Harry Potter: A Real Tale

The great hall was permeated with various aromas and murmurs.

"The elves outdid themselves as always," Leon muttered savoring his soup.

'Hmm! So many spices!' he thought, gulping it down.

'What's this?' A well-dressed dish that looked like it was made of fish caught his eyes, beckoning him to taste it.

'Who cares, it looks delicious.' With a shrug filled with confidence in Hogwarts elf's nature, he helped himself to the dish.

After tasting most of the delicious items on the table, Leon decided to do a tour of Hogwarts.

He couldn't quite get an idea of how to traverse it, swift and unseen, so he thought observing the corridors might help.

Tonks dragged Susan and Hannah away in the middle of his meal, the time he was most vulnerable.

Hannah looked resigned and Susan reminded him about Hufflepuff's picnic at 4 pm near the lake before getting dragged away by the older Hufflepuff.

"Picnic, right? I would have totally forgotten if not for Susan! I wonder how many people will be there." The prefects intimated them about the Hufflepuff picnic- the house has them weekly.

Leon started roaming the hallways admiring the portraits and odd armors.

He even tried to catch the eye of the people in paintings after he camouflaged himself, experimenting with the parameters of the spell.

It seems they can't see him; how their visual perception works he didn't know but it seems to replicate humans.

He used the spell and tested many different portraits.

From magical beasts and mad wizards to drunk poets, no one seemed to notice him in his camouflaged form.

Just like that he reached the abandoned wing, the area filled with abandoned classrooms.

As he was admiring an armor near the corner of a hallway, he heard hurried footsteps and voices coming from behind him.

Leon quickly crouched behind the armor and cast the camouflage spell on himself.

'Is it time for me to eavesdrop on professors who will unwittingly provide me with clues regarding the current mystery of Hogwarts?' Leon wondered; his eyes boring into the roof as he focused on the footsteps as they drew near.

Hogwarts Castle, owing to its large size and hallways that even dwarf a half-giant like Hagrid, has its hallway's roof always obscured by shadows. The only light sources are the lamps attached to the walls at six-foot height, especially at night without the sunlight streaming through the windows.

'Eavesdropping attached to the roof is better no one will look above.' The thought struck him as he noticed something the size of a rat move on the roof, hidden under the cover of shadows. 'And I can do that too!' A spell came to his mind that would let him roam the Hogwarts with the rat-sized spiders and make his moving problems disappear.

Leon eagerly waited for the professors to gossip and move away. So, he could try out his new idea.

'I wonder if Rose is near me in her invisible cloak, ready for the info dump.'

However, the reality was disappointing.

Two fat kids trailed behind a slender blond-haired boy, huffing and puffing.

"Damn! How does this stupid, smug, Hufflepuff halfblood keep disappearing?" The blonde muttered, peeking into the hallway Leon was hiding in.

"I will cover his face with pus-filled blisters when I catch him, then we will see if he can be so smug." The slender blonde cursed and stopped to let his friends catch their breath.

"Our prefects said not to mess with anyone, Draco. We have to be sneaky and not let him see us." A female joined the Slytherin trio walking into Leon's sight from around the corner. "Do you think he will cry after you are done with him, Draco?" The one who wanted to be sneaky asked.

'Damn! It's a wild Malfoy encounter. And it's the generic chase in the hallway too,' Leon exclaimed, feeling dubious.

'But how bad is Malfoy and his gang's luck? I didn't think they would try to bully me on the day I mastered a spell that burns retinas. If they had met me yesterday, I would have used an overpowered Lumos and snuck away leaving them with temporary blindness and a little disoriented, but now….' Leon smothered his laugh.

'Now the question is should I let them unharmed leave or not,' he wondered for a second before deciding.

'Well! They followed me to make me cry. I would be a bad sport if I didn't even sting their eyes…. Right? What is that saying about letting a child touch fire to stop them touching it?.... Anyways, now they are going to get burnt, let's see if they are intelligent enough to learn the lesson that roaming hallways to bully people is a bad idea.'

Leon waited as they turned around the corner and used Lumos Solem after dispelling his camouflage.

Three orbs of light floated in front of him, ready to burn some eyes.

He peeked around the corner and saw them walking away with the female Slytherin holding onto Malfoy's arm.

He waited to make sure they were at a good distance from him.

"Hey! Losers!" Leon shouted, deepening his voice.

The said losers turned just in time to miss the head full of unruly black hair peeking from the corner.

"Who is that? Catch him!" Malfoy screeched as he and his entourage turned back and started running towards Leon.

"Don't let a Gryffindor like me catch you snakes slithering around in the corridors again," Leon shouted and waved his wand, leaning against the corner, hidden.

The three orbs of light turned around the corner, vanishing from his sight before 4 high-pitched screams echoed down the corridor after a bright flash.

Leon didn't use the third orb of light. It served as a backup in case he missed a Slytherin, flaring one orb was easier and faster than multiple as the difficulty scaled exponentially. Due to Professor Flitwick's help manipulating the orbs became easier but the said orbs disappear if they are flared intensely and the Slytherins needed some intense lessons.

'That's four screams!' Dispelling the combo, Leon quickly cast the camouflage spell and slowly retreated as the ruckus attracted every painting in the corridor.

"Oh! Dear! The Slytherins are slithering on the floor.... The Slytherins are slithering on the floor~." A portrait exclaimed before adding a tune to his second sentence.

"Do they not have bones? Look at them go!" Another portrait yelled as Leon turned around a corner, leaving the chaos behind with a smug grin.

'At least something good came off meeting with Malfoy. I know how to move in Hogwarts unseen and have an idea about the swift part too.'

Leon ran to the library and started searching for a spell that would make his idea come true.

"Yep! This is it."

He memorized two spells- a standard spell and its variation- before walking towards Hogwarts Lake for the Hufflepuff picnic.

Blankets and baskets were spread under the shade of the trees. The Hufflepuffs milled about playing games, laughing, and generally enjoying the nice evening.

He quickly joined his friends who were watching a wizard chess match between Justin and an older student.

As the sun disappeared, the Hufflepuffs ended the picnic and left for their common room.

Leon was tired but happy. He liked spending time with his friends, the lonely headache-ridden 14-year-old boy part of him made sure of it.

But he was tired because Susan took it as a challenge to introduce him to every Hufflepuff when he mentioned that he didn't know any older students and they- Susan, Hannah, and Ernie- looked like knew everyone.

That night the Hufflepuff table was buzzing with rumors about Malfoy and his gang's screaming visit to the hospital wing.

One rumor was that Malfoy was practicing a dark spell that went wrong, another said that he was smuggling a Gorg snake while another said that a cockatrice ghost was haunting the castle.

Each rumor was more ridiculous than the last.

As Hannah was explaining to him what a Gorg snake is and how it's linked with Medusa the witch of Greece, Tonks bonked her.

"Aw!" Hannah pouted, clutching her head as she looked at Tonks with tearful eyes.

The seventh-year just waved her hand at her.

"The little Slytherins just had their eyes burnt a little, it seems there wasn't a magical component involved so Madam Promfrey swiftly healed them with a potion."

"I heard the blonde, my cousin Draco, muttering about a black-haired Gryffindor and how his father will make him pay." Tonks shook her head. "When I asked for a name, his grunts let it slip that they didn't see the said Gryffindor."

'Damn! They saw my hair; I thought I hid quickly. I should practice casting when camouflaged to avoid repeating this.' As it was an active spell that changed with surroundings, he couldn't cast other spells complex spells like his Solem and Maxima combo without the first spell flickering out.

"Well, some first-year Gryffindors did master the Lumos Maxima spell today. But it's most likely the work of an older student as the culprit wasn't seen even before he used Lumos Maxima. Maybe the Gryffindor was under an invisibility spell," Susan reasoned, making Hannah nod, rapidly.

Susan poked Hannah's cheeks as she looked like a chipmunk with her cheeks still puffed up as she pouted.

"I doubt it. An older student has many spells in their bag, they would have used some funny curse to teach the brat a lesson." Tonks too poked Hannah's cheeks, making her hide behind Leon.

"So, a first- or second-year student did this with a Lumos spell variant. No one goes to the effort of using an invisibility spell which even the seventh-years wrestle with to teach a firstie a lesson." Tonks continued, ignoring the byplay.

"Gryffindors aren't the bunch to experiment with spells, we are excluding the redheads of course, so it's not a second-year Gryffindor, and it is also not a second-year Slytherin. If they planned this attack, they would make it more humiliating for Draco."

"So, a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff. I don't think the second-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had the luck to meet Draco. And as stupid as Draco is he isn't stupid enough to poke a second year."

"And first-year Ravenclaw's didn't have their second charms class yet. So, it is someone from Hufflepuff or Rose. We can eliminate Rose too; she would have confronted him instead of changing her hair color to hide."

"So, it is a clever Hufflepuff first-year talented in charms and has good manners, seeing he did not interrupt my brilliant deduction."

"Why did you burn his eyes, squirt?" Tonks asked with a grin and draped her hand around Leon's shoulder.

"What? Why can't it be Dean Thomas or Seamus Finnegan, they could have blasted the Slytherin's eyes with light, ambushing them around a corner, and ran without getting seen."

With most of the students practicing Lumos Maxima, Flitwick had to use a spell to not let the students' casting attempts disturb each other.

'So, Susan and Hannah didn't know about the Maxima spell and Solem combo. And I now I think about it, maybe the professor gave this spell to someone in Gryffindor too. I can see him, asking people to practice my(?) variant if they had mastered Maxima and Solem.'

Professor Flitwick was floating murmuring how lucky he was to have two brilliant students. So, while Leon was pulling things out of thin air, there was a chance that could have happened.

'Either Rose or maybe Hermoine?'

"Please! The shortest tunnel is the always tunnel that leads to the Niffler's nest." Tonks slammed her hands on the table and snapped him out of his thoughts.

Leon ignored the magic world's occam razor and stared at Tonks.

"Man, you would make a great auror. Are you trying to become one?" Leon inquired, using the opportunity to score some brownie points and trying to divert the topic.

"Yes! Now tell me, enough dilly-dallying."

Sadly, he was not successful.

"Well! I noticed Malfoy following me and overheard him talking about a smug half-blood Hufflepuff and how he was going to make him cry in pain. So, I thought why not let him cry in pain but without tears." Leon nonchalantly explained, filling his plate.

"That little.., I warned him Hufflepuff students aren't someone you can bully, and now he has to face the consequences." Tonks muttered.

"What consequences? Didn't I deal with him?" Leon asked.

"In Hufflepuff, we have a tradition. If one of us is bullied, there must be consequences."

"A spell was developed in the time of the second wizarding war for this purpose. The Hufflepuffs were tired of the skirmishes in Hogwarts, unlike Gryffindors and Slytherin's who relished in the fight while the Ravenclaws holed up in their tower. So, the Hufflepuffs crafted a spell that made the Slytherins leave us alone."

"And it became a tradition to use the spell if any members of Hufflepuff are bullied."

"Really? But he didn't do anything yet," Leon pointed out.

"Fine! He will know it was you who fooled them sooner or later, depending on when he asks for help. Then you have to inform me, even if he is only being annoying by blocking your way or something."

"It's about making a stand, we can't let them think Hufflepuff has become soft," Tonks said, patting Leon's shoulder.

'Is she disappointed? Oi! Why do I feel like she is disappointed?'

"By the way, what is that spell?"

"You will know when you see it," she answered with a smirk.

"Do you guys know about the spell?" he asked looking at Susan and Hannah.

They shook their heads.

"How about Draco, do you guys know him?"

"We run in different circles," Susan answered.

.................

A/N: I didn't think of much of Hufflepuff when I first read the books like every other young potter head. But while writing this fic, the Hufflepuff House being tight-knit made sense. After all, Strength in numbers is a concept as old as time and one of the main reasons why humans didn't become extinct.

And I did think burning eyes is some next level response, but the mc living and breathing pain in his both lives made me think it is in character for him to discount pain.

What do you guys think?

Your thoughts lets me know that you are invested or like the fic. So don't be shy.