Chapter 044

What began as a 'super-parliament' of various breeds of owls all trying to deliver to him at once, had his housemates either side scrambling out of the way. But, not Neville or Hermione.

Hermione began by sending paralysing charms at each of the owls but was near gobsmacked when Neville, with a firm wave of his wand and a cry of "Stupefy!" knocked them all out. Those still in the air dropped to either the table or the floor on either side almost as one.

While Neville blushed at what had just happened, Hermione stared at him in shock while Harry quietly chuckled and started levitating the birds off the floor that had landed there and up onto the table. Hermione joined him but Neville decided to stay out of it in case he did more harm than good.

"Nice shot, Nev," Harry smirked after he gave the boy a long few seconds to come to terms with what had happened.

Neville just blushed even harder and looked away. But Harry still saw the hint of a pleased smirk on the boy's face.

Once all the owls were on the table, Harry began releasing them of their loads.

What surprised him - and quite a few others who had also seen them - was that Neville had also managed to paralyse the few Howlers mixed in with the rest of the mail.

Harry set them aside and vanished them.

When each owl was released of its load Hermione began to take it aside, cast a finite on it and allowed it to fly away.

"My God," she exclaimed, after reviving the third bird on the third attempt. "I don't know what Neville did, but it's taking me quite a bit of power to wake these owls up again."

Again Neville looked pleased - embarrassed, but pleased.

"Gods!" Harry muttered after trying his first. "Hermione's right, Nev. You really knocked these out! How about just casting a finite over them all for us, yeah?"

Blushing so much he looked as if he had third degree sunburn, Neville turned back, raised his wand, paused a moment and firmly intoned with a swish of his wand, "Finite!"

The remaining owls suddenly woke and began righting themselves before flying off with indignant hoots, barks and ululas.

"Damn, Nev!" Harry exclaimed. "Remind me to never get you angry with me, if you can wield that much power."

Harry said it loud enough that, since they were being watched by the majority of the Great Hall, a great many people heard the remark. That was deliberate on Harry's part. He wanted as many people to know of Neville's 'new found' power as possible, just to ensure they no longer looked upon him as a squib.

However, that was no longer going to happen anyway. They'd watched him both freeze all the birds with one massive petrification charm, before then waking them all up with one massive Finite.

With all the owls now freed of their loads and sent on their way, Harry moved to check said loads. He had been surreptitiously casting detection charms on them already, and had found a few that were quite suspect. Now, though, any charms that were on them seemed to have been negated by Neville's cancelling charm. Surprisingly, that included the remaining Howlers he'd not yet vanished.

The few remaining Howlers that were there before the cancelling charm were now reduced to nothing more than ensorcelled parchment. The parchment was still Howler parchment, but it was all now deactivated.

"Be careful," he said, as Hermione reached to start opening them. "We don't know what manners of trickery the senders have included."

They found their first one when he opened one and found it to contain undiluted bubotuber pus. He was just thankful when he'd also discovered the charm that would have had it explode and send bubotuber pus over the person opening it to have been deactivated.

"Alright, stop!" he immediately commanded, as Hermione reached for the next one. "Some of these appear to have been booby-trapped."

Hermione snatched her hand back away as if she'd been burned and looked at Harry in shock.

He turned to one of the aurors who'd taken station behind him and said, "I think you need to call Madam Bones to come here. As I've just explained to these two, some of these appear booby-trapped. That would be a direct attack upon the Head of a Noble and Most Ancient House. And that makes this..." he indicated the pile of mail with a wave of his off hand, "... A criminal matter."

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