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81.22% HP: A Magical Journey [Complete] / Chapter 358: Back-And-Forth

Capítulo 358: Back-And-Forth

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The link is also in the synopsis.

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"Alright, I admit, I was there. What's next?"

Quinn heavily leaned into his chair and crossed his legs with his hands firmly resting on the armrest. If not for his clothes, it'd look like he was in his home, getting comfortable for a night of relaxation in front of a fireplace.

"Why did you hide it?" asked James.

Quinn looked at James, contemplating if he should put him in the answerable bucket or dump him with Moody and ignore the Auror. After a second of thought, he decided to answer the man,

"I hid it because I thought no one knew about it." He gazed at the Sorting hat, which again had gone to looking like a dilapidated hat. "But it seems I was wrong. . . . I feel ashamed I forgot about the hat which brought in the Gryffindor's sword used to stab and end the Basilisk. . . . I was particularly distracted that day," that day he was just at the edge of the first bout of Sin curse taking over.

He remembered how he had met with Lockhart shortly after, and the greedy, pompous bastard had triggered his emotions enough to let the Sin curse take over. Soon after, he had almost tortured two girls, and things had come this close to going down terribly wrong.

Every pair of eyes— even the one with the artificial eye— stared at Quinn. Their eyes were full of shocked curiosity and various other varying emotions.

". . . Why did you stab the diary with the Basilisk fang, Mr. West? How did you know that the spirit was attached to the diary?"

Quinn shrugged, "I observed, listened, and applied my brain to deduce that the suspicious leather diary laying on the ground of the previously deserted Chamber of Secrets would probably have something to do with spirit spouting maniacal ambitions would be connected."

He stared directly at Dumbledore as he said those words. Not for a second did he break away from eye contact with the blue eyes.

When Quinn got a call from Ivy about the situation, he had scoured the memory of the day with a fine-toothed comb. He had increased the immersion on the memory book to the max— and could live in the memory as if he was experiencing it firsthand. He noticed all the little things he had not thought about in-depth— the actions he had taken, the magic he had cast, and, more importantly, the words he had spoken.

According to Ivy, the Sorting hat provided them a gist of the situation and his(Quinn) involvement, but the hat hadn't provided the specifics; at least, not to everyone in the room. . . but the same couldn't be said about Dumbledore. The hat had been in Dumbledore's company ever since; who knew how much in detail the hat might have retold the incident.

'Expect and prepare for the worst,' Quinn thought. 'And it's not like it matters, does it.'

"The Sorting hat tells me that you took away the Basilisk's fangs and its venom. May I know what you did with them, Mr. West?" asked Dumbledore.

Quinn could feel the eyes on him. Basilisk fang and venom— two priceless commodities that couldn't be procured by usual means, only available through highly illegal means in exotic black markets, but here he was in possession of invaluable materials.

"It's ironic," said Quinn instead of answering the question, "a man produced a feat of magic, created to protect his life at all costs, but then he created a second one, something amazing, fascinating. . . he had created a new life— but that new life somehow threatened his own— I'm not sure if the man knew. . . but I do. . . I have seen it in action after all."

Quinn turned his eye to the Sword of Gryffindor encased inside a glass showcase, enhancing the aesthetic of the office by displaying the glory of Gryffindor. It was goblin-made metal which had been dipped inside the Basilisk venom and magically took on the properties, henceforth becoming a more valuable asset.

"Ironic isn't it, Headmaster," said Quinn.

He had spent seven years walking around on eggshells because Dumbledore had substantial authority over and it didn't seem wise to be at loggerheads with the person who ran the place where he had to spend seven years of his life. But now, he had graduated, and he was out of Dumbledore's umbrella, free to do things he couldn't do before. . . and it felt great to act out so boldly.

Dumbledore showed no reaction. He stared at Quinn in silence while others seemed confused about what Quinn was talking about.

Quinn enjoyed seeing Dumbledore so restrained. It was clear that he hadn't told anyone about the existence of Horcruxes. He was still trying to keep the cards so close to his chest.

