Capítulo 242: 23
XLV. A Project
Other than domination of whatever particular area you happen to desire control of and the destruction of any opposition, a major pursuit or two can be interesting to pursue, perhaps even profitable. If you please it can be some sort of leisure activity, and while unwinding is useful in its own way, there are many possible benefits to side projects. More money for your ventures, research into powerful magics, loyalty among your followers, a better reputation (however you chose to define better)… a sufficiently profitable or impressive venture can do these things.
Atlantis was deep under the sea. Very deep. Thankfully, magic meant Harry could explore with ease without getting crushed like a tin can thanks to the pressure. The darkness was choking, and Harry had to wonder when was the last time any sort of light, other than the pale mimicry of bioluminescent creatures, had touched the ancient stones he walked on.
Those stones composed a city, and while it was no longer in an ideal state of repair, it was still a marvel to behold: he thought that at this point he was pretty experienced with architecture, but the ruins were like nothing he had ever seen- this place was truly foreign, both in style and substance.
Thankfully, they were lucky enough to have landed in some sort of public plaza or square, instead of, say, on top of a house or library or something. That would have been a touch embarrassing, especially given his semi-archaeological pretensions. He was pretty sure that the average archaeologist's job was very different from what Harry did, but smashing artifacts willy-nilly was probably a no go for them as well.
Of course, Harry was the first out of the ship, and he swam around a bit. Yep. Seemed like a sunken city. Very wet.
He definitely planned on investigating at length. Actually, he might need to set up some sort of base of operations near Atlantis, just to make the matter easier- he wasn't exploring some little undersea shack or anything. If it had remained completely undiscovered for… however long it was undersea (another thing to look into!) then there would be a lot to uncover.
Harry would admit that it was all tremendously exciting. He would be breaking new ground, archaeologically speaking- hell, he could probably write a book about Atlantis, or something. As loath as he was to admit it, there was more to archaeology than just taking shit, although he doubted there were any heirs to Atlantis floating around.
And of course, he wasn't blind enough to think that there couldn't be some serious profit involved here- it was never really Harry's objective, but it was a definite possibility. He figured that a civilization sent to the bottom of the sea for hubris and decadence- if that was the actual cause and not a cover story or something- would probably have some very nice stuff, if nothing else.
Of course, before they could 'borrow' any such stuff, they had to find it- which was a bit more of a problem than the usual archaeological adventures, because of their current location in the inky depths of a black abyss. He couldn't really guess at the city's size, considering his limited vision and the roads that seemed to be designed by an alcoholic- they twisted and turned crazily.
Even Daphne seemed somewhat interested, but Astoria was particularly excited, if a little crestfallen that she wouldn't get a chance to explore the place more fully until the summer came around. "Save some for me, yeah?"
"Of course." Harry honestly didn't think he would be even close to finishing with something on the scale of Atlantis before Astoria was done with Hogwarts, even if he had help.
As it turned out, setting up a connection between Doggerland and Atlantis, while useful logistically, meant that just about everyone wanted to come by and check the place out- which was fair, if a touch distracting. It was interesting, after all, and Harry planned on taking a good long while to really explore the place, setting up a little camp in one of the more intact buildings.
And because Harry had decided to temporarily live in Atlantis while exploring it, Margaret had decided to come along. She still considered her secretarial duties to be of the utmost concern, after all, and she could still fulfill those duties while in Atlantis. You couldn't send letters from Atlantis for obvious reasons, but the place certainly wasn't uninhabitable, at least after you chipped away all the barnacles.
If there was any pattern to the roads- which he barely had to follow, because, you know, swimming- then Harry couldn't make much sense of it. He couldn't begin to fathom who thought the wild, disorganized pattern of the buildings was a good idea, the way the streets curved and doubled back and never seemed to stay straight…. Maybe it was some brilliant defensive choice- if the Atlanteans even needed to defend themselves- but Harry couldn't help but feel a little sick to the stomach imagining getting lost in those narrow streets as your whole world fell out from under you.
