It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. LOL.
Enchanting Melodies (HP SI)
- Thread starter athassprkr
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It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. LOL.
Chapter 58 - 62: Reflection - Summer’s Child
I'll be honest here, these chapters were pretty much fillers. I was planning my second-year plot, and it's something that was really ambitious. I haven't seen any other fic do it, and I'm pretty proud of what I achieved there. Anyway, I posted it all at once since I didn't want to torture you into waiting for chapters again and again, with nothing actually happening in the story.
I know that I messed up the second half of the first year. I forced canon while I focused on building the world instead of developing my own plot. So, if you're worried about that being a trend, then I'm here to tell you that you shouldn't. The second year starts in the next chapter, and trust me, you'll like tomorrow's upload.
Now, onto the chapter...
Chapter 58: Reflection
4 June 1992, Hogwarts
A blinding green light hit the boy in the chest, and he stilled. It was a shame. What a waste of potential. Alas, the boy would have been a threat to his world order. The dark lord quickly walked out of the classroom and walked towards the forbidden corridor. He had a stone to steal after all.
The possessed professor did not notice the blood in the boy's palm, nor the small glow his cloak had a fraction of a second before the spell hit him.
When Harry regained consciousness, all he felt was pain, unrelenting pain. It was like there was fire coursing through his veins, and that his muscles had turned to stone. The mere thought of moving his body had sent a wave of agony throughout his being. His limbs simply refused to obey him, choosing to stay limp in his little bed. Wait a minute, that wasn't in bed.
Harry turned his head and saw the familiar white walls and ceiling surrounding him. The Potter scion groaned, which was a bad idea since he started coughing the moment a noise left his throat, it being on fire as well. Of course, the coughing made him unconsciously move, putting him in even more pain.
All this happened because he realized that for the second time in his enrollment at Hogwarts, he was transported to the hospital wing unconscious, the first time being after fighting the wraith in the Forbidden Forest. Madam Pomfrey was going to kill him.
Fortunately, Harry's bed was surrounded by curtains, giving him some privacy to freak out properly. He murmured to himself, "What happened?" His voice was sore, gravely. How long has he been there? What happened?
It took a minute for Harry to realize what had occurred. He remembered being anxious about meeting Professor Quirrell for his practical defence against the dark arts exam. They duelled, and he lost, again, badly. It wasn't unexpected for the man to end up victorious. Harry would still lose against any competent adult wizard. For all his intelligence and natural grasp regarding magical subjects, he was still far less experienced than them, and that's not even including the vast difference in raw power.
It took a few moments to process Quirrell's revelations, or more appropriately Voldemort's revelations. The dark lord was far more civil than he expected. He could see why the man would inspire loyalty. It was easy to see Tom Riddle in his core. The charming manipulative magical prodigy that could talk circles around anyone. If it was anyone else, a person who didn't know about the man's past, someone who couldn't see the nature of his magic, Harry was sure that they would be convinced to follow him.
Oh, the man talked a good game, but every single word he said was crafted. He was a master of words, and it showed. The idea of using genocide to rally the magical world against Dumbledore, to stop an endless war, made sense, in a warped sort of way. It was obvious that the man believed his cause to be just. Harry had no idea if he was telling the truth about the endless conflict between the champions of light and dark, but he would research it thoroughly. No one could hide that much history from the world, especially if Voldemort was to be believed, their fights shaped the magical world.
It was a shame that their history of magic lessons was about nothing more than the Goblin Rebellions. Yeah, that was what they got when their professor was a ghost that died in the midst of the last Goblin Rebellion, which wasn't technically a rebellion since only a single faction of the Goblin Nation had decided to start attacking wizarding settlements. If the history of magic covered all of the endless conflicts between the light and the dark, then lessons would have been far more interesting.
Back to Voldemort, his speech was sort of inspiring. He had a way with words that made you want to listen to him speak, but for all his seemingly altruistic goals, Harry could hear his magic, and it wasn't pretty. His song was of darkness and rage. It was what drove him the most, his rage, his fear, and his greed. He was angry at the world, at the people who failed him, he was afraid of Death, the ultimate end, and he wanted the conquer the magical world. There was this madness to his method. He had kept it locked up, ready to burst out at any moment. There was chaos in him. It was what probably drove him to start killing unicorns or try to curse the broom of the boy who lived in the middle of a match, in broad daylight. And it wasn't even this madness that terrified him, it was that his song was obviously incomplete.
Yeah, he wasn't a complete person, and it showed. Everyone has a song, with each instrument showing a personality trait. It was something he had noticed growing slowly ever since his crest was unlocked. It was the extra dimension he saw in spells. The nature of the castor, and his mindset while using the spell. It took some concentration, but Harry had heard Voldemort's heart, his soul, and it was missing. Some basic instruments that symbolized apathy, guilt, love, lust, and so much more, were simply non-existent. They weren't quiet, they were just absent, and that was utterly terrifying.
Was that what happened when you split your soul? You take away some of what makes you, well, you. A soul is an abstract but sacred thing. Seeing someone tamper with it made him want to throw up. It was sacrilege that for some reason made Harry angry. And the obvious taint from the unicorn blood had even suppressed even the few things that the man enjoyed. Voldemort couldn't be called a man, because his soul could barely qualify as one. He would never experience joy because of what he has done to unicorns, he will never experience love, and he will never empathize with any being.
All he could experience was hate and rage. What a cursed experience, even if he came back to his body he would be as miserable as he was as a wraith. The mere thought of being forced to serve such a man was so revolting. Deep down in his soul, Harry was utterly disgusted with the lengths the man had gone to for power. Death was preferable. He didn't know why he refused his self-preservation instincts and tried to fool the dark lord somehow, to live another day, but it was like his body moved on its own.
Of course, the man's intelligence was still there. And unfortunately, Harry's gambit with sending a letter to Dumbledore hadn't panned out. For one, the headmaster probably already knew about Quirrell being guilty, especially with the rumoured personality changes. And also, the Dark Lord simply didn't care about his threat. It was a half-baked idea, but Harry couldn't have done anything else.
No, he could have, but he was unwilling to do it. He was so certain that everything was going to go with the script, that he was safe. But Voldemort hadn't confronted anyone before trying to steal the stone, and yet he did Harry. This wasn't a story. People didn't follow some sort of script because the stories said so. No, things were different, and banking on them was utterly foolish. Harry wanted nothing to do with the spat between Dumbledore and Voldemort and yet was pulled into it regardless.
It was a lot of little things that made that happen. Longbottom's pseudo-obsession over everything he did, caused the many corridor confrontations between them, which caused the detention that made him reveal his capabilities to Voldemort, who ended up almost killing him.
Was it some sort of coincidence? It happened so slowly that Harry hadn't seen the strings being pulled. Did Dumbledore arrange all of this, or was it some kind of fate power that moved things around?
Harry wanted nothing more than to leave this castle and get his magical education elsewhere. He would miss his friends, but it would have been better for his safety. Maybe he could go to Beauxbattons or Ilvermorny. Alas, Harry was a ward of the ministry, and they would need to approve the transfer, something that had never happened for decades, if ever. Yeah, the ministry was really patriotic and didn't like British wizards and witches getting their education elsewhere. Maybe he could do that after taking his OWLS. The ministry wouldn't have a say then.
He had to admit that he was an idiot for not taking things seriously, for considering this to be a children's story. And when Quirrell revealed his crimson eyes, Harry knew deep down that everything had changed. Voldemort had completely taken over the man's body and wasn't just hitching a ride.
No more.
He wasn't going to stand aside and wait for the story to occur in front of him. For one, he had no faith in Longbottom of all people, and he definitely didn't trust Dumbledore or Voldemort. He was going to live his life how he wanted it because it was his. He was going to fight for his own side, for his own right to freedom, and if some wannabe Archmages wanted to stop him, then he would surpass them all.
With a renewed sense of confidence, Harry felt things snap into place. His magical crest warmed up slightly, but instead of the intense heat and discomfort he always felt, it was oddly comforting.
Speaking of the crest, there was still something that he was missing. How did the conflict end? He refused the dark lord's offer and tried to blackmail him, banking on Longbottom killing him because of the whole love magic bullshit that he probably had, or at least, that the headmaster wanted to convince the boy he had. Harry was still convinced that it was an elaborate sacrificial ritual, but it was not like he could convince anyone if Albus Dumbledore himself said otherwise.
Back to the conflict, Harry started to remember. Voldemort had cast the killing curse at him. But something happened. He was like he was hypnotized again by his crest, but it was a little more forceful than the time in the forest. He clenched his hand enough to get some blood and palmed his cloak, which was his invisibility cloak in disguise. When he touched it, he heard a voice in his head. It was more like the wind itself was whispering in a language that Harry had never learnt but could somehow understand, "No magic can touch those who travel between worlds!!"
And then Harry felt his magic being dried up, and then absorbing forcefully the ambient magic around. Calling it painful would be an understatement. It barely lasted more than a fraction of a second, but Harry could feel as if his body was tearing itself out. The curse passed through him and splashed into the enchanted castle walls. Afterwards, everything turned black.
Was this a capability of the cloak? To somehow phase through magic? If that was the case, it was somewhat overpowered, but it was very costly magically. Harry doubted that he would be able to do it without consequences any time soon. After all, if using it once had sucked his magic dry enough to put him in the infirmary for what felt like days, he was not planning on doing so anytime soon.
Harry was so engrossed with his thoughts that he hadn't noticed that the room was not silent, at least not as much as it should have been. He heard two faint voices speaking. It took a few seconds for the Potter to recognize them, the voices belonged to Longbottom and Dumbledore.
The boy sounded surprisingly vulnerable, the encounter with the monster who killed his parents must have shaken him, deeply. The mere revelation that Voldemort was still alive must have terrified the boy to his bones. Of course, the headmaster kept reassuring him and told him about Voldemort being alive and the fate of the stone. Harry didn't trust the man one bit and didn't actually believe that the real stone was in the forbidden corridor, in the first place.
The conversation seemed stale until Longbottom asked, "Why couldn't Quirrell touch me?"
Oh, so, Quirrell had died in exactly the same way as the stories. That was something. It was hard to believe that the man who had so easily beaten Harry could have been destroyed by the accidental touch of a twelve-year-old boy that's barely more than average in his magical studies. There was something odd about it.
Of course, the man started a small speech about the power of love, and his mother's sacrifice.
The boy, funnily enough, didn't seem to take it at face value, "Professor, I thought it was some kind of alchemical ritual or something. Something about a life for a life."
The aged headmaster's voice took a harsh tone, "Who told you that, my boy?"
"Potter did, sir. He said it was the only way he could think of. That it was preposterous that people believed that I was involved in any way."
"He's a clever boy, young Harry, far more advanced beyond his years, and yet he doesn't know anything. In a way, he was correct. Many theories emerged on how exactly you survived. People tried to scry for years in an attempt to take a glimpse of what happened and replicate it somehow. I will admit that such a method did enter my mind, but there were simply no signs of a ritual there, not even a single trace, which would have existed should something of this magnitude have occurred. Such a ritual would also not continue to protect you now. Sometimes, people tend to forget about the simple things in life. They make convoluted theories about complex subjects, forgetting how something as simple and as pure as love can even ignite the stars themselves. Isn't that right, Mr Potter?"
Chapter 59: The Investigative Headmaster
4 June 1992, Hogwarts
The Potter scion froze in panic. He was hidden by a curtain and hadn't moved or made a noise. How in the name of Magic did the headmaster know that he was awake? Gently, an old hand grasped his curtain, revealing Albus Dumbledore in all his glory.
The man chuckled at his shocked expression, "Do not be alarmed, my boy. The infirmary simply has charms to alert Madam Pomfrey when a student wakes up. As the headmaster of this illustrious school, I have the privilege to interact with these charms as well."
Harry wouldn't really know it. The mere idea of using any magic, even his Arcane Hearing seemed ill-advised. The young Slytherin could do nothing but groan and sit back on the hospital bed.
The man seemed to take this as permission to continue his conversation, and asked, "So, young Harry, I believe you had quite the encounter with Professor Quirrell. I have to say that thanks to your letter I was able to return to Hogwarts quickly enough to save Mr. Longbottom from a rather dire fate. In normal circumstances, I would have ignored the letter. I thought it might have slipped past my mail wards somehow, but your owl was very insistent that I take it. You have found yourself quite the remarkable companion, Mr Potter."
Wait a minute, Hedwig had bypassed his mail wards? How is that possible? And yet for all the impossibility of it all, Harry smiled slightly, "That she is, headmaster."
A second later, he remembered something that Dumbledore just said and pretended to be shocked, "Wait, that was really the Dark Lord? I thought he was just some impostor or something."
"No, I'm afraid that Lord Voldemort has yet to leave this mortal plane. I have to ask, though, young Harry, that you explain the events that led you to your current condition. This is not the first time you have overwhelmed your magical circuits, and continuing that trend could end up crippling your magical potential in the long run."
Harry paled and started recounting the events of his encounter with Quirrell, "Well, I was asked to come in for my Defense practical exam. It started normally, with me demonstrating a few spells, but Professor Quirrell tried to curse me, and we duelled. I lost, very badly. He was different. He acted differently, even his eyes were red. I ended up disarmed, bound, and chained to a wall. He had started talking about his mission to turn the magical world into a utopia of understanding and wonder. He asked me to join him. It didn't really come out of the blue, with him trying to get me to accept him as a tutor a few months ago. I refused because I already had an agreement with Professor Flitwick about the duelling club, but he seemed quite vexed when I told him my decision."
Longbottom, who had stayed silent during the entire conversation, choked on his spit. Even the headmaster looked surprised, "And you didn't accept his offer?"
His voice had a tint of steel that wasn't there before. Was this the small taste of the true Albus Dumbledore, the Champion of Light? Was this core of steel what was under the image of an old amiable man?
Harry simply shook his head, "Of course, I didn't. He killed unicorns and drank their blood. Learning from someone capable of committing such horrors was just a bad idea in general."
The Potter scion noticed Dumbledore and Longbottom relax slightly and continued, "Well, as you can expect, he didn't really like my answer. He tried to convince me nicely, but then he started to get frustrated. The last thing I remember is him casting a very painful curse at me. I think it was black, but he didn't say any incantations. I felt my magic fight against it, and weaken it slightly, but then when it hit, I felt like my energy was being drained from my body. I was horrible; it was like someone had replaced my blood with pure lava. It burned so much. I think I passed out from the pain."
Of course, Harry was lying about that last part. There was no reason for Dumbledore to know that he survived a killing curse. Well, his cloak allowed him to phase through the killing curse. The man was already obsessed with the Deathly Hallows. Harry didn't need the man to have even more of an interest in him.
And so, Harry projected his pain for that fraction of a second when the curse hit him, and only modified the colour of the spell. Dumbledore had flinched imperceptibly, meaning that he had used his Legilimency to try to get more information about the encounter. Harry could sense his probe slightly, and so arranged for him to get what he wanted.
There was a reason why Legilimency wasn't really admissible in magical court. It was nothing against the field, but the more skilled a user is in the mind arts, the more they can alter the projected memories. Changing the colour of a spell is easy, far easier than faking an entire conversation for that matter, but it could deeply affect a trial if it was taken into account. Simply changing the spell to the familiar sickly green of the killing curse would have anyone sent to Azkaban for life, and that wasn't feasible in any administration.
The headmaster seemed to buy it though since he nodded. The pain couldn't be fake, and he knew it. Faking something like this couldn't be done if it wasn't experienced in the first place. So, unless Harry kept getting his magic sucked dry by other artefacts, it was very likely that the man would take his words at face value. Really, learning Occlumency was one of his greater ideas, even if was barely a beginner. He knew how to shield his thoughts from preliminary Legilimency scans and project a few memories – with a few alterations of course. He would have been truly fucked if it wasn't for it, to be honest.
The headmaster spoke up, "Lord Voldemort had sunk to depths that I will admit to not even have known that they existed, to gain power. I do not know the spell you're describing, but I am not a master of the Dark Arts like him. However, the effects of the spell seemed to be temporary, putting you in a magical deprivation coma until you recover. But I will admit that I don't know how you knew to send me that letter."
Harry sheepishly looked down, "Well, I knew that Quirrell was the one who killed the unicorns. I recognized the wand, you see. So, every single time I met him, I told Hedwig to come see me if I didn't return. The letter I gave you was written months ago. It had nothing to do with Longbottom, really. I didn't even know that he would try to retrieve the stone that day."
At Longbottom's attempted rebuttal, he continued, "Come on, you have hardly been subtle. Hermione point blank asked me in potions class who was Nicholas Flamel. It didn't take long for me to realize what was hidden in the corridor. And that Quirrell was looking for him."
"And why would you not have come to me sooner?" Dumbledore asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Someone who would be willing to slaughter a unicorn and drink its blood is without a doubt desperate. I trusted your defences on the stone and chose not to bring attention to myself, and risk dying. Not that it worked for that matter."
"I can see why the hat put you in Slytherin, then, Mr Potter," the headmaster retorted, "Well, with that out of the way…"
Before the man had the chance to leave, Harry spoke up, "Is it bad that I don't feel safe in the castle anymore, Headmaster?"
The headmaster's eyes widened in panic slightly, "Now, why would you feel that?"
"Well, this is supposed to be the safest place in the country, but I just died because a professor was possessed. He might be dead, but what if the next one is a vampire or something even worse? After the thing in the Forbidden Forest and my attack, I just don't feel safe here. I'm honestly thinking about sending a letter to the ministry to leave this place. I could go to Beauxbattons. My French is kinda good, and I could handle it, and it's not that far."
Yeah, there was no way the ministry would let the last member of an old family leave the country even if Hogwarts burned to the ground. But a letter could technically be enough to make people start to second-guess Dumbledore's leadership. It wouldn't do anything more than just trouble the man, but he probably saw it as an unnecessary risk. It also would put him on the map, of where the ministry is concerned, and that means that Harry would lose a lot of his independence.
And Dumbledore seemed to understand the risks as well, "Now, now, my boy, there's no need for any of that. This is the same school that your family has learned for centuries, and even your parents came here."
"Yeah, but this tradition would be meaningless if I die and there aren't any more Potters to celebrate it."
"Tell you what, as reparations for the inconvenience, the school is more than willing to reimburse you for your trauma. You were obviously attacked by a professor that we hired without any kind of provocation. How do five thousand Galleons sound? And access to the forbidden section of the library for three years, and to the Prefect Bathrooms."
That was probably the best offer Harry was going to get. It was still a lot of gold, around half of what was sitting in his vault. It would help him a lot when he starts to invest it. He was planning on regrowing the Potter fortune once more after its sharp decline in the last century or so. The access to the Forbidden Section was a nice bonus, even if he could break in there whenever he liked with his cloak. The Prefect Bathrooms were kind of useless, to be honest, but were still a nice perk to have.
Harry pretended to take a deep breath, "Fine, headmaster. But I want your personal assurances that I won't be in danger in my time in this castle, because the moment I almost die again I'll have to leave. I'm the last of my line, and I have a responsibility to make sure that it doesn't die out, even if I have to leave this beautiful place."
Of course, Harry was talking out of his ass, but it was a good idea to make sure that Harry just wanted to feel safe.
"Hey, what about me?" Longbottom exclaimed.
Harry suppressed a snort as he realized that Dumbledore had pretty much bribed him in front of his precious boy who lived. The headmaster seemed to have realised it as well but quickly took control of the situation, "Neville, you have willingly sought out danger. Your classmate, on the other hand, was attacked and hospitalized by a member of the staff without any kind of provocation. The school is accountable for his attack, and thus must offer him reparations."
This was all bullshit, of course, but Longbottom seemed convinced. Was the entirety of the wizarding world so willing to accept the man's words without even attempting to think about it? Maybe it was just because the boy who lived was young and worshipped the old man.
Still, there was something on Harry's mind, "Sir, I have one final question."
The man motioned him to go on, "I have found that asking questions to be a worthwhile pursuit. What troubles you, young Potter?"
"Can you tell me about the fire of Godric's Hollow? It's just there was nothing I could find in the library. The newspapers just say that it was some kind of cursed fire."
The man's jovial disappeared immediately, "That's understandable. The fire of Godric's Hollow is one of the biggest tragedies in magical Britain during the last few decades, and it had very few witnesses. Even though I am not certain as to what happened, I have theories, all of which are very disturbing. But I will not reveal them. Pure truth is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution. You are too young to be burdened with this knowledge."
Harry motioned to protest but was silenced when the man raised his hand, "What I can tell you, for that matter, is that this fire was unlike anything I have ever seen, it was probably unlike anything the world has ever seen. It consumed everything, literally. It wasn't even hot. Simply everything it touched turned to dust. It certainly wasn't natural. There's a reason there aren't any ruins in Godric's Hollow. It's because they don't exist. I can also tell you that the flames were tinged with your mother's magical signature."
The man slowly turned and left the infirmary, leaving two silent boys. Longbottom seemed like he wanted to speak up, but Harry was too tired to deal with his prattling. He simply closed off the curtain. He needed to think.
It didn't take long for him to conclude that the whole encounter with Longbottom was staged. There were too many coincidences, and the ending was too close to the one from the stories for it not to be one. The man must have known that Quirrell was after the stone, or that he was the one killing the unicorn, at least. And yet he did nothing.
You could say what you wanted about the man. He was obviously manipulative, he had too much political power for a man who liked to say he was uninterested in politics, he was slowly changing the magical world to his image with his control over Hogwarts and his changes to the curriculum, but he wasn't the senile old man he pretended to be. His mind was sharp, and it showed.
He used the Philosopher's Stone as a lure, that's for sure. He didn't know if the stone was real or not, but the Flamels would not have parted with it willingly. There was no reason to have the stone in a school for protection. For all its wards, Hogwarts was a public place, with many possible intruders. It simply wasn't safe. And if Longbottom was able to get past his challenges, they definitely weren't defined with a Dark Lord in mind. Dumbledore wanted Longbottom to go after the stone and make it only challenging enough for the boy to succeed after some effort. He designed the entire thing to have an encounter between him and Voldemort, but why?
Was he hoping to trap the wraith or something? Harry didn't know much about souls, but even if that was possible, it would be a temporary solution at best. Dumbledore wouldn't settle for something like this.
Was he hoping to confirm that Voldemort was still alive? No, it was too risky, he could have gone to Albania years before and tracked him down somehow. He definitely wasn't hoping that Longbottom would somehow finish him off. It was too farfetched for that to happen. Did he simply want to study the boy's protection by having it interact with Voldemort?
And most of all, could Harry even believe a word he said about the fire that killed his parents and razed an entire village off the face of the Earth?
Harry was consumed with these thoughts as he fell into the realm of Morpheus, still feeling tired from his encounter with Quirrell.
Chapter 60: Grass of Emerald
6 June 1992, Hogwarts
For the hundredth time ever since she met him, Daphne Greengrass reevaluated her opinion on Harry Potter. However, if there was something she was certain of, it would be that he was unlike any other boy she had ever met. It was hard to explain it. He had this presence. Whenever he walked into a room, people noticed. Whenever he spoke, everyone listened. That's not even speaking of his frankly absurd skill in magic. Seriously, he tried to downplay it slightly, but it was like putting a small dam to hold an ocean. Magic was something instinctive. Downplaying it just was like downplaying a part of your own personality.
When she first met Potter, she didn't really think anything of him. He was just some quiet bookworm, that was probably destined to be in Ravenclaw. Sure, the Potter family was famous, well, mostly infamous because of the fire of Godric's Hollow, to which Harry was the only survivor, somehow. But as for the family itself, it wasn't really anything special. It was relatively old, not really impressive, especially considering Daphne's own roots in the druids during the time of Camelot. They were about as old as the Malfoy family, who became ennobled in France, just a couple of centuries before the statute of secrecy forced them to give away their titles.
The Potter family were mostly a family of relatively wealthy potion masters, that tended to grow the family fortune with their invention, up until the last few wars, of course. Charlus Potter had, for some reason, spent a significant amount of wealth in the war against Grindelwald. According to her grandmother's diary, who was a year younger than him in school, it was completely out of character for him. He was known as a calm and very business minded man, but he seemed desperate to stop Grindelwald for some reason.
James Potter had followed in his father's footsteps and practically donated most of what remained of his fortune in the fight against the Dark Lord. By the end of it, there was probably not going to be a lot of wealth left. So, in summary, Harry Potter was relatively well off for the average wizard or witch, but not nearly as wealthy as any formerly noble house. He wasn't supposed to be remarkable; he wasn't supposed to be smart. He definitely wasn't supposed to have the oddest magical crest she had ever heard of.
No, he was supposed to be an average boy that was born into a progressive oriented family, that would go to either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. He wasn't supposed to go to Slytherin with her. He wasn't supposed to become one of her dearest friends. And yet, what was supposed to happen doesn't matter at all, what does is what actually happens.
And so, out of nowhere, they became friends. They just clicked. Tracy, Blaise, Daphne, and Harry just started by going to class together, and after a while, they just clicked. Hogwarts without Harry would just be wrong, something that he had experienced in the last few days.
Harry had gone to the Defense Against the Dark Arts practical exams. He was oddly jittery. Harry was always very confident during his exams. He aced them without a second's thought; he was a genius after all. Even if it was weird how Quirrell had decided to single him out for his practical exams, Daphne had chalked it up to the cowardly professor having forgotten about him or just wanted to assign him another test. Well, when Harry didn't return the following night, Daphne, Blaise, and Tracy went to their head of house and told him about their missing friend. The man had swept the castle and found Harry in the destroyed defence classroom, completely unconscious. The potion master ended up sending him to the infirmary, before running off the forbidden corridor for some reason.
No one had told her what had happened to Harry, nor why he was unconscious, only that he was in a magical coma for having strained his magical channels. Quirrell had disappeared, and Neville Longbottom was also in the infirmary for some reason.
No one would tell her anything. There were a few rumours that Weasley had spread, that Longbottom had fought Quirrell in the forbidden corridor for some reason, something about a Cerberus, deadly plants, and a giant chess match. But there was nothing about Harry at all. No one even noticed his disappearance, with the boy who lived being hospitalized as well. The ones that did notice, thought that Harry had duelled Longbottom and they all ended up getting hurt. The close timings between the injuries weren't a coincidence. But everyone kept talking about Longbottom's adventure in the Forbidden Corridor, nothing more.
They had been allowed to visit him. He was so pale, so peaceful. Daphne had never seen him like this. There was always this gleam of intelligence in his eyes. He was always either frowning while thinking about so spell or another, or he was slightly smiling when they all hung out together. Without them, he just looked wrong. Without Harry, Hogwarts felt wrong, empty in a way that she couldn't describe.
Oh, he wasn't perfect, not by a long shot. No, Harry was as flawed as they came. He was as socially dumb as he was a genius in matters of magic. He would always deny it, but he acted arrogantly sometimes, especially when it concerned his magical studies. He was so secretive and spent a lot of time alone. It had hurt her at first, thinking that he just didn't want to hang out with them, but after he started to put more time aside to spend with them, she understood that it was just his nature. He liked to spend time with his own company to destress, in a way. Although, she was curious about what he kept doing on his own. Sometimes she wanted to grab him by the throat and force him to tell her his secret. But no, this would spoil all the fun of figuring them out.
Daphne had even discovered one of his secrets; he was muggle-raised. She was kind of proud of that one, to be honest. Harry had done a good job at keeping it under wraps. He was obviously knowledgeable about the magical world, but that could just be him being smart enough to not show any sign of ignorance. But yeah, there were a few muggle terms here and there, and he almost never spoke of his guardians. It took a few months, and Daphne had concluded about the fact that as a Half-Blood, he was as likely to be raised by his mother's muggle family as to be raised in a wizarding home.
She felt strangely closer to him when she realized that. With every piece of the puzzle that she discovered, she liked him more and more.
Even now, as she stayed in the infirmary, with a nice book in her hands, Daphne kept thinking of him. Blaise had stopped going after three days, he wouldn't wake up. Tracy stopped coming after a week. But not Daphne. She would stay at his side until he woke up. Well, she would have, if it wasn't for the evil Madam Pomfrey that only allowed her to come for an hour a day. It was originally just fifteen minutes, but Daphne had worn down the evil Matron. Still, according to her, he had woken up a few days earlier when the headmaster was visiting. They spoke for a few minutes where Harry recounted his side of whatever happened, and then the Potter scion fell asleep once more. And they still wouldn't tell her anything…
Longbottom had woken up a couple of days back and came back completely fine. Apparently, Harry's condition was far more severe than the boy who lived. It was almost the end of the year feast, and Harry still hadn't woken up. They were leaving the castle in a few days and Daphne dreaded leaving the castle without making sure he was alright. She had never known anyone who had been in the hospital wing after the school year. Would he be transferred to Saint Mungo's where she could still visit him? Or would he stay in the castle alone, under Madam Pomfrey's care?
Daphne's frankly depressing thoughts were interrupted when she heard a soft hooting and looked up from the book with a slight smile, "He's really taking his time, isn't he, Hedwig?"
The owl bobbed her head. She really was as remarkably intelligent as the owner. She had somehow been able to sneakily visit her owner and would not let him leave her sight. That is until the evil Madam Pomfrey kept trying to hex her. Apparently, 'pets weren't allowed in her infirmary'. Still, whenever she was chased away, she snuck back in hours later. For some reason, the wards in the hospital wing just wouldn't stop her. The matron had given up after a few days and a tentative peace between the witch and the owl was made. Hedwig would not make a ruckus, and Madam Pomfrey would not try to hex her.
The snowy owl was often her only companion whenever she visited her friend, and she curled up next to her whenever she was there. Hedwig hooted softly in answer and jumped towards her owner. She gave him a gentle peck on the forehead.
Daphne didn't know why she chose this moment to do it when she hadn't touched Harry ever since he was in the hospital wing. Her doubts were immediately shattered when Harry started to frown and mumbled, "Stop it, Hedwig."
She practically leapt from her seat and enveloped Harry in a hug, "HARRY! You're awake!!"
The black-haired boy frowned, "Of course, I'm awake, why wouldn't I be awake?"
"You were hurt remember?"
"Oh yeah, Quirrell attacked me. I think I talked to Dumbledore somewhere in the middle of it."
"Wait a minute, go back to the part where you got attacked!!" Daphne shrieked.
"Well, I went to the exam, and everything was normal and then he declared himself to be some kind of dark wizard, that he was going to take over the world and all that stuff…"
Wait, what? Daphne was baffled. She must have heard it wrong, because Quirrell, a dark wizard? That was just insane. She thought he was some cowardly thief who wanted to steal something from the forbidden corridor, not a full-blown evil wizard.
"Quirrell?" she repeated, wanting to make sure that he wasn't joking.
Well, he started explaining one of the single most outlandish stories she had ever heard. Apparently, Quirrell was the one drinking unicorn blood and had attacked him before when he also ended up in the hospital wing. Harry for some reason chose not to tell anyone about the fact that he obviously figured out who attacked him in the first place. Quirrell then decided for some reason to make Harry his apprentice? Or maybe he wanted Harry to be his servant? He had said no, and then they fought, Harry lost, and he was hit with a spell that forced his body to expel all of the magic inside at once, and then some, which was why he was in a coma. Apparently, the man tried to steal something from the forbidden corridor and ended up being stopped by Longbottom.
Daphne really wished she could grab that turban wearing freak and strangle him to death. Still, she chose not to think too much about it, especially considering the fact that she was just overjoyed that Harry was back. She was going to grill him on this later.
After a few gruelling tests by the matron, Harry was cleared to leave and go to the feast a few days later. Even if Dumbledore was biased enough to give Gryffindor almost two hundred points because Longbottom and his lackeys decided to break the rules and still go to the forbidden corridor. But that didn't really matter to Daphne. Harry was back, and that was enough for her.
Chapter 61: The End and a Beginning
7 June 1992, Hogwarts
The day after officially waking up from his magical coma, Harry decided to just follow Madam Pomfrey's recommendation and not really stress himself. The matron had done a good job when he was in the hospital wing; the Potter scion felt like he was back to his best form, even if his body got sore whenever he cast a significant amount of magic.
So, he spent his last days at Hogwarts with his friends, who had welcomed him warmly. Although, for some reason, Daphne was particularly clingy ever since he woke up. He didn't really get it, to be honest. It was probably because she missed him or something, but Tracy wasn't acting the same, so he didn't really understand. It seems like in this life and his previous one, he would never make sense of what goes on in the minds of the fairer sex.
He had missed his second Hogsmeade weekend. It seems like he was cursed to not visit Hogsmeade this year. Considering what happened in the story at the end of the year feast, with Dumbledore giving away hundreds of points to the boy who lived, he was also not likely to visit the village in the next one either. It's not like he would really lose anything; anything interesting in the village would have an equivalent shop in Diagon Alley. Hogsmeade was originally a wizarding settlement. The whole business growth started because of the proximity to Hogwarts, whilst Diagon Alley was the veritable hub of Magical Britain. It showed in the stores that were in Hogsmeade; it had a few inns, cafes, stores to buy school supplies and a chocolate shop of all things. Yeah, it was obviously geared towards teenagers.
People were staring at Harry and his friends on his way there. Well, it was mostly Harry. Apparently, being attacked by the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor made him some sort of fascinating commodity. There were rumours about him being a secret Dark Lord and that he had duelled Quirrell when he had confronted him, hence why the man disappeared without a trace. There were rumours that they were planning on stealing whatever was in the forbidden corridor together and that they had greedily turned on each other.
He had gotten a nice payout out of the whole mess with Quirrell, and it was the best he could do. Now, if that had happened to Draco Malfoy, then the headmaster would have been in deep trouble. Alas, Harry had no one that was willing to go on a crusade against the most powerful man in the country for his sake, so that would do for now.
Still, Harry slowly walked towards the Slytherin table and sat at his usual spot, his friends joining him. The entire room was decked in green and silver. The members of the House of Snakes were all smiling in victory at having won the house cup and all of the privileges that come with it. Of course, Harry knew what was about to happen, that their smiles were about to be turned upside down in a few minutes.
He was proven correct, when Dumbledore proceeded to his end of the year speech, and well, pretty much handed the cup to the Gryffindors. The utter uproar at the announcement was galling. Harry felt bad that at hard work of the fourth years and sixth years, who had made sure that the privileges that came with the house cup would be theirs the following year, was so easily dismissed with barely more than a second's thought. It was disgusting, and a quarter of the school was openly glaring at the headmaster. Of course, outside of the Gryffindors being overjoyed, the other houses didn't really care about the precedent the headmaster just made. Seriously, just deciding to give the house cup on a whim was making it meaningless, and that's not mentioning the sheer enmity that the man was building in a house where he was already fairly unpopular.
Honestly, the house cup was what prevented Hogwarts from falling into chaos. There were just too many students and too few professors. Adding magic in the mix just made this place a recipe for a ticking time bomb, or at least it would be if it wasn't for the house cup. The prize was enticing for older students, so they went out of their way to stop the younger ones from doing anything drastic. Without the credibility of the house cup, and the fairness of earning it, the older students wouldn't be motivated enough to care about it, meaning that Dumbledore had basically told everyone that it was meaningless, that to keep the boy who lived happily, he would gladly just hand it over to his house without even being discrete about it. If he does the same in the following year, the upper years will just stop caring about it, which definitely wasn't a good idea in the long run.
His friends were pretty grumpy about it. An hour after the announcement, Tracy was still grumbling, "I can't believe Dumbledore just gave the cup to Longbottom, just like that."
"Tracy, let it go," Harry retorted gently, "we all knew that he was very biased when it came to his little boy hero. Honestly, I would have been surprised if he hadn't done anything."
Blaise gave him a confused look, "I don't understand…"
Daphne snorted, "No surprises there, huh? Did you forget how much stuff he let Longbottom get away with this year? He got a spot in the Quidditch team even if he didn't deserve it, that's not to mention being caught with a live dragon in a school, which was a criminal offence that Dumbledore swept under the rug. Now, this? I'm not happy, but I can't say that I can't see him ruin the house cup as a way to reward Longbottom somehow."
Harry's eyebrow reached his forehead; this was definitely not something he saw Daphne, or any girl his age, really, understanding. It was a very good interpretation of the events.
The girl gave Harry a wink and continued with a joking tone, "What? Do you think I haven't learnt anything in the last year? I'm not thick like the other two."
Harry chuckled at Blaise and Tracy's protest. Yes, Daphne was very intelligent. She learnt things quickly and was dedicated when it came to any issue.
The issue dissolved into their usual friendly bickering, and they all quickly forgot about Dumbledore's injustice. Time passed very quickly, and it was almost curfew. The prefects had led them back to the Slytherin common room, and they quickly went to sleep, stuffed with food, and comfortable.
The following morning, all the first years gathered in the Great Hall for their customary end of year warnings, like no casting magic outside of school, or how much their summer homework was important. It really wasn't, since it was mostly just theoretical assignments that didn't necessitate any substantial research. From the looks of it, Harry could discern that it was a basic summary of the theory they had learnt in class, with a small introduction to the next year's curriculum.
As for the trace, Harry had tried to find anything to beat it but came up empty. Seriously, even his meagre wandless magic would be detected by the ministry. After all, the charm was on his person, not the wand, like many thoughts. The trace's purpose is to monitor spikes of magic in muggle homes, especially when underaged wizards and witches are concerned. The medium of magic just didn't matter, and Harry couldn't really find a charm on him using his Arcane Hearing. It frustrated Harry immensely, even if he could understand its purpose. The trace wasn't really made to be biased against muggleborns, but to preserve the statute of secrecy. Children and teenagers tended to be very unpredictable, and the ministry had to know when someone revealed their magic, be it on purpose or by accident.
So, Harry was stuck to staying in a place with enough wards to qualify as a wizarding home. Yeah, he was probably going to stay in Diagon Alley again, instead of a muggle hotel he could easily sneak into without paying a dime.
He already had a stock of ageing potions to fool the innkeeper of the Leaky Cauldron again and spend the entire summer there. After having a taste of magic, there was no way he was stopping for a day, let alone for two whole months.
