Most Useful

I don’t own Harry Potter. Unless JKR is willing to sell the rights to me for… $25. That’s what I got for Christmas, so that’s all I’ve got!

Merry Christmas, all!

PS – the name swap is deliberate.

“What’s the most useful spell you know, Fred? I mean, multi-purpose, use-for-almost-any-situation spell that you can cast?”

“I dunno, Harry – I mean, Forge and I have created some pretty damn awesome spells and gags, but multi-purpose? Only thing that comes mind is scourgify – Mum taught all of us Weasleys that spell as soon as we got our wands – it wasn’t strictly legal, of course, but the ministry doesn’t monitor wands before you reach Hogwarts anyway. Aside from that, it doesn’t strictly use magic to clean – it kind of solidifies a bit of air, and scrubs that back and forth as you make it. Of course, if you want to make that more effective, it can be use to conjure soap suds as well – but that takes more power.” Fred said, contemplating Harry’s question. “I’m not too sure what you’re looking for – the reason we go through Hogwarts is so we learn different spells, and some of the magic behind them for different situations!”

“Yeah, I know. But really, I think I discovered this spell in second year – actually, I almost learnt about it first-hand. Only good thing Lockhart taught!” Harry laughed; the reality had surprised him too!

“Lockhart?! But, he was like, useless! What could he teach you?” Fred said, disbelief clear on his face.

“He didn’t teach me, per say. I learnt the actual spell later, from a professional. Do you remember why Lockhart was useless?”

“Not really – it got caught up, I suppose, with the whole Chamber thing; I mean, we had Ginny to look after!”

“That’s what I thought – Lockhart was actually a fraud. Most of his achievements were really other people. He took the credit, and then embellished most of them into what was sold.” Harry settled down, ready to tell the brief story.

“Why didn’t they come forward, though? I mean, surely they weren’t that far out of the way that they didn’t hear about him?” Fred asked.

“They all somehow ‘forgot’ that they accomplished such things, if you catch my drift. Turns out Lockhart was only really good at one spell.”

“Wh – But – Obliviation?! He obiviated people?! That stirred up a bunch of troubles, I’ll bet. Wait – did he obliviate anyone at Hogwarts?!” Fred asked, suddenly alarmed.

“Nah… with Dumbledore watching? Aside from the guy’s posturing, the only useful thing they recovered from his mind was that he hadn’t used it at Hogwarts – oh yeah. That’s what happened to Ron’s wand; he tried to obliviate us in the Chamber and take the credit, but Ron’s wand backfired. Bastard barely remembered how to write back to his fan mail, let alone that he was famous!” Harry laughed, remembering meeting Lockhart at St Mungos.

“So you reckon that using Obliviate is the most useful spell, eh? How so? If I, say, dropped my drink, Obliviate wouldn’t clean it up!” Fred said triumphantly, figuring he had Harry trapped. He dropped his drink to demonstrate his point.

“Sure it will – you just need to think outside the box. For example, you co-“

“Harry! Oh, sorry to interrupt. Have you seen Ron anywhere? I’ve been looking all over for him!” Hermione had stepped into the room, and burst into her quick questions.

“Ah, Hermione, you’ve arrived at just the right time. Fred, observe! Obliviate!” Harry muttered quietly, and flicked his wand at his friend of many years.

Hermione slouched, and went blank-eyed. Fred, on the other hand, just about had a heart attack.

“Harry! W-“

“Shh. Hermione, you came up into this room to look for Ron, and clean up the spilt drink. You asked us where Ron was, and we didn’t know. You will think that it was normal to come up and clean up this drink.” Harry addressed Hermione clearly, and quickly.

Several moments after Harry stopped talking, Hermione blinked, straightened up, and flicked her wand at the spilt mess.

“Do try and be more careful, boys. I’m not going to always be able to clean up your messes.” With that Hermione turned around and left, marching off to find Ron.