". . . Everyone, please give Mr. West and me some time alone; it'd be much be appreciated," said Dumbledore.

Before anyone from Dumbledore's said could even raise a single word of objection, Quinn spoke up,

"It's okay; they can stay. I'm not going to say that I'd want to hide."

"So you wouldn't be saying things to you want to hide," Dumbledore sighed before saying. "Nevertheless, I would prefer if we could have a talk privately."

"I would like for everyone to stay."

"Mr. West—"

"I insist, Headmaster," Quinn said flat-out.

If he was asked to choose a side between Voldemort and Dumbledore— not the Light and Dark side, but who he would follow between the two leaders— he would go with Voldemort. From what Quinn perceived, the violent megalomaniac seemed easier to work with than the smiling manipulator. At least with Voldemort, he would know when the man was angry and happy, but with Dumbledore, Quinn wasn't sure what the man was thinking at any point. That wasn't to say that Voldemort didn't use manipulation— the Dark Lord had fooled a society of high-class pureblood supremacists into following him, and one young Tom Riddle was particularly charming and persuasive— but to Quinn, that couldn't be compared with Dumbledore who had built a reputation in an entire country's heart's, which only seemed to grow stronger after every adversary and obstacle.

Quinn looked to the people around the country. Especially to the parents of the Boy-Who-Lived. Lily and James Potter had no idea what Dumbledore was hiding from them. Quinn had tried to put himself in their positions and had imagined what it would feel like if something so big would be hidden from him. . . that imagination didn't feel pleasant at all.

So he decided. If nothing else, he was going to break Dumbledore's grasp on information that the Potter family and even those who fought for Dumbledore deserved to know.

"I was shocked when I realized what the Dark Lord had done," said Quinn spinning a small narrative for himself. "No, shocked wouldn't be the right word. . . I was repulsed when I found out. To soil the sanctity of something so pure. A dirty stain on the name of magic. It was fortunate that I did what I did, or who knows what would've happened. It wasn't after some years that I realized what I had destroyed that say when I stabbed the diary. I felt elated— I had destroyed the Dark Lord's twisted safeguard. . . but then"— Quinn stared at Dumbledore with a face without warmth— "after several years, when I had progressed further in my studies of magic. . . I found myself staring at another one of those twisted things, and never in my life I expected it to see in such a form."

Quinn kept his eye on the Dumbledore, but he could that Dumbledore knew precisely what he was talking about.

"What are you talking about?" asked Lily.

"Dumbledore will tell you afterward," said Quinn, not looking at her. "If he doesn't come to me and I will tell you. . . you know what, even if he does tell, come to me, in case he forgets to tell you something. I'll fill those gaps in."

". . . Mr. West, why you're doing this?"

"Because I want the Dark Lord gone, and unfortunately, you're the best chance anyone has of doing that," said Quinn. "And if you keep things as I'm assuming you are, so hidden, it will come back to bite you and everyone in the ass."

"There's a reason why I have kept things as they are, Mr. West."

"Headmaster, believe me when I say that I'm an avid believer of the following: A secret is the strongest when only one person knows about it— but this is not one of those things— this is not something you have the right to keep to yourself."

Dumbledore's eyebrows crinkled, "You say such things, then why haven't you told them. After all, it seems you've known about it for a considerable amount of time."

Quinn laughed inside; Dumbledore was cunning. He had flipped the question away from him towards Quinn. And it wasn't like it was unsightly— Quinn has indeed kept it hidden. . . but Quinn wasn't born yesterday.

"Tell me, Headmaster. How long would it take you to destroy the entirety of London?" asked Quinn abruptly.

". . . Pardon?" Dumbledore seemed stumped.

"What kind of question is this, boy!" Moody grunted.

"In 1927, the recently dead Dark Lord Gellert Grindelwald unleashed a terrible towards the city of Paris after a rally. . . and according to those present there, the spell held enough power to raze the entire capital city to the ground. . . so my question is to the man who defeated Gellert Grindelwald— How long would it take you to destroy London?"