After McGonagall's little speech, they followed Hagrid who took them back to the Hogwarts Express on the boats again. It was a nice touch, to leave the same way they came in, even if some of the wonder had worn off slightly.
As he boarded the Hogwarts Express, Harry found that he was going to miss the castle and its wonderous nature. Sure, he had copied a good part of the library during his nightly escapades using the cloak, so he wouldn't really suffer in terms of reading material, but there was just something about the castle that was just wonderful. It was hard to explain it. It was something at the edge of his mind that he could somehow listen to using his Arcane hearing, despite the ambient magical noise. It was something that felt like a sense of welcome, a smidge of affection, a home open for all those who wish to learn.
Harry sat in a compartment with his friends, wondering when the next time they would see each other again would be. It didn't really matter; if Harry was staying in Diagon Alley, it would be easy to meet them somewhere, but he didn't want any nosy adult to try to butt into his living situation. He sure as hell wasn't going back to the Dursleys, that's for sure.
Funnily enough, Gemma Farley walked up to their compartment in the middle of the train ride to give them a letter that could contain their final grades for their year.
Unlike his friend, he opened it without an ounce of hesitation and read its content. It had two pieces of parchment. The first read the following:
It seemed like they just didn't count the Defense Against the Dark Arts practical, or just gave him full marks. What was the protocol when the defence professor tried to kill you anyway?
Underneath his grades were the end of year rankings, where Harry was unsurprisingly in first place, followed by Hermione Granger and Padma Patil. After his friends grilled him on his grades, he took a look at their own. They did pretty well all things considered. Daphne, the most diligent in her studies, got an Exceeds Expectations or Outstanding in all of her grades, and Tracy and Blaise almost did the same, both getting an Acceptable in History of Magic and Blaise having one in Transfiguration while Tracy had one in charms.
They all bickered about their grades as usual. Harry got teased for being a bookworm, and he told them all off for being 'underachievers'. It was nice banter between friends, and the hours flew by quickly.
Of course, all good things must end, and a distinct voice spoke up around him, "We will be arriving in London in five minutes."
They all said their goodbyes and promised to owl each other during the summer break. While everyone went to meet their families, Harry snuck off to the other side of the platform, ready to take the Knight bus to Diagon Alley.
Of course, all of this completely froze when he saw a familiar obese figure standing on the other side of the platform. Vernon Dursley, in all his purple-face moustached glory, was there, glaring at Harry for some reason. He grumpily walked towards Harry, "Hurry up, boy, we haven't got all day."
Harry looked back towards the families exiting the platform. He didn't want to cause a scene here. The last time he spoke to the Dursleys, he had made it abundantly clear that he did not want anything to do with them again.
Choosing not to confront the man in public, he followed him to his car and was readying a small speech to give him a piece of his mind.
Chapter 62: Summer's Child
9 June 1992, King's Cross Train Station
When he stopped by the man's car, his eyes widened when he saw his aunt Petunia and his cousin Dudley in the car. The boy had lost some weight, Harry noticed, which was good for the formerly obese boy. Oh, he was still overweight, but he didn't look like a blonde potato, so that was a good thing. It seemed like his frankly childish rant when he left had rattled them enough to make a few changes. Even if he had made sure that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.
Harry looked around to see if anyone was looking at them. From what he understood of the trace, he was in the clear if he wanted to use any magic. There were too many magical parents who would come pick up their children. The ministry probably had a few obliviators on standby in case something happened. That meant that Vernon literally held no leverage over him whatsoever.
The Hogwarts Express was made just for the trip to Hogwarts, nothing more. It was built to help muggleborns go to Hogwarts. It was made around two centuries back to replace the endless portkeys that had to be enchanted for every student to have. It was better to overwork a few obliviators a few days a year, then arrange for hundreds of Portkeys to be mailed to students and deposit them back to Hogsmeade. Outside of the trips to the school, the Hogwarts Express was unused, and thus, King's Cross wasn't really a common place for wizards to be, especially not to use their magic. But that didn't really matter now. Harry could use his magic as if he was in Diagon Alley. The ministry wouldn't really notice anything odd in such an area concentrated with wizards and witches.
Harry again made sure that no one could see him and just stood still in front of the car, refusing to get inside. The obese muggle started to look like he was slowly getting enraged. His eyes were reddening, and so was his face in general, for that matter. He practically snarled at Harry, "Well, hurry up, boy. We haven't got all day."
The Potter scion ignored him entirely, "What are you doing here?"
The man moved in a threatening manner towards Harry, who simply raised his wand. At the sight of the magical stick, Vernon practically wilted away. Petunia paled in fear, and Dudley honestly looked confused. Had they not told him about his magic?
Choosing to ignore the comical image of a man five times his size flinching away from him, Harry spoke once more, "I asked you what you're doing here."
"What do you think we're doing here? We're here to pick you up, boy," Petunia snarled back, "I got a letter from that freak school of yours with the time to come pick you up."
"Yes, and we also agreed that it was time for us to go our separate ways. I live my life and you live yours. Isn't that what you always wanted? To get rid of the freak that your dead sister saddled you with. To get rid of the last connection you had to her world which you loathe with all your heart." Harry answered.
"Yes, and we left you alone last Summer. You didn't say anything about it being a permanent thing…" his aunt retorted.
Harry stiffened, doing his best to recollect exactly what their conversation was about. It was so long ago, but by the end, he just remembered feeling free of them. During his stay in Hogwarts, he had made plans to stay by himself during the summer. There was a small voice in his head reminding him about how safe it would be to be with them. It was what the Harry in the stories did, after all.
He shook his head and removed this thought. His confrontation with Quirrell had shown him that following the stories was not always a good idea. No, this was real life, and he wasn't going to follow some sort of silly script and let it dictate his life. Harry loved his new life, he loved his friends, but most of all, he loved using magic. He wasn't about to risk not practising magic for the sake of a story in another life.
Maybe he didn't specify that he wasn't going to leave the Dursleys permanently. But right now, he didn't care. He wasn't going back to Privet Drive. He wasn't going to leave his magic for their sake.
The Potter scion gave a good look at his aunt and spoke up, "Alright, then let's make it permanent then. I won't come back with you, and that's it."
"You what?!!" the woman screeched.
Again, Harry raised an eyebrow at the woman's voice. He really hadn't missed her voice, which is what he imagine a Harpy sounded like. He had been forced to suffer this voice for years, and he had spent almost twelve blissful months without it.
"Look, I know you tend to be emotional, but please don't make a scene in the middle of London," Harry calmly retorted.
"So, that's it, you're moving out?" Vernon spoke up with obvious glee on his face.
"Yes, I am. I can take care of myself, and you won't have to suffer my existence anymore. It sounds like a good compromise, right?"
Petunia looked like she wanted to protest but Vernon answered for her, "A very good compromise, yes."
"Well, of course, there's the legal side of things," Harry remarked, making them stiffen.
"Legal side?" Petunia repeated blankly.
"Officially, I will still be living with you. At least, as far as the government is concerned. It's not really a bother, but things like the letter you got from my school and the like will be sent to your home occasionally. Every month during my summer break, I will come to see you in case you have any documents I might need. It will barely take two minutes of your time, three times a year. Other than that, we'll essentially be strangers. What do you think?"
Harry didn't really need to do this, and it was likely that it would be for nothing. He was still a ward of the ministry in magical matters, but Petunia getting a letter from Hogwarts showed that the Dursleys weren't entirely separated from him. It was better to visit them three times a year than just accidentally miss an important document that was sent their way. He couldn't risk the ministry looking too deeply into his home life and messing his nice little system up.
Again, Petunia wanted to protest, but Vernon spoke up for her, "It sounds like a small price to pay for peace, boy. Come on, Tuney, we're going home."
"No!" the woman exclaimed, "You're supposed to be Lily's boy, not this thing… You're not supposed to leave. You should stay with us."
"And do what exactly?" Harry protested, "I love magic. I am magic. And no matter how much you would like to have your nephew with you, I know that you hate magic more. I saw it when I took out my wand. I saw your fear, your hatred, your bitterness. Stop being attached to the past, to a sister that you hated, and move on with your life. We're too different to live together without both of us being miserable. Let me go back to my magic and I will let you go back to the normalcy you crave. Goodbye Aunt Petunia, I'll see you in a month."
Harry turned and left his relatives near their car. He didn't look back. The Dursleys were his past, but they were not his future. He wasn't going to tie himself to some script anymore. Staying at the Dursleys would make them all miserable. It was better the rip the bandage now and make boundaries clear than to stay in Privet Drive out of some misguided flimsy blood ties.
Harry took one quick trip to the bathroom, and he took off his clothes after locking himself in a stall. He took out a small vial of potion from his school bag and drank it in one gulp. He suppressed the urge to gag at the taste. Still, Harry's form started to slowly grow until he looked like a man with his familiar messy hair and green eyes.
He had drunk an ageing potion. Harry had stocked up on them over the school year, purchasing one every week or so. He had enough to last him the Summer.
The Potter scion opened his bag and took out the large outfit that he had owl ordered months back, and by the end, he looked like a dashing wizard, with a suitcase. With that done, he went out to the street and waved his wand in the manner described by the book he had read.
There was a deafening BANG, and Harry blinked to shield his eyes from the sudden bright light. When he opened them, he saw that a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights screeched to a halt exactly in front of him. They belonged, as Harry saw when he raised his head, to a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelt The Knight Bus.
Yeah, it wouldn't be his most preferred method of transportation, but there wasn't a floo in King's Cross, and he didn't have any other choice. He didn't have any muggle money to get a normal cab, so that was his only choice.
Harry's thoughts were interrupted by a conductor in a purple uniform, who leapt out of the bus and started to speak loudly, "Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this evening. Where would you like to go?"
Harry tried to look as unfazed as ever, "Diagon Alley, please."
"A short trip, then," Stan remarked, "that would be five sickles for the trip. You could get a chocolate, a bottle of water, and a toothbrush in the colour of your choice if you upgrade for just four sickles more."
Harry shook his head and took out five sickles from his gold pouch, "The standard ticket is fine, thank you."
"You loss," the conductor remarked. He then helped Harry lift his trunk with Hedwig's cage balanced on top, up the steps of the bus.
The man pointed at a seat and said, "This is your seat. Over there is the driver, Ernie Prang. Try not to disturb him if you can," he then yelled at the driver, "Take her away, Ern."
There was another tremendous BANG and the next moment Harry found himself glued to his seat, thrown backwards by the speed of the Knight Bus. Harry stared out of the window and saw that they were now bowling along a completely different street.
And so, the bus kept going and stopping, dropping one passenger after another. Honestly, Harry was starting to get motion sick. The total trip was probably around fifteen minutes, but they felt like hours. Honestly, if he wasn't riding the damn thing, he would have been fascinated by the enchantments used to make this marvellous piece of magic. There had to be some spacial magic and a way to accelerate on a ludicrous level. But alas, he was doing his best not hurl.
He almost cried in relief when Stan started to yell at Harry, "Hey, you. We'll be in Diagon Alley soon. Get ready!"
Finally, Ern slammed on the brakes and the Knight Bus skidded to a halt in front of a small and shabby-looking pub, the Leaky Cauldron, behind which lay the magical entrance to Diagon Alley.
"Thanks," Harry said to the driver.
He jumped down the steps and helped Stan lower his trunk and Hedwig's cage onto the pavement. He then looked at the familiar inn and took a deep breath. Yeah, he had a feeling that this was going to be his favourite summer yet.
AN: As usual, let me know what you think so far. The second year will start tomorrow, and trust me, it starts with a banger.
I know that I messed up the second half of the first year. I forced canon while I focused on building the world instead of developing my own plot. So, if you're worried about that being a trend, then I'm here to tell you that you shouldn't. The second year starts in the next chapter, and trust me, you'll like tomorrow's upload.
Now, onto the chapter...
Chapter 58: Reflection
4 June 1992, Hogwarts
A blinding green light hit the boy in the chest, and he stilled. It was a shame. What a waste of potential. Alas, the boy would have been a threat to his world order. The dark lord quickly walked out of the classroom and walked towards the forbidden corridor. He had a stone to steal after all.
The possessed professor did not notice the blood in the boy's palm, nor the small glow his cloak had a fraction of a second before the spell hit him.
When Harry regained consciousness, all he felt was pain, unrelenting pain. It was like there was fire coursing through his veins, and that his muscles had turned to stone. The mere thought of moving his body had sent a wave of agony throughout his being. His limbs simply refused to obey him, choosing to stay limp in his little bed. Wait a minute, that wasn't in bed.
Harry turned his head and saw the familiar white walls and ceiling surrounding him. The Potter scion groaned, which was a bad idea since he started coughing the moment a noise left his throat, it being on fire as well. Of course, the coughing made him unconsciously move, putting him in even more pain.
All this happened because he realized that for the second time in his enrollment at Hogwarts, he was transported to the hospital wing unconscious, the first time being after fighting the wraith in the Forbidden Forest. Madam Pomfrey was going to kill him.
Fortunately, Harry's bed was surrounded by curtains, giving him some privacy to freak out properly. He murmured to himself, "What happened?" His voice was sore, gravely. How long has he been there? What happened?
It took a minute for Harry to realize what had occurred. He remembered being anxious about meeting Professor Quirrell for his practical defence against the dark arts exam. They duelled, and he lost, again, badly. It wasn't unexpected for the man to end up victorious. Harry would still lose against any competent adult wizard. For all his intelligence and natural grasp regarding magical subjects, he was still far less experienced than them, and that's not even including the vast difference in raw power.
It took a few moments to process Quirrell's revelations, or more appropriately Voldemort's revelations. The dark lord was far more civil than he expected. He could see why the man would inspire loyalty. It was easy to see Tom Riddle in his core. The charming manipulative magical prodigy that could talk circles around anyone. If it was anyone else, a person who didn't know about the man's past, someone who couldn't see the nature of his magic, Harry was sure that they would be convinced to follow him.
Oh, the man talked a good game, but every single word he said was crafted. He was a master of words, and it showed. The idea of using genocide to rally the magical world against Dumbledore, to stop an endless war, made sense, in a warped sort of way. It was obvious that the man believed his cause to be just. Harry had no idea if he was telling the truth about the endless conflict between the champions of light and dark, but he would research it thoroughly. No one could hide that much history from the world, especially if Voldemort was to be believed, their fights shaped the magical world.
It was a shame that their history of magic lessons was about nothing more than the Goblin Rebellions. Yeah, that was what they got when their professor was a ghost that died in the midst of the last Goblin Rebellion, which wasn't technically a rebellion since only a single faction of the Goblin Nation had decided to start attacking wizarding settlements. If the history of magic covered all of the endless conflicts between the light and the dark, then lessons would have been far more interesting.
Back to Voldemort, his speech was sort of inspiring. He had a way with words that made you want to listen to him speak, but for all his seemingly altruistic goals, Harry could hear his magic, and it wasn't pretty. His song was of darkness and rage. It was what drove him the most, his rage, his fear, and his greed. He was angry at the world, at the people who failed him, he was afraid of Death, the ultimate end, and he wanted the conquer the magical world. There was this madness to his method. He had kept it locked up, ready to burst out at any moment. There was chaos in him. It was what probably drove him to start killing unicorns or try to curse the broom of the boy who lived in the middle of a match, in broad daylight. And it wasn't even this madness that terrified him, it was that his song was obviously incomplete.
Yeah, he wasn't a complete person, and it showed. Everyone has a song, with each instrument showing a personality trait. It was something he had noticed growing slowly ever since his crest was unlocked. It was the extra dimension he saw in spells. The nature of the castor, and his mindset while using the spell. It took some concentration, but Harry had heard Voldemort's heart, his soul, and it was missing. Some basic instruments that symbolized apathy, guilt, love, lust, and so much more, were simply non-existent. They weren't quiet, they were just absent, and that was utterly terrifying.
Was that what happened when you split your soul? You take away some of what makes you, well, you. A soul is an abstract but sacred thing. Seeing someone tamper with it made him want to throw up. It was sacrilege that for some reason made Harry angry. And the obvious taint from the unicorn blood had even suppressed even the few things that the man enjoyed. Voldemort couldn't be called a man, because his soul could barely qualify as one. He would never experience joy because of what he has done to unicorns, he will never experience love, and he will never empathize with any being.
All he could experience was hate and rage. What a cursed experience, even if he came back to his body he would be as miserable as he was as a wraith. The mere thought of being forced to serve such a man was so revolting. Deep down in his soul, Harry was utterly disgusted with the lengths the man had gone to for power. Death was preferable. He didn't know why he refused his self-preservation instincts and tried to fool the dark lord somehow, to live another day, but it was like his body moved on its own.
Of course, the man's intelligence was still there. And unfortunately, Harry's gambit with sending a letter to Dumbledore hadn't panned out. For one, the headmaster probably already knew about Quirrell being guilty, especially with the rumoured personality changes. And also, the Dark Lord simply didn't care about his threat. It was a half-baked idea, but Harry couldn't have done anything else.
No, he could have, but he was unwilling to do it. He was so certain that everything was going to go with the script, that he was safe. But Voldemort hadn't confronted anyone before trying to steal the stone, and yet he did Harry. This wasn't a story. People didn't follow some sort of script because the stories said so. No, things were different, and banking on them was utterly foolish. Harry wanted nothing to do with the spat between Dumbledore and Voldemort and yet was pulled into it regardless.
It was a lot of little things that made that happen. Longbottom's pseudo-obsession over everything he did, caused the many corridor confrontations between them, which caused the detention that made him reveal his capabilities to Voldemort, who ended up almost killing him.
Was it some sort of coincidence? It happened so slowly that Harry hadn't seen the strings being pulled. Did Dumbledore arrange all of this, or was it some kind of fate power that moved things around?
Harry wanted nothing more than to leave this castle and get his magical education elsewhere. He would miss his friends, but it would have been better for his safety. Maybe he could go to Beauxbattons or Ilvermorny. Alas, Harry was a ward of the ministry, and they would need to approve the transfer, something that had never happened for decades, if ever. Yeah, the ministry was really patriotic and didn't like British wizards and witches getting their education elsewhere. Maybe he could do that after taking his OWLS. The ministry wouldn't have a say then.
He had to admit that he was an idiot for not taking things seriously, for considering this to be a children's story. And when Quirrell revealed his crimson eyes, Harry knew deep down that everything had changed. Voldemort had completely taken over the man's body and wasn't just hitching a ride.
No more.
He wasn't going to stand aside and wait for the story to occur in front of him. For one, he had no faith in Longbottom of all people, and he definitely didn't trust Dumbledore or Voldemort. He was going to live his life how he wanted it because it was his. He was going to fight for his own side, for his own right to freedom, and if some wannabe Archmages wanted to stop him, then he would surpass them all.
With a renewed sense of confidence, Harry felt things snap into place. His magical crest warmed up slightly, but instead of the intense heat and discomfort he always felt, it was oddly comforting.
Speaking of the crest, there was still something that he was missing. How did the conflict end? He refused the dark lord's offer and tried to blackmail him, banking on Longbottom killing him because of the whole love magic bullshit that he probably had, or at least, that the headmaster wanted to convince the boy he had. Harry was still convinced that it was an elaborate sacrificial ritual, but it was not like he could convince anyone if Albus Dumbledore himself said otherwise.
Back to the conflict, Harry started to remember. Voldemort had cast the killing curse at him. But something happened. He was like he was hypnotized again by his crest, but it was a little more forceful than the time in the forest. He clenched his hand enough to get some blood and palmed his cloak, which was his invisibility cloak in disguise. When he touched it, he heard a voice in his head. It was more like the wind itself was whispering in a language that Harry had never learnt but could somehow understand, "No magic can touch those who travel between worlds!!"
And then Harry felt his magic being dried up, and then absorbing forcefully the ambient magic around. Calling it painful would be an understatement. It barely lasted more than a fraction of a second, but Harry could feel as if his body was tearing itself out. The curse passed through him and splashed into the enchanted castle walls. Afterwards, everything turned black.
Was this a capability of the cloak? To somehow phase through magic? If that was the case, it was somewhat overpowered, but it was very costly magically. Harry doubted that he would be able to do it without consequences any time soon. After all, if using it once had sucked his magic dry enough to put him in the infirmary for what felt like days, he was not planning on doing so anytime soon.
Harry was so engrossed with his thoughts that he hadn't noticed that the room was not silent, at least not as much as it should have been. He heard two faint voices speaking. It took a few seconds for the Potter to recognize them, the voices belonged to Longbottom and Dumbledore.
The boy sounded surprisingly vulnerable, the encounter with the monster who killed his parents must have shaken him, deeply. The mere revelation that Voldemort was still alive must have terrified the boy to his bones. Of course, the headmaster kept reassuring him and told him about Voldemort being alive and the fate of the stone. Harry didn't trust the man one bit and didn't actually believe that the real stone was in the forbidden corridor, in the first place.
The conversation seemed stale until Longbottom asked, "Why couldn't Quirrell touch me?"
Oh, so, Quirrell had died in exactly the same way as the stories. That was something. It was hard to believe that the man who had so easily beaten Harry could have been destroyed by the accidental touch of a twelve-year-old boy that's barely more than average in his magical studies. There was something odd about it.
Of course, the man started a small speech about the power of love, and his mother's sacrifice.
The boy, funnily enough, didn't seem to take it at face value, "Professor, I thought it was some kind of alchemical ritual or something. Something about a life for a life."
The aged headmaster's voice took a harsh tone, "Who told you that, my boy?"
"Potter did, sir. He said it was the only way he could think of. That it was preposterous that people believed that I was involved in any way."
"He's a clever boy, young Harry, far more advanced beyond his years, and yet he doesn't know anything. In a way, he was correct. Many theories emerged on how exactly you survived. People tried to scry for years in an attempt to take a glimpse of what happened and replicate it somehow. I will admit that such a method did enter my mind, but there were simply no signs of a ritual there, not even a single trace, which would have existed should something of this magnitude have occurred. Such a ritual would also not continue to protect you now. Sometimes, people tend to forget about the simple things in life. They make convoluted theories about complex subjects, forgetting how something as simple and as pure as love can even ignite the stars themselves. Isn't that right, Mr Potter?"
Chapter 59: The Investigative Headmaster
4 June 1992, Hogwarts
The Potter scion froze in panic. He was hidden by a curtain and hadn't moved or made a noise. How in the name of Magic did the headmaster know that he was awake? Gently, an old hand grasped his curtain, revealing Albus Dumbledore in all his glory.
The man chuckled at his shocked expression, "Do not be alarmed, my boy. The infirmary simply has charms to alert Madam Pomfrey when a student wakes up. As the headmaster of this illustrious school, I have the privilege to interact with these charms as well."
Harry wouldn't really know it. The mere idea of using any magic, even his Arcane Hearing seemed ill-advised. The young Slytherin could do nothing but groan and sit back on the hospital bed.
The man seemed to take this as permission to continue his conversation, and asked, "So, young Harry, I believe you had quite the encounter with Professor Quirrell. I have to say that thanks to your letter I was able to return to Hogwarts quickly enough to save Mr. Longbottom from a rather dire fate. In normal circumstances, I would have ignored the letter. I thought it might have slipped past my mail wards somehow, but your owl was very insistent that I take it. You have found yourself quite the remarkable companion, Mr Potter."
Wait a minute, Hedwig had bypassed his mail wards? How is that possible? And yet for all the impossibility of it all, Harry smiled slightly, "That she is, headmaster."
A second later, he remembered something that Dumbledore just said and pretended to be shocked, "Wait, that was really the Dark Lord? I thought he was just some impostor or something."
"No, I'm afraid that Lord Voldemort has yet to leave this mortal plane. I have to ask, though, young Harry, that you explain the events that led you to your current condition. This is not the first time you have overwhelmed your magical circuits, and continuing that trend could end up crippling your magical potential in the long run."
Harry paled and started recounting the events of his encounter with Quirrell, "Well, I was asked to come in for my Defense practical exam. It started normally, with me demonstrating a few spells, but Professor Quirrell tried to curse me, and we duelled. I lost, very badly. He was different. He acted differently, even his eyes were red. I ended up disarmed, bound, and chained to a wall. He had started talking about his mission to turn the magical world into a utopia of understanding and wonder. He asked me to join him. It didn't really come out of the blue, with him trying to get me to accept him as a tutor a few months ago. I refused because I already had an agreement with Professor Flitwick about the duelling club, but he seemed quite vexed when I told him my decision."
Longbottom, who had stayed silent during the entire conversation, choked on his spit. Even the headmaster looked surprised, "And you didn't accept his offer?"
His voice had a tint of steel that wasn't there before. Was this the small taste of the true Albus Dumbledore, the Champion of Light? Was this core of steel what was under the image of an old amiable man?
Harry simply shook his head, "Of course, I didn't. He killed unicorns and drank their blood. Learning from someone capable of committing such horrors was just a bad idea in general."
The Potter scion noticed Dumbledore and Longbottom relax slightly and continued, "Well, as you can expect, he didn't really like my answer. He tried to convince me nicely, but then he started to get frustrated. The last thing I remember is him casting a very painful curse at me. I think it was black, but he didn't say any incantations. I felt my magic fight against it, and weaken it slightly, but then when it hit, I felt like my energy was being drained from my body. I was horrible; it was like someone had replaced my blood with pure lava. It burned so much. I think I passed out from the pain."
Of course, Harry was lying about that last part. There was no reason for Dumbledore to know that he survived a killing curse. Well, his cloak allowed him to phase through the killing curse. The man was already obsessed with the Deathly Hallows. Harry didn't need the man to have even more of an interest in him.
And so, Harry projected his pain for that fraction of a second when the curse hit him, and only modified the colour of the spell. Dumbledore had flinched imperceptibly, meaning that he had used his Legilimency to try to get more information about the encounter. Harry could sense his probe slightly, and so arranged for him to get what he wanted.
There was a reason why Legilimency wasn't really admissible in magical court. It was nothing against the field, but the more skilled a user is in the mind arts, the more they can alter the projected memories. Changing the colour of a spell is easy, far easier than faking an entire conversation for that matter, but it could deeply affect a trial if it was taken into account. Simply changing the spell to the familiar sickly green of the killing curse would have anyone sent to Azkaban for life, and that wasn't feasible in any administration.
The headmaster seemed to buy it though since he nodded. The pain couldn't be fake, and he knew it. Faking something like this couldn't be done if it wasn't experienced in the first place. So, unless Harry kept getting his magic sucked dry by other artefacts, it was very likely that the man would take his words at face value. Really, learning Occlumency was one of his greater ideas, even if was barely a beginner. He knew how to shield his thoughts from preliminary Legilimency scans and project a few memories – with a few alterations of course. He would have been truly fucked if it wasn't for it, to be honest.
The headmaster spoke up, "Lord Voldemort had sunk to depths that I will admit to not even have known that they existed, to gain power. I do not know the spell you're describing, but I am not a master of the Dark Arts like him. However, the effects of the spell seemed to be temporary, putting you in a magical deprivation coma until you recover. But I will admit that I don't know how you knew to send me that letter."
Harry sheepishly looked down, "Well, I knew that Quirrell was the one who killed the unicorns. I recognized the wand, you see. So, every single time I met him, I told Hedwig to come see me if I didn't return. The letter I gave you was written months ago. It had nothing to do with Longbottom, really. I didn't even know that he would try to retrieve the stone that day."
At Longbottom's attempted rebuttal, he continued, "Come on, you have hardly been subtle. Hermione point blank asked me in potions class who was Nicholas Flamel. It didn't take long for me to realize what was hidden in the corridor. And that Quirrell was looking for him."
"And why would you not have come to me sooner?" Dumbledore asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Someone who would be willing to slaughter a unicorn and drink its blood is without a doubt desperate. I trusted your defences on the stone and chose not to bring attention to myself, and risk dying. Not that it worked for that matter."
"I can see why the hat put you in Slytherin, then, Mr Potter," the headmaster retorted, "Well, with that out of the way…"
Before the man had the chance to leave, Harry spoke up, "Is it bad that I don't feel safe in the castle anymore, Headmaster?"
The headmaster's eyes widened in panic slightly, "Now, why would you feel that?"
"Well, this is supposed to be the safest place in the country, but I just died because a professor was possessed. He might be dead, but what if the next one is a vampire or something even worse? After the thing in the Forbidden Forest and my attack, I just don't feel safe here. I'm honestly thinking about sending a letter to the ministry to leave this place. I could go to Beauxbattons. My French is kinda good, and I could handle it, and it's not that far."
Yeah, there was no way the ministry would let the last member of an old family leave the country even if Hogwarts burned to the ground. But a letter could technically be enough to make people start to second-guess Dumbledore's leadership. It wouldn't do anything more than just trouble the man, but he probably saw it as an unnecessary risk. It also would put him on the map, of where the ministry is concerned, and that means that Harry would lose a lot of his independence.
And Dumbledore seemed to understand the risks as well, "Now, now, my boy, there's no need for any of that. This is the same school that your family has learned for centuries, and even your parents came here."
"Yeah, but this tradition would be meaningless if I die and there aren't any more Potters to celebrate it."
"Tell you what, as reparations for the inconvenience, the school is more than willing to reimburse you for your trauma. You were obviously attacked by a professor that we hired without any kind of provocation. How do five thousand Galleons sound? And access to the forbidden section of the library for three years, and to the Prefect Bathrooms."
That was probably the best offer Harry was going to get. It was still a lot of gold, around half of what was sitting in his vault. It would help him a lot when he starts to invest it. He was planning on regrowing the Potter fortune once more after its sharp decline in the last century or so. The access to the Forbidden Section was a nice bonus, even if he could break in there whenever he liked with his cloak. The Prefect Bathrooms were kind of useless, to be honest, but were still a nice perk to have.
Harry pretended to take a deep breath, "Fine, headmaster. But I want your personal assurances that I won't be in danger in my time in this castle, because the moment I almost die again I'll have to leave. I'm the last of my line, and I have a responsibility to make sure that it doesn't die out, even if I have to leave this beautiful place."
Of course, Harry was talking out of his ass, but it was a good idea to make sure that Harry just wanted to feel safe.
"Hey, what about me?" Longbottom exclaimed.
Harry suppressed a snort as he realized that Dumbledore had pretty much bribed him in front of his precious boy who lived. The headmaster seemed to have realised it as well but quickly took control of the situation, "Neville, you have willingly sought out danger. Your classmate, on the other hand, was attacked and hospitalized by a member of the staff without any kind of provocation. The school is accountable for his attack, and thus must offer him reparations."
This was all bullshit, of course, but Longbottom seemed convinced. Was the entirety of the wizarding world so willing to accept the man's words without even attempting to think about it? Maybe it was just because the boy who lived was young and worshipped the old man.
Still, there was something on Harry's mind, "Sir, I have one final question."
The man motioned him to go on, "I have found that asking questions to be a worthwhile pursuit. What troubles you, young Potter?"
"Can you tell me about the fire of Godric's Hollow? It's just there was nothing I could find in the library. The newspapers just say that it was some kind of cursed fire."
The man's jovial disappeared immediately, "That's understandable. The fire of Godric's Hollow is one of the biggest tragedies in magical Britain during the last few decades, and it had very few witnesses. Even though I am not certain as to what happened, I have theories, all of which are very disturbing. But I will not reveal them. Pure truth is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution. You are too young to be burdened with this knowledge."
Harry motioned to protest but was silenced when the man raised his hand, "What I can tell you, for that matter, is that this fire was unlike anything I have ever seen, it was probably unlike anything the world has ever seen. It consumed everything, literally. It wasn't even hot. Simply everything it touched turned to dust. It certainly wasn't natural. There's a reason there aren't any ruins in Godric's Hollow. It's because they don't exist. I can also tell you that the flames were tinged with your mother's magical signature."
The man slowly turned and left the infirmary, leaving two silent boys. Longbottom seemed like he wanted to speak up, but Harry was too tired to deal with his prattling. He simply closed off the curtain. He needed to think.
It didn't take long for him to conclude that the whole encounter with Longbottom was staged. There were too many coincidences, and the ending was too close to the one from the stories for it not to be one. The man must have known that Quirrell was after the stone, or that he was the one killing the unicorn, at least. And yet he did nothing.
You could say what you wanted about the man. He was obviously manipulative, he had too much political power for a man who liked to say he was uninterested in politics, he was slowly changing the magical world to his image with his control over Hogwarts and his changes to the curriculum, but he wasn't the senile old man he pretended to be. His mind was sharp, and it showed.
He used the Philosopher's Stone as a lure, that's for sure. He didn't know if the stone was real or not, but the Flamels would not have parted with it willingly. There was no reason to have the stone in a school for protection. For all its wards, Hogwarts was a public place, with many possible intruders. It simply wasn't safe. And if Longbottom was able to get past his challenges, they definitely weren't defined with a Dark Lord in mind. Dumbledore wanted Longbottom to go after the stone and make it only challenging enough for the boy to succeed after some effort. He designed the entire thing to have an encounter between him and Voldemort, but why?
Was he hoping to trap the wraith or something? Harry didn't know much about souls, but even if that was possible, it would be a temporary solution at best. Dumbledore wouldn't settle for something like this.
Was he hoping to confirm that Voldemort was still alive? No, it was too risky, he could have gone to Albania years before and tracked him down somehow. He definitely wasn't hoping that Longbottom would somehow finish him off. It was too farfetched for that to happen. Did he simply want to study the boy's protection by having it interact with Voldemort?
And most of all, could Harry even believe a word he said about the fire that killed his parents and razed an entire village off the face of the Earth?
Harry was consumed with these thoughts as he fell into the realm of Morpheus, still feeling tired from his encounter with Quirrell.
Chapter 60: Grass of Emerald
6 June 1992, Hogwarts
For the hundredth time ever since she met him, Daphne Greengrass reevaluated her opinion on Harry Potter. However, if there was something she was certain of, it would be that he was unlike any other boy she had ever met. It was hard to explain it. He had this presence. Whenever he walked into a room, people noticed. Whenever he spoke, everyone listened. That's not even speaking of his frankly absurd skill in magic. Seriously, he tried to downplay it slightly, but it was like putting a small dam to hold an ocean. Magic was something instinctive. Downplaying it just was like downplaying a part of your own personality.
When she first met Potter, she didn't really think anything of him. He was just some quiet bookworm, that was probably destined to be in Ravenclaw. Sure, the Potter family was famous, well, mostly infamous because of the fire of Godric's Hollow, to which Harry was the only survivor, somehow. But as for the family itself, it wasn't really anything special. It was relatively old, not really impressive, especially considering Daphne's own roots in the druids during the time of Camelot. They were about as old as the Malfoy family, who became ennobled in France, just a couple of centuries before the statute of secrecy forced them to give away their titles.
The Potter family were mostly a family of relatively wealthy potion masters, that tended to grow the family fortune with their invention, up until the last few wars, of course. Charlus Potter had, for some reason, spent a significant amount of wealth in the war against Grindelwald. According to her grandmother's diary, who was a year younger than him in school, it was completely out of character for him. He was known as a calm and very business minded man, but he seemed desperate to stop Grindelwald for some reason.
James Potter had followed in his father's footsteps and practically donated most of what remained of his fortune in the fight against the Dark Lord. By the end of it, there was probably not going to be a lot of wealth left. So, in summary, Harry Potter was relatively well off for the average wizard or witch, but not nearly as wealthy as any formerly noble house. He wasn't supposed to be remarkable; he wasn't supposed to be smart. He definitely wasn't supposed to have the oddest magical crest she had ever heard of.
No, he was supposed to be an average boy that was born into a progressive oriented family, that would go to either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. He wasn't supposed to go to Slytherin with her. He wasn't supposed to become one of her dearest friends. And yet, what was supposed to happen doesn't matter at all, what does is what actually happens.
And so, out of nowhere, they became friends. They just clicked. Tracy, Blaise, Daphne, and Harry just started by going to class together, and after a while, they just clicked. Hogwarts without Harry would just be wrong, something that he had experienced in the last few days.
Harry had gone to the Defense Against the Dark Arts practical exams. He was oddly jittery. Harry was always very confident during his exams. He aced them without a second's thought; he was a genius after all. Even if it was weird how Quirrell had decided to single him out for his practical exams, Daphne had chalked it up to the cowardly professor having forgotten about him or just wanted to assign him another test. Well, when Harry didn't return the following night, Daphne, Blaise, and Tracy went to their head of house and told him about their missing friend. The man had swept the castle and found Harry in the destroyed defence classroom, completely unconscious. The potion master ended up sending him to the infirmary, before running off the forbidden corridor for some reason.
No one had told her what had happened to Harry, nor why he was unconscious, only that he was in a magical coma for having strained his magical channels. Quirrell had disappeared, and Neville Longbottom was also in the infirmary for some reason.
No one would tell her anything. There were a few rumours that Weasley had spread, that Longbottom had fought Quirrell in the forbidden corridor for some reason, something about a Cerberus, deadly plants, and a giant chess match. But there was nothing about Harry at all. No one even noticed his disappearance, with the boy who lived being hospitalized as well. The ones that did notice, thought that Harry had duelled Longbottom and they all ended up getting hurt. The close timings between the injuries weren't a coincidence. But everyone kept talking about Longbottom's adventure in the Forbidden Corridor, nothing more.
They had been allowed to visit him. He was so pale, so peaceful. Daphne had never seen him like this. There was always this gleam of intelligence in his eyes. He was always either frowning while thinking about so spell or another, or he was slightly smiling when they all hung out together. Without them, he just looked wrong. Without Harry, Hogwarts felt wrong, empty in a way that she couldn't describe.
Oh, he wasn't perfect, not by a long shot. No, Harry was as flawed as they came. He was as socially dumb as he was a genius in matters of magic. He would always deny it, but he acted arrogantly sometimes, especially when it concerned his magical studies. He was so secretive and spent a lot of time alone. It had hurt her at first, thinking that he just didn't want to hang out with them, but after he started to put more time aside to spend with them, she understood that it was just his nature. He liked to spend time with his own company to destress, in a way. Although, she was curious about what he kept doing on his own. Sometimes she wanted to grab him by the throat and force him to tell her his secret. But no, this would spoil all the fun of figuring them out.
