บท 8: Chapter 9
Sirius stared at his fleeing godson's back, feeling as if the world had
just taken a sharp left turn without warning anyone.
Pettigrew was dead.
The thought was as satisfying as it was horrible.
He hadn't meant for things to go that far, but once Peter had started
talking and begging for his miserable life, still making excuses even
now, the familiar red haze from twelve years ago had come down.
Sirius was actually surprised that he'd limited himself to non-lethal
spells, but that was probably more to do with the fact that his mind
had been on causing pain and he hadn't been in any state to shift
mental gears.
He'd picked up quite a few nasty spells from his family even if he
hadn't wanted to and Azkaban had given him a long time to fantasize
about using them.
The fact that it would now be much harder to prove his innocence
was a distant secondary concern to the fact that Harry had killed
someone. Thirteen was way too young to have that hanging over
you.
Then was the fact that Harry had cast a lethal spell without his wand.
The most wandless magic that Sirius had ever seen had come from
Dumbledore, but even that had been just parlor tricks and not really
anything too impressive aside from the fact that it was wandless.
But his godson's astonishing achievement wasn't important right
now. He needed to go see if Harry was alright.
He found him outside, kneeling in the snow and staring at the night
sky with a look that was hard to decipher. It looked like something
between shock, awe and a sort of horrified realization.
Harry picked himself up before Sirius could make his way over, his
face now hardened into an expression of driven purpose that he'd
last seen on Lily's.
"Harry…" He started, not really sure what to say to make this
situation better.
"Not now, Sirius." Harry snapped, brushing past him roughly.
Sirius shrank back, incorrectly assuming that his godson was angry
at him for losing it with Wormtail.
Not wanting to let things stew, he ran to catch up to the stomping
thirteen year old and grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Harry, I'm so-"
He made it no further than that. Harry spun around and grabbed him
by his robes, actually lifting him off the ground, much to his
incredulity.
"What part of 'not now' do you not understand?!" Harry hissed
furiously, tossing him aside and sending him stumbling into a couch.
"Whatever you have to say, say it later. I have somethig that I have
to do. Until then, don't bother me."
And Sirius obeyed, cowed into submission by a boy twenty years
younger than him. He obeyed because Harry seemed so much more
than just a thirteen-year old wizard in that moment. Too tall and too
strong and too powerful. Age didn't mean much when he could feel
the unmistakable pressure of a powerful wizard's magic pressing
threateningly into his own, daring him to rise up in challenge.
Worse than any of that though, was the sense of something inhuman
staring out from Harry's eyes.
Harry regretted blowing up at Sirius like that, but he was still grateful
that it kept the man off his back. He'd apologize later. He had no time
to talk about the giant fuck up they had to deal with now. He had no
time to deal with the fact that he'd killed a man. He had no time to
explain to his godfather about the wandless magic and the runes,
which he knew that he was now going to have to do.
The only thing he had time for was to finish preparing for the next
ritual and he didn't even have as much time for that as he'd have
liked.
His soul had stopped cracking and the spread of Dark had slowed,
but it was still spreading nonetheless. He expected that it would
always be there even if his next ritual managed to balance it out
enough to save him.
What the Void took, the Void kept. Of this he was certain. He had
made a sacrifice to that entity, giving it a place in his magic in
exchange for power. He had done it ignorantly, unknowingly, but he
had done it all the same. It would not leave.
So many questions and theories crowded his thoughts, but he had to
focus. He had to hurry before the Dark did more than merely ooze
through the cracks in his soul, before it started taking things that
could never be regained. Because he was afraid that it would do
worse than just kill him. If it wanted that, it only needed to wait.
Everyone and everything went to the Void in the end. Harry wasn't
sure how he knew that, but he knew it.
What he was truly afraid of here wasn't dying, it was the grim
certainty that dementors weren't really Non-Beings at all, but the
empty shells of wizards who had dabbled with the Void without
taking the necessary precautions. Now nothing more than hollow
carriers of Dark, their magic turned into a conduit for the Void,
existing to take things from a world that was otherwise protected by
the Sun.
A day later, the final preparations were complete and the ritual was
set to begin.
Harry could feel that the Dark inside him had grown stronger, but not
yet so strong that he was too late. It had been getting harder to
focus, harder to feel afraid of what was happening to him. The world
now seemed just a touch surreal, as if he was looking at it through a
dirty pane of glass. As the Dark grew in strength, his sense of self
waned.
Harry wasn't oblivious to the rather disturbing similarities that his
situation had with the Dark Souls game franchise. He'd never really
played it, but he had had quite enjoyed its quite interesting lore, as
well as its surprisingly deep and subtle plot.
The fact that he was now intending to link himself to the Sun in order
to stave off the Dark amused him and terrified him in equal measure.
He remembered all too clearly what happened to the Chosen
Undead if he decided to link the fires in the Kiln of the First Flame.
He really hoped that he wasn't going to set himself on fire doing this.