Dumbledore remained silent, his eyes studying Quinn and his intention.

Quinn turned to Hermione and asked her the same question.

"Err. . . I-I couldn't," Hermione fumbled. "He couldn't?"

"Oh no, he could definitely; there's no doubt about it," Quinn shook his head.

He turned to James and yet again asked him the same question. The Auror didn't fumble like Hermione and actually looked like he thought it through before answering: "A month?"

Gasps sounded across the room. A month. One month to destroy an entire city. A shocking value when put into the context they talked about.

However. . .

"Wrong, that isn't close to the real value," he turned to Dumbledore. "Come one, Headmaster. Hazard a guess; there's no harm in it."

After some silent deliberation, Dumbledore sighed and gave his answer, "Less than a week."

It was as if someone had dropped a silencing spell on everyone in the room as all went silent with surprise and shock overflowing on their faces. Even Moody's both eyes stared at Dumbledore with rare utter shock.

"London is 6.6 percent larger than Paris. Gellert Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore stand on the same level of destructive power," said Quinn with a bitter smile.

But it wasn't over yet.

"You know the best part?" continued Quinn. "All it would take for him," he pointed at Dumbledore, "is three meals a day, a good night of sleep after every day of destruction and great health. . . that's all it would take to bring a great city to the ground."

Unknowingly, Quinn had started tapping his foot on the floor as he stared at Dumbledore. It wasn't a face of triumph or even satisfaction. It was a bitter face of unwillingness through and through.

"How am I supposed to oppose that?"

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Quinn West - MC - I love derailing conversations.

FictionOnlyReader - Author - Any tips to increase focus and concentration. And those who are currently working corporate jobs, I want to write more while in the office so I don't have to stay late in the night, any tips regarding that will be appreciated.

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next chapter

Capítulo 359: Leaving The Rest To Dumbledore

If you want to read ahead, you can check out my Patreón @

[ https://www.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]

The link is also in the synopsis.

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"How am I supposed to oppose that?" said Quinn, looking at everyone. "I can't decimate Paris in a day with a single spell or bring London to its knees in a week. . . the latter one, I think, is Dumbledore still understating his destructive capabilities— or maybe you've genuinely gotten weaker with your age— I don't know. But the fact remains that people like the Headmaster and Grindelwald have enough power to disregard the norms and rules. . ." He paused, and it seemed like someone had sucked all sound from the room. ". . . and the same goes for the Dark Lord," what had started as a conscious effort had now before a habit. "The thing I care the most for in this world is my family and friends. Grindelwald is dead, and Headmaster isn't going to attack my loved ones— at least, I hope not— but that can't be said for the Dark Lord."

Quinn straight out rudely pointed at Dumbledore. "People like him and the Dark Lord can stroll into our homes, rip the ward apart, and do whatever they like without care—"

"I would never do such things, Mr. West," said Dumbledore, his eyes earnest.

"— it doesn't matter if you would or not, but the Dark Lord definitely would. He will come to my house, threaten my family, and if we are not careful, we will be lying dead on the floor: maybe battered beyond recognition or simply perhaps granted a peaceful death by a shot of the Killing Curse. Even if somehow are able to escape death, I'm sure we're going to end up as puppets."

"Do you think your family will face such a fate?" asked James, sounding doubtful. The West family was the strongest in the country; they could surely hire security.

Quinn shook his head. "The normal person doesn't understand what an Auror, or more importantly, what a Hit Wizard is truly capable of." He jutted his chin to James and Moody. "These two are essentially living weapons. They're trained with magic that was solely created to take down people. An Auror can wreak havoc that would seem horrifying to normal folk. . . but even then, someone like James Potter has this blatant misunderstanding."