Daphne had even discovered one of his secrets; he was muggle-raised. She was kind of proud of that one, to be honest. Harry had done a good job at keeping it under wraps. He was obviously knowledgeable about the magical world, but that could just be him being smart enough to not show any sign of ignorance. But yeah, there were a few muggle terms here and there, and he almost never spoke of his guardians. It took a few months, and Daphne had concluded about the fact that as a Half-Blood, he was as likely to be raised by his mother's muggle family as to be raised in a wizarding home.
She felt strangely closer to him when she realized that. With every piece of the puzzle that she discovered, she liked him more and more.
Even now, as she stayed in the infirmary, with a nice book in her hands, Daphne kept thinking of him. Blaise had stopped going after three days, he wouldn't wake up. Tracy stopped coming after a week. But not Daphne. She would stay at his side until he woke up. Well, she would have, if it wasn't for the evil Madam Pomfrey that only allowed her to come for an hour a day. It was originally just fifteen minutes, but Daphne had worn down the evil Matron. Still, according to her, he had woken up a few days earlier when the headmaster was visiting. They spoke for a few minutes where Harry recounted his side of whatever happened, and then the Potter scion fell asleep once more. And they still wouldn't tell her anything…
Longbottom had woken up a couple of days back and came back completely fine. Apparently, Harry's condition was far more severe than the boy who lived. It was almost the end of the year feast, and Harry still hadn't woken up. They were leaving the castle in a few days and Daphne dreaded leaving the castle without making sure he was alright. She had never known anyone who had been in the hospital wing after the school year. Would he be transferred to Saint Mungo's where she could still visit him? Or would he stay in the castle alone, under Madam Pomfrey's care?
Daphne's frankly depressing thoughts were interrupted when she heard a soft hooting and looked up from the book with a slight smile, "He's really taking his time, isn't he, Hedwig?"
The owl bobbed her head. She really was as remarkably intelligent as the owner. She had somehow been able to sneakily visit her owner and would not let him leave her sight. That is until the evil Madam Pomfrey kept trying to hex her. Apparently, 'pets weren't allowed in her infirmary'. Still, whenever she was chased away, she snuck back in hours later. For some reason, the wards in the hospital wing just wouldn't stop her. The matron had given up after a few days and a tentative peace between the witch and the owl was made. Hedwig would not make a ruckus, and Madam Pomfrey would not try to hex her.
The snowy owl was often her only companion whenever she visited her friend, and she curled up next to her whenever she was there. Hedwig hooted softly in answer and jumped towards her owner. She gave him a gentle peck on the forehead.
Daphne didn't know why she chose this moment to do it when she hadn't touched Harry ever since he was in the hospital wing. Her doubts were immediately shattered when Harry started to frown and mumbled, "Stop it, Hedwig."
She practically leapt from her seat and enveloped Harry in a hug, "HARRY! You're awake!!"
The black-haired boy frowned, "Of course, I'm awake, why wouldn't I be awake?"
"You were hurt remember?"
"Oh yeah, Quirrell attacked me. I think I talked to Dumbledore somewhere in the middle of it."
"Wait a minute, go back to the part where you got attacked!!" Daphne shrieked.
"Well, I went to the exam, and everything was normal and then he declared himself to be some kind of dark wizard, that he was going to take over the world and all that stuff…"
Wait, what? Daphne was baffled. She must have heard it wrong, because Quirrell, a dark wizard? That was just insane. She thought he was some cowardly thief who wanted to steal something from the forbidden corridor, not a full-blown evil wizard.
"Quirrell?" she repeated, wanting to make sure that he wasn't joking.
Well, he started explaining one of the single most outlandish stories she had ever heard. Apparently, Quirrell was the one drinking unicorn blood and had attacked him before when he also ended up in the hospital wing. Harry for some reason chose not to tell anyone about the fact that he obviously figured out who attacked him in the first place. Quirrell then decided for some reason to make Harry his apprentice? Or maybe he wanted Harry to be his servant? He had said no, and then they fought, Harry lost, and he was hit with a spell that forced his body to expel all of the magic inside at once, and then some, which was why he was in a coma. Apparently, the man tried to steal something from the forbidden corridor and ended up being stopped by Longbottom.
Daphne really wished she could grab that turban wearing freak and strangle him to death. Still, she chose not to think too much about it, especially considering the fact that she was just overjoyed that Harry was back. She was going to grill him on this later.
After a few gruelling tests by the matron, Harry was cleared to leave and go to the feast a few days later. Even if Dumbledore was biased enough to give Gryffindor almost two hundred points because Longbottom and his lackeys decided to break the rules and still go to the forbidden corridor. But that didn't really matter to Daphne. Harry was back, and that was enough for her.
Chapter 61: The End and a Beginning
7 June 1992, Hogwarts
The day after officially waking up from his magical coma, Harry decided to just follow Madam Pomfrey's recommendation and not really stress himself. The matron had done a good job when he was in the hospital wing; the Potter scion felt like he was back to his best form, even if his body got sore whenever he cast a significant amount of magic.
So, he spent his last days at Hogwarts with his friends, who had welcomed him warmly. Although, for some reason, Daphne was particularly clingy ever since he woke up. He didn't really get it, to be honest. It was probably because she missed him or something, but Tracy wasn't acting the same, so he didn't really understand. It seems like in this life and his previous one, he would never make sense of what goes on in the minds of the fairer sex.
He had missed his second Hogsmeade weekend. It seems like he was cursed to not visit Hogsmeade this year. Considering what happened in the story at the end of the year feast, with Dumbledore giving away hundreds of points to the boy who lived, he was also not likely to visit the village in the next one either. It's not like he would really lose anything; anything interesting in the village would have an equivalent shop in Diagon Alley. Hogsmeade was originally a wizarding settlement. The whole business growth started because of the proximity to Hogwarts, whilst Diagon Alley was the veritable hub of Magical Britain. It showed in the stores that were in Hogsmeade; it had a few inns, cafes, stores to buy school supplies and a chocolate shop of all things. Yeah, it was obviously geared towards teenagers.
People were staring at Harry and his friends on his way there. Well, it was mostly Harry. Apparently, being attacked by the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor made him some sort of fascinating commodity. There were rumours about him being a secret Dark Lord and that he had duelled Quirrell when he had confronted him, hence why the man disappeared without a trace. There were rumours that they were planning on stealing whatever was in the forbidden corridor together and that they had greedily turned on each other.
He had gotten a nice payout out of the whole mess with Quirrell, and it was the best he could do. Now, if that had happened to Draco Malfoy, then the headmaster would have been in deep trouble. Alas, Harry had no one that was willing to go on a crusade against the most powerful man in the country for his sake, so that would do for now.
Still, Harry slowly walked towards the Slytherin table and sat at his usual spot, his friends joining him. The entire room was decked in green and silver. The members of the House of Snakes were all smiling in victory at having won the house cup and all of the privileges that come with it. Of course, Harry knew what was about to happen, that their smiles were about to be turned upside down in a few minutes.
He was proven correct, when Dumbledore proceeded to his end of the year speech, and well, pretty much handed the cup to the Gryffindors. The utter uproar at the announcement was galling. Harry felt bad that at hard work of the fourth years and sixth years, who had made sure that the privileges that came with the house cup would be theirs the following year, was so easily dismissed with barely more than a second's thought. It was disgusting, and a quarter of the school was openly glaring at the headmaster. Of course, outside of the Gryffindors being overjoyed, the other houses didn't really care about the precedent the headmaster just made. Seriously, just deciding to give the house cup on a whim was making it meaningless, and that's not mentioning the sheer enmity that the man was building in a house where he was already fairly unpopular.
Honestly, the house cup was what prevented Hogwarts from falling into chaos. There were just too many students and too few professors. Adding magic in the mix just made this place a recipe for a ticking time bomb, or at least it would be if it wasn't for the house cup. The prize was enticing for older students, so they went out of their way to stop the younger ones from doing anything drastic. Without the credibility of the house cup, and the fairness of earning it, the older students wouldn't be motivated enough to care about it, meaning that Dumbledore had basically told everyone that it was meaningless, that to keep the boy who lived happily, he would gladly just hand it over to his house without even being discrete about it. If he does the same in the following year, the upper years will just stop caring about it, which definitely wasn't a good idea in the long run.
His friends were pretty grumpy about it. An hour after the announcement, Tracy was still grumbling, "I can't believe Dumbledore just gave the cup to Longbottom, just like that."
"Tracy, let it go," Harry retorted gently, "we all knew that he was very biased when it came to his little boy hero. Honestly, I would have been surprised if he hadn't done anything."
Blaise gave him a confused look, "I don't understand…"
Daphne snorted, "No surprises there, huh? Did you forget how much stuff he let Longbottom get away with this year? He got a spot in the Quidditch team even if he didn't deserve it, that's not to mention being caught with a live dragon in a school, which was a criminal offence that Dumbledore swept under the rug. Now, this? I'm not happy, but I can't say that I can't see him ruin the house cup as a way to reward Longbottom somehow."
Harry's eyebrow reached his forehead; this was definitely not something he saw Daphne, or any girl his age, really, understanding. It was a very good interpretation of the events.
The girl gave Harry a wink and continued with a joking tone, "What? Do you think I haven't learnt anything in the last year? I'm not thick like the other two."
Harry chuckled at Blaise and Tracy's protest. Yes, Daphne was very intelligent. She learnt things quickly and was dedicated when it came to any issue.
The issue dissolved into their usual friendly bickering, and they all quickly forgot about Dumbledore's injustice. Time passed very quickly, and it was almost curfew. The prefects had led them back to the Slytherin common room, and they quickly went to sleep, stuffed with food, and comfortable.
The following morning, all the first years gathered in the Great Hall for their customary end of year warnings, like no casting magic outside of school, or how much their summer homework was important. It really wasn't, since it was mostly just theoretical assignments that didn't necessitate any substantial research. From the looks of it, Harry could discern that it was a basic summary of the theory they had learnt in class, with a small introduction to the next year's curriculum.
As for the trace, Harry had tried to find anything to beat it but came up empty. Seriously, even his meagre wandless magic would be detected by the ministry. After all, the charm was on his person, not the wand, like many thoughts. The trace's purpose is to monitor spikes of magic in muggle homes, especially when underaged wizards and witches are concerned. The medium of magic just didn't matter, and Harry couldn't really find a charm on him using his Arcane Hearing. It frustrated Harry immensely, even if he could understand its purpose. The trace wasn't really made to be biased against muggleborns, but to preserve the statute of secrecy. Children and teenagers tended to be very unpredictable, and the ministry had to know when someone revealed their magic, be it on purpose or by accident.
So, Harry was stuck to staying in a place with enough wards to qualify as a wizarding home. Yeah, he was probably going to stay in Diagon Alley again, instead of a muggle hotel he could easily sneak into without paying a dime.
He already had a stock of ageing potions to fool the innkeeper of the Leaky Cauldron again and spend the entire summer there. After having a taste of magic, there was no way he was stopping for a day, let alone for two whole months.
After McGonagall's little speech, they followed Hagrid who took them back to the Hogwarts Express on the boats again. It was a nice touch, to leave the same way they came in, even if some of the wonder had worn off slightly.
As he boarded the Hogwarts Express, Harry found that he was going to miss the castle and its wonderous nature. Sure, he had copied a good part of the library during his nightly escapades using the cloak, so he wouldn't really suffer in terms of reading material, but there was just something about the castle that was just wonderful. It was hard to explain it. It was something at the edge of his mind that he could somehow listen to using his Arcane hearing, despite the ambient magical noise. It was something that felt like a sense of welcome, a smidge of affection, a home open for all those who wish to learn.
Harry sat in a compartment with his friends, wondering when the next time they would see each other again would be. It didn't really matter; if Harry was staying in Diagon Alley, it would be easy to meet them somewhere, but he didn't want any nosy adult to try to butt into his living situation. He sure as hell wasn't going back to the Dursleys, that's for sure.
Funnily enough, Gemma Farley walked up to their compartment in the middle of the train ride to give them a letter that could contain their final grades for their year.
Unlike his friend, he opened it without an ounce of hesitation and read its content. It had two pieces of parchment. The first read the following:
Dear Mr. Potter,
We thank you for your dedication this year and would like to sincerely congratulate you on all of your achievements. The entirety of the Hogwarts staff is eager to see what shall come next.
Yours truly,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress.
As for the second piece of parchment, it contained his grades:
Passing Grades:
O = Outstanding.
E = Exceeds Expectations.
A = Acceptable.
Failing Grades:
P = Poor.
D = Dreadful.
T = Troll.
Harry James Potter Has Achieved:
Astronomy - O.
Charms - O.
Defence Against The Dark Arts - O.
Herbology - O.
History of Magic - O.
Potions - O.
Transfiguration - O.
We thank you for your dedication this year and would like to sincerely congratulate you on all of your achievements. The entirety of the Hogwarts staff is eager to see what shall come next.
Yours truly,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress.
As for the second piece of parchment, it contained his grades:
Passing Grades:
O = Outstanding.
E = Exceeds Expectations.
A = Acceptable.
Failing Grades:
P = Poor.
D = Dreadful.
T = Troll.
Harry James Potter Has Achieved:
Astronomy - O.
Charms - O.
Defence Against The Dark Arts - O.
Herbology - O.
History of Magic - O.
Potions - O.
Transfiguration - O.
It seemed like they just didn't count the Defense Against the Dark Arts practical, or just gave him full marks. What was the protocol when the defence professor tried to kill you anyway?
Underneath his grades were the end of year rankings, where Harry was unsurprisingly in first place, followed by Hermione Granger and Padma Patil. After his friends grilled him on his grades, he took a look at their own. They did pretty well all things considered. Daphne, the most diligent in her studies, got an Exceeds Expectations or Outstanding in all of her grades, and Tracy and Blaise almost did the same, both getting an Acceptable in History of Magic and Blaise having one in Transfiguration while Tracy had one in charms.
They all bickered about their grades as usual. Harry got teased for being a bookworm, and he told them all off for being 'underachievers'. It was nice banter between friends, and the hours flew by quickly.
Of course, all good things must end, and a distinct voice spoke up around him, "We will be arriving in London in five minutes."
They all said their goodbyes and promised to owl each other during the summer break. While everyone went to meet their families, Harry snuck off to the other side of the platform, ready to take the Knight bus to Diagon Alley.
Of course, all of this completely froze when he saw a familiar obese figure standing on the other side of the platform. Vernon Dursley, in all his purple-face moustached glory, was there, glaring at Harry for some reason. He grumpily walked towards Harry, "Hurry up, boy, we haven't got all day."
Harry looked back towards the families exiting the platform. He didn't want to cause a scene here. The last time he spoke to the Dursleys, he had made it abundantly clear that he did not want anything to do with them again.
Choosing not to confront the man in public, he followed him to his car and was readying a small speech to give him a piece of his mind.
Chapter 62: Summer's Child
9 June 1992, King's Cross Train Station
When he stopped by the man's car, his eyes widened when he saw his aunt Petunia and his cousin Dudley in the car. The boy had lost some weight, Harry noticed, which was good for the formerly obese boy. Oh, he was still overweight, but he didn't look like a blonde potato, so that was a good thing. It seemed like his frankly childish rant when he left had rattled them enough to make a few changes. Even if he had made sure that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.
Harry looked around to see if anyone was looking at them. From what he understood of the trace, he was in the clear if he wanted to use any magic. There were too many magical parents who would come pick up their children. The ministry probably had a few obliviators on standby in case something happened. That meant that Vernon literally held no leverage over him whatsoever.
The Hogwarts Express was made just for the trip to Hogwarts, nothing more. It was built to help muggleborns go to Hogwarts. It was made around two centuries back to replace the endless portkeys that had to be enchanted for every student to have. It was better to overwork a few obliviators a few days a year, then arrange for hundreds of Portkeys to be mailed to students and deposit them back to Hogsmeade. Outside of the trips to the school, the Hogwarts Express was unused, and thus, King's Cross wasn't really a common place for wizards to be, especially not to use their magic. But that didn't really matter now. Harry could use his magic as if he was in Diagon Alley. The ministry wouldn't really notice anything odd in such an area concentrated with wizards and witches.
Harry again made sure that no one could see him and just stood still in front of the car, refusing to get inside. The obese muggle started to look like he was slowly getting enraged. His eyes were reddening, and so was his face in general, for that matter. He practically snarled at Harry, "Well, hurry up, boy. We haven't got all day."
The Potter scion ignored him entirely, "What are you doing here?"
The man moved in a threatening manner towards Harry, who simply raised his wand. At the sight of the magical stick, Vernon practically wilted away. Petunia paled in fear, and Dudley honestly looked confused. Had they not told him about his magic?
Choosing to ignore the comical image of a man five times his size flinching away from him, Harry spoke once more, "I asked you what you're doing here."
"What do you think we're doing here? We're here to pick you up, boy," Petunia snarled back, "I got a letter from that freak school of yours with the time to come pick you up."
"Yes, and we also agreed that it was time for us to go our separate ways. I live my life and you live yours. Isn't that what you always wanted? To get rid of the freak that your dead sister saddled you with. To get rid of the last connection you had to her world which you loathe with all your heart." Harry answered.
"Yes, and we left you alone last Summer. You didn't say anything about it being a permanent thing…" his aunt retorted.
Harry stiffened, doing his best to recollect exactly what their conversation was about. It was so long ago, but by the end, he just remembered feeling free of them. During his stay in Hogwarts, he had made plans to stay by himself during the summer. There was a small voice in his head reminding him about how safe it would be to be with them. It was what the Harry in the stories did, after all.
He shook his head and removed this thought. His confrontation with Quirrell had shown him that following the stories was not always a good idea. No, this was real life, and he wasn't going to follow some sort of silly script and let it dictate his life. Harry loved his new life, he loved his friends, but most of all, he loved using magic. He wasn't about to risk not practising magic for the sake of a story in another life.
Maybe he didn't specify that he wasn't going to leave the Dursleys permanently. But right now, he didn't care. He wasn't going back to Privet Drive. He wasn't going to leave his magic for their sake.
The Potter scion gave a good look at his aunt and spoke up, "Alright, then let's make it permanent then. I won't come back with you, and that's it."
"You what?!!" the woman screeched.
Again, Harry raised an eyebrow at the woman's voice. He really hadn't missed her voice, which is what he imagine a Harpy sounded like. He had been forced to suffer this voice for years, and he had spent almost twelve blissful months without it.
"Look, I know you tend to be emotional, but please don't make a scene in the middle of London," Harry calmly retorted.
"So, that's it, you're moving out?" Vernon spoke up with obvious glee on his face.
"Yes, I am. I can take care of myself, and you won't have to suffer my existence anymore. It sounds like a good compromise, right?"
Petunia looked like she wanted to protest but Vernon answered for her, "A very good compromise, yes."
"Well, of course, there's the legal side of things," Harry remarked, making them stiffen.
"Legal side?" Petunia repeated blankly.
"Officially, I will still be living with you. At least, as far as the government is concerned. It's not really a bother, but things like the letter you got from my school and the like will be sent to your home occasionally. Every month during my summer break, I will come to see you in case you have any documents I might need. It will barely take two minutes of your time, three times a year. Other than that, we'll essentially be strangers. What do you think?"
Harry didn't really need to do this, and it was likely that it would be for nothing. He was still a ward of the ministry in magical matters, but Petunia getting a letter from Hogwarts showed that the Dursleys weren't entirely separated from him. It was better to visit them three times a year than just accidentally miss an important document that was sent their way. He couldn't risk the ministry looking too deeply into his home life and messing his nice little system up.
Again, Petunia wanted to protest, but Vernon spoke up for her, "It sounds like a small price to pay for peace, boy. Come on, Tuney, we're going home."
"No!" the woman exclaimed, "You're supposed to be Lily's boy, not this thing… You're not supposed to leave. You should stay with us."
"And do what exactly?" Harry protested, "I love magic. I am magic. And no matter how much you would like to have your nephew with you, I know that you hate magic more. I saw it when I took out my wand. I saw your fear, your hatred, your bitterness. Stop being attached to the past, to a sister that you hated, and move on with your life. We're too different to live together without both of us being miserable. Let me go back to my magic and I will let you go back to the normalcy you crave. Goodbye Aunt Petunia, I'll see you in a month."
Harry turned and left his relatives near their car. He didn't look back. The Dursleys were his past, but they were not his future. He wasn't going to tie himself to some script anymore. Staying at the Dursleys would make them all miserable. It was better the rip the bandage now and make boundaries clear than to stay in Privet Drive out of some misguided flimsy blood ties.
Harry took one quick trip to the bathroom, and he took off his clothes after locking himself in a stall. He took out a small vial of potion from his school bag and drank it in one gulp. He suppressed the urge to gag at the taste. Still, Harry's form started to slowly grow until he looked like a man with his familiar messy hair and green eyes.
He had drunk an ageing potion. Harry had stocked up on them over the school year, purchasing one every week or so. He had enough to last him the Summer.
The Potter scion opened his bag and took out the large outfit that he had owl ordered months back, and by the end, he looked like a dashing wizard, with a suitcase. With that done, he went out to the street and waved his wand in the manner described by the book he had read.
There was a deafening BANG, and Harry blinked to shield his eyes from the sudden bright light. When he opened them, he saw that a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights screeched to a halt exactly in front of him. They belonged, as Harry saw when he raised his head, to a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelt The Knight Bus.
Yeah, it wouldn't be his most preferred method of transportation, but there wasn't a floo in King's Cross, and he didn't have any other choice. He didn't have any muggle money to get a normal cab, so that was his only choice.
Harry's thoughts were interrupted by a conductor in a purple uniform, who leapt out of the bus and started to speak loudly, "Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this evening. Where would you like to go?"
Harry tried to look as unfazed as ever, "Diagon Alley, please."
"A short trip, then," Stan remarked, "that would be five sickles for the trip. You could get a chocolate, a bottle of water, and a toothbrush in the colour of your choice if you upgrade for just four sickles more."
Harry shook his head and took out five sickles from his gold pouch, "The standard ticket is fine, thank you."
"You loss," the conductor remarked. He then helped Harry lift his trunk with Hedwig's cage balanced on top, up the steps of the bus.
The man pointed at a seat and said, "This is your seat. Over there is the driver, Ernie Prang. Try not to disturb him if you can," he then yelled at the driver, "Take her away, Ern."
There was another tremendous BANG and the next moment Harry found himself glued to his seat, thrown backwards by the speed of the Knight Bus. Harry stared out of the window and saw that they were now bowling along a completely different street.
And so, the bus kept going and stopping, dropping one passenger after another. Honestly, Harry was starting to get motion sick. The total trip was probably around fifteen minutes, but they felt like hours. Honestly, if he wasn't riding the damn thing, he would have been fascinated by the enchantments used to make this marvellous piece of magic. There had to be some spacial magic and a way to accelerate on a ludicrous level. But alas, he was doing his best not hurl.
He almost cried in relief when Stan started to yell at Harry, "Hey, you. We'll be in Diagon Alley soon. Get ready!"
Finally, Ern slammed on the brakes and the Knight Bus skidded to a halt in front of a small and shabby-looking pub, the Leaky Cauldron, behind which lay the magical entrance to Diagon Alley.
"Thanks," Harry said to the driver.
He jumped down the steps and helped Stan lower his trunk and Hedwig's cage onto the pavement. He then looked at the familiar inn and took a deep breath. Yeah, he had a feeling that this was going to be his favourite summer yet.
AN: As usual, let me know what you think so far. The second year will start tomorrow, and trust me, it starts with a banger.
MarlasSett
Prometheus Engineer
I can accept Dumbledore being a cunt. But I feel he's starting to turn into a much overused evil caricature that tends to happen in bashing fics.
- Location
- Zambia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This was actually touched on by Voldemort
The whole light and dark lord thing-the terminology escapes me.
Dumbledore is going on to guide, not create, a utopia, according to his definition of it. That's a lot of power, and "good" men don't do so well with power. The Greater Good has always been terrifying because of how much it waves off
Silveraith
Argent Phantasm
- Location
- Terra Atlantus
The "Greater Good" in canon would see Harry dead and buried if it meant Voldemort died with him. A lot of the times the greater good is not a moral standard to stand by because sometimes the greater good is for good people to suffer.
Chapter 63 & 64: Prerogative & The Alchemist
Chapter 63: Prerogative
14 June 1992, Hogwarts
Albus Dumbledore sat in his chair, pondering on the happenings of the previous year. With the students gone, the castle was oddly quiet, with only ghosts, elves, and the portraits keeping him company.
His plans with the Philosopher's Stone were a resounding success. The confirmation of Lord Voldemort's survival was very valuable, and so was having an active participant in a true prophecy. Neville Longbottom had no idea of his true value, that until the prophecy is fulfilled, fate itself will move mountains for his survival. And in the case, he wasn't cooperative, or if the prophecy would obviously not end in his victory, breaking the prophecy and using it as fuel for a ritual could be very beneficial for Albus in the long run, as regrettable as that might be.
The boy arrived exactly as he predicted. He was arrogant, and spoilt, but fairly talented, at least for a normal wizard. And Albus Dumbledore was nothing but a normal wizard.
His tranquillity was interrupted by a visually livid woman flooing to his office. He had been waiting for this meeting and dreading it at the same time. This woman could indivertibly ruin many of his plans, just out of stubbornness.
The visitor was tall, thin, and bony. She was wearing her customary stuffed vulture hat and was carrying her red handbag. The witch looked surprisingly formidable despite her age and was a terror in the Wizengamot session. It was Augusta Longbottom, the grandmother of the boy who lived. Honestly, Albus preferred to call him the child of the prophecy. He wasn't really special; his mother had used a sacrificial ritual of his own design to trap Voldemort. Well, it was a ritual that the Light, which he had sworn to almost a century back, helped him devise. He knew to trust the small whispers guiding his movements over the years, and they always delivered.
Honestly, it was lucky that Lord Voldemort hadn't gone after the Potters himself. Whatever monstrosity Lily Potter had conjured on Godric's Hollows was unlike anything he had ever seen. It was good that young malleable Neville Longbottom was the child of the prophecy in the long run. It made his planning a lot more flexible, all things considered. The willful and strangely intelligent Potter boy would have made a terrible weapon, although, if he had a better hand in his upkeep, he would have probably grown up differently.
"Dumbledore, you have a lot to explain…"
Oh, right, Augusta was there to meet him. She had refused him access to young Neville in the past, probably paranoid because of the death of her son and daughter-in-law. But that wasn't nearly enough to stop him from influencing the boy. Just his reputation had been enough, considering the awe in the boy's eyes whenever he looked at Albus.
Back to the angry grandmother, Albus pretended to sigh loudly, "Can you be a little more specific, Augusta…"
"The Philosopher's stone, the little tests, the possessed professor, what else do you want me to say?" the woman thundery returned.
The aged headmaster repressed a sigh. The boy had ended up blabbing to his grandmother, after all. He had thought that he would have a smidge of discretion after all. Alas, the boy really was a Gryffindor to the bone.
That woman really was irritating. Her husband was far easier to get along with. He had House Longbottom on his side in any Wizengamot meeting, but now, he had to appease her at every turn.
"Well, I can tell you that the Philosopher's Stone was nowhere in the castle. It was a small diversion Nicholas and I made to well, prepare to fake his and his wife's deaths, and see if Lord Voldemort was still alive. I dare say that it worked wonderfully so far." Albus explained.
He was lying slightly in this. The Philosopher's Stone was in the castle, just under very heavy wards in a secret room in his office. His control over Hogwarts was enough to divert the magical aura of the stone and make it appear to be in the forbidden corridor. Lord Voldemort in his prime probably wouldn't have been fooled by it, but as reduced as he was, possessing an average wraith with barely a fraction of a fraction of the power and skill he held, and counting for his desperation to regain his body, it was enough to trick him.
The woman didn't seem to be appeased at all, "And my grandson's involvement in this mess?"
"I will admit that I did not expect him to take that as an invitation to figure out the ploy and try to stop it himself. It was never meant to involve him in any way," Dumbledore answered with a calming tone.
"So, it was just a coincidence that you pulled this off during the first year you had access to Neville?" the head of house Longbottom answered with a dubious tone.
"Yes, it was. It coincided with some very disturbing rumours I heard of a malicious wraith in Albania, which I thought might be Voldemort. And it was confirmed that he was still alive. Did you really wish that his return be a surprise, that your grandson and the legacy of Frank and Alice would be unprepared to deal with him when he inevitably returns? He will not leave the boy, you know it, I know it. This defeat was a sting to his pride, to his supposed supremacy. He will not take it lying down."
It was easier to scare the woman than to try to outfight her stubbornness. It showed in the manner she paled in fear and flinched at the probable danger coming her grandson's way. It was better to give her that wake-up call, to remind her of the active threat a surviving Lord Voldemort could pose to her legacy, "What are you doing to stop that monster?"
"Well, there was a plan in place to capture him in his wraith form. The small trials were supposed to only slow him down, making him overconfident after passing the Cerberus. I put in place an artefact that was supposed to trap him, as it has many people. With the lure of the stone, it should have been done and over. Alas, it proved to be ineffective, be it because of your grandson's involvement or because it simply did not work on whatever Voldemort has become. You can understand how I took that small risk to stop a war in the long run. A war that will inevitably come if he ever returns, and he will start by going after young Neville," Dumbledore explained.
Yes, Albus had planned on trapping the wraith of Lord Voldemort in the mirror of Erised. It was a way to eliminate Lord Voldemort without having to kill him, and still keep the prophecy alive in case of emergency. True prophecies were rare and Albus had felt its power when Sybil Trelawney had spoken hers all those years ago.
But Neville had no hand in the mirror failing. The magic was simply incompatible. The wraith was entranced by the mirror, but Voldemort had the willpower to break free of it eventually. The space inside of the mirror refused to absorb the wraith and trap it inside for some reason. It was a long shot at best, but it was a very curious phenomenon. It was why he had also let the confrontation between the possessed professor and young Neville occur. He needed to study his mother's protection.
Even if he had designed it, the protections were something new. He didn't always understand the will of the Light and just followed its guidance. It had never led him wrong. But he was very curious as to the nature of the protection itself, and how it would react with Voldemort trying to finish the job. Well, from what he could understand, the boy would be safe from the supposed dark lord for now. It made the boy practically invincible. According to the prophecy, he must die at the hands of Voldemort, and yet, the protections assured him that he wouldn't, unless something drastic happened. This was the power of the weapon he had created against Voldemort.
The headmaster's musings were interrupted by the Longbottom matriarch, "And now what?"
"Well, Voldemort is a very intelligent wizard," Albus said, "and he will not fall into the same trap again. I had hoped to do this subtly, but I will need to research the method with which he survived the killing curse. We need to counteract his immortality somehow. I will continue to do this discreetly to avoid any mass panic, or his old followers from returning, which is why I'm asking you to tell young Neville to not spread the news of Voldemort's survival to the general public. As for now, we can do nothing but wait. It will take time for him to return, time which you will need to prepare your grandson for the worst that could come."
The woman nodded, and took a deep breath to calm herself before straightening out, "But why did you make the trials this easy?"
"Well, I didn't want any student to accidentally get hurt trying to be adventurous. The Cerberus was explicitly ordered to not hurt any wizard or witch under the age of eighteen, but still target possessed students and professors. The devil's snare was bred to inject paralytics and simply knock out the intruders. The broom key was just a delaying tactic, at best. The giant chess set was enchanted to knock out the intruder, nothing more, the room the trolls were in was warded to petrify the beasts and the students in case of mortal peril, and the poisoned potions contained sleeping potions. A student who would have gotten far would have been unharmed in my trial, as they will need to know about the stone to be trapped, even then, they could be released rather easily by myself. Everything was planned. I could not risk a student getting severely hurt under my watch."
"Tell that to the Potter boy," Augusta retorted.
Albus suppressed a flinch at that, "That was an unfortunate accident."
"That boy saved my grandson's life in that foolish detention that you allowed to happen. And he was attacked again under your watch. It's a miracle he was able to pass with all the days he missed," the Longbottom matriarch continued.
Yeah, that was a sore spot. Dumbledore's opinion of the Potter boy was mixed. Sometimes, he just looked so similar to a familiar Slytherin boy with a troubled childhood, and yet there was a kindness and gentleness to him. He was a prodigy when it came to magic. Albus had noticed the obvious signs of Occlumency training when the boy practically fed him the memories he wanted. They weren't modified, at least not in a way he could notice. The pain was too real, the emotions too wild to be fake. It was how you knew a memory was fake. A competent mind mage might be able to change how things looked, and how they sounded, but it was almost impossible to fake a feeling because you had to have felt it. Even then, the boy was eleven years of age. Even the most outlandish of prodigies did not achieve this much in just a year of magical education.
The boy was impressive; he managed to leverage his position as much as Albus could possibly allow, scoring some privileges and a nice bit of gold as compensation for the attack. Thankfully, the boy was smart enough not to press too much. It wouldn't take much for Albus to crush him – a single owl to the ministry from him could easily ruin the boy's life – but it would have been a waste of a potentially useful asset.
Still, Harry Potter had been attacked under his watch, and it was his inaction and anticipation of destroying Voldemort once and for all that almost caused the death of the boy. He owed it to his father at the very least to keep him safe. James Potter had heavily supposed the war against Voldemort as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, especially financially. He had been tempted to use what remained after the man's death. Especially when dealing with the damage of the fire of Godric's Hollow, but he couldn't rob a boy of the meagre remains, that wouldn't really help on a large scale.
"I will admit that what happened to young Harry was my fault. I can't take it back, but the boy fully recovered, and I do not plan on endangering him anymore. For James and Lily's sake."
The severe looking woman nodded imperiously, "That boy was Alice's godson. See to it that he's not endangered again."
The headmaster returned her nod and the woman silently walked towards his personal floo and left. Albus sagged the moment he left. Dealing with that woman was exhausting.
"Still, as crafty as ever, aren't you, Albus?" a familiar voice spoke up behind him.
He had felt the man's presence the moment he snuck in during the conversation, but he did his best not to react, "Well, I have learnt from the best, Nicholas."
Chapter 64: The Alchemist
14 June 1992, Hogwarts
Albus didn't really like to admit it, even to himself, but he was always wary of the famed alchemist. Nicholas Flamel might not even come close to rivalling him in power or strength, but he had mastered his magic to a ridiculous degree. He had learnt during his apprenticeship with the man how ridiculous the man's skill in Alchemy on a conceptual level was. Albus would never dream of coming close to his skill in the field, even with the light itself guiding him.
The headmaster turned to speak to his former mentor and saw the familiar figure of an elderly frail old man with silver hair. He looked like a soft breeze could topple him over. Oh, Albus knew that his appearance was deceiving. The man could move like a seasoned Auror, and had more energy than a teenager, thanks to the Elixir of life.
"Yes, you have. And what a disappointment you've become, Albus. You had so much potential," the famed alchemist muttered slightly.
"I embraced my destiny, Nicholas. You were only trying to delay the inevitable. What I have done was necessary, you have seen the results of my work. A magical peace on a global scale, the children are growing in the light without the dangers of the traitorous dark. I do not understand why you condemn my actions so much," Dumbledore returned with a slightly heated tone.
"Then what do you call your spat with the Riddle boy? Is that what your precious peace is? Most of the founding families of Britain have been either reduced to single members or just wiped out in his war, in your war. Defeating Grindelwald was not the end of all of your worries."
Albus gritted his teeth. He would admit that Tom Riddle took him by surprise with both his power and his determination. He wasn't a champion of the Dark; he had even checked on his old friend in Nurmengard in case he perished or somehow passed on his powers to another. You could never be sure with Gellert. But the British civil war came out of nowhere. He didn't expect it. Without anyone to rival him in power, the political scene was his to do as he pleased, and he did push things for the greater good of the magical world.
He had tried to eradicate the dark in a way that no champion before him had tried, by introducing a progressive faction that would slowly dismantle the rituals and traditions that were so commonly used by the followers of the dark. It had worked. Spells were banned, knowledge censored, and rituals destroyed. And it showed how effective it was. The years between the war with Grindelwald, and Voldemort's emergence, were the closest thing to a magical utopia ever since Camelot fell.
"Tom Riddle is an aberration, one that sacrificed everything he had for power. I never expected anyone to be prepared to lose so much of themselves and still be relatively functional. He's barely even human anymore." The headmaster retorted.
"For all your power, you still do not understand. These excuses show that I have failed you as a teacher. Your little display with the house points shows how little foresight you can have sometimes. It seems like wisdom is something that you still lack even after over a century of life," the old man answered with a soft and infuriatingly mysterious tone while shaking his head.
"I had very little choice in the matter. With Voldemort's inevitable return, it is imperative to prevent his future followers from getting any dangerous knowledge from the restricted section. You know that I wanted to stop the privileges of the cup for years," Dumbledore explained to his mentor.
"Then you could have removed the knowledge from the restricted section. It's not like you haven't done it before. So, what is it really?"
"Fine!" the headmaster said, "Some of the members of my faction didn't like the idea of a fourth Slytherin victory in a row. Many heirs have started Hogwarts, and their parents want a chance to see their children grow and surpass those of traditional families. I had to be heavy handed because I certainly didn't expect Gryffindor to end up in last place with such a difference. Minerva was particularly strict when it came to punishing her own house, and Neville Longbottom was very troublesome to handle."
"Ah, at least that makes sense. You and your politics. You're losing yourself in them, boy. You have been trying your best to create the world of your dreams that you bound yourself to the wills of others. What happened to your sister was a tragedy and an accident, but do you have to limit yourself so? People are starting to forget why they followed you in the first place. A few decades ago, not a single family would have dared give you such an ultimatum."
"Simply because I chose not to act like some sort of brute does not mean that my methods are inefficient," Dumbledore protested.
