Work Text:
“This is a terrible idea. It worries me that I have to tell you that this is a terrible idea.”
“Voldemort’s first war against magical Britain took eleven years,” Harry said emphatically. “Eleven years. And then he lost.”
“Yes,” Ron said, dragging the syllables out, “but I think this is a bad idea. Bad idea levels of Hermione murdering you for it.”
“We’ve been at war for…” Harry paused to think about it. “If we’re counting from our first year, which I don’t, we’re talking another fourteen years. So actually, I think this is the perfect idea and I’m offended that you, my best friend of nineteen years, disagrees with me.”
Ron stared at him. “Harry, you can’t be serious.”
Harry squinted. “Do you even know what a GoFundMe is? How it works?”
“Hermione explained it to me last week.”
“Which makes you an expert, I’m sure.”
“Harry,” Ron repeated, “you can’t buy Voldemort a nose.”
“Ah,” Harry said, raising a finger, “but he doesn’t know that.”
Ron took him gently by the shoulders and pulled him to his feet. “You know what I think? I think you need a break. A nice long break. All this stress is getting to you.” He gave Harry’s back a meaningful pat. “I’m going to tell Kingsley that you’re putting in all your vacation days. You can kip at the Burrow for a while, how about that? Mum and dad would love to have you over—”
Harry smiled. “I’ve put the page up already.”
“When?” Ron demanded. “When could you have possibly done that?”
“During lunch. I lied about having left my food at the flat. ‘Smells Like World Peace’ is at sixty pounds and counting. I think the photograph I uploaded is really bringing in views.”
“Fuck me,” Ron said vehemently. “Who’s paying sixty pounds for Voldemort’s nose?”
“A few people,” Harry said, off-handed. Ron didn’t need to know that the first three donations had all been made by ‘Harry Potter’. “I’d show you but, you know, there’s no internet here at the office.”
“Right.” Ron inhaled loudly. “You know what, I’m just going to let Hermione yell at you for this. I am going to stay out of it. Far, far away from it. You’re on your own.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Harry called out as Ron began walking away, “I quoted you in the description and everything!”
“This is the worst idea you've ever had!” Hermione shrieked at him. “What were you thinking, starting a GoFundMe for Voldemort’s nose? People use this website for serious things like paying for medical treatments—”
“Please tell me that’s not the issue you have with this,” Ron said despairingly. “Please tell me it’s not because Harry is misusing a donations site to fund Voldemort’s nose job.”
“Fuck,” Harry said. “Fuck. You’re right, Hermione.”
Hermione seemed to relax. Her shoulders loosened up and her wild curls stopped their mad attempt to escape her practical hair bun.
“I’m such an idiot,” Harry continued. “I should have used Kickstarter! How else am I going to use all these stickers as pledge rewards?”
Ron pressed the side of his fist against his mouth, then turned around to face at the nearest empty wall.
“Stickers?” Hermione said in a high-strung voice. “You’ve got stickers?”
“For donations of five pounds or more,” Harry said, whipping out a roll of circle-shaped stickers from the inner pocket of his robes, “you can have one of these.” He peeled off a sticker and slapped it onto Hermione’s breast pocket.
“Did you draw this?” Hermione asked. Her voice may or may not have been shaking.
“I commissioned Dean to do it.”
“You paid someone to draw this?” Hermione repeated incredulously.
“I don’t know what you’re so mad about,” Harry said, folding his arms over his chest. “Aren’t you the one always telling me we need to support local artists? Do you not like Dean or something?”
“This is an awful idea,” Hermione said, rudely ignoring his sensible point in favour of jabbing her finger at him. “No one is going to support this. No one is even going to hear about it! Only Muggleborns use the internet, Harry. Wizards aren’t going to donate on a platform they can’t access!”
“Everyone is going to hear about it,” Harry said. “I am not going to rest until the entire world knows that Voldemort needs a new nose.”
“Could I have your autograph, Mr. Potter?”
“Donate five pounds to my campaign to buy Voldemort a nose and I’ll consider it.”
“I—alright.”
“That’ll be three galleons and six sickles, Mr. Potter.”
“What if I only gave you three galleons, and I donated the rest of the money to my charity campaign: ‘Smells Like World Peace’?”
“What… What are the donations for?”
“I am so glad you asked me that.”
“Mr. Potter! Mr. Potter! What do you have to say about recent—”
“You mean my recent charity work? To raise money for Voldemort’s new nose?” Harry smiled brilliantly into the blinding light of several dozen camera flashes. “I would love to talk about that but I’m afraid I’m very busy today. I’ve been informed that we’ll be able to offer keychains and notebooks to our top supporters. Working towards world peace is a thankless, never-ending job.”
Harry was dozing on his desk when he woke to someone roughly shoving at his shoulder.
“Harry. Harry. Harry!”
“What is it?” Harry asked irritably. He sat up with a groan and rubbed at his eyes.
“Malfoy’s donated ten thousand pounds to the GoFundMe!”
“What?” No way. No fucking way. Harry shoved his glasses onto his face. “Show me,” he demanded.
Ron slammed Harry’s laptop down on the table with a bit more force than was really necessary.
“That…” Harry blinked. “That can’t be right? Just the other day Malfoy told me, and I quote, ‘no one cares enough about your sanity to try and save it’. I thought it was weird he cited me with such accuracy, but I chalked it up to being part of our rivalry. Definitely did not think he was going to donate.”
Ron scowled. “Well, he has. Or else someone’s pretending to be him and has ten thousand pounds to spare? Unlikely.”
Harry grimaced. “I’m not sending him a SLWP sticker. Or a keychain. Or a signed poster.”
“Don’t send him anything,” Ron agreed sagely. “The prat doesn’t deserve it.”
