Kapitel 195: Hph79-87
Chapter - 79 : Rebirth
2 days ago
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Harry was carefully revising his opinions on what made for a successful Dark Lord. The two best examples he knew of, Voldemort and Dumbledore, had exhibited traits, to a greater or lesser degree, out of all four Houses.
Did they both have power? Yes. In fact, both were counted among the most powerful wizards of the age.
Did they both have knowledge? Yes, they did. Each was well acquainted with obscure or otherwise unknown bits of magic, rituals and so on, as well as less magic-oriented areas of knowledge like politics.
Both had glory, of their own sorts. Voldemort as the 'Heir of Slytherin' and Dumbledore as the 'Defeater of Grindelwald.'
They both had followers, and they both worked hard.
The difference seemed to be in the emphasis. Voldemort really liked power, and his whole focus was on gaining more of that for himself while denying it to others; while Dumbledore spent a fanatical amount of effort on hoarding knowledge the same way, so their types were still clearly evident.
If one were to contrast this with, say Gilderoy Lockhart, then one could see that while the former DADA professor had mastery of the secrets of one House sewn up, he really had accumulated an amazing degree of glory, he'd neglected the others quite badly. He knew nothing, had no personal power... although he had been working, rather successfully, on building up his fan club.
So, at most, Lockhart scored only half points on the Dark Lord contest.
Perhaps he needed another category? Because the fop really hadn't counted for much of a 'lord' of anything. A poser, yes. Annoying, yes, and influential, yes. Not much of a powerful force like your typical Dark Lord was, but still influential enough to be counted a player.
Lockhart could get people to do things, just not on the same sort of scale as one of the major players on that field like Dumbledore or Voldemort.
Yes. Harry was thinking that he really should reserve the term 'lord' for someone who had all of the basics covered - personal power, knowledge, a reputation, and the loyalty of others.
Actually, that kind of brought him up short, as he'd inherited one of the best and brightest reputations there was. His title 'Boy-Who-Lived' was one of the most far-reaching and influential out there. Even those who'd never heard of Dumbledore's defeat of Grindelwald knew about the boy who'd survived the killing curse. And, coming kind of hand in hand with that, was the fact that certain folks admired Harry enough to offer him a certain degree of loyalty.
So the Boy-Who-Lived had come into the magical world with as many basics covered as Lockhart; and the same basics, ironically.
Rather spooky, really.
Then Voldemort's soul fragment had provided the rest: the knowledge to make the most out of his personal power. Harry shuddered, actually kind of scared at that concept, thinking that he himself now scored high enough on his own personal charts to have entered the game on a big league scale.
Even if he was by far the most junior player in this three way war.
Still, he had to be grateful he had that much to call his own, as both the other major players had singled him out and individually targeted him for destruction.
Given an opportunity to strike an irreparable blow to the power of one of them (even if the man would still have plenty of power left over) Harry did not waste any time. When he left the tower with the real Trelawney they went out the nearest way that did not look immediately suspicious, and from there flew directly over to the heart of the Forbidden Forest, back to the pond with the Fairy Queen shrine.
Even as they landed, Harry felt quiet dread over the prospect of returning to the island at the center of that lake, and concluded that dread was a warning not to go back.
Come to think of it - they hadn't been invited back. Instead they'd been told to look for a potion on the outer shores of that small lake. So they did, quickly circling it together.
The clearing was just as packed as before. The trio had not been gone long and the creatures had no reason to leave, as there were just as many dangers outside the hedge as before. It would have been more efficient to split up and circle the lake with Trelawney going one way while he went the other. Doing that they could have traversed the distance in half the time. But Harry didn't dare risk it.
Dumbledore had a phoenix and their flame transport ability crossed all known wards and was undetectable by magical means. Since the bird had been used to deliver letters before, Harry could only assume that Dumbledore had put the same tracking charms on Fawkes as were used on post owls.
Harry did not have a phoenix familiar (nor, obviously, did Tom), so he could not say with any certainty what they could or could not do. So that meant they were in very real danger of Dumbledore simply appearing at any moment wherever they were, flame-transported by Fawkes.
Since that was a danger, distance was not much of a friend. So Harry was very relieved when, after traversing three-quarters of the lake's perimeter, they found a place where the boardwalk had been rerouted to leave a clear circle right on the shore of the pond. Dead center in this clear area was a golden vial, with a note attached.
As he and Trelawney (still in her disguise as Hermione, they not having stopped to change her back - if even there was a way for normal witches to counter polyjuice before the time ran out) ran toward the bottle Harry saw that it was not the container that was gold, that was merely glass. No, it was the liquid inside that was a solid gold color.
He snatched it up, half-afraid one of the many beasts around them would beat them to it, and instantly handed it off to Trelawney, saying, "Here, drink this!"
The teacher smiled at him out of Hermione's face, and Harry had an odd moment as she acted with total trust in him, just as his real friend would've. But before this attack of conscience could cause him any regrets Trelawney had already drunk the contents of the vial.
There came a vast anticlimactic moment when nothing happened.
Chapter - 80 : Rebirth Part - 2
Yesterday
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Harry blinked, as their only instructions had been to, 'Bring her to this pond, dose her with a potion you shall find on the shores when you return.' Already thinking that perhaps that was some remedy against the Headmaster scrying or finding her, or perhaps some potion to release her from his mental control and that they would have to take it from there, his brain kicked into gear and began planning for contingencies.
Harry's first series of letters sent on that trip where he'd taken Pettigrew to the Ministry for registration as a pet had been the opening salvos in a multi-stage process he'd planned for creating a support base and gathering supplies. Voldemort's memories had shown him how cruel the magical world could be, and so he'd begun to arrange a series of safe houses, refuges and materials stockpiles in preparation for a life on the run from muggle and magical authorities, in case that should ever prove necessary.
Only a heartbeat after having seen her drink the gold potion and had nothing happen, Harry was already plotting to go personally ram through one of those planned safe houses to completion, so he could store her there safe from the Headmaster's control, when Trelawney threw back her head and vomited forth a shaft of golden light straight up to the heavens.
