Most Unexpected, and joint winner of the People's Choice Award for the Prank Wars Challenge (2022)***Little Harry, new Unspeakable-in-Training, assumes that attending a birthday party for an 11-year-old girl should be a piece of cake. He finds out otherwise.

Sequel to The Art of Being Harry. CoS replacement.
Hitcount: Story Total: 2423; Chapter Total: 592
Awards: View Trophy Room




Author's Notes:
By popular request, Little Harry is back! He heard about SIYE's Pranking Challenge and wanted to sign up. This story extends beyond the challenge portion, but the author is a sloooow writer. Apologies - it will be completed eventually. Reading "The Art of Being Harry" first is recommended but not essential - the basics are explained in-story.




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1. Time

o

"Harry, these are Unspeakables Winken and Blinken," said the Unspeakable who called himself Nod. "We will be your guides today for your tour of the department."

Harry looked up at the mostly featureless faces under the grey hooded cloaks they all wore. Winken was apparently female while the others appeared to be men.

"Hi," he said with a small wave.

He was feeling a little less intimidated since they were all being extra friendly towards him. Hopefully they wouldn't be treating him like the small child that he appeared to be. He was almost twelve for Merlin's sake and knew most everything taught at Hogwarts. He still needed the practical experience, which is why this was to be his OWL year at school when he prepared for his Ordinary Wizarding Levels, and the following year he would be preparing for the NEWTs which reportedly earned their name of Nastily Exhausting.

No one in history had ever graduated from Hogwarts school at age 13. Harry Potter would be the first.

By then, Harry would have spent the usual seven years in the castle like most other students. Unlike every other student, Harry had arrived at age seven and spent four years in the magical paintings of Hogwarts, visiting every class offered inside the building and learning what he could without actually performing the magic. No one, not even Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, had recognized him as the Boy Who Lived.

The only problem with living in magical paintings is that his body did not change at all. When he came out to be sorted at age eleven, he still had the under-nourished seven-year-old body he arrived with four years earlier. The school matron, Madame Pomfrey, had taken very good care of him and declared that he would grow into his normal size - eventually - at some rate that one could only guess because no living person had ever resided in a magical painting before.

Of course, no person had ever survived the Avada Kedavra Killing Curse before either. Apparently Harry Potter had no idea how to do normal, and he was okay with that. He lived with his perfectly normal (according to themselves) relatives long enough to know that kind of life was not for him.

For some reason he didn't completely understand, the Unspeakables at the Ministry's Department of Mysteries were very eager to have him join their staff. He supposed it had something to do with all those unique things that happened to him.

Unspeakable Nod led them into a dark round room that was nothing but unmarked doors, and if that wasn't confusing enough, the room spun around when the doors closed so there was no way to physically tell where you came from. A trap, possibly? Harry imagined security must be particularly high if they kept lots of secret stuff down here.

They toured several different areas of the department where they studied everything from the planets to Death. It was the time department they were entering when Harry noticed a frustrated desk worker trying to swat at a couple of colorful paper airplanes that kept buzzing his desk.

"What is wrong with the mail today?" he cried. "Can somebody please take care of this?"

Despite feeling sorry for the clerk's troubles, Harry found it hard not to laugh.

The tour stopped in front of a wall with floor to ceiling shelves of small intricate devices that all contained hourglasses filled with sand. Nod retrieved one and held it out to Harry.

"This is a time turner," he said. "One turn sends you ten minutes into your past. These are highly regulated in their use, as you can probably imagine. For personal safety, do not allow your past self to see your current self."

Harry looked up in wonder. "And I can try one out? Wicked…"

He reverently took it in hand, gave it a spin, and vanished from view.

Winken frowned. "You just gave an eleven year old boy with his own invisibility cloak a time turner inside the department. And you thought this was a good idea?"

Nod nodded. "We shall see…"

o o o

Harry found himself staring at the Death Arch - an ancient-looking stone monstrosity that towered above its platform - supporting the beyond-creepy Veil that fluttered without wind and whispered without people. Harry thought he heard something behind it, but there was nothing and no one there.