It was going to be his last ritual one way or another, because if this
worked then he didn't want to risk upsetting the balance with any
further additions.
He had originally been intending to perform this ritual in the Potter
ritual chamber like all the others, but it just didn't feel right to do this
one beneath the ground.
That was why he was now making his way away from the manor in
the pre-dawn darkness, moving towards the east. The light covering
of snow crunched under his shoes as he walked and the night was
cold and black, seeming even colder and darker because the skies
were clear. The moon and stars did nothing to counter that feeling
when he could feel the Void pressing in around him.
He turned his mind away from that, knowing instinctively that
focusing on it would only make things worse. He focused on making
a suitable platform for the ritual instead, using the wand he'd retaken
from Sirius on his way out to transfigure a flat stone surface and then
inscribing the instructions on it that would allow the knife to act
independently.
This time, there was no hesitation as he took off his shirt and began
the ritual.
" Ca'Daith. "
Grace. Power. Music of the Stars.
A rune to to call on the Light magic that he was now certain was
inherent to the stars and also to make sure that he did not rely
completely on the Sun. It would be the height of irony to find out that
this final rune set only worked during the day. He decided to have it
carved just under his left collarbone. It seemed appropriate to have it
mirror Arhain .
" Yen'Lui. "
Balance. Harmony. Chaos.
This rune's sole purpose was to ensure that the clash of Light and
Dark inside him didn't have explosive results. He feared that the Sun
would burn him out if he did not use this rune. There was an
uncomfortably high chance of it happening anyway. This one was
carved on the lower end of his breastbone, equidistant from both A
rhain and Ca'Daith .
" Sol. "
The Sun. The Ever Seeing Eye. Consciousness.
This rune was doubled and carved into his temples. He'd been
planning to use it to enhance his eyes and give himself the ability to
see magic as well as expand his capacity to feel it. That had now
become its secondary purpose, but Harry was still pleased that he
was able to sneak in one final enhancement.
Once the carving was done, Harry took a deep breath and waited
tensely, knowing that the ritual was not over yet. Of the three runes,
only Yen'Lui felt active, which was as he had expected. The other
two would become active once they were hit by sunlight, which
should be any second now if the brightening sky was any indication.
He grunted in surprised pain as the first rays of sunlight broke over
the horizon and washed over him. He hadn't expected that magic
born in the violence of the Solar Core would be gentle, but its
fierceness still surprised him. How had wizards ever gotten the idea
into their heads that Light was gentle?
Ca'Daith and Sol burned. Yen'Lui prickled madly as it attempted to
temper the violent reaction between Light and Dark.
Harry shut his eyes tighly as Sol executed its purpose. They stung
terribly and he felt them bleed from the sudden change. He'd
expected that, so it didn't worry him.
At the same time, he felt his perception expand as the rune's power
touched his mind. The sensations were jumbled, unfamiliar as they
were to him, but what was happening inside him was clear.
Dark gave way before Light as was its nature, but with the
understanding that it would still be there, that it could never be
pushed out. His other runes broke open and bled as Light burned
through them. Where Dark was cold and slow, Light was fire and
voraciously consumed all it touched.
Once it had pushed the Dark out of all the runes except A rhain,
where a shard of Dark was connected to the infinite Void and could
not be burned away, it surged into the cracks in his soul. It didn't hurt
in the physical sense, but Harry knew instantly that he had preferred
the gentle creep of Dark. Given the slightest opportunity, Light would
burn him to nothing.
It was a decidedly uncomfortable experience to feel the Dark slowly
relinquishing its grip on the edges of his damaged soul as Light
advanced, but there was nothing to do except endure it as Yen'Lui
worked to keep things from spiralling out of control.
But there was one chunk of his soul that the Dark had grasped tightly
and seemed intent on taking. It had nearly pulled it away from the
whole.
No, not my soul. Harry realized, now seeing that the piece did not
match the rest of him. It had a dormant quality to it, but it was
unquestionably foreign. That isn't mine, it doesn't belong there. How
did a piece of someone else's soul attach itself to me?
It must have been with him for a long time, to have gone undetected
until he'd cracked his soul enough to expose it. Unlike the rest, this
one piece felt as if it been rather haphazardly attached to him and
had come loose once his soul was no longer whole.
Voldemort, it has to be. Something of him must have been left inside
me when he tried to kill me.
Not really sure what he was doing, but knowing that he definitely did
not want that madman's soul latched on to his own, Harry pushed .
He focused on that foreign soul shard and began forcing it out. He
had been afraid of what would happen if the Dark took any of his
soul, but it was more than welcome to the piece of Voldemort.
Its already tenuos grip on him broke once he rejected it so
completely and the Dark took it instantly, as it did all unanchored
souls.
With that done, the Dark put up no more struggle and allowed Light
free reign.
Squinting with painfully stinging eyes, Harry shuffled back towards
the manor.