Then her hair turned green, and her toes transformed into roots that began sinking themselves down in the soft ground beneath her. Harry realized, in an odd moment of introspection, that she was standing right at the center of the cleared space that the newly revised boardwalk circled around, as her limbs flung outwards and leaves sprung out from her fingertips.
Trelawney, still using Hermione's mortal face, smiled at him winningly just before her whole body morphed into a small tree, that quickly began shooting upwards as it reached for its full adult growth in seconds.
'White Oak', a dry, dispassionate corner of his mind remarked as he watched the transformation. 'The oldest of all Greek oracles, the shrine at Dodona, consisted of a holy oak. Though it never eclipsed the oracle at Delphi, many notable magical artifacts were constructed out of timber spirited away from Dodona - most notably the Argo, ship used by Jason and the Argonauts.'
"Your Queen was most generous to her," Firenze, the centaur who had helped him in his first year stepped up beside Harry.
'By turning her into a tree?' Harry thought. But he stifled that and aimed for a more diplomatic reaction to this unexpected company. "Well... Dumbledore ought to have a harder time kidnapping her now."
"This is really amazing!" Hermione's voice came from behind him. Harry spun around to see Hermione and Luna were there, just coming out from under invisibility and offering him smiles.
"Your future self offered us a pair of Time Turners and told us to spin back, that we didn't want to miss this - You were right." Hermione told him.
"Anyone want to clue me in? I seem to have missed the significance of this," Harry told them right back, earning a few startled glances.
It was Luna who answered. "You'd find out in a moment, when Sybil stepped forth from her new tree. Our Divination teacher is now a dryad, transformed by order of the Queen."
Hermione nodded happily, eyes still on the swiftly growing pure-white barked oak. "Yes! Do you recall what the Queen said to us? That adding extra of an element to an already living thing is one of the most terrifying, dreadful, and yet beautiful things possible in magic, and usually only seen in nymphs? Well, a dryad is a wood-nymph, infused with extra of the Earth element, just like naiads are especially strong with Water. I looked it up back at Hogwarts."
Firenze was nodding. "Oak, a symbol for strength and endurance. Truly she is blessed by your Queen."
Luna smiled, her own eyes still on the steadily growing tree. "A dryad's life is inextricably bound to her peculiar tree, and it is impossible for her to truly be destroyed so long as it, any tree descended from it, or any of its seeds, still exists." She turned an otherworldly gaze on Harry for a brief instant. "Even so, her tree represents her only weakness, so most dryads are careful to keep its identity a secret."
Harry blinked several times as he was fed information outside both Riddle's experience and his own, and he now understood how privileged he was being to watch this particular tree take form. Already plans for defending it had begun taking shape in his mind.
A sudden shower of acorns covered them as the tree bloomed and fruited in under a second, sending down a rain of seeds. Thousands of fairies acting under orders of the Queen, rushed forward to scoop up armfuls of them and sped on glowing wings off into the depths of the Forbidden Forest to hide in out of the way pockets and corners.
It would be impossible for even the most skilled and knowledgeable mage in the world to track them all, or find out where they had hidden every seed.
Harry frowned, almost petulantly, knowing there was no need for his rapidly burgeoning dryad defense plans now that she had so many seeds hidden all over. "Still, she's a tree."
The centaur now spared him a short glance. "A dryad can leave her state to become mortal at any time, all she must do is choose to do so. But once lost her immortality is gone forever. This is no prison that holds her bound, but a rare privilege not to be seen again for many lifetimes. The birth of a new dryad is as scarce an event as the birth of a new phoenix, instead of the rebirth of an old one."
"There are many similarities," Luna softly nodded. "If the physical body of a phoenix is destroyed it is instantly reborn from its ashes. Should the body of a dryad be destroyed, she is reborn out of her tree. And within the woods that bear her home, a dryad is as adroit and agile as any unicorn, making her almost impossible to catch unless she chooses to be caught. This, plus her immortality, places her forever beyond the Headmaster's control. Trelawney is now truly free."
After the shower of golden acorns, Trelawney stepped forth as a dryad - and she still looked, barring certain features like green hair, identical to the mortal form of Hermione.
Harry blushed. "Oops," he apologized. "I guess we could have waited for the polyjuice to wear off before doing this."
The true Hermione smirked. "All of the Headmaster's damage and meddling of her was removed, but the potions you gave her will never wear off. They were part of her when she changed, and not included in the Queen's removal program (which was aimed at the harm did her by the Headmaster), so they are now part of her forever."
"I hope you don't mind her sharing your appearance," Harry apologized.
"No," Luna smiled. "Her appearance is not the problem. It is the fact that you didn't let the Unctuous Unction wear off before you changed her."
"HARRY!" The world's newest dryad flung herself on the boy, covering him in hugs and kisses.
Chapter - 81 : Rebirth Part - 3
9 hours ago
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It was now unlikely that Dumbledore would ever find out what happened to his now-former Divination teacher, much less get her back. And even if he did find out her fate, she now possessed multiple layers of defense around her - she was in the hedged area around the shrine, so automatically powerful magics prevented creatures of darkness or those of ill will from penetrating that far. Yet even should his phoenix transport him past those wards she still possessed other defenses.
A dryad was far from helpless. She was not as unbeatable in her terrain as a naiad, but still possessed potent abilities if pressed. A dryad's senses of her surroundings were uncanny, and being virtually impossible to hit if she was dodging and immune to mind control as a fairy creature made her distinctly hard to catch, even should the Headmaster find her. But having satyrs in the woods made it so any nymph at all was engaged in a never ending game of hide and seek, so she'd get PLENTY of practice evading unwanted notice, and satyrs had some pretty potent abilities of their own for finding hidden girls. So it was safe to say that soon she'd become expert at using those natural abilities of hers, and catching her would be almost as hard as finding her, and both would be almost impossible if she did want to be found.
Frankly most nymphs only got caught when they got bored, and it would be a couple of centuries before Trelawney had to fear that. Then, having so many of her seeds hidden throughout the forest by the fairies also made it so she did not have to fear death, so most threats and traps were useless.