"And yet, you're slowly losing, aren't you?" the famed alchemist said with his usual infuriating tone.
The sad thing was that he was right. Dumbledore had at the prime of his political power, control over half the Wizengamot. And yet with the appearance of the conservative faction, or as they like to call themselves, the neutrals, had split the Wizengamot into three factions. It was slow at first, but members of the progressives and traditionalists started to flock to avoid choosing between Voldemort's and Dumbledore's ideologies. This created a risk for his faction to leave at any moment since they had a place to turn to where they could be accepted and that they would return to. Currently, Albus' faction was made up of around a third of the Wizengamot, and he had to constantly try to convince members of the conservatives to vote out any relevant law. It was cumbersome, and it certainly slowed down his momentum immensely.
"I am sorry that you think that I am a disappointment just because I haven't followed the plans you laid out for me. Don't think that I haven't noticed your machinations with Vlad Drakul, who happened to be Gellert's mentor as well," Dumbledore heatedly retorted.
"I will admit that creating a peaceful interaction between the Light and Dark Champions has always been a motivation of mine and Drakul. We hoped to break the cycle of hatred, of bringing true peace. It didn't seem possible with yours and Gellert's predecessors. They were too volatile, too consumed by the powers. Alas, we still dreamed. The last time a champion of the light and a champion of the dark united, Hogwarts was built, and an age of prosperity followed. The two of you were getting so close until the Ariana incident. You delved into the light, and Gellert embraced the dark. Each one of you hoped to create a mockery of the world you planned together, and it turned into a war between the two of you."
"You tried to meddle with something that shouldn't be meddled with. The Light and the Dark are enemies, and you know it. How many champions have you trained over the years? You should know this fact intimately. And how is what I have accomplished a mockery?" the headmaster asked.
"You have destroyed magical society in a way that was never done before, boy," Flamel retorted and for the first time, he looked angry, "you have turned a race of explorers, of inventors and theorists, and turned them into muggles with magic. To be a mage is to walk with Death and you took that away from them, from us. You rendered the magical population into content simpletons, Albus. The progress in magical innovation has slowed down ever since your victory over Gellert."
"Enough of these games, Nicholas. You did not come to rehash an argument we had many times. Why are you here?"
"You know exactly why I am here, Albus," the famed alchemist replied while snorting, "I heard a rumour that you destroyed my stone."
"It was an accident," Albus started.
The man burst into laughter, "Oh, my boy, you have so much to learn. You asked me long ago how I made my stone, and I always refused to answer. I might have been magically bound to lend it to you, but I am sure that you failed to understand what it even is, let alone how to use it. So, let me give you a small hint. If what you had said was true, if you truly have destroyed it, then the island of Scotland would have been nothing more than a large crater."
"What is it?" Albus asked, despite his reservation.
"It is my greatest accomplishment and my greatest failure. After graduating from Beauxbattons, Perenelle was sick. I had never seen anything like it, and I loved her more than life itself. It was a curse that was in her bloodline, that made her life force leak out faster. It was cast using a sacrifice of an innocent soul by a champion of the dark and was strengthened by powering itself from the very life force that was leaked by its victim. In every generation, it grew stronger, and it was very old. It was a miracle the line hadn't died out somehow, but I had to save her. Alas, I was only skilled in alchemy, but nothing really more than that. You know the rules of alchemy, equivalent exchange."
Albus did not like where the story was going. Nicholas always seemed like a wise old man, a bit demanding, a little forcing and grumpy, but to commit human sacrifices… It was just so out of character.
"I found a way to nullify any other curse by sacrificing guilty souls, but Perenelle's was cast by a champion of the dark. Nothing seemed to be enough until I was desperate enough to just let magic decide. I created a plague that would not stop until the price would have been enough. It took millions of lives for the stone to be created but it was nearly not enough, except that a newborn light champion was killed by it as well. It was able to supercharge the ritual and become the tool for immortality that it is today. Of course, the next champion immediately cornered me, and bound me to the light, to track down the light champions and train them until my dying breath. I saved Perenelle but lost my freedom. No one could use the thing anyway; I had to activate it to work. And destroying the stone would have released the energy trapped within it, and it would have resulted in a spectacular explosion."
Albus was flabbergasted, "The black plague, that was you?"
"I was young, desperate, foolish, and in love. I never told Perenelle about how I created the stone, but she does know of my servitude of the light. I still think she knows, to be honest. Seers tend to see through people rather easily. Now, Albus, my stone."
Albus nodded, stood up and waved his wand towards a blank wall. The stones slowly parted into a metallic vault. He put his hand on it, and it disappeared as well, leaving a large vault filled with his most treasured artefacts.
He handed over the stone to his former mentor, who grabbed it. The stone started to glow, meaning it was activated, and suddenly, Albus heard the whispers of the light come to life. Nicholas had activated the stone, and they were urging him to take it. It seems that the light believed that the man's sentence was over.
Quick as a snake, Dumbledore whipped his wand and sent a spell at the distracted alchemist, who was inspecting his artefact. The man gasped in pain and doubled over, "I am sorry that it's ending like this, Nicholas. I have treasured your tutoring greatly, but alas, the light deems your servitude to be over. I release you from your oath."
The desperation in the man's eyes that he expected to see wasn't there. Instead, he was laughing, "It seems that she was right, after all."
"Who was right?" Albus asked, more out of curiosity than anything.
"Perenelle, she said that my penance would be over soon. That it was time for a new adventure…" the man answered while gasping.
"I will need to visit her after this," Albus murmured to himself.
The dying man snorted, "No, you don't. Perenelle is dead. She died in her sleep yesterday. Those were the last words she ever said to me."
Before Albus could even digest what the man said, the alchemist coughed up blood and pressed it on the stone. It glowed and disappeared with a flash of light.
"No!!!" Albus yelled.
"Do you really think I would let you have my stone, boy," the alchemist answered with a gasp.
"Where is the stone, Flamel?"
The man was giggling, "I don't know. That's the best part. It's lost to me, to you, to everyone. But that's not what's important now. You have far bigger things to worry about, boy. Death is coming, and it has eyes on you…"
Those were the last words the immortal alchemist said before life left his eyes, leaving an enraged headmaster to pick up the pieces.
14 June 1992, Hogwarts
Albus Dumbledore sat in his chair, pondering on the happenings of the previous year. With the students gone, the castle was oddly quiet, with only ghosts, elves, and the portraits keeping him company.
His plans with the Philosopher's Stone were a resounding success. The confirmation of Lord Voldemort's survival was very valuable, and so was having an active participant in a true prophecy. Neville Longbottom had no idea of his true value, that until the prophecy is fulfilled, fate itself will move mountains for his survival. And in the case, he wasn't cooperative, or if the prophecy would obviously not end in his victory, breaking the prophecy and using it as fuel for a ritual could be very beneficial for Albus in the long run, as regrettable as that might be.
The boy arrived exactly as he predicted. He was arrogant, and spoilt, but fairly talented, at least for a normal wizard. And Albus Dumbledore was nothing but a normal wizard.
His tranquillity was interrupted by a visually livid woman flooing to his office. He had been waiting for this meeting and dreading it at the same time. This woman could indivertibly ruin many of his plans, just out of stubbornness.
The visitor was tall, thin, and bony. She was wearing her customary stuffed vulture hat and was carrying her red handbag. The witch looked surprisingly formidable despite her age and was a terror in the Wizengamot session. It was Augusta Longbottom, the grandmother of the boy who lived. Honestly, Albus preferred to call him the child of the prophecy. He wasn't really special; his mother had used a sacrificial ritual of his own design to trap Voldemort. Well, it was a ritual that the Light, which he had sworn to almost a century back, helped him devise. He knew to trust the small whispers guiding his movements over the years, and they always delivered.
Honestly, it was lucky that Lord Voldemort hadn't gone after the Potters himself. Whatever monstrosity Lily Potter had conjured on Godric's Hollows was unlike anything he had ever seen. It was good that young malleable Neville Longbottom was the child of the prophecy in the long run. It made his planning a lot more flexible, all things considered. The willful and strangely intelligent Potter boy would have made a terrible weapon, although, if he had a better hand in his upkeep, he would have probably grown up differently.
"Dumbledore, you have a lot to explain…"
Oh, right, Augusta was there to meet him. She had refused him access to young Neville in the past, probably paranoid because of the death of her son and daughter-in-law. But that wasn't nearly enough to stop him from influencing the boy. Just his reputation had been enough, considering the awe in the boy's eyes whenever he looked at Albus.
Back to the angry grandmother, Albus pretended to sigh loudly, "Can you be a little more specific, Augusta…"
"The Philosopher's stone, the little tests, the possessed professor, what else do you want me to say?" the woman thundery returned.
The aged headmaster repressed a sigh. The boy had ended up blabbing to his grandmother, after all. He had thought that he would have a smidge of discretion after all. Alas, the boy really was a Gryffindor to the bone.
That woman really was irritating. Her husband was far easier to get along with. He had House Longbottom on his side in any Wizengamot meeting, but now, he had to appease her at every turn.
"Well, I can tell you that the Philosopher's Stone was nowhere in the castle. It was a small diversion Nicholas and I made to well, prepare to fake his and his wife's deaths, and see if Lord Voldemort was still alive. I dare say that it worked wonderfully so far." Albus explained.
He was lying slightly in this. The Philosopher's Stone was in the castle, just under very heavy wards in a secret room in his office. His control over Hogwarts was enough to divert the magical aura of the stone and make it appear to be in the forbidden corridor. Lord Voldemort in his prime probably wouldn't have been fooled by it, but as reduced as he was, possessing an average wraith with barely a fraction of a fraction of the power and skill he held, and counting for his desperation to regain his body, it was enough to trick him.
The woman didn't seem to be appeased at all, "And my grandson's involvement in this mess?"
"I will admit that I did not expect him to take that as an invitation to figure out the ploy and try to stop it himself. It was never meant to involve him in any way," Dumbledore answered with a calming tone.
"So, it was just a coincidence that you pulled this off during the first year you had access to Neville?" the head of house Longbottom answered with a dubious tone.
"Yes, it was. It coincided with some very disturbing rumours I heard of a malicious wraith in Albania, which I thought might be Voldemort. And it was confirmed that he was still alive. Did you really wish that his return be a surprise, that your grandson and the legacy of Frank and Alice would be unprepared to deal with him when he inevitably returns? He will not leave the boy, you know it, I know it. This defeat was a sting to his pride, to his supposed supremacy. He will not take it lying down."
It was easier to scare the woman than to try to outfight her stubbornness. It showed in the manner she paled in fear and flinched at the probable danger coming her grandson's way. It was better to give her that wake-up call, to remind her of the active threat a surviving Lord Voldemort could pose to her legacy, "What are you doing to stop that monster?"
"Well, there was a plan in place to capture him in his wraith form. The small trials were supposed to only slow him down, making him overconfident after passing the Cerberus. I put in place an artefact that was supposed to trap him, as it has many people. With the lure of the stone, it should have been done and over. Alas, it proved to be ineffective, be it because of your grandson's involvement or because it simply did not work on whatever Voldemort has become. You can understand how I took that small risk to stop a war in the long run. A war that will inevitably come if he ever returns, and he will start by going after young Neville," Dumbledore explained.
Yes, Albus had planned on trapping the wraith of Lord Voldemort in the mirror of Erised. It was a way to eliminate Lord Voldemort without having to kill him, and still keep the prophecy alive in case of emergency. True prophecies were rare and Albus had felt its power when Sybil Trelawney had spoken hers all those years ago.
But Neville had no hand in the mirror failing. The magic was simply incompatible. The wraith was entranced by the mirror, but Voldemort had the willpower to break free of it eventually. The space inside of the mirror refused to absorb the wraith and trap it inside for some reason. It was a long shot at best, but it was a very curious phenomenon. It was why he had also let the confrontation between the possessed professor and young Neville occur. He needed to study his mother's protection.
Even if he had designed it, the protections were something new. He didn't always understand the will of the Light and just followed its guidance. It had never led him wrong. But he was very curious as to the nature of the protection itself, and how it would react with Voldemort trying to finish the job. Well, from what he could understand, the boy would be safe from the supposed dark lord for now. It made the boy practically invincible. According to the prophecy, he must die at the hands of Voldemort, and yet, the protections assured him that he wouldn't, unless something drastic happened. This was the power of the weapon he had created against Voldemort.
The headmaster's musings were interrupted by the Longbottom matriarch, "And now what?"
"Well, Voldemort is a very intelligent wizard," Albus said, "and he will not fall into the same trap again. I had hoped to do this subtly, but I will need to research the method with which he survived the killing curse. We need to counteract his immortality somehow. I will continue to do this discreetly to avoid any mass panic, or his old followers from returning, which is why I'm asking you to tell young Neville to not spread the news of Voldemort's survival to the general public. As for now, we can do nothing but wait. It will take time for him to return, time which you will need to prepare your grandson for the worst that could come."
The woman nodded, and took a deep breath to calm herself before straightening out, "But why did you make the trials this easy?"
"Well, I didn't want any student to accidentally get hurt trying to be adventurous. The Cerberus was explicitly ordered to not hurt any wizard or witch under the age of eighteen, but still target possessed students and professors. The devil's snare was bred to inject paralytics and simply knock out the intruders. The broom key was just a delaying tactic, at best. The giant chess set was enchanted to knock out the intruder, nothing more, the room the trolls were in was warded to petrify the beasts and the students in case of mortal peril, and the poisoned potions contained sleeping potions. A student who would have gotten far would have been unharmed in my trial, as they will need to know about the stone to be trapped, even then, they could be released rather easily by myself. Everything was planned. I could not risk a student getting severely hurt under my watch."
"Tell that to the Potter boy," Augusta retorted.
Albus suppressed a flinch at that, "That was an unfortunate accident."
"That boy saved my grandson's life in that foolish detention that you allowed to happen. And he was attacked again under your watch. It's a miracle he was able to pass with all the days he missed," the Longbottom matriarch continued.
Yeah, that was a sore spot. Dumbledore's opinion of the Potter boy was mixed. Sometimes, he just looked so similar to a familiar Slytherin boy with a troubled childhood, and yet there was a kindness and gentleness to him. He was a prodigy when it came to magic. Albus had noticed the obvious signs of Occlumency training when the boy practically fed him the memories he wanted. They weren't modified, at least not in a way he could notice. The pain was too real, the emotions too wild to be fake. It was how you knew a memory was fake. A competent mind mage might be able to change how things looked, and how they sounded, but it was almost impossible to fake a feeling because you had to have felt it. Even then, the boy was eleven years of age. Even the most outlandish of prodigies did not achieve this much in just a year of magical education.
The boy was impressive; he managed to leverage his position as much as Albus could possibly allow, scoring some privileges and a nice bit of gold as compensation for the attack. Thankfully, the boy was smart enough not to press too much. It wouldn't take much for Albus to crush him – a single owl to the ministry from him could easily ruin the boy's life – but it would have been a waste of a potentially useful asset.
Still, Harry Potter had been attacked under his watch, and it was his inaction and anticipation of destroying Voldemort once and for all that almost caused the death of the boy. He owed it to his father at the very least to keep him safe. James Potter had heavily supposed the war against Voldemort as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, especially financially. He had been tempted to use what remained after the man's death. Especially when dealing with the damage of the fire of Godric's Hollow, but he couldn't rob a boy of the meagre remains, that wouldn't really help on a large scale.
"I will admit that what happened to young Harry was my fault. I can't take it back, but the boy fully recovered, and I do not plan on endangering him anymore. For James and Lily's sake."
The severe looking woman nodded imperiously, "That boy was Alice's godson. See to it that he's not endangered again."
The headmaster returned her nod and the woman silently walked towards his personal floo and left. Albus sagged the moment he left. Dealing with that woman was exhausting.
"Still, as crafty as ever, aren't you, Albus?" a familiar voice spoke up behind him.
He had felt the man's presence the moment he snuck in during the conversation, but he did his best not to react, "Well, I have learnt from the best, Nicholas."
Chapter 64: The Alchemist
14 June 1992, Hogwarts
Albus didn't really like to admit it, even to himself, but he was always wary of the famed alchemist. Nicholas Flamel might not even come close to rivalling him in power or strength, but he had mastered his magic to a ridiculous degree. He had learnt during his apprenticeship with the man how ridiculous the man's skill in Alchemy on a conceptual level was. Albus would never dream of coming close to his skill in the field, even with the light itself guiding him.
The headmaster turned to speak to his former mentor and saw the familiar figure of an elderly frail old man with silver hair. He looked like a soft breeze could topple him over. Oh, Albus knew that his appearance was deceiving. The man could move like a seasoned Auror, and had more energy than a teenager, thanks to the Elixir of life.
"Yes, you have. And what a disappointment you've become, Albus. You had so much potential," the famed alchemist muttered slightly.
"I embraced my destiny, Nicholas. You were only trying to delay the inevitable. What I have done was necessary, you have seen the results of my work. A magical peace on a global scale, the children are growing in the light without the dangers of the traitorous dark. I do not understand why you condemn my actions so much," Dumbledore returned with a slightly heated tone.
"Then what do you call your spat with the Riddle boy? Is that what your precious peace is? Most of the founding families of Britain have been either reduced to single members or just wiped out in his war, in your war. Defeating Grindelwald was not the end of all of your worries."
Albus gritted his teeth. He would admit that Tom Riddle took him by surprise with both his power and his determination. He wasn't a champion of the Dark; he had even checked on his old friend in Nurmengard in case he perished or somehow passed on his powers to another. You could never be sure with Gellert. But the British civil war came out of nowhere. He didn't expect it. Without anyone to rival him in power, the political scene was his to do as he pleased, and he did push things for the greater good of the magical world.
He had tried to eradicate the dark in a way that no champion before him had tried, by introducing a progressive faction that would slowly dismantle the rituals and traditions that were so commonly used by the followers of the dark. It had worked. Spells were banned, knowledge censored, and rituals destroyed. And it showed how effective it was. The years between the war with Grindelwald, and Voldemort's emergence, were the closest thing to a magical utopia ever since Camelot fell.
"Tom Riddle is an aberration, one that sacrificed everything he had for power. I never expected anyone to be prepared to lose so much of themselves and still be relatively functional. He's barely even human anymore." The headmaster retorted.
"For all your power, you still do not understand. These excuses show that I have failed you as a teacher. Your little display with the house points shows how little foresight you can have sometimes. It seems like wisdom is something that you still lack even after over a century of life," the old man answered with a soft and infuriatingly mysterious tone while shaking his head.
"I had very little choice in the matter. With Voldemort's inevitable return, it is imperative to prevent his future followers from getting any dangerous knowledge from the restricted section. You know that I wanted to stop the privileges of the cup for years," Dumbledore explained to his mentor.
"Then you could have removed the knowledge from the restricted section. It's not like you haven't done it before. So, what is it really?"
"Fine!" the headmaster said, "Some of the members of my faction didn't like the idea of a fourth Slytherin victory in a row. Many heirs have started Hogwarts, and their parents want a chance to see their children grow and surpass those of traditional families. I had to be heavy handed because I certainly didn't expect Gryffindor to end up in last place with such a difference. Minerva was particularly strict when it came to punishing her own house, and Neville Longbottom was very troublesome to handle."
"Ah, at least that makes sense. You and your politics. You're losing yourself in them, boy. You have been trying your best to create the world of your dreams that you bound yourself to the wills of others. What happened to your sister was a tragedy and an accident, but do you have to limit yourself so? People are starting to forget why they followed you in the first place. A few decades ago, not a single family would have dared give you such an ultimatum."
"Simply because I chose not to act like some sort of brute does not mean that my methods are inefficient," Dumbledore protested.
"And yet, you're slowly losing, aren't you?" the famed alchemist said with his usual infuriating tone.
The sad thing was that he was right. Dumbledore had at the prime of his political power, control over half the Wizengamot. And yet with the appearance of the conservative faction, or as they like to call themselves, the neutrals, had split the Wizengamot into three factions. It was slow at first, but members of the progressives and traditionalists started to flock to avoid choosing between Voldemort's and Dumbledore's ideologies. This created a risk for his faction to leave at any moment since they had a place to turn to where they could be accepted and that they would return to. Currently, Albus' faction was made up of around a third of the Wizengamot, and he had to constantly try to convince members of the conservatives to vote out any relevant law. It was cumbersome, and it certainly slowed down his momentum immensely.
"I am sorry that you think that I am a disappointment just because I haven't followed the plans you laid out for me. Don't think that I haven't noticed your machinations with Vlad Drakul, who happened to be Gellert's mentor as well," Dumbledore heatedly retorted.
"I will admit that creating a peaceful interaction between the Light and Dark Champions has always been a motivation of mine and Drakul. We hoped to break the cycle of hatred, of bringing true peace. It didn't seem possible with yours and Gellert's predecessors. They were too volatile, too consumed by the powers. Alas, we still dreamed. The last time a champion of the light and a champion of the dark united, Hogwarts was built, and an age of prosperity followed. The two of you were getting so close until the Ariana incident. You delved into the light, and Gellert embraced the dark. Each one of you hoped to create a mockery of the world you planned together, and it turned into a war between the two of you."
"You tried to meddle with something that shouldn't be meddled with. The Light and the Dark are enemies, and you know it. How many champions have you trained over the years? You should know this fact intimately. And how is what I have accomplished a mockery?" the headmaster asked.
"You have destroyed magical society in a way that was never done before, boy," Flamel retorted and for the first time, he looked angry, "you have turned a race of explorers, of inventors and theorists, and turned them into muggles with magic. To be a mage is to walk with Death and you took that away from them, from us. You rendered the magical population into content simpletons, Albus. The progress in magical innovation has slowed down ever since your victory over Gellert."
"Enough of these games, Nicholas. You did not come to rehash an argument we had many times. Why are you here?"
"You know exactly why I am here, Albus," the famed alchemist replied while snorting, "I heard a rumour that you destroyed my stone."
"It was an accident," Albus started.
The man burst into laughter, "Oh, my boy, you have so much to learn. You asked me long ago how I made my stone, and I always refused to answer. I might have been magically bound to lend it to you, but I am sure that you failed to understand what it even is, let alone how to use it. So, let me give you a small hint. If what you had said was true, if you truly have destroyed it, then the island of Scotland would have been nothing more than a large crater."
"What is it?" Albus asked, despite his reservation.
"It is my greatest accomplishment and my greatest failure. After graduating from Beauxbattons, Perenelle was sick. I had never seen anything like it, and I loved her more than life itself. It was a curse that was in her bloodline, that made her life force leak out faster. It was cast using a sacrifice of an innocent soul by a champion of the dark and was strengthened by powering itself from the very life force that was leaked by its victim. In every generation, it grew stronger, and it was very old. It was a miracle the line hadn't died out somehow, but I had to save her. Alas, I was only skilled in alchemy, but nothing really more than that. You know the rules of alchemy, equivalent exchange."
Albus did not like where the story was going. Nicholas always seemed like a wise old man, a bit demanding, a little forcing and grumpy, but to commit human sacrifices… It was just so out of character.
"I found a way to nullify any other curse by sacrificing guilty souls, but Perenelle's was cast by a champion of the dark. Nothing seemed to be enough until I was desperate enough to just let magic decide. I created a plague that would not stop until the price would have been enough. It took millions of lives for the stone to be created but it was nearly not enough, except that a newborn light champion was killed by it as well. It was able to supercharge the ritual and become the tool for immortality that it is today. Of course, the next champion immediately cornered me, and bound me to the light, to track down the light champions and train them until my dying breath. I saved Perenelle but lost my freedom. No one could use the thing anyway; I had to activate it to work. And destroying the stone would have released the energy trapped within it, and it would have resulted in a spectacular explosion."
Albus was flabbergasted, "The black plague, that was you?"
"I was young, desperate, foolish, and in love. I never told Perenelle about how I created the stone, but she does know of my servitude of the light. I still think she knows, to be honest. Seers tend to see through people rather easily. Now, Albus, my stone."
Albus nodded, stood up and waved his wand towards a blank wall. The stones slowly parted into a metallic vault. He put his hand on it, and it disappeared as well, leaving a large vault filled with his most treasured artefacts.
He handed over the stone to his former mentor, who grabbed it. The stone started to glow, meaning it was activated, and suddenly, Albus heard the whispers of the light come to life. Nicholas had activated the stone, and they were urging him to take it. It seems that the light believed that the man's sentence was over.
Quick as a snake, Dumbledore whipped his wand and sent a spell at the distracted alchemist, who was inspecting his artefact. The man gasped in pain and doubled over, "I am sorry that it's ending like this, Nicholas. I have treasured your tutoring greatly, but alas, the light deems your servitude to be over. I release you from your oath."
The desperation in the man's eyes that he expected to see wasn't there. Instead, he was laughing, "It seems that she was right, after all."
"Who was right?" Albus asked, more out of curiosity than anything.
"Perenelle, she said that my penance would be over soon. That it was time for a new adventure…" the man answered while gasping.
"I will need to visit her after this," Albus murmured to himself.
The dying man snorted, "No, you don't. Perenelle is dead. She died in her sleep yesterday. Those were the last words she ever said to me."
Before Albus could even digest what the man said, the alchemist coughed up blood and pressed it on the stone. It glowed and disappeared with a flash of light.
"No!!!" Albus yelled.
"Do you really think I would let you have my stone, boy," the alchemist answered with a gasp.
"Where is the stone, Flamel?"
The man was giggling, "I don't know. That's the best part. It's lost to me, to you, to everyone. But that's not what's important now. You have far bigger things to worry about, boy. Death is coming, and it has eyes on you…"
Those were the last words the immortal alchemist said before life left his eyes, leaving an enraged headmaster to pick up the pieces.
This story is way more enjoyable than I expected. Sorta-Evil!Dumbledor is real.
Well now, that is interesting? Yes, let's go with interesting. It's logical, more or less. I mean what can student do against professor? Well, they can shoot them I guess, but 15 to 20 years for asshole? Hmm. If it was real and professor was serial pedophile then maybe.
Chapter 65-67: Summer Days - The Diary
Chapter 65: Summer Days
17 July 1992, Diagon Alley
Harry jumped down the steps and helped Stan lower his trunk and Hedwig's cage onto the pavement. He then looked at the familiar inn and took a deep breath. Yeah, he had a feeling that this was going to be his favourite summer yet.
Over the course of the previous month, Harry's theory was proven to be correct. This was, in fact, his favourite summer so far. In his previous one, there was still this nervousness at being in another world, utterly alien to what he was used to. He had put himself out there just to try to find a way to use magic. Having come very far over the course of the last year in mastering his magic, the Potter scion was confident that he could handle whatever was thrown at him.
Living by yourself was surprisingly freeing. Well, if you don't need to deal with my responsibilities that came with independence that is. Having been staying in the Leaky Cauldron, for over a month, Harry didn't need to clean, or cook meals. Instead, he did his best to simply relax and enjoy his summer. There was more to the magical world than books, after all, and he had forgotten what it was like to be amongst adults, not children.
Yeah, he was pretty much always using ageing potions to move around. He looked like an average Hogwarts graduate, and people just spoke to him normally. There were side effects to prolonged use of ageing potions, of course, but they tended to affect people trying to look younger, not the other way around. According to numerous researchers and potion masters, the only thing he risked was mild aches for a few weeks because of the large difference in size after he came back to his normal body. However, there were documents of actual accelerated ageing when using the potion substantially to look younger.
His older form allowed him to explore the alley properly. It turned out that Diagon Alley itself is simply the hub of magical London, but it didn't really stop there. It was an alley where any wizard or witch would probably be able to find any normal item they needed. The shops, for all how dingy and unclean they looked, were very expensive since most of the population just went there to get their stuff. Other shops had needed to settle from branches of the alley.
To be able to survive, they were either really specialized or really cheap. You won't find a secondhand store anywhere in the main alley, but in Bargain Lane, they were commonplace. The Charmers' Lane is specified for custom Charmed jobs. There were shops for just enchanting clothes. Hell, Carkitt Market was a street filled with stalls that sold magical creatures and anything related to them.
Then, there was Knockturn Alley, of course. Even in his adult form, Harry didn't dare venture there. The horror stories he heard about that place were enough. It wasn't even the danger of being hurt – not that it was insignificant – it was mostly the fact that it was a close-knit community and that he would be caught as an outsider in seconds. Magical Britain isn't that large, and people living in the seedier parts of the city all know one another. And for all its reputation with the dark arts, the alley was mostly home to the outcasts of magical society. Werewolves, vampires, Hags, and every sentient magical being that the common wizards dislike are just sent there. The rents are cheap, people don't ask questions, and you can just do your job in peace. Of course, if you want to buy anything illegal, it would be probably easier to find a place where no one asks any questions.
So, yeah, the rest of the alley was just enough for him. For now. It might be cowardly, but the sorting hat did choose to put him in Slytherin for a reason.
Harry opened his eyes this morning not expecting any letters. Blaise was back in Italy for the summer, and Daphne was currently in Greece for the holidays. Tracy's parents had taken her camping in the woods for some reason. She had grumbled about it in her last letter. So, with all his friends doing their own thing, Harry decided to do his. He walked down the stairs, and saw Tom waiting for him, "Oh, hey Harry."
"Hey, Tom," the Potter scion greeted.
"Do you want the usual," the man asked.
"Yes, that would be wonderful, Tom."
Tom went to the kitchen with his order, just a standard English breakfast. And was accosted by a small barn owl with a familiar newspaper in her talons. Harry took out the paper and gave a couple of Knuts for the owl to take as payment, and it flew away immediately after.
By then, his breakfast was laid out for him. He took a sip of his coffee, relishing its taste, before opening the newspaper and almost spitting it out in shock at the headline.
Underneath the huge title, the famous alchemist and his wife Perenelle looked lying dead in the living room. Unlike most wizarding photos, this one was not moving at all. The two former immortals looked like they were sleeping together on the couch, not dead as they were.
Of course, the rest of the article was the typical Rita Skeeter nonsense. It started with the man's accomplishments, and his contributions to the field of Alchemy. His association with Dumbledore, everything that was pretty much summarized in his chocolate frog card in just a couple of sentences. The bodies looked fresh, but the effects of the Elixir of Life were unknown to everyone, hence why no one said anything about it. Curiously, the man had left a sizable sum of gold for Beauxbattons, and people are still theorizing if there was still more that was hidden away. Yeah, the world was going on treasure hunts trying to find any caches of gold. As always, it wouldn't be a Rita Skeeter article without some sort of scandal. Apparently, she supposed that one of the alchemist's possible experiments on wizards backfired and killed him and his wife. Or that the Philosopher's Stone was a lie all along. Harry had to admit that for all the ridiculousness of it, the woman had a way with words. It was too bad she wasted them on trash like this.
Funnily enough, the location of the Philosopher's Stone wasn't really mentioned anywhere in the article. That was the terrifying part. Somehow, the Daily Prophet just ignored the man's most notable achievement. Dumbledore must have had a hand in that, or maybe it looked like the deaths were natural, hence the assumption that the stone was destroyed or stolen. Still, things didn't look good.
No matter what happened, the timing didn't match. Even if the stone was really destroyed as Dumbledore would say, they should have had the foresight to have more elixir. They left the damn thing with Dumbledore for a year, they wouldn't just only have enough Elixir for exactly a single year. This was murder, and Harry was afraid of the implications of such murder.
Flamel was a constant in the magical world for six centuries, and just like that, he was gone. And that was worrying. It was a reminder that the world wasn't safe and that no matter how experienced you are, you can never be safe. Dumbledore must be far more dangerous than he had expected. Voldemort's words came to mind slightly before the Potter scion dismissed them. These were the ravings of a mass-murdering, power-hungry madman who wanted to convince Harry to join him for some reason. He couldn't trust a word that thing said. The screaming when he had killed that unicorn still haunted his dream. The utterly wrong act of slaying something so fundamentally pure was disgusting.
Back to the Flamel situation, Harry expected the demand for alchemical products to rise immensely in Europe. Alchemists were already rare, and the number of competent ones in Europe could be counted on two hands. Dumbledore had essentially bought a ticket to fortune in the aftermath of Flamel's death. He was the only real source of alchemical products. The classes in Hogwarts were nothing more than an introduction to the field. Two years were not enough to become anything more than an amateur in Alchemy, and the products on demand were notoriously complicated.
This was a decisive win for Dumbledore, and that was a fact.
It really was a shame, Harry had wanted to meet Flamel eventually, to understand what it meant to see the world go round before their eyes, to see civilizations be born and destroyed. He wanted to pick the man's brain when it came to alchemy, perhaps even create a philosopher's stone of his own. But that wasn't possible anymore.
Choosing to not ponder too much on the issue, Harry decided to just explore the alley. He had already gone to the alley, but he didn't really buy anything, apart from a few curiosities. He did get his glasses charmed to magnify things by touching the handle. These looked dead useful, and he wanted them. Harry also wanted to buy his school supplies, at least his standard one since his letter still hadn't come in.
After buying a few quills and rolls of parchment, Harry decided to have some ice cream at Florean Forescue's Ice Cream Parlour, before going to the bookstore to see if the new books came out. Hogwarts was notorious for giving the book list at the last minute because of the Defense Professors changing every year. Still, Dumbledore might have finally found a Defense Professor. Harry really hoped it wasn't Lockhart. The Potter scion couldn't stomach another useless year of defence to deal with. Honestly, the man's book would have been sold very well as fiction books. He was a good writer, and competent as a public persona, but it was obvious that some of these stories were outlandish. Who in their right mind wrestles a werewolf anyway?
Finally, Harry arrived at the bookstore, and as always was disappointed in the lack of a Hogwarts book list. He finally decided to just browse in the collection. Flourish and Blotts was honestly the only bookstore in the alley. There weren't any libraries or any place that sold books really. Funnily enough, Harry had seen a Most Potente Potions book in a secondhand shop he browsed. He had immediately bought it for a couple of galleons, knowing that it was worth so much more in both knowledge and value. Still, there seemed to be something fundamental about the lack of widespread knowledge, at least with any magical knowledge.
Back to Flourish and Blotts, there was a sign with a giant moving poster of Lockhart. The man in the poster was grinning and winking at everyone, and Harry suppressed the urge to curse the ponce. And yet various witches kept sighing whenever he did that. What the hell was wrong with these people?
Still, the Potter scion decided to look at the announcement. Huh, apparently, the man was coming to sign his new book release. Having decided not to continue, Harry decided to leave the bookstore. His mood was already sour because of what happened to Flamel, and well, Lockhart fanatics were not going to help things.
Harry slowly wandered around until he found himself in the Leaky Cauldron once more. He just walked up the stairs and entered his room. The Flamel situation simply would not leave his mind. The utter fear he felt at the idea of not being secure enough for something like that to happen.
He learnt one thing for certain and that was the fact that Dumbledore was fucking terrifying. He didn't want anything to do with the man, really, but that was it.
With determination in his eyes, the last Potter proclaimed, "This is not over. I will become powerful, and I will survive. This is a promise."
Chapter 66: Planning a Heist
2 August 1992, Diagon Alley
Today was the day. Harry had woken up in the morning with a huge smile on his face. Living in Diagon Alley, and being able to do magic without anyone saying anything was simply amazing, but after a month of solitude, he was slightly lonely.
The feeling was surprising; in his previous life, he had no one. He took care of his family, of his brother, but they were family. In a way, he relished the time when he could spend on his own, something that made him feel like shit after his brother passed away. Alas, life was cruel and ironic that way.
And yet, here he was, free of any obligation, free of any supervision, and he was feeling lonely. He hadn't expected to be so attached to his friends like this, especially considering the mental age difference. Even if it was more of a technicality. Honestly, looking back to the previous year, he really shouldn't have acted that way. He was impulsive, cowardly, and vindictive. The way he humiliated Malfoy for insulting his parents was proof of that. He had spent years as an educator in his previous life, and he knew he could have handled it better. Although, he only taught to students in high school, who were a lot more mature – if a little rebellious – than his classmates.
Honestly, the way he rebuffed Longbottom's attempt at friendship was due to his fear. Neville Longbottom was the boy who lived. Danger will follow him to the ends of the earth, and Harry wanted nothing to do with it.
But the petty rivalry they had was not something he would have done in his past life. He would have simply shrugged and let the children deal with their own mess. Their opinion shouldn't have mattered, and yet it did.
Harry had to admit that he was different from the man he used to be. He was mature for a child his age, but he didn't really have the maturity of an adult. This dichotomy was confusing. He had the emotional range of a child and the memories of an adult. And in a way, Harry did not want to stay the same man from his past life.
He remembered how empty the man was. He had no purpose, no ambition, no love, no hate, no anger. He had no friends, no rivals, and it was only the act of teaching that brought a spark of passion into his life. He didn't dream of wealth, and yet he craved love but didn't feel like he would ever get to feel it or have someone feel it towards him, even if he didn't understand what love truly was. Harry still didn't understand it, to be completely honest, and yet he was hopeful that he would ever feel it. Harrison Smith was like a meat puppet that was just going through the motions, waiting for something to fill up the endless hole inside of him, and yet he knew deep down that the chances of that happening were slim to none.
The Potter scion liked to distance himself from the man. He liked to think that they were two different people, even if the two of them tended to overlap. Perhaps it was a desperate attempt to not H to share the man's fate, and if it meant having a shard of immaturity left in him, then it was a price he was willing to pay.
Still, this childish cowardly thinking almost got him killed a few months ago. He had done everything right, and yet it didn't matter. Lord Voldemort had tried to kill him, and it was his magic crest, and cloak of invisibility that saved his life. It had nearly killed him, but the cloak's ability had a lot of possibilities. Phasing through magic was a very overpowered ability, one that he was hoping to one day be able to use when his magic had matured enough. Still, Harry wondered what other secrets the cloak held. There was no mention of this ability in anything he had read about the Deathly Hallows. And his frustratingly silent magical crest was annoying.