Sirius hadn't been quite sure what to do with himself for the past day.
Neither Teeny nor Charlus and Dorea would tell him what Harry was
up to, but he was sure that it was something big.
His godson had locked himself in the study and hadn't left it since.
His wand was still in Sirius' possession, apparently being considered
unimportant, which was an attitude that Sirius had never expected to
see from any witch or wizard. Then again, he hadn't expected to see
this level of wandless magic either.
In the absence of anything else to do, he had put Wormtail's
gruesome remains into stasis and stuffed them into an unused trunk.
He was quite unrecognizable, but there were magical ways to
determine a dead wizard's identity by his blood as long as they had
his magical signature on file, which the Ministry should have. The
corpse could still be useful.
Finally, after he had nearly paced a hole into the floor in fruitless
worry, Harry had come out of the study.
Unfortunately, all he had done was grab his wand from Sirius
possession with a terse warning to stay inside. He'd tried to get
some answers out of Charlus and Dorea again, but they merely
looked uncomfortable and still refused to speak. The only thing they
would say was that it was Harry's secret to tell and that he should
leave him alone to do what he was going to do.
Finally, Harry came back, but Sirius couldn't feel anything besides
stunned horror at the sight of him.
His godson was only wearing a pair of pants and streaked with blood
from head to toe. Even more disturbing were the twin trails of bloody
tears coming from his eyes, eyes that were so bloodshot that the
sclera had effectively turned completely red and whose green color
now gleamed visibly with magic.
"Harry?" Sirius asked cautiously.
"Not yet, Sirius." Harry replied with weary clam. "Let me get cleaned
up first, then we'll talk.
Sirius looked worried, but nodded all the same. His godson had been
up to something obviously dangerous and quite probably illegal, but
it seemed like the worst was over. He could wait a little longer to get
answers.
"… and here we are." Harry finished, slouched in an armchair.
Sirius looked at his godson, looking less like some kind of eldritch
abomination and more like a human being now that the blood had
been cleaned off, his sclera had gone back to white and he was
dressed in a comfortable bathrobe. He could almost convince
himself that nothing had changed, if only it wasn't for the rune that he
could plainly see carved into his godson's forehead now that he'd
been told it was there and the shimmer of magic in his eyes that
made them a touch brighter than they'd been before.
It had been quite a tale and Sirius wasn't sure whether to be
impressed or horrified.
"Harry, don't take this the wrong way, but what the hell is wrong with
you?" He asked in a deadpan tone of voice. "What kind of eleven
year old is introduced to magic and thinks 'I think I'll ritualistically
mutilate myself'?"
"The kind that grew up thinking of all the cool enhancement rituals
he could do?" Harry asked rhetorically.
Sirius went on as if he hadn't said anything. "And then, when you
figured out that your first set was giving you the urge to shag your
foster mother, you didn't think that it might have been a good idea to
rethink things?"
Harry didn't know it yet, but this was mildly hypocritical of Sirius. It
wouldn't have stopped him either. Well, it would have if it had made
him lust after his own mother, who had been a hag in every sense of
the word except the literal one, but being attracted to a fine piece of
ass like Katherine Shaw would not have bothered him in the
slightest, no matter his relation to her.
"It seemed like a fair trade." Harry shrugged. "An overactive libido
and a bad temper in exchange for a stronger body and faster
maturation? I regret nothing."
"And your second set, the one that nearly turned you into a
dementor just now?" Sirius demanded. That had been an
unwelcome revelation and he wasn't sure if he believed his godson's
claim of dementors being the leftovers of wizards who'd carelessly
dabbled with Dark. It was just too creepy for words.
"That one I might have done differently if I knew what was going to
happen." Harry admitted.
"Might have?!"
"Despite the close shave, I'm actually pretty happy with the way
things turned out. You have no idea about all the things I see and
know now." He could see the magic in the manor and in Sirius and
he could feel the Sun in the sky. There were so many things that he
had been blind to before.
"And Wormtail?" Sirius challenged, becoming frustrated with his
godson's recklesness. He'd thought that Harry was a lot like Remus;
quiet, studious, thoughtful and he was, but when it came to magic he
was a hundred times as reckless as all the Marauders put together.
Harry sobered instantly. He'd been trying not to think of that.
"We might still be able to use him to clear your name, we'll just have
to be creative about the cause of his death."
"That's not what I meant, Harry." Sirius said gently.
"I know."
"You don't have to feel guilty. I probably would have killed him myself
if you hadn't done it."
"Sirius, I killed a man because I lost my temper. Don't patronize me."
And he couldn't even feel too sorry about it for any reason but for the
fact that it would make proving Sirius' innocence harder. Yes, he
wished that he hadn't done it, but he was not as broken up about it
as he felt that he should be.
The worst part was that he didn't know if that was yet another sideeffect of his runes or if it was something about him. Were the runes
or his exposure to Light and Dark meddling with his sense of
morality, or was he simply somewhat lacking in that department to
begin with? Either way it was a disturbing thought.