Not being able to either kill or control her left any potential enslaver of the new nymph extremely few options. And, as they quickly discovered, Sybil had kept her magical core through this transformation. Since her body, too, had been removed and replaced by a fey one, doubtless for that to happen the Queen had to have done something much like the teens had received, with her human magic core moved to and merged with her spirit.
That made her possibly the only dryad in the world able to cast spells as any witch could, and made her harder still to catch or control.
Harry, frankly, had to admit this defense of the oracle was better than any he might've arranged. His powers were all spells and tricks well known to the Dark Ravenclaw, even if Albus was as yet unappraised of the fact that Harry could use them. But this... turning her into a dryad was not something the Headmaster could just expect. It came out of left field and crossed enough boundaries of magic as to have been completely unpredictable.
The unknown or unknowable were the most difficult things to counter, and Dumbledore no longer had an oracle feeding him advice about secrets he could not pry into any other way. That left him to rely on mortal methods, and the only mortals to witness this were... not exactly mortal anymore. So long as the trio never spoke of this at Hogwarts or spoke of it to any human the secret should stay secret forever.
Well, forever might be pushing it, but a long time at any rate. Heck, as fast as Dumbledore knew most things, Harry'd settle for a couple of weeks - long enough to get Fawkes out from under his control; and without a phoenix to transport him past the defensive magic inherent in the hedge, Dumbledore ought to be all but helpless in any attempts to approach or regain her.
He'd still try to employ agents, of course. But the magic of this sanctuary denied access to any who would harm those already within, and well-meaning harm was still harm. So anyone acting on his orders ought to be hedged out, even if they did not know their actions would ultimately be used to harm her.
He'd still try to use proxies, because that was how he did most of his work, but tricking unknowing agents this deep into deadly dangerous woods so they could innocently stumble in here, past all the guardians, and do something that would be an advantage to him would be a difficult machination, which is not to say he wouldn't try, only that it would be a while before he'd succeed.
Actually, put in those terms, Harry himself would probably be the first patsy he'd try, as that was exactly the sort of thing the Headmaster had been using him for until now, and Albus wasn't aware that situation had changed.
Harry could even play along with that, and mysteriously fail those missions, to delay Dumbledore using any other agents if nothing else.
Chapter - 82 : Rebirth Part - 4
9 hours ago
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Harry noted his own future self had spun back with the rest of them, and the newly minted dryad's attention had slipped to the older him. Since the group of future selves was about to launch into a big discussion centering around the Queen's note, present Harry slipped away. He'd hear all of it later, right now he had errands to go take care of to make that meeting even possible.
First item on the agenda was to obtain some time turners, and that meant a trip to the Department of Mysteries.
Fortunately for him, Voldemort had worked there, and even if they'd changed the locks on the doors, so to speak, that intimate a familiarity with the place gave him an innate advantage in penetrating their defenses.
The early morning hour also helped him there. Having just rushed Trelawney to the woods, it was not long after they'd first entered her tower, and that was only an hour or so past dawn.
Luna was correct in stating that most shops in Diagon Alley didn't open until well after breakfast. That was not an aberration, among wizards it was a well established trend. They loved their comforts and convenience, and having to get up early for an early morning rush was uncomfortable - especially when your customer base was made up of self-indulgent slug-abeds who'd lay in until a comfortable hour, and thus not give you that early morning rush to get up for in the first place.
Businesses suited themselves to their customers, and the high-pressure, fast-paced world of muggles did not exist for wizards (a big part of why they found muggleborns so annoying - "You want it this afternoon? What? Are you crazy? I've got a tea-time appointment with friends!").
If you wanted something non-standard, that didn't come off the shelves, and put it on rush order, you'd get it back in a week... maybe. Muggles would have a comparable service done for you in under an hour, tops.
But that well established trend suited Harry's purposes as well, as guards on the Ministry at this hour would be few, and most napping at their stations as there was nothing for them to do. Thus, security would be light, if not non-existent aside from wards. And Voldemort's memories would get him past virtually any ward in existence.
He could hardly have killed his chosen victims otherwise. The first reaction of any magical folks when in danger was to layer their homes in magical wards to keep out any invaders, much like this sanctuary intended to do.
And, well, if you hunted people who liked to play clam you had to be able to get through those shells. You didn't get to any of your prey otherwise.
Without that skill he'd have been known as "The Great Wannabe", as in "Yes, he'd wanted to kill a great many people, but he never managed it."
Harry broke into a house of someone he knew worked at the Ministry and used their floo to access the employee-only floo entrance to the Ministry building, bypassing most intruder wards and detections, just to save time.
Yes, he could've broken through the front entrance, but why bother? More especially, why bother when this other route was so much easier? The man hadn't even bothered to lock the front door!
He'd have to thank Arthur Weasley for that sometime. Yes, they had very nice wards over the house in times of danger, but during these peaceful years you could walk in and steal his children, if you wanted.
Not that Harry had any such inclination, nor did he think that would change.
Having effectively bypassed most of the protections over the Ministry itself it was time to go on to the Department of Mysteries.
Harry was lowering himself on a zip-line into a cell in moments.
"Hi! My name is Harry Potter, and I'm here to rescue you!"
The woman he saw was old, aged before her years by inhumane treatment and harsh abuse, worse even than his was. Simple wards over these cells to prevent use of wand magic made a fifty foot vertical shaft one of the most effective forms of confinement in existence. Just drop down the food and water, and lower a rope ladder when you wanted someone out. If they didn't climb up on their own, send someone down to fetch them - and make sure to add punishments for your inconvenience on top of what they were suffering.
The floor magically absorbed wastes, and that was that, nearly impenetrable cells by wizarding standards. Of course, muggles would teach themselves rock climbing by sheer trial and error, and be out of there in months, tops. But they probably had slickening charms on the walls to prevent that. Magic was their answer to everything, after all.
Therefore, the muggle rappelling gear. Dropping those rope ladders down would trigger alarms he didn't feel like dealing with. But, some conjured muggle currency and a bribe to a muggle to open his shop early, and he had some top of the line equipment for search and rescue belaying and rappelling.
The cynical, hardened old woman looked up at him with weary eyes. "Aren't you a little young to be rescuing damsels?"