“Y-Y-oh, alright. But isn’t that dangerous? And aren’t only Ministry authorized people supposed to use that?”

“Well, yes. It’s mind-altering, so yeah, it’s dangerous. But then again, you and George sell daydream things for pocket change. If you made it a bit more realistic, and left out the sedation part of the makeup, then you’d have a problem with daydream-walkers, and them reacting to what happened. I mean, most boys daydream about girls – can you imagine what would happen if Ron stood up in the middle of defense and grabbed some girls tits because he dreamed that he could?! Even alcohol is the same – there is a reason they suggest you don’t apparate or portkey after consuming alcohol! But, in the hands of someone trained, it’s not as dangerous. Illegal? Not a chance. Take a look at the ministry’s authorization procedures – the main reason the auror training is three years long is that’s how long it takes for their paperwork to get through the ministry, the Wizengamot, back into the ministry, out of the wrong department it was given to and then into the right one. Occasionally – actually, mostly, some of those steps are repeated more than two times. Obliviators, on the other hand, are always in demand, so they need to fast-track the training.”

“Oh. Wow. I now appreciate even more that Fred and I went into our own business. We just have to say something like, “Don’t hurt yourself, and make good pranks” if we happen to hire someone..”

“It’s a hard life you lead, huh. Well, cleaning up isn’t the only thing you can do with Obliviate. Depending on how you cast it, it can be easy to remove, or hard. Or close to impossible, but that’s another story. The trick is to do in such a way that other’s can’t undo it, but you can. I have an almost foolproof way. What do most people use to protect things conditionally?”

“Passwords, keys – something physical, so it can only be in someone’s hands, or a secret to be shared.”

“And, in theory, it’s works. But, like with the Order, others can be given the correct condition – or password. I set up most of my obliviations with the same password, but it is still incredibly secure. Even if someone knew what my password was, it wouldn’t do them any good. “

“You’ve got a bi-conditional system!” Fred cried out triumphantly. “Do you need a specific magical signature, or something similar?”

“No – my password is in a language only I can speak – parseltongue.”

“Ah.. excellent. Very handy. But why leave a remove clause?”

“Obliviated memories are much harder to find by legilimens, by virtue of the fact that even your mind doesn’t know that it’s there. It’s like a basic occlumency barrier that completely surrounds the memories, except it also disallows you to access them.”

“Oh. But, legilimency isn’t all that common, really. Takes quite some training.”

“Oh yes. But, still a handy fact. I tend to suppress some memories for weeks on end – and suddenly, Hedwig will deliver me a letter I forgot I wrote, and I have them again. Generally it’s sensitive information. Though, once I hid Hermione’s birthday present that way – I knew I’d let it leek, otherwise. “

“But how did you know not to get her another one?”

“Nah – I just got rid of the object itself. I remembered going out to buy it, and coming back from the trip. Hey, let’s take a walk outside – I’m getting stiff in my old age.”

“Ha – you, getting old! Harry, mate, you’re not even close to twenty, yet!”

“Yeah, yeah. Still, though.” Harry grumbled all the way out, and the two walked in quiet for sometime.

“You know, Fred, I reckon I could show you another use of Obliviate – Luna’s a cute girl, right?”

“Umm.. What? Yeah, I suppose. Grown up in the last year, for sure. Pity she stopped coming over and swimming in our pond in the nude. Took mum forever to convince her that it wasn’t ‘ladylike’. Luna was a great wrestler when she was about ten, though. Even better than Forge and I were!”

“Why, thank you George. I’m flattered.”

“Ah! Luna, hey – didn’t even see you there. Harry and I were just talking about you.” Fred said, jumping as he noticed her presence in front of them.

“Hey Luna, pop down from that tree, come have a seat with us.” Harry called out, dropping down to the ground at the base of the tree. Fred collapsed next to him, and soon Luna joined them, sitting on Harry’s left.

“Here Fred, allow me to demonstrate – obliviate!” Harry muttered again, flicking his wand at the blond. He then leant in, whispering to the blank eyed girl.