He could feel the potential to cast the Killing Curse within him now. It
was such a terribly simple spell, as simple as Lumos. Nothing but
raw killing intent given power through magic. No shield could block it
because it was so pure in its intent that only something equally pure
could block it. Something like a mother's willing sacrifice for her
child. It wasn't an Unforgivable because the spell was Dark or evil, it
was an Unforgivable because you had to be a killer already to cast it.
That evening found Harry on the highest balcony of the manor,
looking to the west.
He and Sirius hadn't managed to work out a viable solution to his
fugitive status just yet. They had tentative plans, but nothing that
they were in a hurry to implement at this point for fear of it backfiring
spectacularly. Wormtail's death made things complicated. They'd
have to spin it in a way that didn't make it look like murder.
Now Harry was waiting for the sunset, running his hands over his
invisibility cloak and wondering at the piece of Dark he could see and
sense in it now. Such a strange thing that he'd carried it around for
years and never known it.
He'd read that invisibility cloaks tended to degrade into uselessness
after a few years, but this one had by all accounts been around for
decades at the least. Harry knew that this was due to it being infused
with Dark. It had to be one of a kind, as he doubted that the secrets
to this kind of craft had been shared beyond the original maker.
Maybe Sirius would know about any legendary invisibility cloaks or
similar artefacts.
When the Sun began to set, Harry observed it with a rapturous
smile. He'd never paid much attention to sunsets before, but now he
found them impossible to ignore.
How could he, when he could feel the Sun's blinding presence
recede to make way for the Dark and the stars? The Sun was too
close and too powerful. It blotted out so much. Now that it had set,
he could see and feel the distant Light of uncountable billions of
stars against the backdrop of Dark. He'd never thought that
something so beautiful could exist. Even more, it was echoed inside
his own soul. The Light inside him waned with the Sun, making way
for Dark, speckled with the Light of the distant stars.
If given the choice to redo things with the knowledge he now had, he
wouldn't change this. The risk of death and hollowing had been
worth it to be able to see magic as he saw it now. He would have
done it in a more controlled manner, but he would have done it
anyway.
"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your
eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will long
to return." He murmured to himself, recalling the old quote from Da
Vinci that he'd come across years ago. It fit the situation perfectly.
Now that he'd seen past the tiny perspective of wizards, he could
never again confine himself to that world. Wizards who learned
spells but did not know them, who used magic but did not know it,
who's best explanation boiled down to 'it just was'. It would drive him
mad as surely as having to pretend that he was a toddler again.
"Legendary invisibility cloaks?" Sirius said in surprise. "Why would
you want to know about that?"
"There's something special about this one." Harry answered, holding
up his father's cloak but not elaborating further.
"I don't really know the story behind it." Sirius said with a shrug. "I
know that it's a Potter family heirloom, but that's all."
"And that doesn't strike you as strange?" Harry asked pointedly.
"Invisibility cloaks aren't supposed to last that long."
"A lot of old magical artefacts are pretty extraordinary by today's
standards. To quote a muggle, 'they don't make 'em like they used
to'."
"I'm surprised that you can actually quote a muggle." Harry snorted.
"I'll have you know that I'm actually very knowledgeable about
muggles." Sirius protested indignantly. "My family hated them, so I
made sure to be as muggle as possible. I even got myself a
motorcycle, though I did enchant it to fly. That's actually where I
heard that particular saying."
"Riiiight." Harry drawled laconically, deciding not to ask whether
Sirius had a license. "But back to the point, legendary invisibility
cloaks?"
"Nothing really comes to mind." Sirius admitted. "The only thing I can
think off is the tale of the Deathly Hallows, but that's just a children's
story."
"Tell it to me."
"Aren't you a bit old for bedtime stories?" The dog Animagus teased.
Harry just rolled his eyes and waved at him, silently telling him to get
on with it.
"I'll tell it to you if you tell me how your night with those two lovely
ladies of yours went." Sirius bargained. He and James had always
swapped details about these things, but Harry was proving to be a
more secretive fellow. James hadn't become like that until he'd
gotten together with Lily.
Harry rolled his eyes again. "What's there to tell? We met up
somewhere private, we got naked, we had sex, we fell asleep."
"You can't cheapen your first sexual experience like that, especially
since it was a threesome!" Sirius protested.
"I lost my virginity back in July." Harry replied blandly.
"Damn!" Sirius cursed.
"What?"
"That means you were twelve at the time."
"So?"
"That means you ditched your virginity two years sooner than me."
"So?"
"How am I supposed to be a rolemodel if you outperform me in
everything?"
"You can stick around and provide a morale boost by showing me
how great I am in comparison."
"That's harsh, Harry."
"So is life, now get to the bedtime story."
Sirius grinned at the banter, fondly remembering similar verbal spars
with James. His best friend might be gone, but something of him had
survived in his son.