He heard a door opening above him and wisely pulled his invisibility cloak over his head. Looking up several tiers, he saw three familiar Unspeakables, along with himself - his ten-minute younger self - walk into the room. Interesting, he thought, the time turner places you near where you were before.

He watched silently as they described what little was known about the structure and how it came to be in the Department of Mysteries. Harry followed them out.

Harry recalled that Nod had earlier given him a folded piece of parchment. He wondered if it would interrupt the flow of time if he stole the parchment and wrote himself a note. He quietly summoned it out of the pocket of his earlier self, caught it, and unfolded it. To his surprise, the parchment already had two tears on one edge. Those had definitely not been there when it was given to him.

It slowly became obvious to him what was happening, so he tore a little rip next to the other two and shoved the parchment in his own pocket, watching his earlier self walk away.

He turned the time turner once again. He was in the lofty atrium of the Ministry of Magic and saw Nod leading earlier Harry towards the lifts. He repeated the action to go back yet another ten minutes. He found himself on a London sidewalk. He watched his younger self - Harry the first - being escorted by Headmaster Dumbledore, who wore a distinctive aquamarine suit that he claimed matched up well with his beard. Under the invisibility cloak, Harry the fourth slipped in behind them.

They soon arrived at the Muggle telephone box that was the public entrance to the Ministry of Magic. A man that introduced himself as Unspeakable Nod welcomed younger Harry to the Ministry and chatted with them for a few minutes. They said farewell to the headmaster and stepped into the phone box, the Unspeakable followed by both Harrys.

Pressing himself into a corner, Harry watched for a second time as Nod described how to operate the secret lift by dialing M-A-G-I-C on the phone. As they were descending, Nod seemed thoughtful before pulling out a piece of parchment and folding it. He then handed it to the visible Harry.

"Put this in your pocket," he said. "You never know when you might need to keep track of something."

Hearing those words again made Harry wonder if Nod was aware of his presence in the lift with them. He decided he needed to act quickly. He managed to pick the fresh parchment from his earlier pocket, make two small tears and replace it before the lift stopped in the atrium. They all walked across the atrium, invisible Harry holding a little behind to stay out of the way. When they got to the security check-in, he checked his own pocket and found it empty. He smiled.

Harry wandered around the atrium for several minutes, watching people whooshing in and out of the floos and scurrying this way and that. It was fascinating to watch this central hub of the British Wizarding World.

Soon it was time and he turned back once more. He remained in the atrium but was closer to the visitors' lift. He saw Nod and first Harry exit the lift, and he knew that fourth Harry was right behind under the cloak. He took careful aim and summoned the parchment from fourth Harry and saw that it had three tears along the edge. Chuckling to himself, he added a new tear and stuffed it into his own pocket again.

He repeated the process over and over, always summoning the parchment and ripping a small tear for every time he turned back time. Otherwise, he would have no idea how many times he had repeated the ten minutes. He wandered throughout the Department of Mysteries - at least all the doors he could open - until he had determined how to get around. He usually left some evidence behind wherever he went - surprises for the Unspeakables to discover.

He eventually wandered back into the Time department and saw the office worker sending a memo by paper airplane. He remembered the dueling planes and thought it would be fun to try that too. He found a sheet of bright orange paper laying on another desk, quietly folded it and charmed it to fly around the office. Another plane joined it almost immediately, and Harry enjoyed watching the frustrated office worker screaming all over again.

It took him a minute to figure out where the second plane came from. With a quiet chuckle he turned back once again. He summoned the parchment from his nearby former self and added a tear; it now had quite a number of them. He found a lime green sheet of parchment, folded it and set it to flying just after the orange one appeared overhead.

He stayed just long enough to see the office worker successfully summon his planes and crush them in triumph, and he wandered to where the time turners were stored.

Winken was saying, "And you thought this was a good idea?"

Nod responded with a nod. "We shall see…"

Harry walked up and removed his cloak. "Hi, I'm back. Thanks, that was fun." He returned the time turner to Nod.

Nod held out his other hand. "The parchment?"

Harry complied, passing that over as well.