Bumping into the odd mosaic or mostly intact complex was pretty neat, though. Sure, he might have to do a bit of wand-work to clean it up properly, but they were well made, great whorling spirals in precious and semi-precious gems. He supposed prying them up was possible- and potentially even profitable- but the idea of wrecking something that survived a catastrophic event and ages upon the seafloor seemed almost tragic.
There were also occasional hints of a written language, one that neither he or Mary could make any sort of sense of. He supposed he'd have to hope he would find some sort of Rosetta stone- or maybe some entity that would be kind enough to give him a hint.
Slowly, his little expeditions went further and further out from Atlantis, leaving behind the shockingly dense urban center, the houses fading away (not that was saying much, in this inky dark) as Harry passed by towering, partially destroyed walls and rotted docks. Finding stuff out there was harder- it was just so damned dark!
Thankfully, they seemed to have landed near the edge of the place- the city had a scale that beggared the imagination- and it wasn't too much effort to look around outside. Admittedly, Harry wasn't expecting much on the outskirts of the city, so he was rather surprised, and not in a particularly pleasant way. It seemed the Mermen who lingered around Atlantis were a bit more closely related to their North Sea cousins than the ones in the Mediterranean, so Harry was certainly in for a surprise when he ran into one on the way out of the city. For a few moments he thought he had bumped into an angler fish or some other less than pleasant abyssal creature… but no, it was just a Merman. One he couldn't speak to, and who was gesturing with a spear in terrified fashion.
The Merman was seemingly as scared or surprised by Harry as Harry was by him, and both of them calmed down quickly enough to not start a fight. Only to realize that they couldn't communicate. Harry made some gesture which he hoped was a sort of 'follow me' or 'stay here' thing, while he swam off to get a translator.
He totally wasn't bitter that Mermen had gotten to the city first. Not at all. Like, he supposed he couldn't be too mad if the Mermen needed the city's resources to stay alive or something, but it did put a minor wrinkle in his archaeological plans. Although he had to wonder how the Mermen reacted to the crash of Atlantis, if they were even around at the time…
The Mermen near Atlantis were a meager people- they were far too deep under the sea to grow kelp or seaweed, to eat themselves or to feed their own flocks of fish, so they were left with less typical means of living. Their society was instead focused on geothermal faults and the odd sorts of life that lived off of chemical reactions instead of sunlight. It was the sort of thing that might make an interesting book, Harry thought. Well, he'd put that on the back burner...
There were some translation issues- surprise surprise, Atlantean dialect was super weird thanks to the isolation- but they got some interesting info about the underwater city, on top of the fact that they understood, if vaguely, Mermish as the world knew it.
Harry was disappointed but not too surprised to find that the Mermen looted the outer portions of the city for metal tools, with some mix of fear and quiet awe keeping them from plunging too deep into the city, at least while metal was still in plentiful supply on the outskirts. It was while discussing this that Harry (through a translator) asked what he thought was an obvious question: "What sorts of tools did you use before the sinking? Could you show me?"
Their response was basically "Before the sinking?", which was an entire can of worms all on its own.
"Surely, you were here when it sunk?"
The response from everyone, even the elders, was basically "We don't know. We don't remember." The closest Harry got were vague references to old glory days, days where Mermen weaved complex magics and used powerful relics, before that knowledge was lost to time and to petty conflicts caused by jealousy…
Admittedly, it was perfectly possible that the Mermen had only arrived in the area of Atlantis after the sinking and just kind of decayed from the glorious past they remembered… but part of Harry wondered. If Atlantis was a city thriving with magic, and if the Mermen's earliest cultural memories were of Mermages (was that a word?) was it possible they were one and the same? That their traits were not the result of whatever analogue to evolution the magical world had, but rather as some sort of last ditch effort to save what people they could?
A bit more questioning revealed that at several points, mermen peeled off from the little settlement near Atlantis, when numbers were too great to be sustained by the meager produce around vents… was it so hard to believe that they might have chosen to swim to the comparatively brighter waters of the Mediterranean or North Sea?
Or that was Harry's theory, anyways. Maybe he'd find evidence that disproved it tomorrow, or maybe he wouldn't. Either way, there was an awful lot of Atlantis to look over.