"Alright, fine. It goes like this…"
House elves were weird.
That was Harry's conclusion as he watched Teeny use some magic
with his new magesight, as he'd requested. The small house elf's
magic looked like nothing he'd ever seen. He had admittedly not
seen much since he'd only just acquired the ability to see magic, but
it just looked… weird, almost like human magic, but so warped.
He'd tried to enlist her help in figuring out wandless magic soon after
he'd first come to the manor, but that had been a dead end. House
elves had no idea how they used magic, they just did. That had been
quite frustrating to hear at the time. How can you use something if
you didn't know how you used it? His persistent questioning had
nearly driven Teeny to tears when she had been unable to answer
him, so he'd let it go.
House elves also couldn't use spells in the same fashion as wizards.
In fact, they couldn't cast spells at all. The closest aproximation they
could make was a blast of force that could pass for a banishing or
bludgening spell. Pretty much everything else they could do revolved
around their duties as servants, which made sense in light of the fact
that house elves would literally die if they weren't bonded to a master
or a powerful magical location for an extended period.
Which of course made not a lick of sense if you took it out of the
Wizarding World sandbox and looked at it from a broader
perspective. There was simply no conceivable situation in which an
entire sapient species would evolve to be slaves to another, no
matter how special witches and wizards thought they were.
Conclusion? House elves weren't natural.
Admittedly it was a conclusion based mostly on conjecture, but it
made more sense to him than the alternative, especially when the
feel of their magic was taken into account.
"Teeny, do house elves eat?" He asked.
"Sir?" She asked, confused.
"Do you need food the way that I do?"
"No sir, house elves only be needing a master's magic." She
answered with a shake of her head, sending her big ears flopping
everywhere.
Definitely unnatural. Harry was betting on some kind of sophisticated
homunculi that had over time developed sapience. He certainly
wouldn't put it past some wizard to have gotten the idea to create a
servant race because he couldn't be bothered to fluff his own pillows.
Probably best to keep that bit of conjecture to himself. He couldn't
think of a single positive outcome if he started spread that around. At
least not right now.
"You know that this is illegal, right?" Sirius asked wryly.
"Sirius, you are a fugitive from the law and I am harboring you, not to
mention the mangled carcass we have stashed in a trunk. I hardly
think that the legalities of you teaching me to apparate four years
ahead of schedule are noteworthy."
"Alright, just checking." He'd tried. If Harry didn't want to be a
responsible citizen, then far be it from Sirius to try and make him
one.
With a noisy crack, Sirius apparated about three feet to the left.
"Huh, that's interesting." Harry commented.
"What is?" The past few days with his godson had shown Sirius that
Harry sometimes noticed things about magic that most people
missed. Lily had that quality too, though not quite the same. Maybe it
was due to them having a muggle upbringing.
"I wonder how it works?" Harry mused, apparently to himself.
"The way it was explained to me is that you have to keep the three
D's in mind. Destination, Determination and Deliberation. You need
to keep the destination fixed firmly in your mind, you have to be
utterly determined to reach it, and you have to be very deliberate but
unhurried about it. Once you've got all that, you just kind of… will
yourself to wherever you want to go."
"Yes, that's how you do it, but how does it work ?"
Sirius blinked. "What?"
Harry sighed. Honestly.
Sirius frowned. Lily had sighed exactly like that whenever someone
said something especially stupid to her. James had gotten sighed at
like that a lot.
"Do it again."
Sirius shrugged to himself and apparated again.
"Again."
Crack.
"Again."
Crack.
"Again."
"Harry, why am I apparating back and forth like this?"
"Because I'm trying to figure out how exactly you're using your magic
to create a pathway through space without killing yourself."
"Such a bloody Ravenclaw." Sirius complained. "Just try it already.
I'm pretty sure that I can fix you if you end up splinching yourself."
"I'd rather not test that belief, now do it again."
"Fine." Crack.
"Again."
Crack.
"Again."
Sigh. Crack.
"What does it feel like to apparate?"
"Kind of like being squeezed through a tube actually. Pretty
unpleasant until you get used to it."
"Hmm, do it again."
An even more dramatic sigh. Crack.
"What's with the crack?"
"No idea, but it happens every time someone apparates?"
"Probably just violently displaced air then, but better safe than sorry.
Do it again."
Sigh with eyeroll. Crack.
"Ah, I see."
"What are you seeing, oh wise one?" Sirius asked dryly.
"You're forming a narrow pathway through space and then forcing
yourself through it. The interesting part is that the 'exit' side of this
little magical wormhole has to be anchored in some way to the
planet for it to be safe. That must be why rushing it leads to
splinching, you don't anchor yourself properly and come out wrong.
How you're managing to do it subconsciously escapes me though,
probably lucky chance. Maybe… hmm… Apparating into the air
doesn't work, does it? "
"No. In fact, apparating onto anything at all that isn't solid ground is a
good way to get splinched, sometimes even killed and there's even
stories of people vanishing altogether, never to be seen again."