“Luna, you will think that it is perfectly normal to take off your clothes when joining friends for a chat, and will do so. It will also be normal for us to touch you. You won’t think any of this is strange, even though you haven’t done this before.”

Again, it was several seconds before Luna’s eyes refocused, but when she did, she looked at herself and exclaimed,
“Oh, I most sorry – I sat down before getting dressed properly!” Fred turned, expecting her to be reattaching something, but turned back as Harry tapped his shoulder, mouth gaping wide.

“H-hub-oh god-“ Fred stuttered.

“Shut up, Fred. Here Luna, sit between us. “ Harry gestured between Fred and himself as Luna finished taking off her clothes. She was very much a willowy type of beauty – and definitely blond naturally.

Harry caressed one of her thighs as she stepped in between them, allowing it to trail up to a firm buttock. He then reached up higher to play with her perfectly shaped breasts, teasing them gently.

“You have a lovely body, Luna, really.” Harry said, before looking over at Fred, who was still somewhat in shock. He reached over and hit him across the back of the head, which prompted his question”

“Uh.. Luna – would y-you mind if I – if I could –“ He stammered, red faced.

“Play with my boobs? Yes, of course. What’s a little fondling between friends?” Luna said, before moaning happily at the sensations Harry’s hands were providing. Another moan was prompted as George also joined in, groping with abandon. Harry swapped hands, and let his other drift down and tickle Luna – at just on the right little button.
With all the excitement, and the help the two boys provided, Luna squeaked as the unexpected climax swamped her body and drowned her consciousness.

“Aaah! Wha-“

“Calm down, Fred. I just gave her a bit of help getting there quickly – now, let’s just quickly clean her up!” Harry waved his wand, gesturing at Luna and cleaning her off nicely, before swapping Luna’s clothes with the air around her, but leaving her panties at her ankles, and slipped her hand up her skirt. He also enervated her.

“Obliviate! You won’t remember Fred and I coming past here, though you will remember that you reached orgasm out here. “ Harry said, before hissing for several seconds.

“Stupefy!” Harry then tossed a weak stunner at Luna before he grabbed Fred and kept moving.

“What was with the hissing and the stunner, Harry?” Fred asked, having an inkling of what he was about to hear.

“Well, as you might have guessed, the hissing was me releasing the obliviate that I performed on Luna first – I didn’t want her to think that talking to friends in the nude was a regular, did I? Or the groping, either. But, the stunner was to get us away – Luna just remembers playing with herself till she passed out – waking up will encourage that, as well as finding herself in the position she’ll wake up in; which should only be in a minute or two. Plenty of time for us to disappear.”

“Yeah.. so – any other uses? You’ve established that you can use obliviate to convince people that they should do menial tasks, and act out of their normal behavior. Anything else?” Fred asked sarcastically.

“Nope.” Harry said, “Between those two, that covers most of what you would need out of a multipurpose spell – get people to do stuff. And this is better than the imperious, even if it is much harder to use – people will think it’s their own idea, unless you’re a really bad Obliviator. And – no memory of any spell cast.”

“Hmm… I may just have to sign up for the Obliviators, sometime.” Fred said thoughtfully. “Imagine a line of forgetfulness pranks, or temporarily replacing memories, or inserting them!”

“Bad idea – to sign up for that, you have to swear you won’t use it outside of your job. Bummer, eh?” Harry grinned as he saw Fred’s face fall.

“How’d you learn, then?!” He said indignantly.

“Fudge generously offered me any of the Ministry’s resources for a time – a lot of the secretaries in that section of the ministry are missing memories from my learning period. I learnt other stuff too – just most of them don’t remember it. Understanding occlumency and legilimency really helps make this stuff easier. It also helped me make those modifications I mentioned earlier.”

“So Fred – my case for Obliviate being the most useful spell ever invented.”

“After the conclusive evidence, I must admit that I agree. Luna was particularly convincing!”