Harry did have to take the occasional break from what they were now calling the Atlantis expedition for business back at the island (not to mention for his own health- Margaret could be shockingly intimidating when she thought he was overworking himself). Sometimes these things were kind of normal, for him- they wanted him to redirect a particularly nasty weather pattern, do some particularly intense work with his staff, or maybe just mediate the occasional dispute between people. He kind of expected that, as leader of Doggerland- some of the other requests got a little weirder.
While typically pretty happy to manage themselves, the people did occasionally come to Harry when seeking permission for something particularly noteworthy: several rituals intended to increase the island's prosperity or yields or whatever (which Harry hesitantly greenlit as long as blood sacrifice or anything of that sort wasn't involved), testing new spells, even a small wand crafting business- they apparently wanted to make sure they could take thestral hair from 'his' herds before starting. Of course, Harry didn't say no.
The thing he found the most shocking was when several residents asked him to officiate their weddings. He didn't say no, but he just found it a little jarring. He was glad people were getting married, sure, but it was also a bit of a reminder that he was responsible for more people than just himself now- a lot more, especially considering that Teddy was no longer the only child on the island.
Thankfully, Harry wasn't asked to be godfather to any of the other children on the island, as he already had his hands full with handling just the one godson. He wasn't entirely sure if he could take that active role in another child's life. Well, maybe he could, but Harry still wondered if he was helping to raise Teddy properly. He wasn't exactly an expert on the subject of child rearing, after all.
Hell, it felt like Harry didn't know nearly enough. Sure, he was good with Defense Against the Dark Arts, and the skills he had developed in the course of building the castle… but raising a kid? Ruling a country? He supposed that all he could really do was try his best, and depend on the people around him- perhaps that seemed a touch maudlin, but Harry would rather be overly sentimental as opposed to some egocentric, isolationist maniac.
Harry liked to think he was gathering no small number of skilled people on the island: the vampires were, if perhaps a little out of touch, enthusiastic; the werewolves tended to have a fairly broad set of skills, considering that just about anyone could be made a werewolf; add to that any humans that came along, the Veela, and Yuki-Onna… He had certainly gathered an unusual crowd.
Around this point, the island also had another interesting occurrence: a visitor sailed up and moored themselves to the docks- Jean Paul. Harry was glad to see that finding his island wasn't completely impossible, as long as he actually wanted the guest around, of course.
Harry imagined that he would have been quite shocked when he first saw the tower and got an understanding of its scale, but he seemed somewhat calm by the time the Belle Epoque's ropes leapt from the decks and tied themselves to their moorings.
"You don't do things in half measures, do you, Potter?"
Harry chuckled. "I suppose I don't. Why don't I show you?"
In some ways, Harry Potter felt like a kindred spirit. Meeting while on adventure seemed like a sign in some way, or perhaps that was just the shock of seeing a magical Brit so far from home. Then there were more similarities: very unique boats, an active archaeological urge, and, as he eventually learned, self made homes in the sea. Admittedly, there was a bit of a deviation in that Potter's island home was all his own, while his own Ys fell under the French Ministry (not that he didn't feel like seceding sometimes, damned reneging sons of…). There was a bit of a surprise when he first saw it, though- he wasn't quite imagining something on Doggerland's scale.
It was towering, a complex tangle of architectural styles writ in monolithic enchanted bricks. Sure, there were a few gardens and such ringing the structure, but the castle- or perhaps it would have been better to say tower- was taller than just about any magical building he could think of. The only thing that he could really compare to it was muggle skyscrapers, or perhaps several of the larger muggle cathedrals stacked on top of each other.
The weather was pretty nice, although that was undoubtedly Potter's doing as well. He was visiting the island at Potter's pleasure, especially considering the fact that he was using a ship with sails. Assuming someone somehow managed to make it through the worst gale Potter could possibly whip up, there was also the matter of the dark shadows that flitted through the water- mermen, and swarms of them.
Then there was the tour. Potter had thestrals and other bizarre creatures ("Oh, those are just Hagrid's.") in paddocks ringing the island, and he made an off hand comment about dragons on another island of his.
"You've got dragons?"