He gave her an infectious grin. "You started in on the hero business younger than I did, Alice Lovegood. I only intentionally began saving people at eleven years old. Your granddaughter sends her regards. In fact I was going to ask your permission to marry her, but do you mind if we get out of here first?"
"Just get me to a chess set, or a mirror, and you'll have my blessing" the woman stated solemnly.
"Luckily I came prepared," Harry set out both objects.
Alice chose the mirror, stepping through like it was a portal and arriving on the other side as she'd always been pictured in those books, about seven years old, long golden hair, and an old-fashioned dress. The newly invigorated girl waved to him, then stepped off a side of the reflection into Wonderland.
No point in his running off and hiding her. She knew her own way.
Harry had read those books in a school library when he was a kid. He knew that Alice had passed tests in Wonderland to become a queen there, called Queen Alice by the native inhabitants. She would be fine there, and had more powers to draw on than he probably realized.
Harry began ascending his rope.
Chapter- 83 : Freedom
5 hours ago
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Harry busied himself in the Department of Mysteries, hurrying about his tasks there in much the same way Hermione had in the Headmaster's office, and for most of those same reasons - he didn't want to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
He went to the room dealing with time and stole every Time Turner they had there, as well as all of the collected fairy wings and powder used to fashion special use ones, replacements, or to make repairs.
Dumbledore had his fingers in this place, and Harry didn't want to have to deal with a time-traveling Headmaster. One of him was bad enough. Come to think of it, if he was loaning any of these out to students, it was a certainty that Dumbledore had his own set. But that didn't matter. Denying an enemy any resource at all (even if it was only denying him the ability to expand his operations, perhaps handing out more of these to his followers) was always a good idea.
Harry was as yet unaware that Dumbledore's own personal time turner and his spare would be destroyed later that day by Hermione. But that just made it ever so clear and obvious why clearing out the Department of Mysteries' stock of those before had been a good idea.
Always deny your enemy resupply when you can, even if you don't know if or when you can knock out his actual supplies. Because sometimes you get lucky (or your enemy gets unlucky) and he gets trapped without and starts losing options. So it's just a good policy to have.
The wards in this place were bad enough it would take Harry days to disable them all, days he did not have. So he couldn't cause any sort of widescale disruption or damage, not without substantial prep time ahead of time, at any rate. So maybe if he was planning to stage an ambush down here he could do that, but for this operation that was strictly a no-no.
He wanted to be quick in and quick out, no loitering, and since he didn't want to be stuck extracting himself from an automatic lockdown, that meant no burning the place down behind him.
He could, however, rescue all of their prisoners, letting them go and pointing them to an international floo they could escape from. The Ministry was THE government building for magical England, and such a floo existed for political reasons, transporting ambassadors and such. They'd drop into hefty security on the other side, so the dangerous ones would get contained, while the rest would probably be used as political ammunition against the magical UK, as in, "Look at what nasty stuff you've been up to! Look! We have WITNESSES! Now, don't you want to grant us favors to stay quiet about it?"
Political nightmares for Dumbledore's power base were ALWAYS a good idea!
Even if all that cost him was political capital, that was still an excellent move in the right direction, as it gave him less weight to throw around later, on other issues that might be important to him. Things like, oh, say, extraditing Harry once he'd fled to another country.
The boy couldn't bring himself to believe that Dumbles wouldn't try to get him back by any and all means at his disposal, from declaring him a 'strategic national asset' to a wanted criminal, or both at once, who knew?
Staying in the lap of that beast was also tantamount to suicide, so he'd be forced to make an attempt to escape to another country sooner or later.
Naturally, he favored sooner.
Saving prisoners costs a lot of time, and this place was warded against the use of time turners, so it wouldn't be a good idea to have multiple copies of himself walking around down there, even if he'd left the place to create them. So Harry had to go before he could work any more deviltry on that department than snagging a few large books and a certain prophecy.
He used a Ministry owl to send the thing to the Daily Prophet, and another of those Ministry owls to run an ad in that paper for Snape's Magical Pimping Service, with polyjuice prices and a complete listing of available hairs, just to see if that couldn't stir up some trouble for the Greasy Haired Git.
Odd, but in that moment when he'd only just sent that owl off to advertise Snape's wares, Harry felt like the true son of a Marauder for the first time in his very young life.
Because THAT was a prank! One worthy of his father and his friends.
Enough time had passed that offices and things were now opening. One of the last things Future-Hermione had told him before he'd left the sanctuary where the future selves were conversing, was that she'd dosed Dumbledore's tea with malaclaw venom, and he'd drunk it around three-thirty.
So, that was the time this Harry was going to make a push for various legal measures he'd already put into motion before, including his emancipation.
Dumbledore had used his various positions of authority to outright ban Harry from becoming an emancipated minor. The only way to overturn that was a full vote of the Wizengamot, so Harry had decided to call for one.
Still, he had five hours between ten (the time the Ministry really got moving) and three, when he'd start to try to call for a vote, counting on a half hour delay, at minimum, before thing got started moving. He went to the office which sent out meeting notices to Wizengamot members to send out that call, snagging the one for Dumbledore to hand-deliver himself, say about evening-ish, long after the actual vote had passed.
Then it was off to the bank.
Harry watched with a satisfied smile as all of the gold under his control was removed from Gringotts. The goblins in general and one goblin in particular had taken advantage of their ability to limit access to gold during the war. Armies may march on their stomachs, Harry thought to himself, but wars were won and lost by gold. More gold meant more medicine, more food, more weapons. Less meant death. After all, winning a war takes almost everything you have, while losing takes it all.
This was but the opening salvo of a barrage, where Harry intended to move all of his family holdings out of country. There were even devices, expensive ones to be sure, but still devices that allowed one to move homes, farms and other landed property intact from place to place. He intended to use them.
After all, why go only to leave all of your belongings behind? That made you a refugee, and easy prey to powerful types like Dumbledore, the Ministry, or anyone else for that matter.
Harry spent some hours getting his network of safehouses established, just in case he was forced to return to this country, or had to run operations there. It was useful to leave some options open behind yourself, after all.
For the most part he used muggle means, along with loads of conjured cash, to buy warehouses or abandoned properties, then put them all under Fidelius.