Other than saving his life in dire situations, the crest didn't really do anything. He was thankful for it, but it still was a mystery. He had a few guesses, of course, the first of which was the fact that it was the Peverell family crest, not the Potter one. The interaction between the crest and the cloak was enough of a hint. But any knowledge about the family was very scarce for some reason, so he was going around blind on that front.
And yet, Harry doubted that his crest would be able to save him from a basilisk. Yeah, staying passive while a dark lord was possessing a professor was one thing. There wasn't really anything he could do about it. He was inexperienced in terms of magic to fight Quirrell, something that he was reminded of in both his encounters with him. And with anyone in a position of authority would ask how he knew that Quirrell was possessed, there was very little thing he could do, but try to stay out of the way. It didn't work as intended, of course, and Harry didn't know which Fate fuckery happened with Longbottom to get him to kill Quirrell.
But a basilisk actively attacking students in a school was where he drew the line. He wasn't going to gamble on the fact that the students would all be lucky enough to only see the reflection of the king of serpents. Basilisks were the stuff of nightmares. They were beings of alchemy and blood magic that were designed to be the magical equivalent of weapons of mass destruction. Their killing stares were enough to make them very dangerous, but their magically impervious skin was immune to practically any damage, and their venom was so corrosive that it destroyed magic, in the same way Fiendfyre did. A drop was enough to destroy wards or protection enchantments. Breeding a basilisk was an immediate death sentence all over the world, and everyone knew it.
Thankfully, Basilisks were hunted down to extinction centuries ago, when the statute of secrecy was put in place, and any record of their creation was destroyed on a global scale using an extremely powerful secrecy spell. That was how dangerous these things were.
Having children die on his watch because he chose to be passive was too much of a chance. He needed to intercept the diary, and the most convenient place to do it was in Diagon Alley, where Malfoy puts it in Ginny Weasley's cauldron.
Which according to the books, would be today. It was the day of Gilderoy Lockhart coming to Flourish and Blotts to sign his autobiography. He had gone practically every day to the library in case he was mistaken. He wasn't going to take any chances with the diary.
The only complication was that Harry's friends were coming that day as well. They were all back from their trips, and Tracy had insisted that they go buy their books on that day – probably because of Lockhart being there. That meant that Harry had to nab the diary in his normal body – aka in the body of a twelve-year-old.
It was nice that they wanted to hang out with him near his birthday. All of them coming back to London by the end of July wasn't really a coincidence, and the gifts they had given him were thoughtful. Daphne had gotten him a very nice portable perch for Hedwig, that way she could stay in the dormitory. Tracy had gotten him a Sneakoscope that her Auror grandfather used to have, and Blaise had bought him some official looking green silk dress robes that he could use on any official occasion.
It was a touching moment. He hadn't had a birthday gift for years. He really had picked some great friends. Harry looked at the watch in his room and saw that it was almost ten, meaning that his friends were going to arrive soon. Harry wanted to have some breakfast before the inevitably hectic trip throughout the Alley would start.
He stepped out in his adult form and greeted Tom and ate his usual breakfast. Afterwards, he simply went to the bathroom, took a potion that would reverse his age, and changed his clothes. When he got out, he was just a normal second year Hogwarts student here to do his shopping.
Deciding to treat himself to some ice cream, he went to Florian Fortescue's ice cream parlour and sat down to eat. It was the place they had all agreed to meet. Of course, barely five minutes before he started eating, he was immediately enveloped by a hug from behind. He stiffened slightly before noticing that it was just Daphne.
"Hey, Daphne, I missed you," Harry started.
The girl just hugged him harder, "I missed you too."
"Hey, lovebirds, don't forget about us," another voice spoke up.
Harry looked around and saw Tracy and Blaise looking amused at them. Harry rolled his eyes, and Daphne blushed. He stood up and enveloped his two other friends with a hug of his own, "I really did miss you all. Happy now?"
Tracy was grinning brightly, "Alright, I'm good. How was your summer, by the way?"
"Not really interesting," Harry answered while shrugging, "I visited the alley a few times out of boredom, other than that I just stayed home."
"That really does sound boring, mate," Blaise commented, "Although Italy wasn't that much better. I kept getting dragged around by my mother, for some meeting or another. And then the shopping," Blaise shuddered, "Oh Merlin, I still have nightmares about it."
Tracy playfully punched him in the shoulder, "At least it's better than camping. Dad was insistent that we cook our own food in the wilderness without any magic. We almost starved trying to hunt anything. Mum ended up stunning a deer so that we could eat. Even then it was so bad and so disgusting."
They all looked to Daphne, "What? Greece was amazing. We went to this resort that was on the beach. We had a house elf assigned to just us, and we went swimming a bit. We even visited a few historical sites where the Olympians lived. Although Astoria was a bit annoying, I had fun."
The girl ignored the dirty looks coming her way and just huffed, "So, where are we going first?"
"To Flourish and Blotts," Tracy immediately answered.
"You just want to see that Lockhart fellow," Blaise complained.
"Of course not," the girl denied with suspiciously red cheeks, "I just wanted to get our books before they're sold out."
"They would only be sold out because the defence professor practically put all of Lockhart's books on the list," Harry dryly replied.
"To the bookstore," Tracy yelled out, ignoring his response entirely.
All three of them shook their heads at their friend's antics and followed her out of the ice cream parlour. By the time he arrived, Harry could tell that the store was by far the most crowded in the alley. There were wizards and witches pressing everywhere, in fact, a lot were middle-aged witches. As they came near the doors of the bookshop, the reason for this gathering became clear. Across the upper windows of the building, a large banner stretched.
Harry ignored Tracy's gasp when she first saw the famous wizard, he ignored the giant camera that was constantly flashing. He was only focused on what he picked up using his Arcane Hearing. It was a disgustingly familiar song, a shard of a whole, an abomination created using death. The unnaturalness of it made Harry clench his fist. The diary was there and with it, was his chance to finally steal it.
Chapter 67: The Diary
2 August 1992, Diagon Alley
On his left, Blaise let out a pitiful groan, "Why did we decide to come in today? Practically the entire wizarding world and their mother decided to come to the alley today."
"We wouldn't have come today if it wasn't for a certain fangirl that wants Lockhart's autograph," Daphne remarked.
Harry interrupted the brunette's inevitable retort, "Let's just get our books while Tracy goes in line to get an autograph. We should save some time, then."
"But you'll miss Lockhart's announcement. He's been teasing it for weeks on Witch Weekly that he's planning on revealing something huge at his book signing today," Tracy protested.
Harry released a sigh. He didn't have time to deal with Tracy's crush on the probable fraud that is Lockhart. He just decided to pull the band-aid, "Tracy, you're being inconsiderate here. None of us really care about Gilderoy Lockhart. As for the announcement, he's probably going to be our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. So, now that we're all on the same page, Daphne, Blaise and I will go get our books, and you can stand in line for his autograph."
His three friends looked at him with wide eyes. Blaise murmured, "Mate… Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"
"I'm sorry, it's just there's something I need to get at Flourish and Blotts, and I don't want to stand in line for some celebrity I don't care about."
"How could you not care about him," Tracy said while giving him a baffled look, "And how do you even know that he's our new Professor?"
"Look, Tracy, for all his supposed accomplishments, the most remarkable thing I can see about him is that he's a good author who's somewhat attractive. Someone with his accomplishments should have gotten hurt somewhere, but he's practically spotless," Harry answered.
"So, you think he's some sort of fraud?" Daphne asked with her eyes suddenly alert.
"I don't know. But some of his stories really did happen, even if the facts are embellished or sometimes even just wrong. They're too clean, without any real mistakes or gore. It's always the good hero against the horrible monster. That's not how life is. I honestly think that he's probably an author that's narrating someone else's story, or even multiple other people, that actually did all this stuff and is selling himself as this celebrity hero to get more sales, and with it more gold. It's not actually illegal. He's not selling his competence, just his character. If he had tried to help out Aurors or remove a curse professionally, then there would have been issues with the law. But he's currently just a celebrity with some bold claims, nothing more. It's how I know he's our next Defense professor after all."
"And how do you that?" Tracy answered with a heated tone.
"You're joking, right? Did you even look at our booklist?" the Potter scion answered with another question.
"Not really. It just came in a few days ago," the brunette responded.
"Well take it out, and you'll understand."
The girl did as he asked her and gaped at the piece of parchment that was sent to her with her Hogwarts letter. On it was written:
Second-year students will require:
Daphne looked furious, "These are all Lockhart's books. Who in their right mind would require us to buy seven books just for a single class."
"No, Daphne," Harry replied, "Who would require every single student, from first year to seventh year to buy the exact same seven books for a single class."
Blaise was frowning, "That has to be illegal somehow. My mother read a few of them. They're adventure books at best, not actual textbooks."
The Potter scion nodded, "Yeah, who would do it, but the actual author? It's not for educational purposes, that's for sure. It can't be a fan, because they wouldn't really be taken seriously. Unless they don't care about it and want to gain something. That meant that it had to be the author, which in this case is Lockhart. And he's getting a lot of money out of it too. Assuming that there are at least a hundred students in Hogwarts, Lockhart's books are almost two Galleons each, so each student will be paying fourteen Galleons to Lockhart, that's at least fourteen hundred Galleons just this summer for only accepting the job. That's without the free advertisement he's getting with the parents."
Believe it or not, that was a lot of gold to be made in just a few months, for no effort whatsoever. The man probably leveraged his acceptance of the job to these requirements.
The other three Slytherins just gaped at him again. They really need to stop doing this every time he needs to do something. Harry didn't really have the energy to deal with them. He missed them and all, but the library was more important. He needed to find it, "Alright, I need to get something. I'll get back when I find it."
The Potter scion didn't even wait to see their reaction and ran towards the abominable song. He needed to concentrate. It was very difficult to locate with so much noise going on. He was, of course, talking about magical noise. Outside of the wards on the property, every single person in the shop was exuding a magical noise. What Harry was doing was like trying to isolate a voice in a loud concert. But he had no choice, he needed that diary.
The song, distorted as it might have been, starts somehow blending in with its surroundings. It was hard to explain. It was trying to hide, and it was working. With every second, the sound became less sinister, less abominable, and less wrong. Oh, Harry would no doubt be able to discern its true nature if he was on his own with it, but in a crowd, that posed a lot of issues.
He was racing against the time although, he isolated the noise to the front of the shop. Harry practically ran towards the noise, uncaring about who exactly he was trampling. The thought of a Basilisk roaming free in these corridors was frightening enough. He even pushed around the photographer from the Daily Prophet who was for some reason taking photos of an uncomfortable Neville Longbottom and Gilderoy Lockhart, who was handing him a bad filled with his books.
"Hey!" the man exclaimed, "Get back here you little brat."
Harry didn't give him any mind and ran towards the fading sound of the song, just as a redhead, whom Harry assumed to be Arthur Weasley, practically threw himself at a pale man with long platinum hair, probably Lucius Malfoy. Well, at least things are going according to the script. The redhead knocked the former Death Eater backwards straight into a bookshelf without using any magic whatsoever. Dozens of heavy magical books came thundering down on all their heads. The Weasley twins were in pure Gryffindor mood screaming "Get him, Dad!" would have made Harry laugh if it wasn't for the seriousness of the situation.
A plump woman with red hair, probably the Weasley matriarch was shrieking "No Arthur, no!" and at the same time the crowd present inside the store was running in every direction casting spells, with the employee of Flourish and Blotts trying to restore order without any success.
By the time the assistant started breaking the fight, Arthur Weasley had a split lip, and the Malfoy Patriarch had a visible bruise that would probably swell into a black eye. The man was still holding a first-year transfiguration book, which was put in a redhead girl's small cauldron as he pulled himself up, "Here, girl — take your book — it's the best your father can give you…"
Having given his last dig into the Weasleys, he motioned his son to leave. By this time, the book had camouflaged his song perfectly. Harry could not detect it, especially with the crowd there. But thankfully, he knew the stories. The redhead girl – Ginny Weasley – is supposed to get Tom Riddle's diary, thanks to Lucius Malfoy putting it discreetly with her transfiguration book.
Now that he understands the reasoning behind the fight, Harry could see how staged it was from the Malfoys' perspective. They were purists and would try to avoid a physical conflict at any cost, preferring to use their wands. Lucius Malfoy was obviously provoking the Weasley Patriarch into a physical brawl to sneak something in. And no one would have batted an eyelash at it, since to everyone else, it was Arthur Weasley who had escalated the encounter.
Discreetly, Harry slowly followed the family of redheads, as the Weasley Matriarch kept scolding her husband in front of her children. The Potter scion slowly walked towards the redhead girl, hoping to spare her from the fate that awaited her.
"Hello there," he spoke up with a charming smile, "I'm sorry but someone knocked over my cauldron back at the shop, and I lost a journal of mine. A small black book. Do you mind if you look for it in your cauldron? It's rather precious to me."
The youngest Weasley blushed furiously before nodding and looking inside her cauldron filled with her schoolbooks, "I'm sorry, there isn't anything like that here."
Harry stiffened, "Are you sure? It's very important to me?"
The girl just handed him her cauldron and he peeked inside. Yes, there weren't any unusual books. There was no black Diary, and yet Harry was sure that Lucius Malfoy had dropped it off somewhere in the shop. The fact that the diary was somehow camouflaging itself from his Arcane Hearing was already very troublesome. He didn't even know that this was possible. Magic was always transparent in a way to him. It never tried to hide anything. Harry could detect wards, curses and any spell, and yet a sixteen-year-old boy enchanted a diary that was actively fooling him.
But if it could hide from him, why had he sensed it when it entered the shop? The sheer wrongness of it was overwhelming and probably anyone with a modicum of magical sensing would have noticed that it was an abomination. Did a sudden change in the environment disable its protection, which is why it needed time to hide its song once more? If that was the case, then theoretically, when they arrived in Hogwarts, the abrupt change in the wards should disable the protections momentarily, allowing Harry to track it down.
It would be better if he didn't wait that long. A lot of damage could be done in a month. Harry needed to find it as soon as possible. he tried to spread his senses another time, hoping to find any trace of it, and yet there was nothing. Fucking mysterious protection that Harry had never even heard of before.
Of course, Ron Weasley of all people had to disturb Harry again, "What are you doing near my sister, Potter?"
Thankfully Ginny stopped him, "He just wanted to see if I had a book he lost, Ron. Now, go away."
Harry shook his head, "It's fine. We figured out that it wasn't with you. Have a good day."
The Potter scion walked away. He still did his best for an hour trying to locate the damn Diary, until deeming it to be a lost cause and returning to see his friends. They obviously noticed his foul mood, since they didn't comment on how long he spent there. He was thankful for it because all he could feel was disappointment. He had lost the Diary and the students of Hogwarts were going to pay for it.
He had failed. Ginny Weasley did not have the diary. From now on, he couldn't rely on the stories, and for the first time, Harry dreaded his return to Hogwarts.
17 July 1992, Diagon Alley
Harry jumped down the steps and helped Stan lower his trunk and Hedwig's cage onto the pavement. He then looked at the familiar inn and took a deep breath. Yeah, he had a feeling that this was going to be his favourite summer yet.
Over the course of the previous month, Harry's theory was proven to be correct. This was, in fact, his favourite summer so far. In his previous one, there was still this nervousness at being in another world, utterly alien to what he was used to. He had put himself out there just to try to find a way to use magic. Having come very far over the course of the last year in mastering his magic, the Potter scion was confident that he could handle whatever was thrown at him.
Living by yourself was surprisingly freeing. Well, if you don't need to deal with my responsibilities that came with independence that is. Having been staying in the Leaky Cauldron, for over a month, Harry didn't need to clean, or cook meals. Instead, he did his best to simply relax and enjoy his summer. There was more to the magical world than books, after all, and he had forgotten what it was like to be amongst adults, not children.
Yeah, he was pretty much always using ageing potions to move around. He looked like an average Hogwarts graduate, and people just spoke to him normally. There were side effects to prolonged use of ageing potions, of course, but they tended to affect people trying to look younger, not the other way around. According to numerous researchers and potion masters, the only thing he risked was mild aches for a few weeks because of the large difference in size after he came back to his normal body. However, there were documents of actual accelerated ageing when using the potion substantially to look younger.
His older form allowed him to explore the alley properly. It turned out that Diagon Alley itself is simply the hub of magical London, but it didn't really stop there. It was an alley where any wizard or witch would probably be able to find any normal item they needed. The shops, for all how dingy and unclean they looked, were very expensive since most of the population just went there to get their stuff. Other shops had needed to settle from branches of the alley.
To be able to survive, they were either really specialized or really cheap. You won't find a secondhand store anywhere in the main alley, but in Bargain Lane, they were commonplace. The Charmers' Lane is specified for custom Charmed jobs. There were shops for just enchanting clothes. Hell, Carkitt Market was a street filled with stalls that sold magical creatures and anything related to them.
Then, there was Knockturn Alley, of course. Even in his adult form, Harry didn't dare venture there. The horror stories he heard about that place were enough. It wasn't even the danger of being hurt – not that it was insignificant – it was mostly the fact that it was a close-knit community and that he would be caught as an outsider in seconds. Magical Britain isn't that large, and people living in the seedier parts of the city all know one another. And for all its reputation with the dark arts, the alley was mostly home to the outcasts of magical society. Werewolves, vampires, Hags, and every sentient magical being that the common wizards dislike are just sent there. The rents are cheap, people don't ask questions, and you can just do your job in peace. Of course, if you want to buy anything illegal, it would be probably easier to find a place where no one asks any questions.
So, yeah, the rest of the alley was just enough for him. For now. It might be cowardly, but the sorting hat did choose to put him in Slytherin for a reason.
Harry opened his eyes this morning not expecting any letters. Blaise was back in Italy for the summer, and Daphne was currently in Greece for the holidays. Tracy's parents had taken her camping in the woods for some reason. She had grumbled about it in her last letter. So, with all his friends doing their own thing, Harry decided to do his. He walked down the stairs, and saw Tom waiting for him, "Oh, hey Harry."
"Hey, Tom," the Potter scion greeted.
"Do you want the usual," the man asked.
"Yes, that would be wonderful, Tom."
Tom went to the kitchen with his order, just a standard English breakfast. And was accosted by a small barn owl with a familiar newspaper in her talons. Harry took out the paper and gave a couple of Knuts for the owl to take as payment, and it flew away immediately after.
By then, his breakfast was laid out for him. He took a sip of his coffee, relishing its taste, before opening the newspaper and almost spitting it out in shock at the headline.
NICOLAS FLAMEL FOUND DEAD IN HIS HOME!
Underneath the huge title, the famous alchemist and his wife Perenelle looked lying dead in the living room. Unlike most wizarding photos, this one was not moving at all. The two former immortals looked like they were sleeping together on the couch, not dead as they were.
Of course, the rest of the article was the typical Rita Skeeter nonsense. It started with the man's accomplishments, and his contributions to the field of Alchemy. His association with Dumbledore, everything that was pretty much summarized in his chocolate frog card in just a couple of sentences. The bodies looked fresh, but the effects of the Elixir of Life were unknown to everyone, hence why no one said anything about it. Curiously, the man had left a sizable sum of gold for Beauxbattons, and people are still theorizing if there was still more that was hidden away. Yeah, the world was going on treasure hunts trying to find any caches of gold. As always, it wouldn't be a Rita Skeeter article without some sort of scandal. Apparently, she supposed that one of the alchemist's possible experiments on wizards backfired and killed him and his wife. Or that the Philosopher's Stone was a lie all along. Harry had to admit that for all the ridiculousness of it, the woman had a way with words. It was too bad she wasted them on trash like this.
Funnily enough, the location of the Philosopher's Stone wasn't really mentioned anywhere in the article. That was the terrifying part. Somehow, the Daily Prophet just ignored the man's most notable achievement. Dumbledore must have had a hand in that, or maybe it looked like the deaths were natural, hence the assumption that the stone was destroyed or stolen. Still, things didn't look good.
No matter what happened, the timing didn't match. Even if the stone was really destroyed as Dumbledore would say, they should have had the foresight to have more elixir. They left the damn thing with Dumbledore for a year, they wouldn't just only have enough Elixir for exactly a single year. This was murder, and Harry was afraid of the implications of such murder.
Flamel was a constant in the magical world for six centuries, and just like that, he was gone. And that was worrying. It was a reminder that the world wasn't safe and that no matter how experienced you are, you can never be safe. Dumbledore must be far more dangerous than he had expected. Voldemort's words came to mind slightly before the Potter scion dismissed them. These were the ravings of a mass-murdering, power-hungry madman who wanted to convince Harry to join him for some reason. He couldn't trust a word that thing said. The screaming when he had killed that unicorn still haunted his dream. The utterly wrong act of slaying something so fundamentally pure was disgusting.
Back to the Flamel situation, Harry expected the demand for alchemical products to rise immensely in Europe. Alchemists were already rare, and the number of competent ones in Europe could be counted on two hands. Dumbledore had essentially bought a ticket to fortune in the aftermath of Flamel's death. He was the only real source of alchemical products. The classes in Hogwarts were nothing more than an introduction to the field. Two years were not enough to become anything more than an amateur in Alchemy, and the products on demand were notoriously complicated.
This was a decisive win for Dumbledore, and that was a fact.
It really was a shame, Harry had wanted to meet Flamel eventually, to understand what it meant to see the world go round before their eyes, to see civilizations be born and destroyed. He wanted to pick the man's brain when it came to alchemy, perhaps even create a philosopher's stone of his own. But that wasn't possible anymore.
Choosing to not ponder too much on the issue, Harry decided to just explore the alley. He had already gone to the alley, but he didn't really buy anything, apart from a few curiosities. He did get his glasses charmed to magnify things by touching the handle. These looked dead useful, and he wanted them. Harry also wanted to buy his school supplies, at least his standard one since his letter still hadn't come in.
After buying a few quills and rolls of parchment, Harry decided to have some ice cream at Florean Forescue's Ice Cream Parlour, before going to the bookstore to see if the new books came out. Hogwarts was notorious for giving the book list at the last minute because of the Defense Professors changing every year. Still, Dumbledore might have finally found a Defense Professor. Harry really hoped it wasn't Lockhart. The Potter scion couldn't stomach another useless year of defence to deal with. Honestly, the man's book would have been sold very well as fiction books. He was a good writer, and competent as a public persona, but it was obvious that some of these stories were outlandish. Who in their right mind wrestles a werewolf anyway?
Finally, Harry arrived at the bookstore, and as always was disappointed in the lack of a Hogwarts book list. He finally decided to just browse in the collection. Flourish and Blotts was honestly the only bookstore in the alley. There weren't any libraries or any place that sold books really. Funnily enough, Harry had seen a Most Potente Potions book in a secondhand shop he browsed. He had immediately bought it for a couple of galleons, knowing that it was worth so much more in both knowledge and value. Still, there seemed to be something fundamental about the lack of widespread knowledge, at least with any magical knowledge.
Back to Flourish and Blotts, there was a sign with a giant moving poster of Lockhart. The man in the poster was grinning and winking at everyone, and Harry suppressed the urge to curse the ponce. And yet various witches kept sighing whenever he did that. What the hell was wrong with these people?
Still, the Potter scion decided to look at the announcement. Huh, apparently, the man was coming to sign his new book release. Having decided not to continue, Harry decided to leave the bookstore. His mood was already sour because of what happened to Flamel, and well, Lockhart fanatics were not going to help things.
Harry slowly wandered around until he found himself in the Leaky Cauldron once more. He just walked up the stairs and entered his room. The Flamel situation simply would not leave his mind. The utter fear he felt at the idea of not being secure enough for something like that to happen.
He learnt one thing for certain and that was the fact that Dumbledore was fucking terrifying. He didn't want anything to do with the man, really, but that was it.
With determination in his eyes, the last Potter proclaimed, "This is not over. I will become powerful, and I will survive. This is a promise."
Chapter 66: Planning a Heist
2 August 1992, Diagon Alley
Today was the day. Harry had woken up in the morning with a huge smile on his face. Living in Diagon Alley, and being able to do magic without anyone saying anything was simply amazing, but after a month of solitude, he was slightly lonely.
The feeling was surprising; in his previous life, he had no one. He took care of his family, of his brother, but they were family. In a way, he relished the time when he could spend on his own, something that made him feel like shit after his brother passed away. Alas, life was cruel and ironic that way.
And yet, here he was, free of any obligation, free of any supervision, and he was feeling lonely. He hadn't expected to be so attached to his friends like this, especially considering the mental age difference. Even if it was more of a technicality. Honestly, looking back to the previous year, he really shouldn't have acted that way. He was impulsive, cowardly, and vindictive. The way he humiliated Malfoy for insulting his parents was proof of that. He had spent years as an educator in his previous life, and he knew he could have handled it better. Although, he only taught to students in high school, who were a lot more mature – if a little rebellious – than his classmates.
Honestly, the way he rebuffed Longbottom's attempt at friendship was due to his fear. Neville Longbottom was the boy who lived. Danger will follow him to the ends of the earth, and Harry wanted nothing to do with it.
But the petty rivalry they had was not something he would have done in his past life. He would have simply shrugged and let the children deal with their own mess. Their opinion shouldn't have mattered, and yet it did.
Harry had to admit that he was different from the man he used to be. He was mature for a child his age, but he didn't really have the maturity of an adult. This dichotomy was confusing. He had the emotional range of a child and the memories of an adult. And in a way, Harry did not want to stay the same man from his past life.
He remembered how empty the man was. He had no purpose, no ambition, no love, no hate, no anger. He had no friends, no rivals, and it was only the act of teaching that brought a spark of passion into his life. He didn't dream of wealth, and yet he craved love but didn't feel like he would ever get to feel it or have someone feel it towards him, even if he didn't understand what love truly was. Harry still didn't understand it, to be completely honest, and yet he was hopeful that he would ever feel it. Harrison Smith was like a meat puppet that was just going through the motions, waiting for something to fill up the endless hole inside of him, and yet he knew deep down that the chances of that happening were slim to none.
The Potter scion liked to distance himself from the man. He liked to think that they were two different people, even if the two of them tended to overlap. Perhaps it was a desperate attempt to not H to share the man's fate, and if it meant having a shard of immaturity left in him, then it was a price he was willing to pay.
Still, this childish cowardly thinking almost got him killed a few months ago. He had done everything right, and yet it didn't matter. Lord Voldemort had tried to kill him, and it was his magic crest, and cloak of invisibility that saved his life. It had nearly killed him, but the cloak's ability had a lot of possibilities. Phasing through magic was a very overpowered ability, one that he was hoping to one day be able to use when his magic had matured enough. Still, Harry wondered what other secrets the cloak held. There was no mention of this ability in anything he had read about the Deathly Hallows. And his frustratingly silent magical crest was annoying.
Other than saving his life in dire situations, the crest didn't really do anything. He was thankful for it, but it still was a mystery. He had a few guesses, of course, the first of which was the fact that it was the Peverell family crest, not the Potter one. The interaction between the crest and the cloak was enough of a hint. But any knowledge about the family was very scarce for some reason, so he was going around blind on that front.
And yet, Harry doubted that his crest would be able to save him from a basilisk. Yeah, staying passive while a dark lord was possessing a professor was one thing. There wasn't really anything he could do about it. He was inexperienced in terms of magic to fight Quirrell, something that he was reminded of in both his encounters with him. And with anyone in a position of authority would ask how he knew that Quirrell was possessed, there was very little thing he could do, but try to stay out of the way. It didn't work as intended, of course, and Harry didn't know which Fate fuckery happened with Longbottom to get him to kill Quirrell.
But a basilisk actively attacking students in a school was where he drew the line. He wasn't going to gamble on the fact that the students would all be lucky enough to only see the reflection of the king of serpents. Basilisks were the stuff of nightmares. They were beings of alchemy and blood magic that were designed to be the magical equivalent of weapons of mass destruction. Their killing stares were enough to make them very dangerous, but their magically impervious skin was immune to practically any damage, and their venom was so corrosive that it destroyed magic, in the same way Fiendfyre did. A drop was enough to destroy wards or protection enchantments. Breeding a basilisk was an immediate death sentence all over the world, and everyone knew it.
Thankfully, Basilisks were hunted down to extinction centuries ago, when the statute of secrecy was put in place, and any record of their creation was destroyed on a global scale using an extremely powerful secrecy spell. That was how dangerous these things were.
Having children die on his watch because he chose to be passive was too much of a chance. He needed to intercept the diary, and the most convenient place to do it was in Diagon Alley, where Malfoy puts it in Ginny Weasley's cauldron.
Which according to the books, would be today. It was the day of Gilderoy Lockhart coming to Flourish and Blotts to sign his autobiography. He had gone practically every day to the library in case he was mistaken. He wasn't going to take any chances with the diary.
The only complication was that Harry's friends were coming that day as well. They were all back from their trips, and Tracy had insisted that they go buy their books on that day – probably because of Lockhart being there. That meant that Harry had to nab the diary in his normal body – aka in the body of a twelve-year-old.
It was nice that they wanted to hang out with him near his birthday. All of them coming back to London by the end of July wasn't really a coincidence, and the gifts they had given him were thoughtful. Daphne had gotten him a very nice portable perch for Hedwig, that way she could stay in the dormitory. Tracy had gotten him a Sneakoscope that her Auror grandfather used to have, and Blaise had bought him some official looking green silk dress robes that he could use on any official occasion.
It was a touching moment. He hadn't had a birthday gift for years. He really had picked some great friends. Harry looked at the watch in his room and saw that it was almost ten, meaning that his friends were going to arrive soon. Harry wanted to have some breakfast before the inevitably hectic trip throughout the Alley would start.
He stepped out in his adult form and greeted Tom and ate his usual breakfast. Afterwards, he simply went to the bathroom, took a potion that would reverse his age, and changed his clothes. When he got out, he was just a normal second year Hogwarts student here to do his shopping.
Deciding to treat himself to some ice cream, he went to Florian Fortescue's ice cream parlour and sat down to eat. It was the place they had all agreed to meet. Of course, barely five minutes before he started eating, he was immediately enveloped by a hug from behind. He stiffened slightly before noticing that it was just Daphne.
"Hey, Daphne, I missed you," Harry started.
The girl just hugged him harder, "I missed you too."
"Hey, lovebirds, don't forget about us," another voice spoke up.
Harry looked around and saw Tracy and Blaise looking amused at them. Harry rolled his eyes, and Daphne blushed. He stood up and enveloped his two other friends with a hug of his own, "I really did miss you all. Happy now?"
Tracy was grinning brightly, "Alright, I'm good. How was your summer, by the way?"
"Not really interesting," Harry answered while shrugging, "I visited the alley a few times out of boredom, other than that I just stayed home."
"That really does sound boring, mate," Blaise commented, "Although Italy wasn't that much better. I kept getting dragged around by my mother, for some meeting or another. And then the shopping," Blaise shuddered, "Oh Merlin, I still have nightmares about it."
Tracy playfully punched him in the shoulder, "At least it's better than camping. Dad was insistent that we cook our own food in the wilderness without any magic. We almost starved trying to hunt anything. Mum ended up stunning a deer so that we could eat. Even then it was so bad and so disgusting."
They all looked to Daphne, "What? Greece was amazing. We went to this resort that was on the beach. We had a house elf assigned to just us, and we went swimming a bit. We even visited a few historical sites where the Olympians lived. Although Astoria was a bit annoying, I had fun."
The girl ignored the dirty looks coming her way and just huffed, "So, where are we going first?"
"To Flourish and Blotts," Tracy immediately answered.
"You just want to see that Lockhart fellow," Blaise complained.
"Of course not," the girl denied with suspiciously red cheeks, "I just wanted to get our books before they're sold out."
"They would only be sold out because the defence professor practically put all of Lockhart's books on the list," Harry dryly replied.
"To the bookstore," Tracy yelled out, ignoring his response entirely.
All three of them shook their heads at their friend's antics and followed her out of the ice cream parlour. By the time he arrived, Harry could tell that the store was by far the most crowded in the alley. There were wizards and witches pressing everywhere, in fact, a lot were middle-aged witches. As they came near the doors of the bookshop, the reason for this gathering became clear. Across the upper windows of the building, a large banner stretched.
GILDEROY LOCKHART
will be signing copies of his autobiography
MAGICAL ME
today 10.30 – 4.30 pm
will be signing copies of his autobiography
MAGICAL ME
today 10.30 – 4.30 pm
Harry ignored Tracy's gasp when she first saw the famous wizard, he ignored the giant camera that was constantly flashing. He was only focused on what he picked up using his Arcane Hearing. It was a disgustingly familiar song, a shard of a whole, an abomination created using death. The unnaturalness of it made Harry clench his fist. The diary was there and with it, was his chance to finally steal it.
Chapter 67: The Diary
2 August 1992, Diagon Alley
On his left, Blaise let out a pitiful groan, "Why did we decide to come in today? Practically the entire wizarding world and their mother decided to come to the alley today."
"We wouldn't have come today if it wasn't for a certain fangirl that wants Lockhart's autograph," Daphne remarked.
Harry interrupted the brunette's inevitable retort, "Let's just get our books while Tracy goes in line to get an autograph. We should save some time, then."
"But you'll miss Lockhart's announcement. He's been teasing it for weeks on Witch Weekly that he's planning on revealing something huge at his book signing today," Tracy protested.
Harry released a sigh. He didn't have time to deal with Tracy's crush on the probable fraud that is Lockhart. He just decided to pull the band-aid, "Tracy, you're being inconsiderate here. None of us really care about Gilderoy Lockhart. As for the announcement, he's probably going to be our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. So, now that we're all on the same page, Daphne, Blaise and I will go get our books, and you can stand in line for his autograph."
His three friends looked at him with wide eyes. Blaise murmured, "Mate… Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"
"I'm sorry, it's just there's something I need to get at Flourish and Blotts, and I don't want to stand in line for some celebrity I don't care about."
"How could you not care about him," Tracy said while giving him a baffled look, "And how do you even know that he's our new Professor?"
"Look, Tracy, for all his supposed accomplishments, the most remarkable thing I can see about him is that he's a good author who's somewhat attractive. Someone with his accomplishments should have gotten hurt somewhere, but he's practically spotless," Harry answered.
"So, you think he's some sort of fraud?" Daphne asked with her eyes suddenly alert.
"I don't know. But some of his stories really did happen, even if the facts are embellished or sometimes even just wrong. They're too clean, without any real mistakes or gore. It's always the good hero against the horrible monster. That's not how life is. I honestly think that he's probably an author that's narrating someone else's story, or even multiple other people, that actually did all this stuff and is selling himself as this celebrity hero to get more sales, and with it more gold. It's not actually illegal. He's not selling his competence, just his character. If he had tried to help out Aurors or remove a curse professionally, then there would have been issues with the law. But he's currently just a celebrity with some bold claims, nothing more. It's how I know he's our next Defense professor after all."
"And how do you that?" Tracy answered with a heated tone.
"You're joking, right? Did you even look at our booklist?" the Potter scion answered with another question.
"Not really. It just came in a few days ago," the brunette responded.
"Well take it out, and you'll understand."
The girl did as he asked her and gaped at the piece of parchment that was sent to her with her Hogwarts letter. On it was written:
Second-year students will require:
The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 by Miranda Goshawk
Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart
Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart
Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart
Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart
Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart
Wanderings with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart
Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart
Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart
Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart
Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart
Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart
Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart
Wanderings with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart
Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart
Daphne looked furious, "These are all Lockhart's books. Who in their right mind would require us to buy seven books just for a single class."
"No, Daphne," Harry replied, "Who would require every single student, from first year to seventh year to buy the exact same seven books for a single class."
Blaise was frowning, "That has to be illegal somehow. My mother read a few of them. They're adventure books at best, not actual textbooks."
The Potter scion nodded, "Yeah, who would do it, but the actual author? It's not for educational purposes, that's for sure. It can't be a fan, because they wouldn't really be taken seriously. Unless they don't care about it and want to gain something. That meant that it had to be the author, which in this case is Lockhart. And he's getting a lot of money out of it too. Assuming that there are at least a hundred students in Hogwarts, Lockhart's books are almost two Galleons each, so each student will be paying fourteen Galleons to Lockhart, that's at least fourteen hundred Galleons just this summer for only accepting the job. That's without the free advertisement he's getting with the parents."
Believe it or not, that was a lot of gold to be made in just a few months, for no effort whatsoever. The man probably leveraged his acceptance of the job to these requirements.
The other three Slytherins just gaped at him again. They really need to stop doing this every time he needs to do something. Harry didn't really have the energy to deal with them. He missed them and all, but the library was more important. He needed to find it, "Alright, I need to get something. I'll get back when I find it."
The Potter scion didn't even wait to see their reaction and ran towards the abominable song. He needed to concentrate. It was very difficult to locate with so much noise going on. He was, of course, talking about magical noise. Outside of the wards on the property, every single person in the shop was exuding a magical noise. What Harry was doing was like trying to isolate a voice in a loud concert. But he had no choice, he needed that diary.
The song, distorted as it might have been, starts somehow blending in with its surroundings. It was hard to explain. It was trying to hide, and it was working. With every second, the sound became less sinister, less abominable, and less wrong. Oh, Harry would no doubt be able to discern its true nature if he was on his own with it, but in a crowd, that posed a lot of issues.
He was racing against the time although, he isolated the noise to the front of the shop. Harry practically ran towards the noise, uncaring about who exactly he was trampling. The thought of a Basilisk roaming free in these corridors was frightening enough. He even pushed around the photographer from the Daily Prophet who was for some reason taking photos of an uncomfortable Neville Longbottom and Gilderoy Lockhart, who was handing him a bad filled with his books.
"Hey!" the man exclaimed, "Get back here you little brat."
Harry didn't give him any mind and ran towards the fading sound of the song, just as a redhead, whom Harry assumed to be Arthur Weasley, practically threw himself at a pale man with long platinum hair, probably Lucius Malfoy. Well, at least things are going according to the script. The redhead knocked the former Death Eater backwards straight into a bookshelf without using any magic whatsoever. Dozens of heavy magical books came thundering down on all their heads. The Weasley twins were in pure Gryffindor mood screaming "Get him, Dad!" would have made Harry laugh if it wasn't for the seriousness of the situation.