"A few hatchlings, now." Harry said. "You can see them if you'd like?"
"I'll pass." Jean Paul had already gotten all the experience with dragons he wanted during a misadventure in Crimea. No thank you.
Then there were all the people. The hustle and bustle was something all on its own, not to mention the sheer variety of people. Well, Jean Paul didn't actually know that many of the people were werewolves until it was pointed out to him, which was a touch embarrassing, honestly. Sure, it wasn't the week of the full moon, but without poverty sinking its claws into them some of the typical 'signs' of lycanthropy weren't really there.
He was already familiar with Veela, of course, but it was gratifying to see the Yuki-Onna and Kitsune bouncing around, considering he didn't get the chance to see any on his own trip to Japan. Having one of the Kitsune dump a bucket of water on him- while in the Yuki-Onna's room- was not quite as gratifying. He wasn't sure how Potter could stand tricksters like those running around, but different strokes, he supposed.
Potter definitely had some different strokes, so to speak. There were the vampires, which were a bit of a scare but had a certain appeal to them, but the real shock came when a slightly older looking woman came out, carrying a babbling baby in her arms, one that Potter rushed over to hold.
"You're awfully young to have a kid, Potter." Wizarding Britain's boy wonder didn't seem like the sort of man who would be into cougars, but apparently… "Is she your Mrs. Potter?"
Potter made a sputtering noise, rather like the dying gasps of a poorly maintained car.
Ys was… something. Harry wouldn't put it in words like that after Jean Paul offered to show him around (mostly as an excuse to escape the choking embarrassment of his Mrs. Potter comment), but in less generous terms, it was basically just a heap of stones in the rough shape of a tower, hidden away by magic in a shallow part of the Breton coast. Still, it was of magical construction, so it didn't just fall over into the sea while Jean Paul was out and about, doing whatever. Not quite as showy as raising an island from the sea, but Harry would admit that it was probably more practical.
Compared to Doggerland, it was small, but a lot of things were kind of small when compared to Doggerland. Perhaps a kinder word to use would have been something like humble, but for a place that only really needed to serve as a bachelor pad and a mooring for Jean Paul's boat, it seemed sufficient.
The kitchen was… well, Harry was under the impression that single men weren't always eating the greatest food, but as far as Harry could tell he only had a few utensils: an extremely aged crock pot and cauldron and basically nothing else. Harry had expected a bit more from the Frenchman, to be honest- weren't they supposed to be all about the fine cuisine?
It took a few moments to click, embarrassingly. Because Harry knew there was, in fact, a mythical crock pot which was quite notable and would effectively replace an entire kitchen. Harry sighed. "You've been collecting the Treasures of Britain, too?"
"Wait, you've been collecting them?"
"A few, yeah-" Harry chuckled. "Suppose it's a good thing I didn't spend too much time looking for them, considering."
Jean Paul sighed. "That explains it."
"Say, what is a Frenchman doing finding British artifacts?"
He scoffed. "Where do you think Brittany got its name from? It's little Britain, you know. Lancelot? French. The tale of the holy grail? French."
"Huh." Harry said. "So, what incredible treasures did you find in Brittany, other than the pot?"
Jean Paul grinned widely and led Harry into a small parlor, where a simple wooden table held an intricate silver chessboard, the pieces glittering like gold- because they were gold, of course. "Oh, the chessboard."
"What's wrong with the chessboard?" Jean Paul asked defensively.
"Nothing, just… if you want a self-playing chess set I can buy one from Diagon Alley, you know?"
"But they don't have history, Harry. You know this."
"Yeah, yeah." Harry conceded, not really disagreeing but finding taking the piss a bit too fun to stop. "You ever find the chariot?"
"Do you think I'd still be using the Belle Epoque if I had the chariot that could go anywhere?" He scoffed. "It's not like I have horses to pull it, either. I haven't found hide nor hair of that damned halter. Do you have it?"
"No," Harry chuckled. "Plus, I'm pretty sure if I tried to ride another horse, my horse would knock my head off."
Jean Paul rolled his eyes. "Some of us don't have islands where we can keep horses, you know?"