He turned to Dumbledore and asked, "Tell them, Headmaster. Would you be concerned about facing a coordinated team of Aurors? A team of highly coordinated Aurors, launching an operation to take you down, for which they had prepared. Be honest. None of your diplomatic, evasive answers."

Dumbledore pursed his lips, making his beard cover his lips. He didn't vocalize his thoughts and simply gave a shake of his head as a response. Making some people in the room blink in surprise.

"What that meant was that if he desired, Headmaster could wipe a couple of Auror teams without breaking a sweat," Quinn said bluntly, which Dumbledore wasn't willing to put into words.

Moody and James didn't look they agreed; maybe it was their pride, or they genuinely believed that they could take Dumbledore out.

"As for what I believe? Is that even a question? The people who have reached the two Dark Lords and Dumbledore levels of magic can be counted on your fingers. And when you take into factor that Headmaster was born in the eighties and the Dark Lord in the nineties. . . puts the rarity of such people into context," said Quinn. "Even among those people, not all are battle oriented. . . . My teacher, Alan D. Baddeley; pit him against the Headmaster and Dark Lord together in a battle of the minds, he'd rip their minds into shreds as if he was tearing bread at the dinner table, then turn these powerful men into doing his bidding— but if you put him in a duel against them, he'd be destroyed.

How many of those rare individuals do you think will come to risk facing someone as ruthless as the Dark Lord. Without fail, all of them are accomplished in their lives; they won't come to defend my family for money— they will have plenty of it. Why would they protect my family for something they already have and can earn more by doing much simpler and safer work. All my family can do is make preparations to delay the Dark Lord reaching them so they could escape. . . . Why else do you think did my grandfather flee the country during the war?

So yes, to answer that question, I do love my family," said Quinn sarcastically. "But now this is out, my family is at risk if it reaches the ears of the Dark Lord," he stared at everyone in the office. "I would be very displeased if this somehow got out. . . I prefer not to have a conversation with my grandfather that we need to leave the country because I put my nose where it doesn't belong."

That was a conversation that would come inevitably, but he preferred it to be as late as possible. After all, he knew exactly what his grandfather would ask him the moment he broke the conversation. He was explicitly told to stay away, and it wouldn't matter to George that it was much before they had the 'stay away' conversation. He'd move in and use the chips he held over Quinn.

Quinn was done. He leaned comfortably into his chair and looked ahead with a bland expression as if waiting for them to say something or end this meeting. He was done with speaking and answering questions. The way the conversation had went, he had done enough damage that the moment he stepped out, the people would jump Dumbledore with their questions.

"Nevertheless, you could've said something," spoke Dumbledore.

"So could have you," Quinn shrugged, "to all these people and so many more."

It seemed that everyone had become fed up with Quinn and Dumbledore's conversation where they couldn't understand what they were talking about.

"Would one you tell us what the hell are you talking about?!" Harry put everyone's thoughts into loud words.

Quinn got up from his chair and buttoned up his suit. "I'll leave that to the Headmaster. I'm done here for today. As for Hogwarts security, for which I was called here, there's no reason to be concerned about me compromising it— the most I will be doing is visiting Hogsmeade."

He faced McGonagall, "I'll be sitting down with Professor Flitwick as he asked me to, but I'll be visiting the AID office before that. I hope that's not a problem."

McGonagall had no opposition. She was too interested in what Dumbledore was going to tell them. She allowed Quinn to visit AID. He immediately exited the tense place that was the Headmaster's Office.

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Quinn knocked on the door of the Arithmancy classroom.

The knock made everyone in the classroom turn towards the door.

"Mr. West!" Septima Vector, the Arithmancy professor, exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"Good afternoon, Professor," smiled Quinn. "Looks like you're still stringing beautiful magic with numbers. I was visiting Hogwarts on some business with the Headmaster. As for your classroom, I'm here to ask if I could borrow one of your students."

Vector's smile seemed to indicate that she knew precisely who Quinn was talking about. "Of course, you can—"

Before she could even complete the sentence, a blonde bullet walked past her with the elegance of a floating cloud and arrived beside Quinn, grabbing onto his arm.