A plump woman with red hair, probably the Weasley matriarch was shrieking "No Arthur, no!" and at the same time the crowd present inside the store was running in every direction casting spells, with the employee of Flourish and Blotts trying to restore order without any success.
By the time the assistant started breaking the fight, Arthur Weasley had a split lip, and the Malfoy Patriarch had a visible bruise that would probably swell into a black eye. The man was still holding a first-year transfiguration book, which was put in a redhead girl's small cauldron as he pulled himself up, "Here, girl — take your book — it's the best your father can give you…"
Having given his last dig into the Weasleys, he motioned his son to leave. By this time, the book had camouflaged his song perfectly. Harry could not detect it, especially with the crowd there. But thankfully, he knew the stories. The redhead girl – Ginny Weasley – is supposed to get Tom Riddle's diary, thanks to Lucius Malfoy putting it discreetly with her transfiguration book.
Now that he understands the reasoning behind the fight, Harry could see how staged it was from the Malfoys' perspective. They were purists and would try to avoid a physical conflict at any cost, preferring to use their wands. Lucius Malfoy was obviously provoking the Weasley Patriarch into a physical brawl to sneak something in. And no one would have batted an eyelash at it, since to everyone else, it was Arthur Weasley who had escalated the encounter.
Discreetly, Harry slowly followed the family of redheads, as the Weasley Matriarch kept scolding her husband in front of her children. The Potter scion slowly walked towards the redhead girl, hoping to spare her from the fate that awaited her.
"Hello there," he spoke up with a charming smile, "I'm sorry but someone knocked over my cauldron back at the shop, and I lost a journal of mine. A small black book. Do you mind if you look for it in your cauldron? It's rather precious to me."
The youngest Weasley blushed furiously before nodding and looking inside her cauldron filled with her schoolbooks, "I'm sorry, there isn't anything like that here."
Harry stiffened, "Are you sure? It's very important to me?"
The girl just handed him her cauldron and he peeked inside. Yes, there weren't any unusual books. There was no black Diary, and yet Harry was sure that Lucius Malfoy had dropped it off somewhere in the shop. The fact that the diary was somehow camouflaging itself from his Arcane Hearing was already very troublesome. He didn't even know that this was possible. Magic was always transparent in a way to him. It never tried to hide anything. Harry could detect wards, curses and any spell, and yet a sixteen-year-old boy enchanted a diary that was actively fooling him.
But if it could hide from him, why had he sensed it when it entered the shop? The sheer wrongness of it was overwhelming and probably anyone with a modicum of magical sensing would have noticed that it was an abomination. Did a sudden change in the environment disable its protection, which is why it needed time to hide its song once more? If that was the case, then theoretically, when they arrived in Hogwarts, the abrupt change in the wards should disable the protections momentarily, allowing Harry to track it down.
It would be better if he didn't wait that long. A lot of damage could be done in a month. Harry needed to find it as soon as possible. he tried to spread his senses another time, hoping to find any trace of it, and yet there was nothing. Fucking mysterious protection that Harry had never even heard of before.
Of course, Ron Weasley of all people had to disturb Harry again, "What are you doing near my sister, Potter?"
Thankfully Ginny stopped him, "He just wanted to see if I had a book he lost, Ron. Now, go away."
Harry shook his head, "It's fine. We figured out that it wasn't with you. Have a good day."
The Potter scion walked away. He still did his best for an hour trying to locate the damn Diary, until deeming it to be a lost cause and returning to see his friends. They obviously noticed his foul mood, since they didn't comment on how long he spent there. He was thankful for it because all he could feel was disappointment. He had lost the Diary and the students of Hogwarts were going to pay for it.
He had failed. Ginny Weasley did not have the diary. From now on, he couldn't rely on the stories, and for the first time, Harry dreaded his return to Hogwarts.
Where is that literally damned book. It could be anywhere but most likely a side character we never heard of lol.
Chapter 68 - 73 : The Blackest Night - The Fraudulent Professor
Chapter 68: The Blackest Night
14 August 1992, Diagon Alley
Harry was thankful for it because all he could feel was disappointment. He had lost the Diary and the students of Hogwarts were going to pay for it.
He had failed. Ginny Weasley did not have the diary. From now on, he couldn't rely on the stories, and for the first time, Harry dreaded his return to Hogwarts.
The Potter scion sat in his usual spot in the Leaky Cauldron, in his adult form, contemplating his failure in procuring the diary, as well as the consequences of that failure. Almost two weeks later, and the detail still eluded him on exactly what happened to it. Most likely Lucius Malfoy did end up involved in putting away the diary. The altercation at Flourish and Blotts just wasn't something that someone who's currently at the helm of a third of the Wizengamot, opposing Albus Dumbledore himself, would do.
The story had even been published in the Daily Prophet. It was in a small article at the end of the paper that pretty much only said that a physical fight happened and that Arthur Weasley was the instigator. The Malfoy family is a very old one, and surprisingly secretive. Its founder was the bastard son of Henry the First, whose mother was a skilled sorceress. He was quite skilled, but after his father's death, he attempted to usurp his trueborn brother's throne, unsuccessfully. He was then banished from France and cursed with a name that branded his betrayal. Malfoy came from Male Foi, which means Bad Faith in French.
When he joined William I in his conquest of England, acting as his personal spymaster, he was granted a lordship and a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, starting the rise of the Malfoy family. Not much is known about their family magics, other than it exists – they have magical crests – and that it isn't displayed openly. Of course, after the Statute of Secrecy, they lost their land, but their influence in magical society over centuries did grant them a spot in the Wizengamot. Malfoys often choose to focus on the realm of politics and Lucius Malfoy followed his ancestor's footsteps.
And so, someone of the Malfoy patriarch's reputation and prestige wasn't supposed to publicly get into physical fights, hence why it was probably planned. Lucius Malfoy was definitely involved in the Diary being given away, but Harry did not notice him doing anything. The only thing he had touched was the Weasley girl's cauldron, and there wasn't a diary there.
It was a mystery that just wouldn't be solved. Oh, how he wished he had a pensive. It would have been very useful, but alas they were very rare, and probably cost as much as whatever remained of his family fortune. No matter what crackpots like to say, Occlumency did not grant perfect memory. In fact, perfect memory retention was still being debated in both the magical and the muggle worlds.
Memory is not like a perfect recording device that captures and stores every detail of our experiences. Instead, it involves encoding, storing, and retrieving information, and it can be subject to biases, distortions, and forgetting over time. Our memories are also influenced by factors like attention, emotional significance, and personal interpretation. Of course, there are memory prodigies, with very good recall, but even then, it tends to be more domain specific than universally flawless and comprehensive memory retention.
What a pensive does is analyse memories and scry for the rest of the details. Sometimes they're faulty, especially if a place is warded specifically against that kind of magic, or they can be modified by outside sources, which was why memories really weren't admissible in any magical court. They were too subjective and unpredictable for it to work.
Still, Harry didn't sense any unusual magic to stop scrying. Not that it meant much; the diary had somehow eluded his Arcane Hearing, something that he had no idea how. His Arcane Hearing was an interpretation of the magic around him. You needed to alter the very magic of something to hide its nature. A few concealing wards did that, but the fact that it was anchored to an artefact and that the magical camouflage was able to adapt in real time, was something Harry had never heard of. The fact that an Adolescent Tom Riddle was able to do it was very impressive and disturbing. It definitely raised his threat level by a few notches.
Alas, there was nothing he could do about the diary now. He was at a dead end, and his next chance would be at the Hogwarts Express when the diary first crosses the wards. The shock would hopefully disrupt the concealing enchantment, and Harry would be able to find it.
But in the event that he fails, he needs to figure out a way to survive the Basilisk, or whatever else was in the chamber. That's not mentioning the Riddle shade. He needed to figure out how to survive the Basilisk's glare, before even thinking about anything else. It was too dangerous for him.
But what was the basilisk glare in the first place? How did it work? Harry needed a way to neutralize it and to do so, he needed to understand it. According to the stories indirect eye contact with a basilisk caused petrification, not instant death. Harry sincerely hoped that it was still the case, especially for the sake of the children at Hogwarts. Yeah, petrification was preferable to death.
Assuming that this was the case, then the basilisk's sight can be distorted by reflections, weakening it. However, the interesting thing was the eye contact. If it was some sort of magical invisible killing beam, then meeting its eyes wouldn't have mattered. Honestly, it reminded Harry eerily of Legilimency. A powerful and unrestrained mental attack in a single burst could explain the instance of death, and how it can be weakened with reflections. But it wouldn't really explain the petrification when looking indirectly. They weren't mental, according to the stories, people were physically petrified and needed a Mandrake draught to go back to normal. However, one saying remained in Harry's mind. The eyes were the windows to the soul. Was a basilisk's glare use some sort of soul magic attack?
It would make sense, but if that was the case, it would be very bad news. Soul magic was known to be undocumented, and even then, the texts that remained were very forbidden. Harry sincerely hoped that this theory was wrong.
Harry let out a deep sigh. What he would give to just leave this place behind and go to another school. He would miss his friends, but at least he would be safe from the insanity that was magical Britain. Alas, with him being technically a ward of the ministry, he needed their permission to change schools, and well, considering how patriotic and proud British wizards were, that was very unlikely. It might even get people asking questions about his guardians and his place of residence, something that he was hoping to avoid as much as possible. He was not ready to risk his freedom for a very faint hope of leaving the country. Maybe after getting his OWLs, he could apply for early emancipation and leave this place but that was years away, so he was stuck with the perilous environment that is Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The Potter scion was so preoccupied with his thoughts, that he didn't notice someone sitting next to him, "Well, what would make someone as young as you have such deep thoughts, Mr. Potter."
Harry stiffened and looked at the man who had sat down, only to be faced with a pair of sharp, yet amused, penetrating steel grey eyes. The man sitting next to him was fairly old. He felt like he was a soldier of some sort, even if he didn't really have any scars. He had this air to him, this aura. His magic was very well controlled, but Harry could tell with his Arcane Hearing that its nature was mostly destructive. This was a man to be wary of, that was for sure.
Then he registered what the man said. He didn't use his last name in his adult form. How had the man known, "I'm afraid that my name is Evans, Harry Evans. You must be mistaken, Mr.…"
The man let out a shark like smile and answered, "Arcturus Orion Black. And I am not mistaken. You might be able to fool most people, but this ageing potion makes it even more obvious to anyone who knew your father. I can even see my sister Dorea's cheekbones and nose somewhere. Don't try to deny it, you look like a small clone of my nephew."
Harry stiffened. To be perfectly honest, he didn't know what to do with the situation before him. He hadn't really researched the Black family much, since most of them were either dead or in Azkaban, and from their reputation, he should try to avoid them as much as possible. But he knew that they were powerful, magically and politically. He couldn't really risk the ire of a family like that, especially one that is famously known for its curses.
Choosing to just come clean instead of insulting the man's intelligence, the Potter scion raised his hand to shake the man's own, "Fine, Harry Potter. I'm happy to see you."
"Good, at least you're not an idiot," the Black Patriarch responded, "I didn't come here to argue with a child, even one that's doing a surprisingly good job at convincing the world that he's an adult. I've been looking for you all summer. I even went to that loathsome muggle family of yours."
Harry stiffened for a fraction of a second before relaxing, "Calling them family would be a stretch, to be honest."
The man burst into laughter, "You really scared the crap out of them. I could practically smell their fear the moment you were mentioned. I obliviated them, of course, but it wasn't a really pleasant experience. At least you came out alright."
"Why are you here?" Harry blurted out. Yeah, sue him, While he was scared out of his mind, he was still curious as to why the man was looking for him specifically when the magical world had forgotten about him for years. He also wanted to get straight to the subject and leave.
"Well, like it or not, you have as much Potter blood as you do Black blood. And as a member of my family, I just wanted to meet you," the elder man answered.
"No, that's not it. You could have tracked me down years ago. You came to see me after my time in Hogwarts."
The man snorted, "At least the reports on your intelligence aren't exaggerated. Yes, I didn't look for you before, because as far as I am concerned, you weren't my problem. You weren't advantageous. Until that is, you showed your prowess in your magical studies. You became useful and I am not the only one who's going to try to use that. I'm just being blatant about it and making sure that you get out of it as much as I do."
"Still, you didn't answer. Why are you here?"
"I was one of the most renowned experts in curses in my time, boy. I have held the Black family high and raised my family name to new heights. Of course, my foolish sons and grandchildren ruined it by supporting that damnable fake Dark Lord and destroying whatever remained of my legacy. I chose to step down and retire with my lovely wife, and while I do not regret it, I'm sad to see what my family had been turned to. The truth is, with most of my descendants either dead or in Azkaban, I need to find an heir. There are a few candidates who are suitable to be the next head of the Black family. You have proven your worth in Hogwarts and, I just had to see it for myself. I have to say, so far, I am not disappointed."
Harry's answer was simply gaping at what the man had just revealed.
Chapter 69: To Walk With Death
14 August 1992, Diagon Alley
It took a few seconds for the Potter scion to recollect himself, "You want me to be your heir?"
"Oh, by the powers no," the Black patriarch responded with a snort, "I'm just here to get a measure of you, to see if you would be a good fit."
"And… What do you think?"
"Kid, the Black family headship is something that people have coveted for centuries. I never expected my family to implode the way it did when I stepped down and gave reigns to my son. Our family is old and very powerful. We have access to knowledge that has been lost many times over during the purges. Our family crest contains enough information about forbidden magics that could shake the very foundations of our world. We are the only family with a member that reached the very root of magic itself, something every mage worth wanted to achieve. Dark lords and Light lords alike have vied for our legacy, and we have protected it for thousands of years. I will not give away the legacy of my ancestors on a whim. I will test you; I will observe you day and night, and I will make my judgement. Should I find you unworthy, you will never see me again."
Harry stiffened and murmured, "The root of magic?"
The man chuckled, "You're curious. That's good, very good indeed. After centuries of research, it was concluded that magic has a source, an origin, outside of time and space. One of my ancestors long ago managed to uncover it and reach it for a fraction of a second, but the knowledge he had gained when he glimpsed at this mythical source was otherworldly. He became the first chronomancer, known nowadays as Kronos. He disappeared after a while, whether it was by choice or not, no one knows. But reports say that he was able to see multiple futures at once, change the very course of destiny, affect the fulfilment of prophecies, and so much more. He was the first Black, the creator of the first magical crest, even if it was filled with a pittance of his true knowledge. After the man disappeared, countless descendants tried to replicate his experiment but were barred from entry. Magic remembered the path he had taken and fixed it. This was the start of an arms race, the very purpose of every wizard and witch for thousands of years, reaching the mythical root of all magic and earning its blessing."
"But why isn't it a thing nowadays?" Harry couldn't help but ponder.
"Albus Dumbledore," the man's grey eyes were practically growing from the sheer hate he held for the man, "he destroyed our society without any of us noticing. We are meant to be explorers of the unknown. Our purpose is to experiment, to enhance our knowledge to allow the next generation to have a chance of reaching the mythical root. Slowly, with his reforms, he banned many fields of magic, he turned Hogwarts into a place where the study of new magic is not encouraged, and he turned our heirs lazy. I and like-minded individuals formed a group to oppose him, the Knights of Walpurgis. We fought him on the political scene and were partially successful in evading him. Of course, we failed to see the effect of his efforts on our heirs. And that damnable fake Dark Lord convinced them to join his camp after we retired. The Knights of Walpurgis turned into the Death Eaters, and well, no one was able to stop Dumbledore anymore. Our heirs had turned into nothing more than savages, slaves to their desire to cause pain and misery, and we stood aside helpless to stop it. Our heirs forgot what it meant to be wizards. To be a mage is to walk with death, and yet the entire magical world became content in wallowing in their mediocrity."
The man looked mournful at saying this. But some of his knowledge was terrifying. The very existence of Kronos as a true Chronomancer was very disturbing. Someone capable of affecting fate in any measure was scary, capable of seeing timelines and going back and forward in it, that was just ridiculous. Harry definitely didn't know anything that could frighten him this way. Although the existence of a root of magic had a lot of connotations. If it was outside of Time and Space, then how did Kronos reach it in the first place? And if magic originated from outside the physical world, then how did it spread? And if it could remember and block the last intrusion, did that mean that there was sentience to magic?
Arcturus Black seemed to be amused at Harry's pondering expression, "I see it now. You're not like the other children, are you? You want to understand magic, to research it, not just use it. You're far above your peers, not because of some sense of honour or duty, but only because you're curious. Oh, you would have been wonderful if I had just gotten to you when you were younger. I would have raised you as a proper mage, with proper education, instead of the muggle nonsense you had to endure. You were able to catch up rather easily. If you continue down this road, I can see myself choosing you."
Harry hesitated for a moment, before answering, "But I can't hold the Black crest. I have one of my own. And you will know that there is no way a body can handle two crests at the same time."
The man's eye widened, "Huh, the Potter crest. It's surprisingly picky with its holders. Charlus told me that it practically refused him, outside a few potions and a few battle spells. Although he could have been lying, the details of magical crests were very private family matters. Although, for some reason, your grandfather did loathe Grindelwald with a passion, enough to give away a fortune to help finance the campaigns against him. I had never seen him as afraid nor as dedicated as he was in the war. And even afterwards, he was still wary of Dumbledore, the man who killed Grindelwald who he fought with a passion. Your father, on the other hand, refused to unlock it, and so did Sirius to prove some sort of point to his mother. It's why they were called blood traitors. They refused their legacy, choosing to listen to the seductive words of their headmaster. But let's not speak ill of the deceased. I had hoped that you wouldn't have unlocked yours, but it is no matter. You can have the headship and have the crest stay dormant until you pass it on to one of your children. I only wish that you secure my legacy."
Harry hummed, "Out of curiosity, who are the other candidates?"
"There are a few scattered all over Europe, but I wish that my legacy remains in the country that we helped build. I will not reveal them, just I will not reveal your candidature to them, to keep things fair, and avoid sabotage."
Huh, understandable, but from what he could remember, Draco Malfoy was definitely a candidate, considering he's the man's great grandson. However, while the boy did have some potential, he was a bit too arrogant and self-assured to be handed away such a rich legacy. Maybe after he grows up and matures with the difficulties of life, he will be able to handle it. Longbottom could technically be a candidate, with his great grandmother being a Black, but he was Dumbledore's puppet, and the Black Patriarch would probably rather let his family legacy die than leave it at the hands of the headmaster. The Weasleys were out, of course, except maybe Bill, who was a very good curse breaker, if the stories were right. But he was too old to be given a new magical crest. After all, the preliminary magical maturity at thirteen was the deadline for getting a magical crest.
Still, Harry was fascinated with the concept of the root of all magic, and that was enough to make this conversation worthwhile. The Potter scion wanted to reach it. His main goal in life was to discover the mysteries of magic, and what better mystery was there than its very source? He needed to research it further, and also take a deeper look at his own magical crest. Yeah, he didn't know how his own irregular crest would react to a new one, even if it was dormant.
From the sound of it, Harry's grandfather had a very weakened version of the crest, which made him get a few potions out of it, but also a deep wariness towards Dumbledore and Grindelwald, the very instinctive wariness that Harry feels whenever he thinks of the headmaster. Did he know that they were hunting the Deathly Hallows, and thus their family was in danger? Oh, how Harry wished he could meet the man.
There was something missing, though, Sirius Black was dead. That wasn't supposed to happen according to the stories, and it was good that he had clocked it now instead of being surprised by it later, "What happened to your grandson, Sirius? And what do you know about the fire that killed my parents?"
The man's eyes turned mournful, "He died in the same fire as your parents did. After he ran away from his harpy of a mother, your grandparents took him in. After the dark lord hunted them down and killed them, they joined Dumbledore's order to fight him. Your father practically emptied his vault financing their campaign, and Dumbledore took advantage of that hatred. I don't know much about what happened in Godric's Hollow, only that it was a very large Death Eater attack that was targeted at your family. Sirius was fighting side by side with your father for hours, repelling Death Eaters, but they were being overwhelmed. Dumbledore was nowhere to be found, probably trying to deal with the aftermath of the Dark Lord's defeat at the hand of the Longbottom boy. Your mother was nowhere to be found, but after your father and Sirius died to a killing curse at the Lestrange's hand, the fire appeared from your bedroom, and disintegrated the entire village, with only you as the remaining survivor of the carnage. No one knows where that fire came from, or how it even worked. It wasn't even hot, it just consumed everything it touched. The Unspeakables have been trying to figure that one out for years, but no amount of scrying or divining could see anything past that. The few who used a time-turner either couldn't get inside the village, and those who directly tried to get inside either didn't survive the trip or just died in the fire. That's all I know."
Huh, that was a lot more information than the pittance Dumbledore had given him. Now that he knows more about what happened, Harry expected to feel some sort of closure, but all he had were questions. If his father and his – probable – godfather had died before fire, then what happened to his mother? Why did she stay behind? Dumbledore did say that the fire had her magical signature all over it, but no one would be able to cast something like this fire at just over twenty years of age. Lily Potter was a brilliant witch, but this was something that still baffles the Unspeakable. So, what happened?
The man sitting at his table seemed to age slightly, "I'm sorry for not getting involved in your life. I had lost a grandson, a granddaughter, and a nephew to this fire. It was so soon after the loss of my wife, Dorea's death, and Regulus' disappearance that I just decided to leave it behind for a while. I am glad you grew up into the man you are now, but still, to make amends, I'm offering you my help slightly. While I think you're happy with your living conditions, and the freedom it provides, I will fight on your behalf if you are caught. I will do my best to be your guardian if the ministry ever catches wind of your living situation. Is there anything else in particular that you need?"
Harry's eyes widened at the man's help. He didn't trust him, but he was grateful for the man's offer of assistance when it came to his living conditions. While he wouldn't want to be formally under a stranger's mercy, if it protected him from Dumbledore, then it would be worth it. Still, he was happy where he was, and he had a backup plan in case he was caught. That was a relief. But when thinking about what was probably going to happen the following day, he had the opportunity to get an advantage. The Potter scion took a breath and answered, "I need everything you have on Basilisks."
Chapter 70: Back Home
1 September 1992, King's Cross Station
Harry walked around King's Cross station while earning odd looks from the passersby. He could understand it, he was lifting up his trunk which was bigger than he was, as if it was nothing. It probably looked odd seeing a twelve-year-old child walking by himself in a train station while holding a giant trunk that looked more like an antique than any modern accessory.
Although Harry did buy this trunk, not because of how it looked, but because of its practicality. It was something that he had noticed, the less processed anything was, the better it could handle magic and the easier it is enchanted. It was probably why wizards and witches still used parchment and quills. It wasn't really about sticking to traditions, but it was simply easier to enchant a quill than a pen, and it was easier to enchant parchment than paper. Although, the Japanese have special scrolls that are very efficient in holding runes, only their own. They were very secretive people, the Japanese, and Harry ached to visit this civilization. They used magic so differently over there, and he wanted to figure it out as well.
Well, as for Harry's trunk, it was made of wood and covered with leather. If it wasn't enchanted, it would have probably collapsed under the weight of the hundreds of books and small knickknacks that he bought over the summer. Having the featherlight charm and a basic expansion charm added in was already proving to be worth the price. He would have had to drag that thing around the station.
He passed by the entrance to the Hogwarts Express and entered the train. He had already let Hedwig fly to the castle since he knew how much she hated being cooped up. He sat down in an empty compartment and decided to continue reading one of the books Arcturus Black had loaned him. The man really went above and beyond. Outside of widening his eyes at the request, the man simply gave him a dozen books that pertained to Basilisks. Blacks really were something else if he didn't really mind giving a child a book on weapons of mass destruction.
Well, at least there was nothing on the creation of Basilisks, because that would be very irresponsible. Or maybe he just didn't have any books on it. Either way, Harry started understanding slightly how Basilisks worked, even if its glare was still subject to a lot of controversies. Well, the venom, outside of being very poisonous, was designed to destroy the structure of any magic it touches. If it touches a wizard, it will slowly dissolve their magic circuits, something that was agonizing for the accounts. Phoenix tears could theoretically counteract it since they promote the generation of magic, outside of healing, of course, although the outcome would still be uncertain as the two substances would not really disappear but continue to fight each other for the rest of the mage's life.
Now, unfortunately, the basilisk's glare was widely considered to be soul magic. So, Harry was right on that part, but no one was ever able to study them properly, since, you know, you either kill them or you're dead if you look at them. What the Basilisk hunters did was use goggles enchanted to reflect what they saw multiple times, which made them slightly resistant to the stare, to a point. After ten seconds of consistent eye contact, they were still petrified, but at least it gave them enough time to look away when the King of Serpents was attacking.
Of course, the Rooster's crow thing was a hoax. It did cause agonizing pain to young Basilisks, and could even kill hatchlings, but to an adult, it was like a particularly annoying voice, and they became aggressive towards anything near the rooster. Apparently, it was theorized that somehow, the ritual used to create Basilisks involved roosters somehow, probably as a training method when they were younger.
Still, Harry had some trouble understanding some of the theories behind the glare, and he'll have to focus a lot to counteract them. The refraction thing was a good initial idea, but he would rather be immune than only give himself ten seconds to run away.
Barely fifteen minutes later, with a huffing Tracy and Daphne came into the compartment. Harry smiled and commented, "You're late."
"We wouldn't have been late if it wasn't for those useless Lockhart books weighing down our trunks. Seriously, why would anyone need that many books," Daphne replied with some bite in her voice.
"Hey, Lockhart's books are not useless," Tracy protested weakly. The brunette shivered at the piercing glare her blonde friend gave her.
Harry, on the other hand, snorted, "Tracy, I'm not going to argue with you, but there isn't a single spell in any of the books, or any theories. They're adventure books that have no place in any educational institute outside of entertainment. But why didn't you just buy enchanted trunks? They're very handy."
The brunette glared at him, "Because they're too expensive and our parents don't trust us with something that costs hundreds of Galleons. Just because you can buy whatever you want doesn't mean that we all can as well."
Daphne nodded and sat down at the seat next to Harry. Soon afterwards, Blaise joined them and started regaling them of his trip to Italy. Halfway through the story, Daphne stiffened as the Hogwarts Express started moving, "Curious."
The dark skinned boy gave her a dirty look for interrupting his story, "What's so curious?"
"I didn't see Longbottom or Weasley on the platform. Usually, he's swarmed by photographers and admirers since people know where he's going to be."
Tracy simply shrugged, "Maybe he just took the floo to avoid people swarming the Express. But I did see the Weasley twins when I got up, so maybe you just missed Ron?"
Daphne nodded, but Harry, on the other hand, stiffened. He had forgotten about the Dobby situation and the fact that Longbottom was probably stuck on the other side of the barrier. The Potter scion sincerely hoped that he wouldn't follow his counterpart from the stories and break the Statute of Secrecy instead of just flooing to Hogsmeade or contacting his grandmother. That would just be ridiculous. Although, if by some miracle, he does end up going to Scotland in a flying car, that would be hilarious.
"What are you smiling about," Daphne asked, having noted his small, amused smile at the thought of Longbottom flying to Hogwarts in a car.
"Just an amusing thought. I really can have an overactive imagination," Harry remarked.
Blaise shook his head at the last Potter's eccentric behaviour and spoke up, "Although, Longbottom has been really popular since last year."
Harry frowned, "I don't remember people really liking him outside of his house."
"Oh, I mean because of the House Cup," Blaise answered, "Slytherin has been winning it for years, and the moment he gets here, Longbottom snatches it. Even if Dumbledore practically handed it to him on a silver platter, it didn't really matter. The other houses are overjoyed that we didn't win for once. I heard an upperclassman in Hufflepuff saying that she's glad that we just didn't win again."
The Potter scion shrugged, "Jealous and envy are very human traits. People will always look to others to see what they do not have."
Afterwards, the discussion moved to the absolute nightmare that was Binns' class and what Lockhart's own classes were going to be like. Harry was adamant that either the man would keep to theoretical work for the upper years and would involve his books somehow in the lessons to justify requiring the students to buy them. Tracy, however, was resolute that he picked the book for their practical applications and that he was going to set up an obstacle course with scenarios from the book, while he would teach them applications of spells that they already knew.
Honestly, it wasn't a bad shout, but considering who was teaching them, Harry didn't expect much from the blonde ponce. The man was a performer, an actor, but he had no qualifications outside of his stories. He wasn't trained as an Auror, he wasn't trained as a Hit-Wizard, hell, he wasn't even a dueler. As far as his books are concerned, one day, he just decided to start going on adventures. The average Hogwarts graduate would die horribly, or at least be mutilated without having the proper training to fight dark creatures and dangerous wizards. His narrative was just unlikely. The only way the Potter scion could see his narrative working would be if Lockhart was some sort of prodigy who hid his talents in school for some reason and wasn't deemed to be particularly remarkable to be recruited by the Unspeakables or the Aurors and just decided to go on random adventures all over the world and just write books about them.
Still, the bickering continued until the sun went down and Harry saw that they just gone past Hogsmeade. He could feel his Arcane Hearing note the proximity to the Hogwarts wards and excuse himself, "Sorry, I have to go somewhere."
Harry practically ran out of the door and waited for the Diary to be overwhelmed by the wards. As expected, barely two minutes later, Harry could feel the same abominable feeling he caught in Flourish and Blotts. At least that confirmed that the Diary was in fact in the train.
The young Slytherin was following the quickly fading song of the abomination. It was far faster at adapting than it was in Diagon Alley. Was it because Riddle was already familiar with the wards? He had to have taken the book to the school after turning it into his Horcrux.
Still, Harry ran from compartment to compartment, desperate to get closer to the cursed diary and not risk his fellow students' lives. He lost count of how many people he trampled on, trying to get to what seemed like the end of the train. By the time he was almost there, the song had faded into nothing, having adapted to the castle wards. Harry knew that he was so close, that he was barely more than a few compartments away.
Frustrated beyond belief, he punched the compartment door. A young girl with long blonde hair and protuberant silver eyes opened the door to her compartment and gave him an odd look.
"Hello," the girl spoke up.
"Hello," Harry parroted back.
"Why were you hitting the compartment?" the girl asked with a dreamy tone. That girl was weird.
"I was just angry about something," Harry responded.
"Oh, I thought you might have been hunting Wrackspurts. They're very tricky buggers. I think I saw one around here…"
"No," Harry answered, "I was just angry."
"Oh, that's a shame. I would have liked it better if you were fighting the Wrackspurts. I have seen a lot of people around with infections. They're so full of negative thoughts. Oh, I haven't even introduced myself. My name is Luna Lovegood, what's yours?"
Oh, that makes a lot of sense now. Luna was coming to Hogwarts this year, "Harry Potter. You're a first year, right?"
She nodded with that weird, dreamy look on her face and Harry continued, "If you need anything, let me know. You seem like a good person."
"You're a very kind boy, Harry Potter. Don't lose that. The world needs more kind people."
"That it does, Luna Lovegood. That it does."
Harry turned and left the compartment, oddly relaxed. He was still frustrated beyond belief for not finding the Diary, but he had a lead now. He had isolated the possible culprit to the compartments he hadn't visited yet, which were around a tenth of the total ones. Having stopped being frantic, Harry walked around the following compartment, making sure to note the faces of every single person he saw. One of them was the one being possessed by Tom Riddle, after all. He didn't really know all of them, outside of a few familiar faces he had seen in the Great Hall a few times, whose names still escaped him.
He might have lost a chance at getting the Diary, but at least, he didn't come back empty handed. There was still the possibility of stopping Riddle before anyone died. When he came back to the compartment, he was oddly smiling. He barely even batted an eyelash at the Thestrals pulling the carriages to the school. They were oddly beautiful in a dark sort of way. Alas, he was back at Hogwarts, and he couldn't wait to see what would happen next.
Chapter 71: The Game is On
1 September 1992, King's Cross Station
Harry stared mostly at the Thestrals in silence as they slowly trotted towards the castle. It wasn't as beautiful as the scenery from the lake the previous year, but it was still relaxing, in an odd sort of way, and it gave him some time to think.
Hogwarts, on average, was made up of roughly three hundred students in the castle, that's from first years to seventh years. It was a bit low, but it was logical since Voldemort's war practically wiped out a generation, and the survivors didn't really want to risk having children. The number of students should risk in the next few years, a baby boom occurring in the safety of a post-war magical society.
That number was of course outside of apprentices and journeymen who often visited the castle for some obscure book or to ask one of the professors about a subject or another. Knowing that the diary was in the train, the chance of a seventh-year student being its holder is quite rare, since they tend to apparate to Hogsmeade. It would be possible, but very unlikely, and there was still the risk that someone would be intelligent enough to realize that the diary was odd. Of course, Harry wasn't really holding his breath.
Removing the 40 NEWT students, it ends up with 260 students in all, and considering that Harry had covered all the compartments but the ten, statistically, he would have twenty-six suspects, which he would round it up to thirty, but that's assuming that the train was equality divided and that was just unreliable.
Also, There was also the fact that a compartment couldn't hold more than six people and that they were resistant to expansion charms. Yeah, a student almost blew himself up a few years back for trying to fit in more people. Now, that gives a maximum of sixty students, which was a lot, but better than three hundred.
Harry did his best to memorize the faces of the people in the last compartments. One of them was full of Slytherin upper years. Harry recognized the Burke twins and a girl that sneered at him. Her name was Selwyn, maybe? He wasn't sure, but it was probably not them; Malfoy wouldn't risk people who had family in his pocket. If they're caught, his political party would take a big hit in both reputation and support.
Another had a gaggle of first years, four to be exact. They didn't have any house crest on their robes, so they weren't sorted yet. They were two boys and two girls and a Ravenclaw prefect, Penelope Clearwater, was reassuring.
There was another compartment of Slytherin Purebloods later, and then one with Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson, and Alicia Spinet. Harry had recognized them from the Quidditch matches. They seemed to be yelling at a boy, Cormac McLaggen, who was in Harry's duelling club.
Thankfully, a few of the following compartments were empty, but there were two filled with Hufflepuffs in Harry's year. Hannah Abbot and Susan Bones were in a compartment together, and Zachariah Smith and Justin Finch-Fletchley were also in one of their own. And of course, there was also Luna Lovegood who was in a compartment on her own. It was a shame because she was a lovely girl. And finally, there was a compartment with Cho Chang who was talking animatedly with her friend Marietta Edgecombe.
The Potter scion noticed that none of the Weasleys were there, meaning that his elimination of Ginny as a suspect in Diagon Alley was somewhat correct.
Honestly, Harry didn't think he had forgotten anyone, but he'll do his best to try to remember. But as for now, he had a list of suspects. Removing the Slytherin that wouldn't make any sense for Malfoy to frame them, there was Luna Lovegood, Cho Chang, Marietta Edgecombe, Susan Bones, Hannah Abbot, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Zachariah Smith, Angelina Johnson, Katie Bell, Alicia Spinet, Cormac McLaggen, Penelope Clearwater, and the four firsties. That's sixteen suspects. The end of the train must have been quite a bit emptier than the rest.
Of course, there was still the possibility that someone had left the diary in their trunk and moved to another compartment, but that was unlikely. Tom Riddle wouldn't have wanted someone to lose his diary accidentally, or to just forget about it at the bottom of a trunk, there has to be a compulsion to keep it closed, and that means that it was probably one of those students. Still, the Potter scion needed to keep his options open and not get any tunnel vision.
His thoughts were interrupted by Daphne hitting him in the shoulder, "What are you staring at?"
Harry just noticed that he spent the entire ride thinking while staring at the Thestrals, "Just looking at the Thestrals, beautiful creatures, very misunderstood. Most people think they're bad omens."
The blonde looked concerned, "What are you talking about, Harry? There's nothing there."
"No, they're pulling their carriages," He explained, "however, they're invisible. There's a very specific condition that would allow you to see them."
"And what is it?" Tracy asked, curious.
"You must have seen Death," the young Potter simply answered.
Honestly, the implications that Harry could see Thestrals were groundbreaking. Harry had never seen anyone dying, outside himself that is. Even then, he had read of a few reports of people who still couldn't see them after they had seen someone die. They had refused the concept and lost themselves to the grief of madness. The truth is, you need to accept the very concept of Death to see the Thestrals, to understand the finally of it, and Harry, well, he knew exactly what the emptiness of Death entailed, and it seemed that this was enough.
Harry's answer must have made his friends uncomfortable since they just stayed silent until their carriage like the others passed two great wrought-iron gates with large columns and winged boars on top of them, looking a bit ridiculous by the posture they were represented. The coach accelerated, as the towers, walls and turrets of Hogwarts grew more and more imposing from the tiny window available. When it came to a halt, they came out and found themselves directly in front of the entrance.
Harry led the group, climbing up first the stairs which guided them into the castle itself and when they passed the huge oak front doors, the cold disappeared in an instant, proof of the magic existing in the school. They did not stay long in the Entrance Hall, as the crowd of incoming students was growing without sign of interruption. Entering the Great Hall, they all went to the Slytherin table and sat down.
Around fifteen minutes later, Professor McGonagall opened the door to the Great Hall, showing the firsties towards the sorting hat. The damn hat started to sing rather horribly. You'd think after hundreds of years doing this, he'd know how to hold a tune or something, but it was as aggravating as usual. When this affront to music was happening, Harry made sure to pick out the faces of his suspects during the sorting. The first was Colin Creevey who was then sorted in Gryffindor, followed by Ethan Glover who was sorted in Hufflepuff. Alice Morris was sorted in Gryffindor and Angela Smith in Ravenclaw. Of course, Luna Lovegood was also sorted in Ravenclaw, having spent the longest under the hat with that same dreamy look on her face, although Ginny Weasley took almost that long to be sorted in Gryffindor.
Harry recognized the four students that Clearwater was talking to in the Hogwarts Express. Colin Creevey, Ethan Glover, Alive Morris, and Angela Smith. These were his main suspects. They were obviously Muggleborns; their amazement at everything magical was rather obvious. Malfoy would have an easier time tricking some ignorant young muggleborn than a child born in this world and aware of its dangers.