"Oh, Ys isn't too bad. Very cozy."
"Cozy. Great. Exactly what I wanted." He sighed. "Which treasures did you manage to find?"
"The sword, the hamper, and Arthur's mantle." Harry said.
"You lucky bastard."
Harry shrugged. "That's fair." It would probably be even more fair if Jean Paul knew Harry now possessed two invisibility cloaks of… unusual value, even for invisibility cloaks.
"That leaves us with… the chariot, the halter, the knife, the horn, the coat, and the other mantle still floating around somewhere."
"The other mantle?"
Jean Paul waved his hand dismissively. "The one that is only long when worn by a faithful wife."
"Why would you ever need that?"
Jean Paul picked up a roughly rectangular looking stone with an odd sort of sheen to it. "Why would I need a whetstone that only sharpens the swords of brave men? You can be a good magician and also have some damned odd priorities."
Meanwhile, in a very small article on one of the last pages of the Daily Prophet, some minor business news was mentioned.
Weasley's Wizard Wheezes Now a Subsidiary of Weasley WIzard Works
The new company claims to be devoted to the same spirit of fun and joy as the original- just with a broader focus on practical products as well. They've started small so far, offering inexpensive cauldrons and other wizarding odds and ends for muggleborns just trying to get their start in the wizarding world…
The intrepid journalist who wrote this article was definitely an attentive sort, paying attention to mind numbingly boring business records in the Ministry in hopes of a piece on the way in which the wizarding economy was changing after the war. Unfortunately, they never really got much attention for these pieces, at least in the way they had imagined.
Perhaps if the writer had discovered Weasley Wizard Works' main provider of goods for sale, it would have been front page news. People were so intrigued by Doggerland, after all.
XLVI. Multitudes
If you can spare some time in your schedule (or get a secretary to shuffle things around) then I would recommend some time spent in introspection. There are a remarkable number of problems that can be solved by just taking some time to think- a bit of planning can do you some good. Or maybe just thinking about whatever. A short break from completely and totally orienting yourself towards your inevitable victory can be worthwhile, perhaps even enjoyable. If you're really tight for time you might be able to overlap it with some good old fashioned villainous brooding.
Overly concerning yourself with the opinions of others does not sound very villainous- who is a lion to care for the opinions of sheep?- but sometimes attempting to understand the other can be a powerful exercise. Consider yourself, and contrast with the you inside the other's mind. Or how you imagine the other's mind to be. If one wants to get overly philosophical, you are composed of multitudes- how hundreds or even thousands of separate people view you.
Mr. Creevey was glad to have Dennis back, at least. It helped him feel a touch less empty. He still felt shell-shocked sometimes, knowing that Colin was just gone one day. Sure, he had known that the wizarding world was undergoing some unrest, but he figured that Collin would have been safe in that castle…
Now it was just him and Dennis, and he was terrified by the idea of the magical world taking his other son away from him, whether through some horrific death or even just stealing away his attention…
He could have nearly throttled someone when he was told he couldn't even go into that bleeding Alley without a wizard accompanying him- sometimes it seemed as if the entire magical world was purposely designed to pluck 'muggleborn' children from their lives wholesale. Mr. Creevey didn't really consider himself some sort of nutty conspiracy theorist- he was just a milkman, after all- but being informed that there was, in fact, a world wide conspiracy to hide magic from the common man… well, it forced you to broaden your horizons a bit.
So he tried to understand just what was going on over on the wizarding side of things- he took out subscriptions to both the Prophet and that tabloid that Collin swore up and down was the real truth…
He read about the triumph of that boy Collin was so intrigued by- the boy who was the subject of those history books he had skimmed back when Collin was just eleven- and felt… something. The news had come around the same time that the news of his son's death came, so he didn't really have much time to process that particular tidbit before his life shattered. Thinking that Collin was one of the last people those Death Eaters had managed to kill before being stopped was cold comfort- it was hard not to feel angry.