Nod studied both. After a moment he announced, "Seventeen turns, seventeen tears."

"Damn," said Blinken, handing several gold coins to a smiling Winken.

Winken looked at Harry, impressed. "I hope you learned something during those nearly three hours."

"Yeah," said Harry, "everything except where the loo is. I really gotta pee."

o o o

Harry remained in the department most of the time over the next few weeks, living in the small dormitory maintained for studies that required Unspeakables to remain on-site. Winken and Blinken were actually a married couple and agreed to be "house-parents" while Harry was staying there.

Not only did they teach Harry lots of new and interesting magic, they ran all kinds of tests on him while he practiced. They claimed it added new data for how people interacted with magic because they rarely had someone as young as him able to cast some of these spells.

Harry didn't really care because he was having a great time.

The surprises he left were a mixed sort. Some were found in rather short order, such as the portrait of an ancient wizard in the planet room that kept complaining about everyone walking on the ceiling, when in truth his portrait had been merely hung upside down. The circular room that spun going from section to section within the department emitted a rather disturbing sound when slowing to a halt, as if a Muggle lorry was squealing its brakes to avoid an oncoming collision.

However, Harry placed a twenty-four hour delay on his enchantment of the wizard in the atrium fountain. Now, it would bow to anyone who dropped coins into the pool and it would on random occasions point its wand at pompous-looking passers-by and douse them with a stream of cold water. Lucius Malfoy was victimized three times in the first month alone. At the time it started, Harry was busy deep in the Department of Mysteries with witnesses so no one even questioned him about it. Those who had suspicions thought it was an improvement anyway.

Some of his shenanigans weren't discovered until long after he returned to school. After all, who would suspect a pre-teen wizard of breaking into a secure filing area just to swap the X-files with the K-files?

o o o

The Unspeakables prepared a small birthday party for Harry on 31 July. Everyone knew that was when it was, of course, except for Harry. He had no idea until he started school and saw it on the forms. His relatives would never celebrate it, only taunt him about it, but no one else was aware of this until the party. The Unspeakables had no idea why Harry was so shocked when they brought out a cake with twelve gaily lit candles.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I've never had a birthday before."

They all looked at each other and decided they were going to fix that. Harry needed some social interaction with peers in a normal setting.

Checking records of Ministry employees, they discovered that the youngest daughter of Arthur Weasley, of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, was having a birthday on the eleventh, just a few days away, and Harry was already friends with some of the Weasley boys.

"Are you joking?" Arthur said when asked about Harry attending her party. "Harry Potter coming to her party? Ginny will be thrilled!"

And that is how Harry Potter ended up stumbling out of the floo at the Burrow, the Weasley home located somewhere in the southwest of England. A red-haired woman in an apron bustled over and took his hand.

"Hello there, you must be Harry," she said. "Ron and the twins have said very nice things about you and I know they'll be glad you're here."

"Thank you, Mrs. Weasley," Harry said, guessing this must be their mum. "I appreciate you inviting me to Ginny's birthday. I hope I'm not intruding."

"Oh, no, you're not intruding," Mrs. Weasley laughed. "Ginny was over the moon when she heard you were coming. She's been hearing your story since she was just old enough to understand such things. I've warned her not to smother you in questions, but -"

"It's alright, Mrs. Weasley. I've sort of gotten used to being different."

"I can only imagine. I hope you're being treated well down there."

For something that was highly secret, a lot of people seemed to know about it. "Yes, quite well, thank you."

"Well, everyone's out in the yard, so you can just go on through -"

She directed him to the door where he could see a number of redheads and a few others near a few tables. He stepped outside.

Ron was the first one to spot him. "Harry! Come on over, mate!"

They met just outside the main group. "Glad you could make it, Harry! Summer okay so far? No brain damage yet?"

Harry chuckled. "Not yet, but there's still plenty of time. Sometimes my brain doesn't know where it is, but yeah, everything is alright."

"Good to hear. Well, you probably need to meet the birthday girl - she's over here."