The rest of the feast went as expected. They ate, and then Dumbledore started his yearly announcement, saying that the Forbidden Forest was, well, forbidden, and he announced Gilderoy Lockhart as the Defense Professor as if it wasn't in the Daily Prophet for weeks straight. The funniest one was the speculation on whether the celebrity would be able to break the 'alleged' defence curse and save the school. It was funny, imagining the ponce trying to break a curse that Voldemort, at the height of his power, put on the position. Of course, The teenage female students, being well, normal teenagers, kept sighing at the sight of the admittedly handsome celebrity. This would get annoying really quickly.
Of course, the aged headmaster was starting to say something about Quidditch tryouts, when a loud bang appeared, and the enchanted ceiling showed a flying car, falling from the sky erratically. The entire room watched, gaping, as the car kept going to the other side. Ten seconds later, an enormous crashing sound reverberated across the castle.
Damn, Harry had forgotten about Longbottom and Weasley getting a flying car. Why the hell didn't they just floo to Hogsmeade or something? It wasn't that hard. In the stories, Harry's counterpart in the stories had the excuse that he didn't know much about the magical world, but Longbottom and Weasley had lived here all their lives. Was Longbottom even visited by Dobby like Harry's counterpart in the stories? Harry didn't know and honestly, he didn't care. He decided to stop bothering himself with Longbottom and his little gang. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. He definitely wasn't going to rely on the boy who lived to kill a fucking Basilisk out of sheer dumb luck. He wasn't going to rely on the story.
He had reflected during the summer, and he realized that for all his thoughts of dismissal, he was still attentive to the boy who lived's activities. Maybe it was because of the stories, or maybe it was because Harry was curious about what Longbottom would do differently. But the encounter with Quirrell taught Harry to throw the stories out of the window and stop relying on them too much. This was real life, and in this life, he had nothing to do with Longbottom.
Still, breaking the statute of secrecy this openly and coming to school on a flying car – which was illegally enchanted – was something that Harry had to notice. Honestly, Harry was sure that if it was anyone else, especially an adult, they would have been arrested and sent to Azkaban. If it was proven to be a malicious act of actively revealing the magical world to the muggles, then they could even be executed. Yeah, the enforcers of the Statute of Secrecy weren't particularly merciful and didn't take any bullshit. Fortunately for the two idiots, Longbottom was a nationwide celebrity and would probably get a slap on the wrist, and some bad publicity, of course.
The entire room unfroze when Dumbledore practically ran out of the Great Hall radiating anger and worry, followed by half the faculty. And of course, the room turned into a cacophony of noise.
Tracy looked at them with wide eyes, "Did that just happen?"
Blaise nodded, looking just as stunned, "Wanna bet they get away with it?"
"That's a sucker's bet and you know it," Harry replied.
A first-year girl who had sat next to him after being sorted, Harry didn't really remember her first name, but she was a Yaxley, asked meekly, "Is this normal?"
Harry snorted and raised his goblet filled with his coffee, "Welcome to Hogwarts kid. I hope you survive the experience."
Chapter 72: Of Mysterious Traps
2 September 1992, King's Cross Station
Harry woke up far later than usual and he knew that he wouldn't be able to have his daily Occlumency lesson and get to class in time. He was still exhausted because of the train ride, and the nightmares didn't help. The Potter scion didn't know if he was back at the castle or something, but that night, he dreamt of Voldemort looming over him, sending a killing curse his way.
The young Slytherin looked around and saw that most people were still asleep. What did he expect? It was still seven in the morning, and most students had spent months waking up far later than that. Choosing to simply clear his head, Harry took out a book in the common room and started reading it. It wasn't even an academic one; it was a fiction book which was a guilty pleasure of his. Yeah, he liked reading about adventures and such, and the authors in the magical words are very dramatic, which was something that he didn't think he would like but quickly learned to enjoy.
Although Harry would have rather been exploring the Room of Hidden Things instead. Yeah, Harry did his best not to remove anything from it with Voldemort possibly being in the castle. The man probably had wards that Harry didn't even know existed near the Diadem. Yeah, he didn't want to accidentally trip them and make the man start panicking for one reason or another.
Well, now his younger version was here, not him, meaning that he shouldn't really be notified by the wards. He was a fraction of a soul without any magic which wouldn't really make him a living being to any magical protection.
Harry's musings were interrupted by a pitiful groan and the sight of a familiar brunette with messy hair dropping herself on the couch next to him.
"Good morning, Tracy," Harry cheerfully stated.
The girl just replied by groaning miserably. "Don't take it personally," another familiar voice replied in her stead, "She's been like that all morning."
Harry turned and saw the familiar figure of Daphne who was immaculately dressed and didn't look worse for wear.
"Well, at least you're actually awake," Harry said.
The girl pouted, "You're supposed to say that I'm beautiful, Harry."
"Of course, you are, Daph. Now, do you know if Blaise is still sleeping?"
"Yeah, I tried to wake him, but he told me to get some breakfast without him."
Harry simply shrugged, "Fine, I guess we should get going so that we could eat before classes start."
They all walked in silence to the Great Hall. Honestly, Harry was kind of hungry, but when they arrived, the entire room was busy staring at Longbottom. His crashing arrival the previous day was the talk of the school. For some reason, people seemed to admire him for it.
It honestly confused Harry immensely. The boy had broken laws that would have gotten most people arrested and possibly in Azkaban. He had broken the Statute of Secrecy out of pure stupidity and negligence. The same Statute that happened to be one of the globally sacred laws in the magical world. People were taught since the moment they could talk to not reveal the existence of magic and yet a national icon did this.
A soft hoot interrupted his thoughts when Hedwig came to perch on his shoulder with a letter and his subscription to the daily prophet.
"Thanks, Hedwig, here have some," Harry spoke up while handing his companion a piece of bacon. The snowy owl nibbled on it and snugged into his face slightly before flying away once more.
Harry opened his letter first and saw that it was simply his timetable. Did everyone get their timetables this way, or was Snape just not bothered to give them face to face?
It didn't matter, only that while the organization was somewhat different, his practical lessons were still with the Gryffindor. There was actually a full-blown war between Longbottom and Malfoy because of this last year, and they have just left it as is? This was honestly getting ridiculous. And as expected, the front page of the daily prophet was a picture of Longbottom and Weasley in a flying car, breaking the statute of secrecy.
The Potter scion took a deep breath and decided to just continue eating. He wouldn't think about Longbottom, it just wasn't worth it. At least that was what he told himself until Tracy suddenly stiffened, "Look, Weasley got a Howler."
Remembering how the Weasley matriarch was yelling at her husband, Harry simply put his hands over his ears. Tracy gave him a confused look, "What are you doing?"
Of course, that was when the youngest Weasley boy decided to open the letter, whose volume was so high that a few people were pushed away by it. For a moment, most of the students were left reeling, as a roar of legendary proportions echoed in the Hall which was almost shaking. Molly Weasley really had a point to put across.
"—STEALING THE CAR, I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY'D EXPELLED YOU, YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU, I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH WHEN WE SAW IT WAS GONE —"
Dear lord, this woman had some lungs on her. Did she enchant the Howler to be extra loud? Or was she just so loud that the Howler was probably damaging the hearing of everyone in the vicinity? Hell, the implements and the plates were rattling, and the sound was echoed magically off the walls of Hogwarts. The poor redhead had practically sunk so low in his chair that only his crimson forehead could be seen.
"—LETTER FROM DUMBLEDORE LAST NIGHT, I THOUGHT YOUR FATHER WOULD DIE OF SHAME, WE DIDN'T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU AND NEVILLE COULD BOTH HAVE DIED —"
Honestly, this was public humiliation at this point. The Weasley boy, while annoying as hell, had a very fragile ego that the woman kept battering on with this howler. Harry started to pity the boy if he was perfectly frank. He didn't like it. However, the fact that the Weasleys just revealed that they were directly contacted by the headmaster reeked of favouritism. The woman must have been too angry to care for subtleties. It was understandable somewhat because if it wasn't for the fact that Neville was with him, Ron would have been expelled and probably arrested.
"—ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED — YOUR FATHER'S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, IT'S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT AND IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE'LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME."
A loud silence fell in the Hall, the children and teenagers still under the shock their eardrums had recorded in all its fury. The red envelope, which had dropped from Ronald Weasley's hand, burst into flames and curled into ashes. Everyone was just too stunned to react or do anything, really.
Of course, just as people started to talk, another Howler appeared at the Gryffindor letter, but this time, it was in front of Longbottom.
"NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM! NEVER I HAVE FELT SO ASHAMED OF BEING YOUR GRANDMOTHER! HOW DARE YOU STEAL A CAR AND BREAK THE STATUTE SO BRAZENLY. FRANK AND ALICE WOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOUR ACTIONS. WHAT YOU DID WAS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DANGEROUS AND I WILL HAVE NONE OF IT. WHEN YOU COME BACK HOME –"
Yeah, Longbottom wasn't spared from the humiliation as well. When the entire Slytherin house burst into laughter, Harry stayed silent.
Tracy had tears in his eyes, "That was the best thing that I've ever seen in my life."
Even the stoic Daphne was openly laughing, although she stopped when she noticed Harry's serious expression, "What's wrong Harry?"
"What happened the last time Longbottom was humiliated publicly?" he explained.
They both frowned in thought and the Potter scion decided to just give them the answer, "Remember the Quidditch match, the one that Snape was refereeing and that he lost badly. Do you remember what he was like afterwards?"
Both girls paled, "You're saying he's going to start attacking Slytherins again?" Daphne asked with visible concern in her eyes.
"I don't know, but what I do know is that our dear boy who lived has a very fragile ego. I only hope the professors will stop him or just keep him busy afterwards."
With that said, Harry decided to ignore Longbottom entirely and focus on the bigger problem at hand, the chamber of secrets. First of all, he needed materials to build his glare resistant artefact, but more importantly, he needed to eliminate a few of his suspects. They were too many. As far as he knows, he could only remove them by confirming their alibis during the attacks. But that was just too much of a risk to wait for a student to be hurt.
Wait a minute, Harry didn't need to wait until an attack, but until the chamber opened. Riddle has to make preparations before taking out the Basilisks, like making sure it's still there. Harry could make a ward alert him whenever the chamber opens. He already knew the entrance, and it's not like he's losing anything if he does it.
Choosing to take the initiative, Harry told his friends, "I need to get to the bathroom. I'll see you in a minute."
The young Potter slowly walked to the second-floor bathroom, home to the infamous Moaning Myrtle. Thankfully, the ghost didn't seem to be there. Harry walked towards the sink and using his Arcane Hearing heard a very subtle hissing. It was well hidden, Harry would give Salazar Slytherin that, but the obvious engraving of a snake kinda made it obvious.
Still, Harry was sure that this was the entrance, and just under the sink, Harry took out one of his engraving tools and put a small runic array underneath. When he touched it, the writing started to glow and just melt into the stone. The array was simple, it would simply send a pulse using his arcane hearing whenever it was moved in space, something that was impossible unless the sink itself was moving, which was what happened when the entrance was opened.
However, Harry wasn't done yet. He needed something else before it was useful. As far as he's concerned, what he's done is simply a warning system whenever the chamber is opened. Considering that the attacks were mostly random, Harry needed the location of most students. The Marauder's map would have been perfect right now, but Harry didn't even know if the thing was real, let alone if the Weasley twins had it. He certainly wasn't going to risk breaking into the Gryffindor common room. Common rooms were protected by more than just silly passwords.
The very design of the map didn't make sense. It was made in two ways, either it was hooked up to the wards somehow, or the Marauders somehow put detection charms that lasted for decades all over the castle. It was probably the wards since the detection charms wouldn't really have access to any student's name.
Dumbledore certainly wasn't going to let Harry mess with the castle wards. That left the detection charms. Yeah, Harry needed to somehow put on charms in the entrance of each common room, counting the number of people getting in and out, revealing if there's someone going out from any house just before the entrance to the Chamber opens. It would help focus on the house of the possessed victim.
Still, he had to do it at night or very early in the morning. As for now, he walked towards the greenhouses. He was almost going to be late for Herbology class.
Chapter 73: The Fraudulent Professor
2 September 1992, Hogwarts
Yeah, Harry needed to somehow put on charms in the entrance of each common room, counting the number of people getting in and out, revealing if there's someone going out from any house just before the entrance to the Chamber opens. It would help focus on the house of the possessed victim.
Still, he had to do it at night or very early in the morning. As for now, he walked towards the greenhouses. He was almost going to be late for Herbology class.
Well, Herbology wasn't all that bad. Honestly, Harry wasn't all that passionate about the field, even if he understood its utility. Herbology wasn't just the study and breeding of plants for use in potions, even if that's what it was used for nowadays. No, it was a study of nature. NEWT herbology students started to even learn a few druidic spells and a few rituals to promote plant growth. It was the only kind of ritual magic allowed in the castle, and in the country, really. Even Dumbledore couldn't ban them, only restrict them, as it would cripple potion production which was necessary in any magical society.
Magical plants could also be extremely dangerous and commonly used as weapons. Yeah, a herbologist Auror was terrifying. There was this professor called Mirabel Garlick over a century back who had somehow created a plant that fed on magical fire. During an attack on the school during the last Goblin rebellion, this simple plant was able to kill a dragon, by growing from the beast's flames and binding the creature, who ended up being strangled to death. Yeah, that woman was badass. It was also one of the main reasons Harry never dismissed the seemingly kind and upbeat Professor Sprout. She had a mastery of the subject, which means that she probably knew more than enough way to give anyone a long and torturous death.
Something that Lockhart seemed unaware of since he kept pestering the woman about the 'correct way to doctor a Whomping Willow'. Never mind that the tree was a creation of the Professor in the first place. Yeah, Harry was curious about the Professors a few times and used his nifty little spell to find any books authored by them, and yeah, Professor Sprout had written one on the properties of the plant that she had created. Yeah, that woman was terrifying, and Lockhart was actively insulting her prowess with his suggestions.
Thankfully the woman ignored the man and did not turn him into fertilizer for her Venomous Tentacula, and just started the lesson, although slightly less upbeat than usual even after the ponce left. Still, it was obvious that this year was going to be more interesting than the last, especially when they started the year with Mandrakes of all things, well at least they were very young so the most they could get was a headache or passing out. Yeah, this was a very dangerous plant that was actually used by certain hit-wizard teams specializing in Mandrakes.
Of course, they used younger ones because the risk to their allies and for collateral damage was high, but it was still relatively common to have a mandrake or two in a team. As for fully matured ones, they needed to be put in specialized rooms with hundreds of wards and enchantments negating any form of noise. Yeah, the buggers' cries could somehow break a few wards on their own. It was why transporting adult mandrakes was such a problem and made illegal in most countries. Portkeys and Apparitions could mess with the wards slightly, and a fraction of a second was all those plants needed to kill hundreds or even thousands of people. Even taking them while flying was risky because the enchantments wouldn't be as stable without an active anchor, like a warded farm. It was why most farms bought the things young and raised them themselves, which was what Hogwarts often did, but they returned the plants to a specialized farm outside of the country just before they matured.
Honestly, Mandrake farming was mostly done for Aurors and Hit wizards. Even if it was useful in terms of an antidote for transfiguration mishaps, it was too expensive to use instead of just finding another cure which would work just as well. Very few incidents actually necessitated Mandrake essence to be used in a potion, and considering how quickly it could be contaminated, it was done to order. The effects practically disappear in an hour, and you can't really apparate or use any magic near it or its effects will be diluted. The best practice was to raise a young mandrake from scratch and wait for it to mature. These victims are often not in critical condition, meaning that they could wait a few months before being treated.
Still, repotting angry baby looking roots was sort of fun, all things considered. Everything went fine except for Crabbe who had put on his earmuffs incorrectly and was knocked out the moment he took out his seedling.
By the end of the lesson, Harry left with a smile on his face, even if his friends were unhappy with touching dirt. That was until he realized that his next lesson was with Lockhart.
Harry grumpily walked out of the room and Daphne caught up to him, "What's got you all grumpy? You looked pretty happy in Herbology."
"Well, we have Defense Against the Dark Arts next," he explained.
"Ah, Lockhart. I still don't understand what you have against him. You weren't that fussed with Quirrell, and he was a pretty bad professor," Daphne responded with a questioning tone.
"Quirrell was a competent wizard pretending not to be one. I could tell with the way he cast his spells, and the way he spoke. He was a shit teacher, and he did try to kill me, but I could tell he knew what he was talking about. Plus, I was doing my best not to stay near him at any time. But Lockhart, I look at him and see a conman, who swindled his way into fame. I wouldn't really care about it if it wasn't the fact that he's supposed to teach us using fiction books, somehow."
"We'll see if he's worth it or not. If he's useless we could just self-study. I know you already do a lot by yourself," the blonde said.
"You're probably right. Alright, let's go catch up with Tracy and Blaise. They practically ran all the way there."
The Slytherin girl nodded, and they walked to the classroom. They stopped for a second in the courtyard to see Longbottom getting into a fight with Malfoy because someone wanted his autograph or something. Harry didn't particularly care and just went to the classroom, leaving Lockhart to deal with the mess. It was his duty as a professor after all.
Harry sat next to Daphne and took out the books that he was forced to buy. Honestly, he wouldn't have touched them with a ten-foot pole. They were all seated until Lockhart came back with a red-faced Longbottom, who was glaring at the man's back. Well, it seems that Lockhart was very good and hitting his nerves.
When the whole class was seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly and silence fell. He reached forward, picked up Parvati Patil's copy of Travels with Trolls, and held it up to show his own, winking portrait on the front.
"Me," he said, pointing at it and winking as well. "Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!"
He waited for them to laugh; a few people smiled weakly. "I see you've all bought a complete set of my books — well done. I thought we'd start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about — just to check how well you've read them, how much you've taken in —"
When he had handed out the test papers he returned to the front of the class and said, "You have thirty minutes — start —now!"
Harry looked down at his paper and read:
1- What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour?
2- What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition?
And on it went to:
54- When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be?
Yeah, Harry wasn't reassured in the slightest. He would have laughed if it wasn't depressing. It seems that the stories were right and that Harry would have to deal with fraud as a Defense professor.
He simply wrote whatever came into his mind first without really thinking about it. He already lost interest in the class. Fifteen minutes later, Lockhart collected their results and took a quick look at them. Of course, the man ruffled through the tests quickly before vanishing them with a wave of his wand like they were useless. Harry could tell that the spell was somewhat inefficient using his arcane hearing. It wasn't close to McGonagall or Flitwick's control, but it looked slightly better than the one from the seventh-year students he saw training for their NEWTs. It was an OWL spell, after all, but the wordless casting was somewhat impressive.
The man stood up suddenly with an intense look in his eyes, "What you've just shown me right now, is that you could memorize facts. It's nice and all, but what I don't understand is why you all kept reading the books when you realized that there were no spells in there and none of you questioned me about it. What I also don't understand is why none of you said anything about how romanticized everything was in there. Defence Against the Dark Arts is not pretty. When you're fighting dark creatures and dark wizards, you make mistakes, you get hurt, and you get a few people hurt, something that is oddly absent in my books. Because these books are made to entertain the masses, not to teach. At least, the version available to the public, that is."
Harry stiffened as the man kept speaking. What the actual fuck was going on? This was completely opposite to the stories. The Potter scion turned around and saw people watching him either in heartbreak or slight admiration.
The man played with his hair a bit and continued, "Which is why, the books I gave you are slightly different. As you probably know, buying a book with a Hogwarts letter entitles you to a discount on Flourish and Blotts. I asked them to set aside books for you that were slightly different."
The professor waved his wand and Harry could feel an enchantment being activated on the books, changing the content. He took a quick look and saw that each book was different. Not only did they contain the story, but there was a description of the spells used, how they were used, a comment on the tactics in each encounter, and most of all, it was real.
Again, this surprised the hell out of the young Slytherin. He hadn't really looked over the books. They often had enchantments to stop them from being copies and such. And Harry didn't really look that closely at Lockhart's books. He didn't even really read them, just skimmed them quickly for a couple of minutes. Still, he should have noted the difference.
"Now, you can start reading something a little more informative than the previous text. With that out of the way, let's get started with our lesson. And what better way to start than with a slight practical lesson? It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm and not scream as it might provoke them."
As the whole class held its breath, Lockhart whipped off the cover. "Yes," he said dramatically. "Freshly caught Cornish pixies."
People started chuckling to which the man snorted, "You think this is funny then? Do you think that something looking as significant cannot hurt you? The magical world is full of hidden dangers. Now, let me show you how unprepared you are."
With a flick of his wand, the cage opened, and pandemonium followed.
AN: Extra chapters for missing yesterday's upload. Enjoy.
14 August 1992, Diagon Alley
Harry was thankful for it because all he could feel was disappointment. He had lost the Diary and the students of Hogwarts were going to pay for it.
He had failed. Ginny Weasley did not have the diary. From now on, he couldn't rely on the stories, and for the first time, Harry dreaded his return to Hogwarts.
The Potter scion sat in his usual spot in the Leaky Cauldron, in his adult form, contemplating his failure in procuring the diary, as well as the consequences of that failure. Almost two weeks later, and the detail still eluded him on exactly what happened to it. Most likely Lucius Malfoy did end up involved in putting away the diary. The altercation at Flourish and Blotts just wasn't something that someone who's currently at the helm of a third of the Wizengamot, opposing Albus Dumbledore himself, would do.
The story had even been published in the Daily Prophet. It was in a small article at the end of the paper that pretty much only said that a physical fight happened and that Arthur Weasley was the instigator. The Malfoy family is a very old one, and surprisingly secretive. Its founder was the bastard son of Henry the First, whose mother was a skilled sorceress. He was quite skilled, but after his father's death, he attempted to usurp his trueborn brother's throne, unsuccessfully. He was then banished from France and cursed with a name that branded his betrayal. Malfoy came from Male Foi, which means Bad Faith in French.
When he joined William I in his conquest of England, acting as his personal spymaster, he was granted a lordship and a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, starting the rise of the Malfoy family. Not much is known about their family magics, other than it exists – they have magical crests – and that it isn't displayed openly. Of course, after the Statute of Secrecy, they lost their land, but their influence in magical society over centuries did grant them a spot in the Wizengamot. Malfoys often choose to focus on the realm of politics and Lucius Malfoy followed his ancestor's footsteps.
And so, someone of the Malfoy patriarch's reputation and prestige wasn't supposed to publicly get into physical fights, hence why it was probably planned. Lucius Malfoy was definitely involved in the Diary being given away, but Harry did not notice him doing anything. The only thing he had touched was the Weasley girl's cauldron, and there wasn't a diary there.
It was a mystery that just wouldn't be solved. Oh, how he wished he had a pensive. It would have been very useful, but alas they were very rare, and probably cost as much as whatever remained of his family fortune. No matter what crackpots like to say, Occlumency did not grant perfect memory. In fact, perfect memory retention was still being debated in both the magical and the muggle worlds.
Memory is not like a perfect recording device that captures and stores every detail of our experiences. Instead, it involves encoding, storing, and retrieving information, and it can be subject to biases, distortions, and forgetting over time. Our memories are also influenced by factors like attention, emotional significance, and personal interpretation. Of course, there are memory prodigies, with very good recall, but even then, it tends to be more domain specific than universally flawless and comprehensive memory retention.
What a pensive does is analyse memories and scry for the rest of the details. Sometimes they're faulty, especially if a place is warded specifically against that kind of magic, or they can be modified by outside sources, which was why memories really weren't admissible in any magical court. They were too subjective and unpredictable for it to work.
Still, Harry didn't sense any unusual magic to stop scrying. Not that it meant much; the diary had somehow eluded his Arcane Hearing, something that he had no idea how. His Arcane Hearing was an interpretation of the magic around him. You needed to alter the very magic of something to hide its nature. A few concealing wards did that, but the fact that it was anchored to an artefact and that the magical camouflage was able to adapt in real time, was something Harry had never heard of. The fact that an Adolescent Tom Riddle was able to do it was very impressive and disturbing. It definitely raised his threat level by a few notches.
Alas, there was nothing he could do about the diary now. He was at a dead end, and his next chance would be at the Hogwarts Express when the diary first crosses the wards. The shock would hopefully disrupt the concealing enchantment, and Harry would be able to find it.
But in the event that he fails, he needs to figure out a way to survive the Basilisk, or whatever else was in the chamber. That's not mentioning the Riddle shade. He needed to figure out how to survive the Basilisk's glare, before even thinking about anything else. It was too dangerous for him.
But what was the basilisk glare in the first place? How did it work? Harry needed a way to neutralize it and to do so, he needed to understand it. According to the stories indirect eye contact with a basilisk caused petrification, not instant death. Harry sincerely hoped that it was still the case, especially for the sake of the children at Hogwarts. Yeah, petrification was preferable to death.
Assuming that this was the case, then the basilisk's sight can be distorted by reflections, weakening it. However, the interesting thing was the eye contact. If it was some sort of magical invisible killing beam, then meeting its eyes wouldn't have mattered. Honestly, it reminded Harry eerily of Legilimency. A powerful and unrestrained mental attack in a single burst could explain the instance of death, and how it can be weakened with reflections. But it wouldn't really explain the petrification when looking indirectly. They weren't mental, according to the stories, people were physically petrified and needed a Mandrake draught to go back to normal. However, one saying remained in Harry's mind. The eyes were the windows to the soul. Was a basilisk's glare use some sort of soul magic attack?
It would make sense, but if that was the case, it would be very bad news. Soul magic was known to be undocumented, and even then, the texts that remained were very forbidden. Harry sincerely hoped that this theory was wrong.
Harry let out a deep sigh. What he would give to just leave this place behind and go to another school. He would miss his friends, but at least he would be safe from the insanity that was magical Britain. Alas, with him being technically a ward of the ministry, he needed their permission to change schools, and well, considering how patriotic and proud British wizards were, that was very unlikely. It might even get people asking questions about his guardians and his place of residence, something that he was hoping to avoid as much as possible. He was not ready to risk his freedom for a very faint hope of leaving the country. Maybe after getting his OWLs, he could apply for early emancipation and leave this place but that was years away, so he was stuck with the perilous environment that is Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The Potter scion was so preoccupied with his thoughts, that he didn't notice someone sitting next to him, "Well, what would make someone as young as you have such deep thoughts, Mr. Potter."
Harry stiffened and looked at the man who had sat down, only to be faced with a pair of sharp, yet amused, penetrating steel grey eyes. The man sitting next to him was fairly old. He felt like he was a soldier of some sort, even if he didn't really have any scars. He had this air to him, this aura. His magic was very well controlled, but Harry could tell with his Arcane Hearing that its nature was mostly destructive. This was a man to be wary of, that was for sure.
Then he registered what the man said. He didn't use his last name in his adult form. How had the man known, "I'm afraid that my name is Evans, Harry Evans. You must be mistaken, Mr.…"
The man let out a shark like smile and answered, "Arcturus Orion Black. And I am not mistaken. You might be able to fool most people, but this ageing potion makes it even more obvious to anyone who knew your father. I can even see my sister Dorea's cheekbones and nose somewhere. Don't try to deny it, you look like a small clone of my nephew."
Harry stiffened. To be perfectly honest, he didn't know what to do with the situation before him. He hadn't really researched the Black family much, since most of them were either dead or in Azkaban, and from their reputation, he should try to avoid them as much as possible. But he knew that they were powerful, magically and politically. He couldn't really risk the ire of a family like that, especially one that is famously known for its curses.
Choosing to just come clean instead of insulting the man's intelligence, the Potter scion raised his hand to shake the man's own, "Fine, Harry Potter. I'm happy to see you."
"Good, at least you're not an idiot," the Black Patriarch responded, "I didn't come here to argue with a child, even one that's doing a surprisingly good job at convincing the world that he's an adult. I've been looking for you all summer. I even went to that loathsome muggle family of yours."
Harry stiffened for a fraction of a second before relaxing, "Calling them family would be a stretch, to be honest."
The man burst into laughter, "You really scared the crap out of them. I could practically smell their fear the moment you were mentioned. I obliviated them, of course, but it wasn't a really pleasant experience. At least you came out alright."
"Why are you here?" Harry blurted out. Yeah, sue him, While he was scared out of his mind, he was still curious as to why the man was looking for him specifically when the magical world had forgotten about him for years. He also wanted to get straight to the subject and leave.
"Well, like it or not, you have as much Potter blood as you do Black blood. And as a member of my family, I just wanted to meet you," the elder man answered.
"No, that's not it. You could have tracked me down years ago. You came to see me after my time in Hogwarts."
The man snorted, "At least the reports on your intelligence aren't exaggerated. Yes, I didn't look for you before, because as far as I am concerned, you weren't my problem. You weren't advantageous. Until that is, you showed your prowess in your magical studies. You became useful and I am not the only one who's going to try to use that. I'm just being blatant about it and making sure that you get out of it as much as I do."
"Still, you didn't answer. Why are you here?"
"I was one of the most renowned experts in curses in my time, boy. I have held the Black family high and raised my family name to new heights. Of course, my foolish sons and grandchildren ruined it by supporting that damnable fake Dark Lord and destroying whatever remained of my legacy. I chose to step down and retire with my lovely wife, and while I do not regret it, I'm sad to see what my family had been turned to. The truth is, with most of my descendants either dead or in Azkaban, I need to find an heir. There are a few candidates who are suitable to be the next head of the Black family. You have proven your worth in Hogwarts and, I just had to see it for myself. I have to say, so far, I am not disappointed."
Harry's answer was simply gaping at what the man had just revealed.
Chapter 69: To Walk With Death
14 August 1992, Diagon Alley
It took a few seconds for the Potter scion to recollect himself, "You want me to be your heir?"
"Oh, by the powers no," the Black patriarch responded with a snort, "I'm just here to get a measure of you, to see if you would be a good fit."
"And… What do you think?"
"Kid, the Black family headship is something that people have coveted for centuries. I never expected my family to implode the way it did when I stepped down and gave reigns to my son. Our family is old and very powerful. We have access to knowledge that has been lost many times over during the purges. Our family crest contains enough information about forbidden magics that could shake the very foundations of our world. We are the only family with a member that reached the very root of magic itself, something every mage worth wanted to achieve. Dark lords and Light lords alike have vied for our legacy, and we have protected it for thousands of years. I will not give away the legacy of my ancestors on a whim. I will test you; I will observe you day and night, and I will make my judgement. Should I find you unworthy, you will never see me again."
Harry stiffened and murmured, "The root of magic?"
The man chuckled, "You're curious. That's good, very good indeed. After centuries of research, it was concluded that magic has a source, an origin, outside of time and space. One of my ancestors long ago managed to uncover it and reach it for a fraction of a second, but the knowledge he had gained when he glimpsed at this mythical source was otherworldly. He became the first chronomancer, known nowadays as Kronos. He disappeared after a while, whether it was by choice or not, no one knows. But reports say that he was able to see multiple futures at once, change the very course of destiny, affect the fulfilment of prophecies, and so much more. He was the first Black, the creator of the first magical crest, even if it was filled with a pittance of his true knowledge. After the man disappeared, countless descendants tried to replicate his experiment but were barred from entry. Magic remembered the path he had taken and fixed it. This was the start of an arms race, the very purpose of every wizard and witch for thousands of years, reaching the mythical root of all magic and earning its blessing."
"But why isn't it a thing nowadays?" Harry couldn't help but ponder.
"Albus Dumbledore," the man's grey eyes were practically growing from the sheer hate he held for the man, "he destroyed our society without any of us noticing. We are meant to be explorers of the unknown. Our purpose is to experiment, to enhance our knowledge to allow the next generation to have a chance of reaching the mythical root. Slowly, with his reforms, he banned many fields of magic, he turned Hogwarts into a place where the study of new magic is not encouraged, and he turned our heirs lazy. I and like-minded individuals formed a group to oppose him, the Knights of Walpurgis. We fought him on the political scene and were partially successful in evading him. Of course, we failed to see the effect of his efforts on our heirs. And that damnable fake Dark Lord convinced them to join his camp after we retired. The Knights of Walpurgis turned into the Death Eaters, and well, no one was able to stop Dumbledore anymore. Our heirs had turned into nothing more than savages, slaves to their desire to cause pain and misery, and we stood aside helpless to stop it. Our heirs forgot what it meant to be wizards. To be a mage is to walk with death, and yet the entire magical world became content in wallowing in their mediocrity."
The man looked mournful at saying this. But some of his knowledge was terrifying. The very existence of Kronos as a true Chronomancer was very disturbing. Someone capable of affecting fate in any measure was scary, capable of seeing timelines and going back and forward in it, that was just ridiculous. Harry definitely didn't know anything that could frighten him this way. Although the existence of a root of magic had a lot of connotations. If it was outside of Time and Space, then how did Kronos reach it in the first place? And if magic originated from outside the physical world, then how did it spread? And if it could remember and block the last intrusion, did that mean that there was sentience to magic?
Arcturus Black seemed to be amused at Harry's pondering expression, "I see it now. You're not like the other children, are you? You want to understand magic, to research it, not just use it. You're far above your peers, not because of some sense of honour or duty, but only because you're curious. Oh, you would have been wonderful if I had just gotten to you when you were younger. I would have raised you as a proper mage, with proper education, instead of the muggle nonsense you had to endure. You were able to catch up rather easily. If you continue down this road, I can see myself choosing you."
Harry hesitated for a moment, before answering, "But I can't hold the Black crest. I have one of my own. And you will know that there is no way a body can handle two crests at the same time."
The man's eye widened, "Huh, the Potter crest. It's surprisingly picky with its holders. Charlus told me that it practically refused him, outside a few potions and a few battle spells. Although he could have been lying, the details of magical crests were very private family matters. Although, for some reason, your grandfather did loathe Grindelwald with a passion, enough to give away a fortune to help finance the campaigns against him. I had never seen him as afraid nor as dedicated as he was in the war. And even afterwards, he was still wary of Dumbledore, the man who killed Grindelwald who he fought with a passion. Your father, on the other hand, refused to unlock it, and so did Sirius to prove some sort of point to his mother. It's why they were called blood traitors. They refused their legacy, choosing to listen to the seductive words of their headmaster. But let's not speak ill of the deceased. I had hoped that you wouldn't have unlocked yours, but it is no matter. You can have the headship and have the crest stay dormant until you pass it on to one of your children. I only wish that you secure my legacy."
Harry hummed, "Out of curiosity, who are the other candidates?"
"There are a few scattered all over Europe, but I wish that my legacy remains in the country that we helped build. I will not reveal them, just I will not reveal your candidature to them, to keep things fair, and avoid sabotage."
Huh, understandable, but from what he could remember, Draco Malfoy was definitely a candidate, considering he's the man's great grandson. However, while the boy did have some potential, he was a bit too arrogant and self-assured to be handed away such a rich legacy. Maybe after he grows up and matures with the difficulties of life, he will be able to handle it. Longbottom could technically be a candidate, with his great grandmother being a Black, but he was Dumbledore's puppet, and the Black Patriarch would probably rather let his family legacy die than leave it at the hands of the headmaster. The Weasleys were out, of course, except maybe Bill, who was a very good curse breaker, if the stories were right. But he was too old to be given a new magical crest. After all, the preliminary magical maturity at thirteen was the deadline for getting a magical crest.
Still, Harry was fascinated with the concept of the root of all magic, and that was enough to make this conversation worthwhile. The Potter scion wanted to reach it. His main goal in life was to discover the mysteries of magic, and what better mystery was there than its very source? He needed to research it further, and also take a deeper look at his own magical crest. Yeah, he didn't know how his own irregular crest would react to a new one, even if it was dormant.
From the sound of it, Harry's grandfather had a very weakened version of the crest, which made him get a few potions out of it, but also a deep wariness towards Dumbledore and Grindelwald, the very instinctive wariness that Harry feels whenever he thinks of the headmaster. Did he know that they were hunting the Deathly Hallows, and thus their family was in danger? Oh, how Harry wished he could meet the man.
There was something missing, though, Sirius Black was dead. That wasn't supposed to happen according to the stories, and it was good that he had clocked it now instead of being surprised by it later, "What happened to your grandson, Sirius? And what do you know about the fire that killed my parents?"
The man's eyes turned mournful, "He died in the same fire as your parents did. After he ran away from his harpy of a mother, your grandparents took him in. After the dark lord hunted them down and killed them, they joined Dumbledore's order to fight him. Your father practically emptied his vault financing their campaign, and Dumbledore took advantage of that hatred. I don't know much about what happened in Godric's Hollow, only that it was a very large Death Eater attack that was targeted at your family. Sirius was fighting side by side with your father for hours, repelling Death Eaters, but they were being overwhelmed. Dumbledore was nowhere to be found, probably trying to deal with the aftermath of the Dark Lord's defeat at the hand of the Longbottom boy. Your mother was nowhere to be found, but after your father and Sirius died to a killing curse at the Lestrange's hand, the fire appeared from your bedroom, and disintegrated the entire village, with only you as the remaining survivor of the carnage. No one knows where that fire came from, or how it even worked. It wasn't even hot, it just consumed everything it touched. The Unspeakables have been trying to figure that one out for years, but no amount of scrying or divining could see anything past that. The few who used a time-turner either couldn't get inside the village, and those who directly tried to get inside either didn't survive the trip or just died in the fire. That's all I know."
Huh, that was a lot more information than the pittance Dumbledore had given him. Now that he knows more about what happened, Harry expected to feel some sort of closure, but all he had were questions. If his father and his – probable – godfather had died before fire, then what happened to his mother? Why did she stay behind? Dumbledore did say that the fire had her magical signature all over it, but no one would be able to cast something like this fire at just over twenty years of age. Lily Potter was a brilliant witch, but this was something that still baffles the Unspeakable. So, what happened?