For that matter, he went back to that safari shop and got himself a second complete set of gear, then another two sets for each girl, packed them all into their own magically expanded trunks, stuffed each with other useful supplies like well-preserved potion ingredients, then put each 'emergency trunk' in a locket on a necklace - one such necklace for himself and each girl.
Harry then put Fidelius on each one, and a wrist holster for a backup wand, also under Fidelius. Getting a used wand to serve as a backup was usually no problem. Obtaining a GOOD one, on the other hand, was more difficult and time consuming. Luckily, he already had Voldemort's wand, reclaimed from Pettigrew, to serve him in that capacity. And, while he was thinking of it, Harry used Voldemort's wand to remove all of the underage tracking charms, both Ministry and Dumbledore's, from his holly and phoenix feather wand. But instead of outright canceling those detection and limitation spells on his original wand, he moved them to a muggle pencil he'd picked up somewhere.
Dumbledore wanted to know where he was and what he was doing at all times? Fine. He could track the pencil. Harry could leave it behind whenever he wanted to go do something sneaky, like now.
But, right at that very moment, Harry had a wizengamot vote to attend.
Chapter- 84 : Freedom Part - 2
5 hours ago
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The Office of the Headmaster burned.
Dumbledore staggered under the force of the loss. The portraits of previous headmasters! All of the wisdom and experience of the ages, Gone! No more would some of the most brilliant and able leaders of the past several hundred years be on call to aid him, advising on every issue! That was tragic in a way the deaths of every student under his care would NOT be!
The books were no loss. Every Christmas or birthday, every time someone gave him presents, they always seemed to think he needed books. The ones on display in his office were those books. It often served him several times to put them there, once when givers saw them on display presumably where he used them, and once when he lent them out, letting those who received them think they were getting some measure of trust with his treasures, when actually he most often had several copies, and those weren't his real treasured books in any case.
No, the library in his office had been all for show, regardless of the rarity or value of those tomes. He had much better secreted away in a private library no one ever saw. The loss of the displayed tomes was no great loss at all.
The knowledge of those previous headmasters and headmistresses, however, was keenly felt, and irreplaceable! Often their wisdom had never been truly captured in any tome! And it would not be the same in any case, if it were!
No, his cabinet, his circle of advisors, and truly the only ones to whom he had any degree of trust anymore (due mostly to their oaths to faithfully serve the interests of the school's headmaster - meaning himself) were GONE!
Snape could've been fed his own horcrux and thrust into the fiery heart of a volcanic mountain, or McGonagall sacrificed by Aztec tribesmen on the head table of the Great Hall at lunchtime before the entire school full of witnesses and not cost him as great a grief! Not nearly so!
In fact, if it would've regained him even so much as one such portrait, Albus would've gladly arranged both 'accidents' himself!
The Sorting Hat was no loss. Spells to do the actual Sorting were quite simple and he could easily create a counterfeit. No one would notice. The priceless artifact had been endowed with other powers, it was true, and had been a wonderful resource in its time, instructing him about control of the wards and powers that were his as Headmaster, before it clammed up on him.
He could program a simplified replacement with songs the original used over the last hundred years, and no one but him would know it was recycling them, as no one else had been at school that long.
He could grant this suitable replacement hat a personality more amenable to his whims, and willing to share with him all the data it discovered while sitting on students heads - something the original had long refused to do. So that, at least, would be a significant improvement. But a resource nowhere near as valuable as other great minds he used to bounce ideas off of!
Countless Slytherins had helped refine his plans. Ravenclaws offered their wisdom and intelligence. Gryffindors had been Devil's advocates to tell him how they might have opposed his whims, and thus anticipate any resistance before it happened, while Hufflepuffs had told him how to coach his plans in terms to seem more friendly and make others like them.
No, there was no substitute for those great minds aiding him willingly, unable to act against him due to their oaths. There simply was nothing to replace it!
Every Hufflepuff or Gryffindor headmaster or headmistress had been his drama coach, teaching him how to act so contrary to his natural inclinations as to be taken for a kindly grandfather and leader of Light. The potions only did so much, and primarily that was to blunt the negative aspects of his own character. His own natural urges went so counter to their advice that he'd needed constant support, and without those portraits teaching him how to constantly refine his act and correct for errors as they crept in he could lose his edge, and no longer be so convincing!
Such coaching required an intimate familiarity in detail as to the problem (his own evil), as well as a complete opposite personality of the one helping him to conceal it, which was something he was not going to find elsewhere. The former headmasters and headmistress of Hogwarts had been almost uniquely situated to provide him both. While he had nominal control of the rest of the paintings of the castle, it did not run as deep.
He simply could not trust any other paintings enough to hang in his office, learning his every secret, and granting him that sort of advice!
Dumbledore had not always been as much of a monster as he was today. In his youth he had not been able to afford it, not yet being above suspicion and holding so much authority as to be effectively above the law. However, in the intervening years he'd allowed himself to yield to his own desires so greatly that he could not so much as recall the methods he had used in his youth, nor the limits he had once held himself to, being forced to conceal his own lust for power behind his publicly displayed merits.
However, for so long he'd been able to rely on the excellent advice of former headmasters that he had grown dependent on it. It was his crutch, and now moving along without it seemed an unconquerable obstacle. He knew he could and would recover, but it would take him precious time and labor, effort he'd much rather spend collecting information and controlling the world would now have to be redirected into rediscovering his old habits to shield his behavior on his own, without that excellent coaching and advice.
While sorrowing over this loss, grieving for the advantage it cost him, Albus moved on to the subject of Trelawney - the true object of this raid.
Lifting a well-charmed pair of thoroughly tracked glasses from a fresh pile of small, burned bones, the Headmaster had time to grieve on this loss. By his estimation, the Fingerlickers had broken into his office, killed Trelawney and transfigured her body into that of a small chicken as an insult to him.
Dumbledore was unaware of just how bad his luck was, that his House Elves had elected to serve him a whole roast chicken that night, or that they had unaccountably delivered it early... right about the time Hermione was leaving his office, in point of fact, and by strange, unlucky coincidence the meal had landed under the pile of Trelawney's clothes as the escaping Miss Granger'd tossed them and her glasses aside to evade the tracking charms on them.