Ron pulled him over to where three girls were talking. One he recognized as a fellow Gryffindor named Hermione Granger; there was a young blonde-haired girl he didn't know, and another girl with long flaming Weasley hair could only be -

"Hi, I'm Ginny."

"Hello, I'm Harry."

She looked him directly in the eye. Harry was suddenly aware that this girl was the same height he was, the first time he'd met someone as small as him since he had slipped aboard the Hogwarts Express all those years ago.

She was frowning. "You're small," she said, matter-of-factly.

Hermione gasped, Ron guffawed, and the blonde girl giggled.

Harry only stared back, unsure how to respond. Fred and George, the infamous twins, came to his rescue, appearing before them.

"Well, our dear little sister," said one twin with a smirk, "Harry here spent four years inside a painting where he couldn't grow."

Smirking even more, the other twin added, "What's your excuse?"

Ginny's frown became an intense scowl. Quicker than Harry would have believed possible, she had two wands - one in each hand, muttered something and twin jets of blue light hit the twins, one in each face. Dark bat-like creatures jumped out of their noses and began to flap about their faces, tormenting them into screaming.

"AAAAHHH! Geroff me! Bloody hell, Ginny, stop this!"

"Not until you apologize," she said imperiously. She handed a wand each to Ron and to Harry. "Thanks," she said.

Harry looked at his own wand that she had somehow gotten out of his pocket and back at this tiny girl, wondering how she had managed it and what in Merlin's name was that curse?

"That's my wand!" said Ron, incensed, looking at the weapon she handed him.

"No, it's not," Ginny said, "it's Charlie's old one. I don't think it's a good match for you."

"You've been using your brother's wand?" Hermione said, eyebrows raised. "No wonder spells have been difficult for you."

"Not all spells," Ron mumbled.

"They're right, you know," said Harry. "Ollivander says 'the wand chooses the wizard' and if it didn't choose you, it's not going to help you be your best. By the way, Ginny, how did you manage those spells without your own wand?"

"I've been borrowing everyone's wand around here since I was five. Thanks again for helping with the twins. They've been driving us all round the twist lately."

"So you resorted to cursing them? What was that, anyway?"

"Bat-bogey hex. It'll wear off in a few minutes. Bill taught it to me to defend myself, and they should know better. They've felt it before when they were bothering my friend Luna here."

Harry turned to the other girl. "Luna, is it? It's nice to meet you."

Luna had been looking at him with an odd tilt to her head, as if he was a puzzle to solve.

"Wrackspurts must not like living in paintings," she mused dreamily.

"I'm sorry, what?" Harry said, confused.

"Wrackspurts fly into your ears and make your brain go fuzzy."

"How come I've never seen or even heard of wrackspurts?" Hermione said.

"Oh, you can't see them," Luna said. "I can sense them. My daddy writes about them all the time."

At Harry's questioning look, Ginny said, "Luna's father is Xenophilius Lovegood. He publishes the Quibbler magazine."

"Oh, right," said Harry, "I've heard of that." Unspeakable Nod had actually shown him a few issues and explained how the tabloid seemed to be mostly nonsense at first glance, but had some brilliant editorials if you understood the symbolism - the "code" as he put it. "The… erm… people I'm working with like to read it."

"Thank you!" chirped Luna. "I'll tell Daddy - he'll be ever so pleased!"

By this time, the twins returned, looking flustered and still red in the face.

"Ginevra," said one twin, "since you have chosen to act upon rather than negotiate your disagreements with us, we have determined that you must suffer the consequences of your actions."

"And since you will be gaining the ability and responsibility of wand ownership," said the other twin, "we are challenging you to a duel of pranks, non-injurious and temporary in nature."

"Choose your second!" finished the first twin.

"Oh, I choose Harry, of course," said Ginny, "and call me that again and it will be another bat-bogey for you two!"

The twins looked briefly at each other with a hint of concern that was gone as quickly as it came. "Agreed," they said.

Harry stared at the three of them. Lunch hadn't even started and he'd gotten himself involved in a family squabble by a girl he just met.

"Harry," said Hermione, "what have you done?"

And it somehow became his fault. Just great.

o

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