The man sitting at his table seemed to age slightly, "I'm sorry for not getting involved in your life. I had lost a grandson, a granddaughter, and a nephew to this fire. It was so soon after the loss of my wife, Dorea's death, and Regulus' disappearance that I just decided to leave it behind for a while. I am glad you grew up into the man you are now, but still, to make amends, I'm offering you my help slightly. While I think you're happy with your living conditions, and the freedom it provides, I will fight on your behalf if you are caught. I will do my best to be your guardian if the ministry ever catches wind of your living situation. Is there anything else in particular that you need?"
Harry's eyes widened at the man's help. He didn't trust him, but he was grateful for the man's offer of assistance when it came to his living conditions. While he wouldn't want to be formally under a stranger's mercy, if it protected him from Dumbledore, then it would be worth it. Still, he was happy where he was, and he had a backup plan in case he was caught. That was a relief. But when thinking about what was probably going to happen the following day, he had the opportunity to get an advantage. The Potter scion took a breath and answered, "I need everything you have on Basilisks."
Chapter 70: Back Home
1 September 1992, King's Cross Station
Harry walked around King's Cross station while earning odd looks from the passersby. He could understand it, he was lifting up his trunk which was bigger than he was, as if it was nothing. It probably looked odd seeing a twelve-year-old child walking by himself in a train station while holding a giant trunk that looked more like an antique than any modern accessory.
Although Harry did buy this trunk, not because of how it looked, but because of its practicality. It was something that he had noticed, the less processed anything was, the better it could handle magic and the easier it is enchanted. It was probably why wizards and witches still used parchment and quills. It wasn't really about sticking to traditions, but it was simply easier to enchant a quill than a pen, and it was easier to enchant parchment than paper. Although, the Japanese have special scrolls that are very efficient in holding runes, only their own. They were very secretive people, the Japanese, and Harry ached to visit this civilization. They used magic so differently over there, and he wanted to figure it out as well.
Well, as for Harry's trunk, it was made of wood and covered with leather. If it wasn't enchanted, it would have probably collapsed under the weight of the hundreds of books and small knickknacks that he bought over the summer. Having the featherlight charm and a basic expansion charm added in was already proving to be worth the price. He would have had to drag that thing around the station.
He passed by the entrance to the Hogwarts Express and entered the train. He had already let Hedwig fly to the castle since he knew how much she hated being cooped up. He sat down in an empty compartment and decided to continue reading one of the books Arcturus Black had loaned him. The man really went above and beyond. Outside of widening his eyes at the request, the man simply gave him a dozen books that pertained to Basilisks. Blacks really were something else if he didn't really mind giving a child a book on weapons of mass destruction.
Well, at least there was nothing on the creation of Basilisks, because that would be very irresponsible. Or maybe he just didn't have any books on it. Either way, Harry started understanding slightly how Basilisks worked, even if its glare was still subject to a lot of controversies. Well, the venom, outside of being very poisonous, was designed to destroy the structure of any magic it touches. If it touches a wizard, it will slowly dissolve their magic circuits, something that was agonizing for the accounts. Phoenix tears could theoretically counteract it since they promote the generation of magic, outside of healing, of course, although the outcome would still be uncertain as the two substances would not really disappear but continue to fight each other for the rest of the mage's life.
Now, unfortunately, the basilisk's glare was widely considered to be soul magic. So, Harry was right on that part, but no one was ever able to study them properly, since, you know, you either kill them or you're dead if you look at them. What the Basilisk hunters did was use goggles enchanted to reflect what they saw multiple times, which made them slightly resistant to the stare, to a point. After ten seconds of consistent eye contact, they were still petrified, but at least it gave them enough time to look away when the King of Serpents was attacking.
Of course, the Rooster's crow thing was a hoax. It did cause agonizing pain to young Basilisks, and could even kill hatchlings, but to an adult, it was like a particularly annoying voice, and they became aggressive towards anything near the rooster. Apparently, it was theorized that somehow, the ritual used to create Basilisks involved roosters somehow, probably as a training method when they were younger.
Still, Harry had some trouble understanding some of the theories behind the glare, and he'll have to focus a lot to counteract them. The refraction thing was a good initial idea, but he would rather be immune than only give himself ten seconds to run away.
Barely fifteen minutes later, with a huffing Tracy and Daphne came into the compartment. Harry smiled and commented, "You're late."
"We wouldn't have been late if it wasn't for those useless Lockhart books weighing down our trunks. Seriously, why would anyone need that many books," Daphne replied with some bite in her voice.
"Hey, Lockhart's books are not useless," Tracy protested weakly. The brunette shivered at the piercing glare her blonde friend gave her.
Harry, on the other hand, snorted, "Tracy, I'm not going to argue with you, but there isn't a single spell in any of the books, or any theories. They're adventure books that have no place in any educational institute outside of entertainment. But why didn't you just buy enchanted trunks? They're very handy."
The brunette glared at him, "Because they're too expensive and our parents don't trust us with something that costs hundreds of Galleons. Just because you can buy whatever you want doesn't mean that we all can as well."
Daphne nodded and sat down at the seat next to Harry. Soon afterwards, Blaise joined them and started regaling them of his trip to Italy. Halfway through the story, Daphne stiffened as the Hogwarts Express started moving, "Curious."
The dark skinned boy gave her a dirty look for interrupting his story, "What's so curious?"
"I didn't see Longbottom or Weasley on the platform. Usually, he's swarmed by photographers and admirers since people know where he's going to be."
Tracy simply shrugged, "Maybe he just took the floo to avoid people swarming the Express. But I did see the Weasley twins when I got up, so maybe you just missed Ron?"
Daphne nodded, but Harry, on the other hand, stiffened. He had forgotten about the Dobby situation and the fact that Longbottom was probably stuck on the other side of the barrier. The Potter scion sincerely hoped that he wouldn't follow his counterpart from the stories and break the Statute of Secrecy instead of just flooing to Hogsmeade or contacting his grandmother. That would just be ridiculous. Although, if by some miracle, he does end up going to Scotland in a flying car, that would be hilarious.
"What are you smiling about," Daphne asked, having noted his small, amused smile at the thought of Longbottom flying to Hogwarts in a car.
"Just an amusing thought. I really can have an overactive imagination," Harry remarked.
Blaise shook his head at the last Potter's eccentric behaviour and spoke up, "Although, Longbottom has been really popular since last year."
Harry frowned, "I don't remember people really liking him outside of his house."
"Oh, I mean because of the House Cup," Blaise answered, "Slytherin has been winning it for years, and the moment he gets here, Longbottom snatches it. Even if Dumbledore practically handed it to him on a silver platter, it didn't really matter. The other houses are overjoyed that we didn't win for once. I heard an upperclassman in Hufflepuff saying that she's glad that we just didn't win again."
The Potter scion shrugged, "Jealous and envy are very human traits. People will always look to others to see what they do not have."
Afterwards, the discussion moved to the absolute nightmare that was Binns' class and what Lockhart's own classes were going to be like. Harry was adamant that either the man would keep to theoretical work for the upper years and would involve his books somehow in the lessons to justify requiring the students to buy them. Tracy, however, was resolute that he picked the book for their practical applications and that he was going to set up an obstacle course with scenarios from the book, while he would teach them applications of spells that they already knew.
Honestly, it wasn't a bad shout, but considering who was teaching them, Harry didn't expect much from the blonde ponce. The man was a performer, an actor, but he had no qualifications outside of his stories. He wasn't trained as an Auror, he wasn't trained as a Hit-Wizard, hell, he wasn't even a dueler. As far as his books are concerned, one day, he just decided to start going on adventures. The average Hogwarts graduate would die horribly, or at least be mutilated without having the proper training to fight dark creatures and dangerous wizards. His narrative was just unlikely. The only way the Potter scion could see his narrative working would be if Lockhart was some sort of prodigy who hid his talents in school for some reason and wasn't deemed to be particularly remarkable to be recruited by the Unspeakables or the Aurors and just decided to go on random adventures all over the world and just write books about them.
Still, the bickering continued until the sun went down and Harry saw that they just gone past Hogsmeade. He could feel his Arcane Hearing note the proximity to the Hogwarts wards and excuse himself, "Sorry, I have to go somewhere."
Harry practically ran out of the door and waited for the Diary to be overwhelmed by the wards. As expected, barely two minutes later, Harry could feel the same abominable feeling he caught in Flourish and Blotts. At least that confirmed that the Diary was in fact in the train.
The young Slytherin was following the quickly fading song of the abomination. It was far faster at adapting than it was in Diagon Alley. Was it because Riddle was already familiar with the wards? He had to have taken the book to the school after turning it into his Horcrux.
Still, Harry ran from compartment to compartment, desperate to get closer to the cursed diary and not risk his fellow students' lives. He lost count of how many people he trampled on, trying to get to what seemed like the end of the train. By the time he was almost there, the song had faded into nothing, having adapted to the castle wards. Harry knew that he was so close, that he was barely more than a few compartments away.
Frustrated beyond belief, he punched the compartment door. A young girl with long blonde hair and protuberant silver eyes opened the door to her compartment and gave him an odd look.
"Hello," the girl spoke up.
"Hello," Harry parroted back.
"Why were you hitting the compartment?" the girl asked with a dreamy tone. That girl was weird.
"I was just angry about something," Harry responded.
"Oh, I thought you might have been hunting Wrackspurts. They're very tricky buggers. I think I saw one around here…"
"No," Harry answered, "I was just angry."
"Oh, that's a shame. I would have liked it better if you were fighting the Wrackspurts. I have seen a lot of people around with infections. They're so full of negative thoughts. Oh, I haven't even introduced myself. My name is Luna Lovegood, what's yours?"
Oh, that makes a lot of sense now. Luna was coming to Hogwarts this year, "Harry Potter. You're a first year, right?"
She nodded with that weird, dreamy look on her face and Harry continued, "If you need anything, let me know. You seem like a good person."
"You're a very kind boy, Harry Potter. Don't lose that. The world needs more kind people."
"That it does, Luna Lovegood. That it does."
Harry turned and left the compartment, oddly relaxed. He was still frustrated beyond belief for not finding the Diary, but he had a lead now. He had isolated the possible culprit to the compartments he hadn't visited yet, which were around a tenth of the total ones. Having stopped being frantic, Harry walked around the following compartment, making sure to note the faces of every single person he saw. One of them was the one being possessed by Tom Riddle, after all. He didn't really know all of them, outside of a few familiar faces he had seen in the Great Hall a few times, whose names still escaped him.
He might have lost a chance at getting the Diary, but at least, he didn't come back empty handed. There was still the possibility of stopping Riddle before anyone died. When he came back to the compartment, he was oddly smiling. He barely even batted an eyelash at the Thestrals pulling the carriages to the school. They were oddly beautiful in a dark sort of way. Alas, he was back at Hogwarts, and he couldn't wait to see what would happen next.
Chapter 71: The Game is On
1 September 1992, King's Cross Station
Harry stared mostly at the Thestrals in silence as they slowly trotted towards the castle. It wasn't as beautiful as the scenery from the lake the previous year, but it was still relaxing, in an odd sort of way, and it gave him some time to think.
Hogwarts, on average, was made up of roughly three hundred students in the castle, that's from first years to seventh years. It was a bit low, but it was logical since Voldemort's war practically wiped out a generation, and the survivors didn't really want to risk having children. The number of students should risk in the next few years, a baby boom occurring in the safety of a post-war magical society.
That number was of course outside of apprentices and journeymen who often visited the castle for some obscure book or to ask one of the professors about a subject or another. Knowing that the diary was in the train, the chance of a seventh-year student being its holder is quite rare, since they tend to apparate to Hogsmeade. It would be possible, but very unlikely, and there was still the risk that someone would be intelligent enough to realize that the diary was odd. Of course, Harry wasn't really holding his breath.
Removing the 40 NEWT students, it ends up with 260 students in all, and considering that Harry had covered all the compartments but the ten, statistically, he would have twenty-six suspects, which he would round it up to thirty, but that's assuming that the train was equality divided and that was just unreliable.
Also, There was also the fact that a compartment couldn't hold more than six people and that they were resistant to expansion charms. Yeah, a student almost blew himself up a few years back for trying to fit in more people. Now, that gives a maximum of sixty students, which was a lot, but better than three hundred.
Harry did his best to memorize the faces of the people in the last compartments. One of them was full of Slytherin upper years. Harry recognized the Burke twins and a girl that sneered at him. Her name was Selwyn, maybe? He wasn't sure, but it was probably not them; Malfoy wouldn't risk people who had family in his pocket. If they're caught, his political party would take a big hit in both reputation and support.
Another had a gaggle of first years, four to be exact. They didn't have any house crest on their robes, so they weren't sorted yet. They were two boys and two girls and a Ravenclaw prefect, Penelope Clearwater, was reassuring.
There was another compartment of Slytherin Purebloods later, and then one with Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson, and Alicia Spinet. Harry had recognized them from the Quidditch matches. They seemed to be yelling at a boy, Cormac McLaggen, who was in Harry's duelling club.
Thankfully, a few of the following compartments were empty, but there were two filled with Hufflepuffs in Harry's year. Hannah Abbot and Susan Bones were in a compartment together, and Zachariah Smith and Justin Finch-Fletchley were also in one of their own. And of course, there was also Luna Lovegood who was in a compartment on her own. It was a shame because she was a lovely girl. And finally, there was a compartment with Cho Chang who was talking animatedly with her friend Marietta Edgecombe.
The Potter scion noticed that none of the Weasleys were there, meaning that his elimination of Ginny as a suspect in Diagon Alley was somewhat correct.
Honestly, Harry didn't think he had forgotten anyone, but he'll do his best to try to remember. But as for now, he had a list of suspects. Removing the Slytherin that wouldn't make any sense for Malfoy to frame them, there was Luna Lovegood, Cho Chang, Marietta Edgecombe, Susan Bones, Hannah Abbot, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Zachariah Smith, Angelina Johnson, Katie Bell, Alicia Spinet, Cormac McLaggen, Penelope Clearwater, and the four firsties. That's sixteen suspects. The end of the train must have been quite a bit emptier than the rest.
Of course, there was still the possibility that someone had left the diary in their trunk and moved to another compartment, but that was unlikely. Tom Riddle wouldn't have wanted someone to lose his diary accidentally, or to just forget about it at the bottom of a trunk, there has to be a compulsion to keep it closed, and that means that it was probably one of those students. Still, the Potter scion needed to keep his options open and not get any tunnel vision.
His thoughts were interrupted by Daphne hitting him in the shoulder, "What are you staring at?"
Harry just noticed that he spent the entire ride thinking while staring at the Thestrals, "Just looking at the Thestrals, beautiful creatures, very misunderstood. Most people think they're bad omens."
The blonde looked concerned, "What are you talking about, Harry? There's nothing there."
"No, they're pulling their carriages," He explained, "however, they're invisible. There's a very specific condition that would allow you to see them."
"And what is it?" Tracy asked, curious.
"You must have seen Death," the young Potter simply answered.
Honestly, the implications that Harry could see Thestrals were groundbreaking. Harry had never seen anyone dying, outside himself that is. Even then, he had read of a few reports of people who still couldn't see them after they had seen someone die. They had refused the concept and lost themselves to the grief of madness. The truth is, you need to accept the very concept of Death to see the Thestrals, to understand the finally of it, and Harry, well, he knew exactly what the emptiness of Death entailed, and it seemed that this was enough.
Harry's answer must have made his friends uncomfortable since they just stayed silent until their carriage like the others passed two great wrought-iron gates with large columns and winged boars on top of them, looking a bit ridiculous by the posture they were represented. The coach accelerated, as the towers, walls and turrets of Hogwarts grew more and more imposing from the tiny window available. When it came to a halt, they came out and found themselves directly in front of the entrance.
Harry led the group, climbing up first the stairs which guided them into the castle itself and when they passed the huge oak front doors, the cold disappeared in an instant, proof of the magic existing in the school. They did not stay long in the Entrance Hall, as the crowd of incoming students was growing without sign of interruption. Entering the Great Hall, they all went to the Slytherin table and sat down.
Around fifteen minutes later, Professor McGonagall opened the door to the Great Hall, showing the firsties towards the sorting hat. The damn hat started to sing rather horribly. You'd think after hundreds of years doing this, he'd know how to hold a tune or something, but it was as aggravating as usual. When this affront to music was happening, Harry made sure to pick out the faces of his suspects during the sorting. The first was Colin Creevey who was then sorted in Gryffindor, followed by Ethan Glover who was sorted in Hufflepuff. Alice Morris was sorted in Gryffindor and Angela Smith in Ravenclaw. Of course, Luna Lovegood was also sorted in Ravenclaw, having spent the longest under the hat with that same dreamy look on her face, although Ginny Weasley took almost that long to be sorted in Gryffindor.
Harry recognized the four students that Clearwater was talking to in the Hogwarts Express. Colin Creevey, Ethan Glover, Alive Morris, and Angela Smith. These were his main suspects. They were obviously Muggleborns; their amazement at everything magical was rather obvious. Malfoy would have an easier time tricking some ignorant young muggleborn than a child born in this world and aware of its dangers.
The rest of the feast went as expected. They ate, and then Dumbledore started his yearly announcement, saying that the Forbidden Forest was, well, forbidden, and he announced Gilderoy Lockhart as the Defense Professor as if it wasn't in the Daily Prophet for weeks straight. The funniest one was the speculation on whether the celebrity would be able to break the 'alleged' defence curse and save the school. It was funny, imagining the ponce trying to break a curse that Voldemort, at the height of his power, put on the position. Of course, The teenage female students, being well, normal teenagers, kept sighing at the sight of the admittedly handsome celebrity. This would get annoying really quickly.
Of course, the aged headmaster was starting to say something about Quidditch tryouts, when a loud bang appeared, and the enchanted ceiling showed a flying car, falling from the sky erratically. The entire room watched, gaping, as the car kept going to the other side. Ten seconds later, an enormous crashing sound reverberated across the castle.
Damn, Harry had forgotten about Longbottom and Weasley getting a flying car. Why the hell didn't they just floo to Hogsmeade or something? It wasn't that hard. In the stories, Harry's counterpart in the stories had the excuse that he didn't know much about the magical world, but Longbottom and Weasley had lived here all their lives. Was Longbottom even visited by Dobby like Harry's counterpart in the stories? Harry didn't know and honestly, he didn't care. He decided to stop bothering himself with Longbottom and his little gang. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. He definitely wasn't going to rely on the boy who lived to kill a fucking Basilisk out of sheer dumb luck. He wasn't going to rely on the story.
He had reflected during the summer, and he realized that for all his thoughts of dismissal, he was still attentive to the boy who lived's activities. Maybe it was because of the stories, or maybe it was because Harry was curious about what Longbottom would do differently. But the encounter with Quirrell taught Harry to throw the stories out of the window and stop relying on them too much. This was real life, and in this life, he had nothing to do with Longbottom.
Still, breaking the statute of secrecy this openly and coming to school on a flying car – which was illegally enchanted – was something that Harry had to notice. Honestly, Harry was sure that if it was anyone else, especially an adult, they would have been arrested and sent to Azkaban. If it was proven to be a malicious act of actively revealing the magical world to the muggles, then they could even be executed. Yeah, the enforcers of the Statute of Secrecy weren't particularly merciful and didn't take any bullshit. Fortunately for the two idiots, Longbottom was a nationwide celebrity and would probably get a slap on the wrist, and some bad publicity, of course.
The entire room unfroze when Dumbledore practically ran out of the Great Hall radiating anger and worry, followed by half the faculty. And of course, the room turned into a cacophony of noise.
Tracy looked at them with wide eyes, "Did that just happen?"
Blaise nodded, looking just as stunned, "Wanna bet they get away with it?"
"That's a sucker's bet and you know it," Harry replied.
A first-year girl who had sat next to him after being sorted, Harry didn't really remember her first name, but she was a Yaxley, asked meekly, "Is this normal?"
Harry snorted and raised his goblet filled with his coffee, "Welcome to Hogwarts kid. I hope you survive the experience."
Chapter 72: Of Mysterious Traps
2 September 1992, King's Cross Station
Harry woke up far later than usual and he knew that he wouldn't be able to have his daily Occlumency lesson and get to class in time. He was still exhausted because of the train ride, and the nightmares didn't help. The Potter scion didn't know if he was back at the castle or something, but that night, he dreamt of Voldemort looming over him, sending a killing curse his way.
The young Slytherin looked around and saw that most people were still asleep. What did he expect? It was still seven in the morning, and most students had spent months waking up far later than that. Choosing to simply clear his head, Harry took out a book in the common room and started reading it. It wasn't even an academic one; it was a fiction book which was a guilty pleasure of his. Yeah, he liked reading about adventures and such, and the authors in the magical words are very dramatic, which was something that he didn't think he would like but quickly learned to enjoy.
Although Harry would have rather been exploring the Room of Hidden Things instead. Yeah, Harry did his best not to remove anything from it with Voldemort possibly being in the castle. The man probably had wards that Harry didn't even know existed near the Diadem. Yeah, he didn't want to accidentally trip them and make the man start panicking for one reason or another.
Well, now his younger version was here, not him, meaning that he shouldn't really be notified by the wards. He was a fraction of a soul without any magic which wouldn't really make him a living being to any magical protection.
Harry's musings were interrupted by a pitiful groan and the sight of a familiar brunette with messy hair dropping herself on the couch next to him.
"Good morning, Tracy," Harry cheerfully stated.
The girl just replied by groaning miserably. "Don't take it personally," another familiar voice replied in her stead, "She's been like that all morning."
Harry turned and saw the familiar figure of Daphne who was immaculately dressed and didn't look worse for wear.
"Well, at least you're actually awake," Harry said.
The girl pouted, "You're supposed to say that I'm beautiful, Harry."
"Of course, you are, Daph. Now, do you know if Blaise is still sleeping?"
"Yeah, I tried to wake him, but he told me to get some breakfast without him."
Harry simply shrugged, "Fine, I guess we should get going so that we could eat before classes start."
They all walked in silence to the Great Hall. Honestly, Harry was kind of hungry, but when they arrived, the entire room was busy staring at Longbottom. His crashing arrival the previous day was the talk of the school. For some reason, people seemed to admire him for it.
It honestly confused Harry immensely. The boy had broken laws that would have gotten most people arrested and possibly in Azkaban. He had broken the Statute of Secrecy out of pure stupidity and negligence. The same Statute that happened to be one of the globally sacred laws in the magical world. People were taught since the moment they could talk to not reveal the existence of magic and yet a national icon did this.
A soft hoot interrupted his thoughts when Hedwig came to perch on his shoulder with a letter and his subscription to the daily prophet.
"Thanks, Hedwig, here have some," Harry spoke up while handing his companion a piece of bacon. The snowy owl nibbled on it and snugged into his face slightly before flying away once more.
Harry opened his letter first and saw that it was simply his timetable. Did everyone get their timetables this way, or was Snape just not bothered to give them face to face?
It didn't matter, only that while the organization was somewhat different, his practical lessons were still with the Gryffindor. There was actually a full-blown war between Longbottom and Malfoy because of this last year, and they have just left it as is? This was honestly getting ridiculous. And as expected, the front page of the daily prophet was a picture of Longbottom and Weasley in a flying car, breaking the statute of secrecy.
The Potter scion took a deep breath and decided to just continue eating. He wouldn't think about Longbottom, it just wasn't worth it. At least that was what he told himself until Tracy suddenly stiffened, "Look, Weasley got a Howler."
Remembering how the Weasley matriarch was yelling at her husband, Harry simply put his hands over his ears. Tracy gave him a confused look, "What are you doing?"
Of course, that was when the youngest Weasley boy decided to open the letter, whose volume was so high that a few people were pushed away by it. For a moment, most of the students were left reeling, as a roar of legendary proportions echoed in the Hall which was almost shaking. Molly Weasley really had a point to put across.
"—STEALING THE CAR, I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED IF THEY'D EXPELLED YOU, YOU WAIT TILL I GET HOLD OF YOU, I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH WHEN WE SAW IT WAS GONE —"
Dear lord, this woman had some lungs on her. Did she enchant the Howler to be extra loud? Or was she just so loud that the Howler was probably damaging the hearing of everyone in the vicinity? Hell, the implements and the plates were rattling, and the sound was echoed magically off the walls of Hogwarts. The poor redhead had practically sunk so low in his chair that only his crimson forehead could be seen.
"—LETTER FROM DUMBLEDORE LAST NIGHT, I THOUGHT YOUR FATHER WOULD DIE OF SHAME, WE DIDN'T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU AND NEVILLE COULD BOTH HAVE DIED —"
Honestly, this was public humiliation at this point. The Weasley boy, while annoying as hell, had a very fragile ego that the woman kept battering on with this howler. Harry started to pity the boy if he was perfectly frank. He didn't like it. However, the fact that the Weasleys just revealed that they were directly contacted by the headmaster reeked of favouritism. The woman must have been too angry to care for subtleties. It was understandable somewhat because if it wasn't for the fact that Neville was with him, Ron would have been expelled and probably arrested.
"—ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED — YOUR FATHER'S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, IT'S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT AND IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE'LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME."
A loud silence fell in the Hall, the children and teenagers still under the shock their eardrums had recorded in all its fury. The red envelope, which had dropped from Ronald Weasley's hand, burst into flames and curled into ashes. Everyone was just too stunned to react or do anything, really.
Of course, just as people started to talk, another Howler appeared at the Gryffindor letter, but this time, it was in front of Longbottom.
"NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM! NEVER I HAVE FELT SO ASHAMED OF BEING YOUR GRANDMOTHER! HOW DARE YOU STEAL A CAR AND BREAK THE STATUTE SO BRAZENLY. FRANK AND ALICE WOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOUR ACTIONS. WHAT YOU DID WAS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DANGEROUS AND I WILL HAVE NONE OF IT. WHEN YOU COME BACK HOME –"
Yeah, Longbottom wasn't spared from the humiliation as well. When the entire Slytherin house burst into laughter, Harry stayed silent.
Tracy had tears in his eyes, "That was the best thing that I've ever seen in my life."
Even the stoic Daphne was openly laughing, although she stopped when she noticed Harry's serious expression, "What's wrong Harry?"
"What happened the last time Longbottom was humiliated publicly?" he explained.
They both frowned in thought and the Potter scion decided to just give them the answer, "Remember the Quidditch match, the one that Snape was refereeing and that he lost badly. Do you remember what he was like afterwards?"
Both girls paled, "You're saying he's going to start attacking Slytherins again?" Daphne asked with visible concern in her eyes.
"I don't know, but what I do know is that our dear boy who lived has a very fragile ego. I only hope the professors will stop him or just keep him busy afterwards."
With that said, Harry decided to ignore Longbottom entirely and focus on the bigger problem at hand, the chamber of secrets. First of all, he needed materials to build his glare resistant artefact, but more importantly, he needed to eliminate a few of his suspects. They were too many. As far as he knows, he could only remove them by confirming their alibis during the attacks. But that was just too much of a risk to wait for a student to be hurt.
Wait a minute, Harry didn't need to wait until an attack, but until the chamber opened. Riddle has to make preparations before taking out the Basilisks, like making sure it's still there. Harry could make a ward alert him whenever the chamber opens. He already knew the entrance, and it's not like he's losing anything if he does it.
Choosing to take the initiative, Harry told his friends, "I need to get to the bathroom. I'll see you in a minute."
The young Potter slowly walked to the second-floor bathroom, home to the infamous Moaning Myrtle. Thankfully, the ghost didn't seem to be there. Harry walked towards the sink and using his Arcane Hearing heard a very subtle hissing. It was well hidden, Harry would give Salazar Slytherin that, but the obvious engraving of a snake kinda made it obvious.
Still, Harry was sure that this was the entrance, and just under the sink, Harry took out one of his engraving tools and put a small runic array underneath. When he touched it, the writing started to glow and just melt into the stone. The array was simple, it would simply send a pulse using his arcane hearing whenever it was moved in space, something that was impossible unless the sink itself was moving, which was what happened when the entrance was opened.
However, Harry wasn't done yet. He needed something else before it was useful. As far as he's concerned, what he's done is simply a warning system whenever the chamber is opened. Considering that the attacks were mostly random, Harry needed the location of most students. The Marauder's map would have been perfect right now, but Harry didn't even know if the thing was real, let alone if the Weasley twins had it. He certainly wasn't going to risk breaking into the Gryffindor common room. Common rooms were protected by more than just silly passwords.
The very design of the map didn't make sense. It was made in two ways, either it was hooked up to the wards somehow, or the Marauders somehow put detection charms that lasted for decades all over the castle. It was probably the wards since the detection charms wouldn't really have access to any student's name.
Dumbledore certainly wasn't going to let Harry mess with the castle wards. That left the detection charms. Yeah, Harry needed to somehow put on charms in the entrance of each common room, counting the number of people getting in and out, revealing if there's someone going out from any house just before the entrance to the Chamber opens. It would help focus on the house of the possessed victim.
Still, he had to do it at night or very early in the morning. As for now, he walked towards the greenhouses. He was almost going to be late for Herbology class.
Chapter 73: The Fraudulent Professor
2 September 1992, Hogwarts
Yeah, Harry needed to somehow put on charms in the entrance of each common room, counting the number of people getting in and out, revealing if there's someone going out from any house just before the entrance to the Chamber opens. It would help focus on the house of the possessed victim.
Still, he had to do it at night or very early in the morning. As for now, he walked towards the greenhouses. He was almost going to be late for Herbology class.
Well, Herbology wasn't all that bad. Honestly, Harry wasn't all that passionate about the field, even if he understood its utility. Herbology wasn't just the study and breeding of plants for use in potions, even if that's what it was used for nowadays. No, it was a study of nature. NEWT herbology students started to even learn a few druidic spells and a few rituals to promote plant growth. It was the only kind of ritual magic allowed in the castle, and in the country, really. Even Dumbledore couldn't ban them, only restrict them, as it would cripple potion production which was necessary in any magical society.
Magical plants could also be extremely dangerous and commonly used as weapons. Yeah, a herbologist Auror was terrifying. There was this professor called Mirabel Garlick over a century back who had somehow created a plant that fed on magical fire. During an attack on the school during the last Goblin rebellion, this simple plant was able to kill a dragon, by growing from the beast's flames and binding the creature, who ended up being strangled to death. Yeah, that woman was badass. It was also one of the main reasons Harry never dismissed the seemingly kind and upbeat Professor Sprout. She had a mastery of the subject, which means that she probably knew more than enough way to give anyone a long and torturous death.
Something that Lockhart seemed unaware of since he kept pestering the woman about the 'correct way to doctor a Whomping Willow'. Never mind that the tree was a creation of the Professor in the first place. Yeah, Harry was curious about the Professors a few times and used his nifty little spell to find any books authored by them, and yeah, Professor Sprout had written one on the properties of the plant that she had created. Yeah, that woman was terrifying, and Lockhart was actively insulting her prowess with his suggestions.
Thankfully the woman ignored the man and did not turn him into fertilizer for her Venomous Tentacula, and just started the lesson, although slightly less upbeat than usual even after the ponce left. Still, it was obvious that this year was going to be more interesting than the last, especially when they started the year with Mandrakes of all things, well at least they were very young so the most they could get was a headache or passing out. Yeah, this was a very dangerous plant that was actually used by certain hit-wizard teams specializing in Mandrakes.
Of course, they used younger ones because the risk to their allies and for collateral damage was high, but it was still relatively common to have a mandrake or two in a team. As for fully matured ones, they needed to be put in specialized rooms with hundreds of wards and enchantments negating any form of noise. Yeah, the buggers' cries could somehow break a few wards on their own. It was why transporting adult mandrakes was such a problem and made illegal in most countries. Portkeys and Apparitions could mess with the wards slightly, and a fraction of a second was all those plants needed to kill hundreds or even thousands of people. Even taking them while flying was risky because the enchantments wouldn't be as stable without an active anchor, like a warded farm. It was why most farms bought the things young and raised them themselves, which was what Hogwarts often did, but they returned the plants to a specialized farm outside of the country just before they matured.
Honestly, Mandrake farming was mostly done for Aurors and Hit wizards. Even if it was useful in terms of an antidote for transfiguration mishaps, it was too expensive to use instead of just finding another cure which would work just as well. Very few incidents actually necessitated Mandrake essence to be used in a potion, and considering how quickly it could be contaminated, it was done to order. The effects practically disappear in an hour, and you can't really apparate or use any magic near it or its effects will be diluted. The best practice was to raise a young mandrake from scratch and wait for it to mature. These victims are often not in critical condition, meaning that they could wait a few months before being treated.
Still, repotting angry baby looking roots was sort of fun, all things considered. Everything went fine except for Crabbe who had put on his earmuffs incorrectly and was knocked out the moment he took out his seedling.
By the end of the lesson, Harry left with a smile on his face, even if his friends were unhappy with touching dirt. That was until he realized that his next lesson was with Lockhart.
Harry grumpily walked out of the room and Daphne caught up to him, "What's got you all grumpy? You looked pretty happy in Herbology."
"Well, we have Defense Against the Dark Arts next," he explained.
"Ah, Lockhart. I still don't understand what you have against him. You weren't that fussed with Quirrell, and he was a pretty bad professor," Daphne responded with a questioning tone.
"Quirrell was a competent wizard pretending not to be one. I could tell with the way he cast his spells, and the way he spoke. He was a shit teacher, and he did try to kill me, but I could tell he knew what he was talking about. Plus, I was doing my best not to stay near him at any time. But Lockhart, I look at him and see a conman, who swindled his way into fame. I wouldn't really care about it if it wasn't the fact that he's supposed to teach us using fiction books, somehow."
"We'll see if he's worth it or not. If he's useless we could just self-study. I know you already do a lot by yourself," the blonde said.
"You're probably right. Alright, let's go catch up with Tracy and Blaise. They practically ran all the way there."
The Slytherin girl nodded, and they walked to the classroom. They stopped for a second in the courtyard to see Longbottom getting into a fight with Malfoy because someone wanted his autograph or something. Harry didn't particularly care and just went to the classroom, leaving Lockhart to deal with the mess. It was his duty as a professor after all.
Harry sat next to Daphne and took out the books that he was forced to buy. Honestly, he wouldn't have touched them with a ten-foot pole. They were all seated until Lockhart came back with a red-faced Longbottom, who was glaring at the man's back. Well, it seems that Lockhart was very good and hitting his nerves.
When the whole class was seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly and silence fell. He reached forward, picked up Parvati Patil's copy of Travels with Trolls, and held it up to show his own, winking portrait on the front.
"Me," he said, pointing at it and winking as well. "Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!"
He waited for them to laugh; a few people smiled weakly. "I see you've all bought a complete set of my books — well done. I thought we'd start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about — just to check how well you've read them, how much you've taken in —"
When he had handed out the test papers he returned to the front of the class and said, "You have thirty minutes — start —now!"
Harry looked down at his paper and read:
1- What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour?
2- What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition?
And on it went to:
54- When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be?
Yeah, Harry wasn't reassured in the slightest. He would have laughed if it wasn't depressing. It seems that the stories were right and that Harry would have to deal with fraud as a Defense professor.
He simply wrote whatever came into his mind first without really thinking about it. He already lost interest in the class. Fifteen minutes later, Lockhart collected their results and took a quick look at them. Of course, the man ruffled through the tests quickly before vanishing them with a wave of his wand like they were useless. Harry could tell that the spell was somewhat inefficient using his arcane hearing. It wasn't close to McGonagall or Flitwick's control, but it looked slightly better than the one from the seventh-year students he saw training for their NEWTs. It was an OWL spell, after all, but the wordless casting was somewhat impressive.
The man stood up suddenly with an intense look in his eyes, "What you've just shown me right now, is that you could memorize facts. It's nice and all, but what I don't understand is why you all kept reading the books when you realized that there were no spells in there and none of you questioned me about it. What I also don't understand is why none of you said anything about how romanticized everything was in there. Defence Against the Dark Arts is not pretty. When you're fighting dark creatures and dark wizards, you make mistakes, you get hurt, and you get a few people hurt, something that is oddly absent in my books. Because these books are made to entertain the masses, not to teach. At least, the version available to the public, that is."
Harry stiffened as the man kept speaking. What the actual fuck was going on? This was completely opposite to the stories. The Potter scion turned around and saw people watching him either in heartbreak or slight admiration.
The man played with his hair a bit and continued, "Which is why, the books I gave you are slightly different. As you probably know, buying a book with a Hogwarts letter entitles you to a discount on Flourish and Blotts. I asked them to set aside books for you that were slightly different."
The professor waved his wand and Harry could feel an enchantment being activated on the books, changing the content. He took a quick look and saw that each book was different. Not only did they contain the story, but there was a description of the spells used, how they were used, a comment on the tactics in each encounter, and most of all, it was real.
Again, this surprised the hell out of the young Slytherin. He hadn't really looked over the books. They often had enchantments to stop them from being copies and such. And Harry didn't really look that closely at Lockhart's books. He didn't even really read them, just skimmed them quickly for a couple of minutes. Still, he should have noted the difference.
"Now, you can start reading something a little more informative than the previous text. With that out of the way, let's get started with our lesson. And what better way to start than with a slight practical lesson? It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm and not scream as it might provoke them."
As the whole class held its breath, Lockhart whipped off the cover. "Yes," he said dramatically. "Freshly caught Cornish pixies."
People started chuckling to which the man snorted, "You think this is funny then? Do you think that something looking as significant cannot hurt you? The magical world is full of hidden dangers. Now, let me show you how unprepared you are."
With a flick of his wand, the cage opened, and pandemonium followed.
AN: Extra chapters for missing yesterday's upload. Enjoy.
- Location
- Madness realms
Lockhart got the book! Voldemort teaches again, let's hope his undying respect for student scholastic performance bears out and he waits until the end of the school year to really fuck things up so they all get a full years worth of classses.
Silveraith
Argent Phantasm
- Location
- Terra Atlantus
I still think it's Luna, far too convenient that she opened the train car door when they passed through the castle wards.
- Location
- America
Didn't she open the door because Harry hit it?