Such a coincidence required spectacularly bad luck, but the Headmaster was not as yet aware of that problem and too wrapped up in the difficulties this created to consider it.
Truly, his seer was irreplaceable.
There were very few gifted oracles in the world, and while they could not tell their own futures, they had remarkable insight into the status of the others of their rather limited sorority. For years they had been hatching schemes to get Trelawney from him. In fact, it was a regular part of their interviews together for him to question Trelawney about how to foil her sister oracles in their plots to save her from him. He'd found endless amusement in that, using Trelawney's powers against herself to keep her servile to him.
But regardless, now she was lost, and every other notable figure in the world of Divination would be avoiding him like a plague of festering boils - and there were many that would actually prefer the boils.
Chapter- 85 : Freedom Part - 3
5 hours ago
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So, no. They were on guard against him, HAD been on guard against him, and would remain so. While he had been successful in limiting their influence and tarnishing the name of Divination until no one of any authority listened to those old crones, Dumbledore would not have an oracle to call his own again.
They all hated him too badly for that to happen.
Attempting to control the damage, Dumbledore stumbled out of doors until he came around to Hagrid's cabin, which struck him as an odd place to hide his stolen devices (which had multiple security charms on them to prevent theft, including anti-shrinking and anti-tranfiguration charms to prevent an easy, light fingered escape) until he came around back and saw the niffler cage, a pen full of beasts who, even then, were fighting over the tattered, broken scraps of the last of his sensitive devices.
Albus was struck poignantly by this final touch, equal parts tragic and trivial. He'd relied on those silver devices to monitor everything that needed keeping track of outside of Hogwarts halls that was not worthy of Trelawney's predictions. They were his buffer against all sorts of unpredictable goings on. An oracle cannot monitor everything, and there were notable figures in politics that no longer had school-age children, so were far less likely to be openly discussed within his well-spied halls.
His silver instruments had filled the gap between what he learned from Hogwarts and what was worthy of spending an oracle's powers on.
Some, such as the monitoring charms on Harry, would be trivial to replace, as the boy was even now attending Hogwarts. Creating new magical linkages to other figures of importance, however, would range from only moderately difficult to downright impossible, as he had to have a moment's unrestricted access to the person to be monitored to collect blood samples and cast the needed spells. That was hardly something one could do to a sitting Minister of Magic. Oh, well, in Fudge's case he could, as the nitwit would never suspect anything after a memory modification or Obliviate. The blowhard never had before. The Head of Magical Law Enforcement, on the other hand, as well as several aurors... they fell in the more difficult range.
Voldemort, however, was currently impossible to place new tracking charms on. That, as well as his present inability to track the Flamels to see if they really died (they hadn't yet, and he strongly suspected they were racing to make another stone to replace the one he'd stolen from them, then claimed to have destroyed), were more worrisome. Having key figures like that out of his benign, all-seeing view could lead to all sorts of complications.
Nevertheless, even for the easy monitors, getting new silver instruments constructed, then tying them to appropriate targets, would take months. MONTHS! All that while precious information would be lost!
Others? He'd been decades visiting notable figures around the world, and in some cases never had found opportunities to place them under monitoring in this way. Now that the bulk of his instruments had been destroyed, taking their vital linkages with them, he'd been set back almost a hundred years.
Still, he was a far more notable figure himself than he had been back then. He could, and would, get an agent to introduce some controversial bit of legislation, then use his position as Head of the International Confederation of Wizards to go around politicking, meeting privately with other notable figures in order to 'influence their votes', and use that opportunity to trap them once again under his watchful eye.
He'd had to do the same thing on a regular basis to catch new figures into his fold as they entered the realm of politics, after all.
Still, holes had been torn in his net and that irked him something dreadful, as even if most of them could be fixed, some couldn't. And while he was making repairs he was learning less than he really wanted to.
Perhaps the scariest thing of all about the dreadful losses the Headmaster had been taking of late, was that he could absorb them all without the least twinge of control lost among the magical world. He'd had his fingers so deep in so many pies that not even these catastrophes could budge him. All that would be required was a little time and he'd be as on top of his game as before, save only for the loss of Trelawney.
Everything else would soon be replaced with equal or even better sources.
Chapter- 86 : Freedom Part - 4
4 hours ago
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A dozen man-sized playing cards with human arms and legs and faces leapt up off the ground they had perfectly molded themselves against to hold very real and deadly looking spears facing in toward their prisoner.
"Hello, Mister Black," Luna said, smiling softly with her back to him.
"Something about this feels so wrong," Sirius Black answered, speaking out from the bars of a cage on which hung a 'distinctly not a trap' sign. But the smell of fried chicken had drawn his dog form all the way from Hogsmead.
Luna had carried an extra bucket with her that morning, and played solitaire until she won a game, then bet a galleon on a coin toss to make certain the bad luck had gone before putting her plans into motion.
But an abandoned picnic lunch on a table all spread out, inside a disillusioned cage charmed so no matter which way you approached, the entrance would always face you...
... and one starving fugitive in the area who had been living on rats.
The 'distinctly not a trap' sign on the cage as it got revealed was going a bit too far, though. That was pranking below the belt, that was!
Luna spun around, seated in a muggle leather office chair that had been just as invisible as she'd been up until a moment ago, idly petting Harry's pet kneazel Gus, whom she had charmed white for this occasion. "So, Mister Black..."
Sirius felt his eyes focus on the kneazel, knowing about those cat's uncanny dislike of unsavory people. That it was sitting in her lap allowing itself to be petted spoke volumes about his captor. Of course, there was also the rather disturbing fact that cat was GRINNING at him!
Cat faces couldn't make that expression, could they?
One of the playing-card men poked his wicked sharp spear a bit too close and the fugitive raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Uh, I can explain..."
Luna rose from her seat, and still holding and petting the cat, approached him. "At last you come before us, Your Blackness. I knew the temptation charm on the fried chicken would draw a starving fugitive..."
"Really, I'm innocent! I was framed!"