Anger at that bastard, Voldemort, at his swarms of cronies (although he derived some satisfaction from following the trials), at the teachers of Hogwarts who couldn't keep his son safe, at the Ministry who had let their society rot, and sometimes even at Potter, who had apparently spent the year gallivanting about Britain before finally killing Voldemort… he supposed a shrink could have come up with all sorts of stuff about how it was really anger at his own powerlessness or some such, and sometimes it really felt like all he could do was observe.
And observe he did. He found himself closely following Potter, the boy that Collin was so starstruck by in life… Potter was larger than life, he would say that. Keeping company with vampires and werewolves on his own private island, forming his own country… it all seemed a little unreal for a boy a year older than his Collin… It did make him wonder if the papers were fudging things a little. Or a lot.
From the way Dennis talked, Potter did seem like a stand up guy, and it was possible that his whole starting an island thing was him literally creating the sort of country he wanted to live in. At least for Mr. Creevey, Wizarding Britain was already tiring enough, and he was on the edge of periphery- he couldn't imagine having the whole lot of them breathing down your neck from the moment you went to school…
(Remembering Collin's almost paparazzo-level obsession with Potter used to make him cringe, now it made him teary-eyed.)
On the subject of the great institution of Hogwarts, Dennis' schooling was already wildly off track considering that Voldemort didn't think muggleborns deserved a magical education. Some part of him wondered if there were better options. He wondered about a lot of things in the magical world, actually. Would Dennis be able to make something of himself, in that strange world? Would he forever be an alien to the normal- or would he say muggle?- world?
For a moment, he almost wondered if Potter was open to teaching. Dennis and Colin had ranted and raved about how great Dumbledore's little Army was- AN awfully martial name for a children's study group, but there was something darkly fitting about that name and all the violence that was to come. If there was a better teacher of magical self defense, Mr. Creevey didn't know of them, although that wasn't saying much.
Despite that, Mr. Creevey wasn't entirely sure if he could actually meet Harry Potter face to face without far too many painful emotions bubbling up in his chest: how did you treat my son? Did you fill his head with dreams of fighting evil that made him stay in that damned castle? Could Potter have done more?
Good God, he needed something to drink. Maybe he could have some of that firewhiskey stuff that Dennis tried to pretend he hadn't brought home.
Draco Malfoy was not in the greatest mood, at the moment. Sure, he could say that he wanted to make a name for himself without depending on his father- who was currently becoming very intimate with the pleasures of prison life- but that was cold comfort considering his current situation. He had tried the Ministry, at first, but everyone there thought he was suspect: if he was lucky, he got some unsubtle comments about graft and if he was unlucky he was basically told to leave if he didn't want to get run out of the department.
A job at Borgin and Burkes would have been a nightmare for his reputation if the place hadn't burned down mysteriously in a way he was certain wasn't an accident. He wasn't dumb enough to kick up a fuss about it, but it was hard not to feel a little set upon. Any prospects of marrying into Greengrass money were shot by the war's end, not to mention how potentially depending on his spouse for an allowance made his ego prickle.
Even if the Malfoy family was in good standing- which it definitely was not- his chances would still be slim. Draco's relationship with the elder Greengrass had been… cool. Not marriage material, especially when Astoria was right there. At least, she was right there once- she was off the market now, although for what reason Draco didn't know. Admittedly, he didn't exactly have many strong contacts in Hogwarts ready to spill the beans about Astoria's relationship status…
So Draco was left searching for jobs his father would have considered far below his dignity while attempting to mend bridges with the Parkinsons. Not quite the future he had imagined for himself, but he wasn't dead and wasn't locked up in prison somewhere, which was more than could be said of several people he used to know. Compared to the sorry remnants of the Death Eaters, the Order of the Phoenix and friends made it out a lot better- especially Potter.
Oh sure, Gringotts hated his guts, but Draco wasn't even entirely sure Potter needed money anymore. He wasn't going to Hogwarts, and he certainly wasn't paying rent on a slab of stone he had lifted from the sea himself- if the rumors were true- and a sufficiently skilled magician could probably make other ends meet, so it wasn't like he'd really need money. Instead, he could spend his time acquiring vampires and werewolves and other odd sorts.