Sirius said, a bit confused as to how Harry had guessed that. And
what the hell was a wormhole anyway?
"A quirk of thought then. You automatically associate solid ground
with the planet and that's apparently enough to keep you safe.
Rather amusing how close to messy death you are every time you
apparate."
"There you go, scaring me with all these theories like a typical
Ravenclaw." Sirius said. "I really need to teach you a few Gryffindor
qualities."
"Blockheaded stupidity isn't a quality, Sirius."
"Your mother said that a lot, but I never gave in to her peer
pressure."
"Obviously."
"Well then smarty pants, why don't you show me how it's done?"
Harry honestly thought apparition to be a rather insane mode of
travel, but instantaneus teleportation was entirely too useful a skill to
not learn simply because it was crazy. Occlumency helped him fix
the image of his destination in his mind and then he simply willed
himself to pass through the intervening space in a wormhole made of
his own magic, making sure that the exit was latched on to the planet
to prevent any mishaps. Earth wasn't a stationery object in space
after all and he had a feeling that those people who had disappeared
had ended up drifting through vacuum.
Crack.
Sirius hadn't been kidding, that really was unpleasant.
"Showoff."
Harry smirked at his godfather, openly gloating at one upping him.
"So, is there any other illegal bit of magic that you'd like to learn
today?" Sirius asked sarcastically.
Harry considered it for a moment and then nodded. He could
practice apparating later.
"The Animagus transformation."
Sirius was surprised for a moment and then chuckled gleefully.
"Ah, a new Marauder in the making!"
"Hate to break it to you, Sirius, but I'm not much of a prankster."
Harry pointed out.
"I'm sure we can turn you into one." Sirius said with authority and
then affected a pensive look. "But I think we might want to wait until
the summer to start teaching you that. It's not something that you
can do in a few days."
For one thing, the Animagus transformation could be dangerous and
Harry had demonstrated a disturbingly large amount of recklessness
with dangerous magic. For another, if he tried to finish it on his own
and screwed up, he'd have to go to McGonagall to fix it and that
would expose the secret. Being an Animagus was way more fun if
nobody knew it.
In the end, Sirius and Harry decided to deal with the Pettigrew
situation over the summer. Neither one of them had any faith in the
fairness of the government, one from bitter experience and the other
from a deliberately cultivated sense of cynicism, so making hasty
decision was a no-no. They would communicate through letters for
the rest of the school year and hammer out a plan to be executed
during the summer. Harry would have the free time to deal with it
then and this was something that his fame would actually be useful
for. Besides getting laid that was.
Harry sighed in his train compartment, alone for now. Hogwarts was
starting to become a nuisance. He still loved to learn about magic,
but other things were starting to pile up and he couldn't keep putting
them off until the summer all the time. Not to mention that he was
outpacing the curriculum and starting to become quite bored in a
number of classes.
"Hello again, Harry." A dreamy voice greeted as the door slid open.
Of course, there were upsides to Hogwarts, Harry conceded with a
smile.
"Hey Luna."
"How was your Christmas?" She asked as she sat down.
"It was interesting." He replied, barely managing to keep the
sarcasm out of his voice.
"I suppose it must have been." Luna agreed, peering at his eyes.
Harry knew that they were too bright. His green eyes had always
been vibrant, but now they verged on the point of glowing. No doubt
a side effect of the Sol runes constantly keeping a bit of Light in
them.
Mercifully, Luna apparently decided not to ask questions. "I had a
visit from Ginny."
"Oh?" Harry questioned, more out of a desire to move past the topic
of his eyes than any real curiousity. Luna's 'go with the flow' attitude
was something that he'd always liked.
"Yes, she wanted to wish me a merry Christmas and speculate about
how many girls you're sleeping with."
"Really?" Ginny had drifted off into acquaintance status this year,
apparently unable to deal with the fact that he was nothing at all like
she'd imagined. She clearly wasn't above gossiping though.
"Ginny thinks there's only Bryanna, but I'm pretty sure that you've
also got one in Slytherin."
Harry was normally very reticent with information of any kind, he
hadn't even told Luna about his invisibility cloak, but right at that
moment he felt like being honest. Maybe keeping quiet about this
just didn't seem important anymore after what had happened
recently, or maybe Sirius was a bad influence on him.
"I actually have three. There's also this muggle girl that I meet up
with during the summer."
Luna clapped her hands excitedly at the news. "Oh, that's wonderful!
It makes my Christmas present even more appropriate!"
"How so?" Harry asked, bemused.
Instead of answering, Luna went for her trunk and dug out a book.
"' The Lovegood Guide on how to Love Very Good' ?" Harry read the
title, even more bemused.
"My great-great-grandmother was making a study of sex magic and
preparing to publish that book before the European Ministries
unanimously classed sex magic as a Dark Art in 1870. She wasn't
able to publish it after that, but she still finished it." Luna explained
without being prompted.