Ten thousand pounds was a lot of money, though. “Maybe a thank-you card,” Harry allowed. “Because it is a very generous donation.”
“I guess,” Ron agreed, but he didn’t sound happy about it.
“I’ll write a thank-you card. Just to show our appreciation.”
“Okay?” Ron said, sounding confused. “I’m not going to stop you.”
Harry didn’t know if he wanted Ron to stop him or not. “Okay, I’m going to write it now.”
“Okay…” Ron squinted at him. “You go and do that.”
“Okay,” Harry said, still not moving. “I am.”
After two weeks of successful campaigning, Hermione came to his flat to yell at him. Thankfully, Ron was also there. Harry found that things often went better with Hermione when Ron was there, not only because they were married but also because it was better to have a witness in case she decided to murder him.
“People keep coming up to me with money,” Hermione protested, pacing the room and gesturing wildly as she spoke, “and saying things like ’You’re friends with Harry, can you please give this to him? And could I also have one of those sticker things?’” She released an inhuman noise of frustration and threw her hands up. “Why do they all assume I’m involved when I have been very clear about how I feel about this idea!”
“I mean,” Ron said, “I think if I was other people, I would assume the same thing. Usually we do everything together.”
Hermione glared at him.
Ron let out a nervous half-chuckle in response. “So does this mean you’ll help us? Seeing as people think you’re involved anyway. We’ve got a lot of orders to ship out…”
“No,” Hermione said hotly. She shoved at his shoulder. “I am not helping!”
They really did need Hermione’s help. Harry had no idea how to manage the SLWP inventory and Ron had no idea how to package things. “Ron’s been putting the posters and stickers in standard A4 envelopes,” Harry said. “He’s been folding them.”
Hermione closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “He’s been folding them?” she repeated, sounding remarkably calm for someone who’d been nearly screaming not moments earlier. “He’s been folding the posters?”
“It’s just so they fit,” Ron said defensively. “You try working one of those things into a cardboard tube! It’s ridiculous.”
“The fold lines are usually crooked,” Harry added for good measure.
“I am going to kill you both,” Hermione said. Her left eye was twitching. “I am going to kill you both and drop your sad, lifeless bodies into the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Sure,” Harry said, nodding. “But only after Voldemort gets his nose.” He clapped a hand to his chest and tried his best to look innocent. “I made a promise to myself and I have to see it through. If we don’t get world peace by the end of the month, I owe Dean and Seamus five galleons.”
“Someone named Rupert Grint’s just donated five hundred pounds.”
“That’s…” Harry paused. “Who is that?”
Hermione frowned. “I have no idea, actually.”
“Well,” Ron said into the resulting silence, “I hope he’s having a nice day.”
By the time the campaign was over, Harry had enough funds to buy a thousand new snake-skin noses. Once people had figured out they could exchange solid gold galleons for an absurd amount of British pounds, the money had come pouring in. Stickers had been out of stock for three weeks, and it looked like the branded mugs were headed the same way.
Who knew that the key to world peace was steeped in merchandise featuring art drawn in less than fifteen minutes?
Harry had contacted Voldemort with a request to negotiate world peace. To his surprise, Voldemort had immediately agreed. They had chosen a neutral meeting place and made binding magical vows to avoid conflict for the duration of the conversation.
Voldemort had conjured furniture to make their discussion more comfortable, and Harry had delicately shoved a single piece of parchment with an obscene amount of money written on it across the wooden surface. Now they were in the middle of haggling or something like that. Voldemort did not seem to think having a nose was a fair exchange for the safety of magical Britain.
“Let’s be honest with each other,” Harry said seriously. He steepled his hands on the large table that Voldemort had conjured for their negotiations. “Most, if not all, of your devoted followers will be senior citizens in the next twenty to thirty years. You, on the other hand, will still be immortal. You will be an immortal man hanging around with a bunch of old people.”
“Or,” Harry continued in a brighter voice, “you can take this very generous payout, make an Unbreakable Vow to never kill and/or torture anyone, or attempt to take over any major geographical areas via force, and live a blessed, unbothered life in the Bermuda Triangle. I have heard it’s very easy to avoid people there.”
“I would like to ask you—” Voldemort began.
“Yes?”
“—to take off your cloak.”
Harry had the Invisibility Cloak draped over his body in case he needed to make a quick getaway. This meant the only parts of him visible were his head and neck. “I don’t see why that’s necessary.”
“You look like a child.”
“And you look like you need a nose,” Harry said with a wide smile. “Funny how I’m actually delivering on one of these things and it’s not the one that you said.”
Voldemort’s left eye began twitching. It was a facial tick very similar to Hermione’s. “Let me see that number again,” Voldemort snapped.
Harry pushed the result of his funding campaign over to the Dark Lord.
“And this number is in galleons?”
“No,” Harry said, a weird sense of pride rising up in him, “that’s the number in British pounds.”
“... I see.”
Several weeks later, all was well. Voldemort had accepted the deal and fucked off to Merlin-knew-where. For the first time in his life, Harry was free. He was free from the prophecy and free from the Order of the Phoenix. He was still pestered by reporters everywhere he went, but nowadays the questions were more oriented towards new SLWP merch. That was something he could handle.
What he could not handle was the notification he got on Facebook that Lord Nose-Job Voldemort had sent him a friend request.
Harry had lots of questions.
How had Voldemort gotten reception all the way in the Bermuda Triangle? Were those lip fillers Harry was seeing? Why was Voldemort sending Harry a friend request when they were mortal enemies?
After long, agonizing minutes spent debating what to do, Harry hit ‘Confirm’ and opened a new chat.
Harry closed Facebook and deleted the app off his phone.
END.