Luna pouted. "Oh, pooh! You keep interrupting my Evil Monologue (TM). How am I supposed to get through this if you keep causing me to forget my lines? Now where was I?"
The little blonde pulled a sheaf of papers out of her pocket and began to consult them.
"You'd scripted this out?" Sirius asked, amazed and, in spite of himself, a little impressed - both that she'd been that confident of catching him and... well, it brought back old memories. This was something like the Marauders would do, back in the old days.
"Uh huh," Luna bobbed her head cutely, now juggling papers so she did not drop Harry's cat.
In one smooth motion she'd produced Colin's camera and snapped a photo of Sirius hanging on the inside of his cage bars right underneath the 'distinctly not a trap' sign.
Sirius' face had paled. "That is so like something James would do," he whispered, as if to himself. "Even down to recording evidence of his triumph. He'd kept a journal of that stuff, and I've never found it."
"Probably in his family vaults," Luna demurely agreed. Her parents had been to school during the Marauding Era too, after all.
"No, I looked there, polyjuiced as James. He never could keep a password secret from me," Sirius kept mumbling. "And I knew where to find his key."
"You also knew where to find Amelia Bones' knickers, but that doesn't mean you ever got them," Luna supplied helpfully.
"Oh, no, I did! That was in our first year," Sirius reminisced. "Lucius bet me that I couldn't, so I did. I told him a brave tale about secret passageways that bypassed the girls' stairs, but actually I knew where elves did laundry and got them from there."
"So there aren't secret passages to bypass the girls dorm alarms?" Luna blinked, sounding disappointed. Waving her hand, she signaled the playing-card men to stop poking him and ship their spears to port arms.
"Oh, of course there are! We found those in third year, but by then no one would bet me that I couldn't nab a pair of any girl's panties." Sirius quickly corrected. "Kind of took the fun out of it, really."
"Ah, but there is a perfect defense - don't own any," Luna nodded sagely.
"Nope," Sirius disagreed, shaking his head. "Some girls tried that. You only have to give her a package as a present, then steal them back again after she wears them or throws them away. That still qualifies. They were hers, however briefly. Lily got SOO enraged with James after he found that loophole." The man smiled fondly in remembrance.
The cat, Sirius noticed, had disappeared - all except for its grin, which hung suspended above the blonde girl's shoulder. A Cheshire Kneazel? No, that was impossible. Every wizard knew that Cheshire Cats didn't exist. But... then why was that disturbing grin hanging there?
"Speaking of boys and their stealing knickers from women who turn into the mothers for their children, I need you to formally engage me to Harry," Luna changed the subject.
"Ah," Sirius smacked his lips delicately. "Has he stolen any of your knickers yet?"
"Well, no..."
"Have you stolen his?"
"Not at present. But I'm willing to give it a try."
"I don't know," Sirius temporized, slowly shaking his head. "We have something of a family tradition at stake here. Granted, it's only been going on a single generation, but you've always got to start these things somewhere."
Luna blinked. "Aren't you oddly sane and rational, not to mention having a strong sense of humor, for someone just escaped from Azkaban?"
"Your joke got me back into my happy place, work with me here," the man waved a hand airily, dismissing her concerns. "Living in the past agrees with me, provided I can pretend the last dozen years didn't happen."
"Shouldn't be too hard," Luna quirked her lips. "Snape is also pretending they didn't happen, and that he is still a student at school standing up to bullies - ignoring the fact that he is now an authority figure being the bully."
"Oh, he always was," Sirius quipped. "A bully. He just wasn't a very good one. He'd start something, then we'd finish it, time after time, until it got to be a habit. He kept trying to rule the school and bully the new students, and we'd prove to them all what an ass he was. He never was able to stand us for that reason alone, and spent most of his school time plotting to get us expelled."
"He truly is living in the past." Luna blinked, astonished. "What you described is exactly the way he treats Harry."
"Which brings us back to Harry and your knickers," Sirius sat down at the table inside the cage and began filling up a plate of fried chicken. "Why would I want to engage a perfectly good godson to someone like you, when I've hardly known you for five minutes?"
"Because it would be funny?" Luna ventured.
Sirius stopped moving. "Dang, but that's a hard argument to resist."
"You could try?"
"No, no. I couldn't." Sirius was shaking his head. "It's just too much. Here I am, weakened for want of food, talking about knickers, and the temptation to engage my godson is simply too much for me. You'll just have to accept that you'll be living with a starving fugitive in your basement who wants to attend all your meals... and heckle all of your romantic moments."
"That sounds like a match made in Heaven!" Luna beamed. To the odd look she got from the scraggly man, she replied, "Oh, but as a wedding present to dear Harry, I'm afraid that I'd have to give you to the Head of Magical Law Enforcement as a prank. Perhaps I could arrange to do it on a blind date?"
Sirius' jaw dropped, he was so impressed. Swallowing his mouthful of chicken, he said, "You put me on a date with the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, and get me out WITHOUT getting caught, and that'd be a prank worthy of the bride of a future Marauder!"
Reaching in past the playing-card men guards to stick her arm in through the bars, Luna swept off the invisibility cloak hiding Amelia Bones, who'd been bound and sitting at the same table, and in the same cage as Sirius.
"She sleeps rather soundly, and I got up early this morning," Luna supplied helpfully. "Of course, I was rather counting on her being unlucky enough to have a career shattering moment, sharing a picnic lunch date with Magical Britain's Most Wanted Criminal, to help pull this trap off. That way she'd be trapped in the awkward situation of either investigating the evidence that finds you innocent, or losing her job."
Sirius looked at her in awe. "Kid, when I sign those engagement papers, can we get her to be the witness? Please?"
Chapter - 87 : Struggle
4 hours ago
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Harry was white in the face.
Failed. How could he have FAILED?!
The Wizengamot vote ought to have been a mere formality, a token 'uh-huh' to let him take the position that was rightfully his. In spite of all of his many titles, Dumbledore had no real excuse for denying Harry emancipation, none that were at all legally supportable anyway. Harry had every reason and then some for emancipation, all of the qualifications they asked for and more. His was better than a textbook case of 'this is when emancipation is needed.'
Yet the Geezergamot had voted to support Dumbledore anyway.