"How in the world could sex magic be classed as a Dark Art?" Harry
demanded irritably. Of all the stupid things to classify as a Dark Art…
"It was first used by the Succubi and the Ministry deemed that
anything used by them had to be a Dark Art."
"Succubi are real?" Harry asked incredulously.
"Not any more. The last of them was killed in 1637." Luna answered
mournfully.
"Let me guess, they weren't the soul sucking demons of myth but
just a misunderstood race of gorgerous women?" Harry ventured. He
wouldn't put it past wizards, or in this case more likely witches, to
wipe out another species out of some misplaced sense of
righteousness.
"Its never been proven that they sucked out souls." Luna chirped,
causing Harry to blink at the implications of the statement. "There's a
short exposition on Succubi at the beginning of the book if you're
interested."
Harry was indeed interested and would be reading the book cover to
cover as soon as he got the chance, but first he had his own gift to
give.
"I've got something for you as well." He told Luna and went for his
own trunk.
"He's so cute!" Luna squeed, looking at the hamster that Harry had
just handed her.
"He's more than just cute," Harry said sternly, putting herculean effort
into keeping a grin off his face. "this is Boo and he's a miniature giant
space hamster."
"Really?" Luna asked in awe.
"Really." Harry confirmed. "He will smite evil and gouge out its
eyeballs whenever he sees it."
Perhaps playing on Luna's eccentricies was a bit mean, but he
hadn't been able to resist. The mental imagery had simply been too
hilarious and the girl certainly seemed to be happy with her new pet.
Hamsters and rangers everywhere were surely rejoicing.
The return to Hogwarts was a bit distracting to Harry. The thestrals
were touched by Dark. He hadn't expected that, though perhaps he
should have. The realization distracted him thorougly and made him
poor company on the ride back as he considered the implications.
Was that state natural or had some overly curious wizard wanted to
see what would happen if he infused a winged horse with Dark? He
was going to need to investigate that eventually.
So preoccupied was he that he barely noticed the speculative looks
several people gave his eyes, wondering if their memory was playing
tricks on them or if they had always been that bright.
His thoughts were still on the thestrals when he felt yet another
presence of Dark, this time as Dumbledore rose from the staff table
to make a speech.
"I have at long last been able to prevail upon Minister Fudge to recall
the dementors back to Azkaban, as it seems clear that Sirius Black
has no intention of coming to Hogwarts." The old wizard was saying.
Harry registered the words, but only barely. He'd noted the absence
of dementors on their approach to the school, so that answered that
little mystery, but most of his focus was on the wand he could sense
in Dumbledore's sleeve.
It radiated Dark, just like his invisibility cloak. It was the only wand in
the Great Hall that did so. The phoenix feather wands were like a
tiny spark of sunlight to his senses, well suited to explosive bursts of
magic. The unicorn hair wands felt like a gentle stream of moonlight
and were probably better off used for calmer magics. The dragon
heartstring ones strangely did not give off a feeling of fire as he had
expected, but of a more robust and enduring strength.
Dumbledore's wand though… it could only be the Elder Wand. Sirius
had been disparaging of the tale of the brothers Peverell, and Harry
had to agree that them meeting an anthropomorphic manifestation of
Death and getting it to give them super powerful magical doodads for
no easily explicable reason was unlikely, but he had been willing to
give the story the benefit of the doubt in some measure. He may not
be prepared to believe that Death was a person, but he was more
than ready to believe that the three brothers had dabbled with Dark
and learned how to use it to enchant certain items.
Now that he'd lain eyes on the wand, that belief was all but
confirmed. He had to wonder where the Resurrection Stone was.
As soon as he was alone in his room, Harry cracked open the book
Luna had given him and started reading.
Sex magic is something that has long been thought of as the domain
of certain non-human magical beings. Given the recent thrust by the
Veela Covenant to be recognized as equals under wizard law, I
decided to research it myself and publish my findings so that we may
better understand the Veela and their magics.
The decision of the European Ministries of Magic to classify all sex
magic as a Dark Art the previous year and prohibit its use has put an
end to this intention, but I will still finish this book if only for my own
purposes.
The first mention of sex magic dates back to Ancient Sumeria and
the sorceress that would later become most widely known as Lilith,
the Queen of the Succubi.
Little is known of Lilith's origins, but it is known that she was born
human. Her transformation into a Succubus has long been an
unanswered mystery and will likely remain so. The other thing that is
known of Lilith is her mastery of sex magic.
After her transformation, Lilith spent a millenium ensnaring the minds
of wizards and witches alike and consuming their magic to sustain
her life and power. For this reason, she eventually became revered
as a fertility goddess and feared as a voracious demon.