Potter could certainly keep the werewolves if he wanted; Draco was still of the opinion that they were a distasteful sort, even with Granger's PR campaign to the contrary. The vampires… well, Potter's taste in women wasn't all bad, he supposed, even if he spun that whole 'dignity to all magical creatures' story in front of the ICW. He wasn't sure if Potter bought it fully, but if he wanted to attempt to make something of the werewolves and whoever else, then he could. It seemed to Draco that some of the more powerful wizards got a touch eccentric- too much magic rattling in the skull, perhaps.
On the bright side, if Potter was messed up in the head it was the mostly benign crazy of Albus Dumbledore and not the madness of Voldemort. Draco had enough to worry about without considering the possibility of Potter sending a tornado straight down Diagon Alley. Instead his craziness was devoted to making friends with bizarre foreign creatures, exploring the world (and staying far away from Britain in the process), and attempting to spread Parseltongue as a spoken language.
That last one was kind of weird, and depending on how you looked at it, you could see it either as some attempt to… decratize? Demicraze? Democratize? Some attempt to make a famously pureblood ability more common, as some sort of snub, or possibly some attempt to make it more accepted, to make the world a shade darker so he fit in better? He had heard all sorts of bizarre theories like that, or that it was a scheme by Granger somehow…
Granger was far too busy smearing Draco's father for how he treated Dobby to worry about something like Parseltongue, Draco thought, but she was also the sort of woman who tended to bite off more than anyone could reasonably chew. Weasley would have his hands full with that one…
At the Three Broomsticks, a few friends were discussing goings on in the world- and their own lives- over some Butterbeer.
"I mean, if I stopped smoking for a few months, that might help me get enough money to buy a staff."
"A few years, more like." One of his friends muttered. "Plus, do you even know how to use it? I mean, if you want to tell everyone that you're compensating for something…"
"Oi! I mean, just look at what Potter's done with his!"
"Yeah," one of the others snickered, "Potter's definitely been makin' good use of his staff…"
"Really, though, I think he's… a cut above the average wizard, yeah?"
"Sure, but we're all magicians, yeah?" One of them made a vague waving gesture towards his wand. "Why couldn't we do something similar, you know?"
"I suppose… but do you think you could run a country? Really?"
"I mean, he's what, nineteen?"
"You ever kill a dark lord by the time you were nineteen?"
"Well if I was presented with the opportunity…"
"Like hell you could!"
As the pair went on an impassioned tangent about the skills required to defeat a dark lord, the others continued talking.
"Technically speaking, does beating a dark lord disqualify you from eventually becoming a dark lord?"
"Dark lord? I dunno, seems like a bit of an exaggeration." He shrugged. "I mean, Dumbledore proved you can beat a dark lord and still not be the greatest guy, you know? Less dark, more… gray?"
After recovering from a wild coughing fit caused by taking a sip at the same time as the previous comment, one of the others spoke. "Gray lord? You kidding me? What's next, a zebra lord?"
"I mean, gray's kinda nebulous, you know? Like, charcoal gray and Patronus silver aren't the same, you feel me?"
Astoria Greengrass stayed in a room with several other Slytherin girls, ones that had known her since their very first year at Hogwarts- to them, any changes in behavior were pretty obvious.
It was rather hard not to notice her unusually chipper mood recently, and her unabashed excitement for the end of the year. She was frantically corresponding with a mysterious someone- who she avoided naming- and seemed oddly evasive when it came to questions of her plans for a profession after school…
For some, it might have been enough to engage their curiosity- perhaps even to inspire a bit of (very cautious) eavesdropping. Possibly even when Astoria stayed after class to talk with her sister, Daphne.
"I don't think you need to ask through me or anything like that, Tori- McGonagall doesn't hate him or anything. If he wants to come, she'll let him."
"I know… I just think we need a cover story, is all."
Daphne scoffed. "Tori, do you really think anyone's gonna get suspicious if you two scamper off somewhere? They'll just assume it's a broom closet and not the Room of Requirement."
"Yeah, but it's not like you'd visit Hogwarts just for the closets."
"Then Potter can just teach a class, or something- you've seen how many people are running around with staves they don't know how to use."
Well, that was something. Something big.
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