The ramifications of that were downright scary, as with malaclaw venom in his veins Dumbledore ought to be living the very personification of Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.
That NOTHING went wrong for in him in that vote... meant that it couldn't.
To have failed to overturn Dumbledore's ruling in an open vote with him as unlucky as he was... what that said was that there was no possible way for Albus to have lost that vote. Anything at all chancy would be going against him now. The least probability of anything going wrong ought to be realized. What that said, for his luck to be that bad yet for him to STILL succeed...
It said that there was no way Dumbledore was losing in any political contest. There was no crack, no chink in the armor for his bad luck to exploit. The Headmaster's victory had been certain, no matter what Harry did, and in spite of all that had happened.
That brought back memories of Voldemort, acting through Lucius, and his earlier statement that Dumbledore never lost a contest in the Ministry that he did not intend to lose. And those he intentionally lost he'd always twist around to increase his power. Even NOT being the Minister of Magic fit into those plans, as that way there was always someone in authority to blame who wasn't Dumbledore, and thus someone for Albus to use as a scapegoat.
That was sobering.
It was also pathetic, in a way. Realtime, the Dursleys had just been exposed as these terrible abusive people, the most horrid guardians imaginable, and public sentiment on that was still cresting, almost but not quite yet at its peak. There was this terrible backlash of 'save our boy hero' going on. The Ministry itself, through its dementors, had been responsible for nearly killing him. An entire administration had fled the country over fear of angry mobs in the backlash over that.
Harry was never going to have more public support behind him than now, nor any more clear and obvious NEED for emancipation! The Dark Ravenclaw was as unlucky as he was ever going to get, so this contest was Harry striking with his sharpest tool at his enemy's weakest point.
Yet still the Headmaster won anyway.
That settled it. Harry just was not going to win any contest in politics when Dumbledore opposed him. That made it meaningless to try, as if he couldn't win THIS time, when Harry had everything in his favor and his foe was off balance, overworked, unlucky, and fighting against a tremendous tide of public sentiment, then no advantage was going to be enough.
If you couldn't win on those terms there was no point even to try.
The Dark Lord Voldemort really might regain a body faster than Harry could free himself from the supposed 'Light' side effectively imprisoning him. And though different, those circumstances were surprisingly equal in most ways. Voldemort could not do most things in his present state, and his minders wouldn't let Harry do anything if they could avoid it.
So both Harry and Voldemort stole what opportunities they could on the sly.
Harry had, he had to admit, grown used to a series of successes from his recent series of stabs at the Headmaster's authority and establishing a life and future for himself.
This came as a bitter reminder that he was still very much a junior player.
Harry felt so very, very much behind. He still had quite a lot of catching up to do before he could hope to match the least of his opponents in battle.
Voldemort had a large number of followers willing to die for him, people who had influence, wealth and power and were willing to use that on his behalf, while Harry had only a couple of friends his own age and one of Voldemort's followers duped to serve him instead (a fundamentally unsound relationship).
On that point, things could hardly be more unequal.
For that matter, with the magical government wholly in Dumbledore's pocket Harry was clearly in last place as far as followers or political influence were concerned. Most of the people who highly regarded 'The-Boy-Who-Lived' had loyalties first and foremost to Albus Dumbledore.
And, as the Geezergamot vote just proved, if people were forced to choose between supporting The-Boy-Who-Lived versus backing the Headmaster, they backed Dumbledore every time.
That left Harry distinctly lacking in the follower department, and in this war most of the work was done by proxies acting on orders.
Another area in which he lacked was personal power. Tom had tons of skills and devices that Harry would not, could not bring himself, to use. Getting an equal arsenal of spells and tools of a usable sort was an enormous task, and Voldemort was the junior and less educated of the two dark lords who had singled Harry out for destruction.
As far as power-enhancing rituals performed, Harry was also last place, as he only knew of the fire immunity one out of Voldemort's memories, so he knew Tom had performed that one before. Whereas Dumbledore, if he'd used the Goblet to bind Fawkes to serve him as the Fairy Queen had said, then he must have known about that fire immunity ritual also.
The Queen said the Goblet of Fire could bind a phoenix to someone's service only at maximum power. Going by what Harry knew, you couldn't even USE the cup at its maximum potential without having performed the fire immunity ritual on yourself. There was no way to handle the cup when it was that fully charged without burning to death otherwise. Spells would slide off and it would melt any tools.
That was Harry's one major power enhancement ritual so far, and both of his rivals had already performed it - and done it successfully, too.
Harry had nearly killed himself, and his friends, when he'd tried it. Of course, that had its advantages, too. Being remade by the Fairy Queen had put him back into play with some unique advantages. The trouble with that was, Harry himself didn't really know what those were, aside from an absolute defense against mind probes (something he could already defend himself rather well against), and becoming a metamorph.
The only really telling advantage so far out of all that had been some advice the Fairy Queen had given them - targeting information on where to hit the Dark Ravenclaw where it would truly hurt him.
They'd struck one such blow already. Harry resolved that when they all spun back to have that discussion in the clearing around the shrine, that he bring up as their next possible mission doing that ritual with the Goblet of Fire that would free Fawkes from service to the Headmaster. That was another one of those blows the Fairy Queen had said Dumbledore could not recover from.
Taking Hogwarts itself from Albus seemed more than a little bit out of their league for now, so he'd have to be content with removing two of the three unique and irreplaceable treasures that gave Dumbledore added powers. It would have to be enough, because they couldn't do any more than that.
No, getting beaten at the Ministry that badly had shaken Harry's confidence and made him even wonder why he was in the game at all. Oh, that was right, he didn't have a choice in the matter. He could either roll over and die or stand up to fight, and even a losing battle had some chance for success, whereas surrender held none.
Depressing really, but the only way to oppose the Headmaster seemed to be the route Voldemort took - become an outlaw. There was nothing else to do when the law was unbending in support of a man that wanted you dead.
But Harry didn't want to tred that outlaw road, and hoped moving to another country was a better option. Plus, he still had one advantage in the three way war - the other two may have targeted him, but they both currently thought that he was a piece on the gameboard, not another player.
For however long that lasted, he had an advantage.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein