Desperate Measures

Chapter 5 - Explanations

Wednesday dawned bright and much too early in Harry's opinion. Today was The Day. The day he would really start receiving courtship offers. He wanted to stay in bed.

Eventually, his curtains were swept aside by a fully-dressed Neville. "Come on, Harry. Up and at 'em!"

Harry scowled and said sulkily, "Why are you so disgustingly cheerful today?"

Neville grinned and said, "Because I don't have thousands of pieces of mail to look forward to. I just have to help collect them."

Harry just glowered darkly and didn't move.

Neville tugged teasingly on the covers and said, "Come on, Harry. You might as well receive all your letters in the Great Hall instead of the dorm. At least then we can help you gather them all."

Harry groaned but got up and headed to the shower. The sad thing was, he knew he would be getting thousands of pieces of mail, probably not all today, but still...

Thankfully, the shower renewed his courage. He was ready for this. He had a plan. A well-thought out plan that would get him through all the suitors in record time. Hopefully.

He got dressed and walked to breakfast with Neville, making more and more outlandish bets with the other boy about how many letters he would receive today. Harry finally conceded defeat when Neville bet Malfoy's blonde hair that five hundred letters would come from the deserts of Africa carried on the back of a wild purple hippogriff. Although, it wasn't so much that he conceded defeat as that he was laughing too hard to think of a comeback. It wasn't that funny, it wasn't really funny at all, but you find the oddest things hysterical when you're stressed. Their verbal play had the effect of distracting him and reducing his nervousness, which, he was certain, had been Neville's plan all along. Harry was thankful once again for the quiet boy's friendship.

Breakfast was a tense affair with the entire school waiting to see just how much mail Harry Potter would receive today because of yesterday's article. Finally the mail did come and, while it wasn't five hundred pieces from the deserts of Africa, it was probably close to four hundred pieces from all over Europe. A dozen or so Gryffindors pitched in to release the owls from the letters and packages they carried and managed to gather the mail within about ten minutes, although it took another few minutes for Harry to get it all into his bag.

The remainder of breakfast was even more tense, at least for Harry. The comments he overheard were not, for the most part, deliberately nasty, but he had found them all offensive anyway. His courtships were not their business. Ron's comments were deliberately nasty, though, and Harry had been very hard-pressed to keep his mouth shut. A completely unexpected source had come to his defense against Ron, however. Lavender, to the jaw-dropping shock of everyone within hearing distance, had raked Ron over the proverbial coals. When Harry had grinned at her in thanks, causing the girl to blush, Hermione had scolded him about flirting with someone and leading them on. His newly acquired good mood had vanished instantaneously and he had scathingly replied that a grateful grin was hardly flirting and it wasn't any of her business anyway. From that point on Harry had only issued biting retorts to any teasing or comments about the number of letters he had received. Everyone had quickly learned to leave him alone.

Eventually the students left and Harry did the same thing as the prior days, taking out stacks of folders and postcards and arranging them around him on the table. Once again he was aware of, but ignored, the headmaster's scrutiny from the head table. Harry figured that all the time he spent at the Gryffindor table answering mail would be supervised by one teacher or another. He wondered if they were hoping to catch him actually skipping class instead of dealing with his courting tasks. If so, they were going to be wasting their time.