"— take her," Vector chuckled and shook her head. "Please return her before her next class."

"Will do," Quinn turned to the girl beside him and smiled, "Shall we?"

Luna Lovegood nodded with her eyes staring at Quinn.

"You didn't tell me you were coming," she said.

"It was a last-minute thing, and I thought I'd give you a surprise. How's sixth-year treating you?"

"It's the same as fifth-year, which was same as fourth-year, same as third-year. . ."

"Really? I thought with me gone, Hogwarts would be less fun. I was the life of the party after all."

Luna tilted her head cutely and muttered: "Party?"

Quinn chuckled before asking in a softer tone, "Has anyone tried to act stupid with you? Tell me, and I'll whip up something in the workshop you can throw at them to make the rest of their years absolutely miserable."

"It's okay. I can do it on my own."

"Yes, you can," Quinn grinned and side hugged the shorter girl. "How's AID going? Is Astoria handling the office well? Any clients she had to turn away for any reason?"

"We completed the request of every person who came in. Everyone's happy. . . and have their names added into the debt ledger."

"Good, good, that's the most important part. Any projects that you two are doing?"

"Un, we're in the middle of updating your first-year notes."

"My notes? Are you adding something?"

"Not like that. We're trying to rearrange how the information is presented. As Astoria said: we're making it more digestible. We even did the research for it."

"Oh, what did you do?"

"Last year, we took one chapter from every notebook of every subject from the first year and made different mockups, each with a different design. We showed them to a lot of different first-year and second=year people for feedback. By the end of the year, we had decided upon the final version of the design.

Then through the summer break, we slowly worked through all the chapters in all the notebooks for the first year. We're going to review the design one last time, and by the end of the week, we're going to send the new designs to Scrinvenshaft for printing."

"Are you going to expand to the other years?" asked Quinn. He hadn't taught Astoria, so he didn't know if the younger Greengrass could handle the educational content from higher years, but he knew Luna, and she could gulp everything taught in the Hogwarts classroom like a thirsty traveler in the desert.

"If this is a success, we're going to repeat the process for the second and third-year notes and complete the process in the next year. If the updated notes fail, we're going to put the project on long-term development to see what went wrong."

Quinn was impressed. He had told both of them that they needed to do something other than solving the clents' problems isn't going to get work out as that got boring quickly, and doing personal projects was the best way to utilize AID— which was also what he had done.

"We are trying to do something."

Quinn asked what it was.

"We're going to start a monthly newspaper. Everything from what happened in Hogwarts to what is happening outside, from magic to history. Everything is going to be in one place. It's going to be both new and familiar. Plus, we have decided to involve the AID cards. We haven't decided where we're going to use them."

"Maybe you could use them to access the paper."

"Nuh-uh, that's too easy. That idea was rejected was the one we rejected first."

"Ouch, that hurt. Well, whatever you do, send me one of those newspapers if it is built to be taken out of Hogwarts."

Quinn smiled as Luna's eyes shined. He had dropped a little hint, and as he had expected, Luna had taken inspiration from it.

"Where are we going?" asked Luna.

"To bust Astoria out of her class, wherever that is," Quinn sighed. "Why do these halls feels so foreign without Recon. How am I going to find where she is?"

"You can ask me," she said. "I know."

"You're smart."

"I know. You're smart too."

"Thank you."

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Quinn West - MC - From focused to random.

Albus Dumbledore - Headmaster - Trapped in his office with questions.

Luna Lovegood - Best Friend - Still the same, but also smarter.

FictionOnlyReader - Author - Three works done.

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If you have any ideas regarding the magic you want to see in this fiction or want to offer some ideas regarding the progression. Move onto the DISCORD Server and blast those ideas.

The link is in the synopsis!


PENSAMENTOS DOS CRIADORES
FictionOnlyReader FictionOnlyReader

Just like always,

Review, comment, add to the library, and share this fic.

Thx

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