This was a time long before wands and magic schools, meaning that
trained magic users were few and far between and none of them
very powerful. Lilith's Succubus transformation had among other
things granted her immense control over fire and her ability to
enthrall the minds of near any magical being made her unassailable
by magical means. She was eventually slain by the hand of the
muggle Hero-King Gilgamesh, who was immune to Lilith's
enthrallment ability due to his lack of magic.
But Lilith had spawned a legion of Succubi daughters during her long
life and they continued to prey on wizardkind, learning from the
death of their mother and adopting a more subtle approach by
targeting mostly those who were young, untrained, easily seduced or
otherwise vulnerable.
Though popular muggle folklore portrays the Succubi as horned and
bat winged demons, they were in fact indistinguishable from human
women, save for their beauty, allure, intrinsic control of fire and the
ability to partially transform into a hybrid bird creature at need. This
made it easy for them to hide amongst human populations if they
were careful and fed on the unwary or ignorant.
Their fortunes turned with the establishment of Hogwarts and similar
magic schools later on. With fewer and fewer victims going untrained
and unguarded, they were forced to go after more risky prey. The
increased danger and lack of sustenance took a great toll on their
numbers.
Unlike their mother, Lilith's daughters were unable to breed more
Succubi and the last was eventually killed in 1637.
One among their number, the Succubus Velana, did however learn
to spawn more children that were not Succubi. These came to be
called Veela. They are possessed of similar powers as the Succubi,
but much weaker. However, Veela also do not need to prey on
magicals for survival and have been able able to endure despite the
stigma of their origins.
After centuries of being hunted, Veela have now successfully won
their acceptance in the majority of Europe, though their innate ability
to use sex magic has been classified as a Dark Art in a rather
transparent attempt to limit their influence.
Harry kept on reading long after he would have usually gone to bed,
completely absorbed in the book. Much of the writing done by Luna's
ancestor was theory and speculation, in no small part due to the fact
that sex magic could not be done with a wand.
Which was exactly why Harry found it so fascinating in the first place,
even beyond the subject matter.
It was well into the wee hours of the morning when something
occured to him.
"How the hells did Luna know that I wouldn't give a shit about the
Ministry prohibition, or that I would like the wandless aspect?" He
wondered, baffled. " Did she know, or was it just a coincidence?"
He pondered the vagaries of his friend for another half hour before
metaphorically tossing his hands into the air in frustration and going
to bed.
Harry sighed in his Charms class.
They were currently going over the Freezing spell, which Harry had
known for some time. Even if he hadn't known it, he could have
gotten the hang of it within minutes. Even watching the energy flow
with his newly acquired magesight had gotten old already.
Flitwick was a good teacher, but Harry was bored out of his skull in
his classes these days. Now that he could see magic as well as feel
it, it seemed like he had an easier time mastering wandlessly what
his classmates struggled to master with a wand.
Transfiguration was an interesting subject that was quickly becoming
as dull as Charms.
While doing it wandlessly had always been a problem, doing it with a
wand was simple enough, even if a dragon heartstring wand would
have been better suited for the task.
Now that he could observe the process happenning, he was starting
to figure out the nuances that would let him do it without a wand.
This had the unfortunate side-effect of making the class itself mostly
superfluous. He spent almost the entire time ignoring McGonagall
and doing his own thing.
"Potter, stop staring at your cauldron and start brewing!" Snape
shouted.
Harry jerked in surprise, having gotten caught up in watching the
magic of the ingredients interacting in his cauldron.
"Sorry, sir." He apologized and went to complete the potion.
Half an hour later, he was once again staring at his unfinished potion
in fascination, wondering at the strange swirls and eddies that his
stirring was making in it. He had no idea what any of it meant, but it
was mesmerizing. All that 'stir clockwise six times and counter
clockwise four times' crap was finally making some sense.
"POTTER!"
"Harry, please stay after class."
Harry raised an eyebrow. Looks like Lupin was finally done waffling.
His indecisive shuffling had been getting beyond obvious in the lead
up to the Christmas holidays.
When they were alone, Harry decided to ask the obvious question.
"Was there something you wanted, Professor?"
"Harry, the Headmaster tells me that you are aware of my
relationship with your parents." Lupin stated after taking a bracingly
deep breath.
"Yes."
Cue uncomfortable silence.
"I'm going to be late for Herbology." Not that he cared too much
about that particular class, but standing here and waiting for the
werewolf to get to the point was pretty tedious.
"I was wondering if you'd like to hear a few stories about them
sometime." Lupin offered hopefully.
"Not really, I think I've got a general idea of the kind of people they
were." It wasn't likely that he had anything new to add to what he'd
already learned from Sirius, Charlus and Dorea.
"Harry, I'm sorry." Lupin suddenly said.
"What for?" Harry asked, puzzled.
"For never checking up on you, for not getting in touch when you
started Hogwarts."
"Whatever your relationship with my parents, you don't and didn't
owe me anything." Harry pointed out.
Remus winced at the even response. Perhaps he hadn't owed
James, Lily or Harry anything, but it was a poor friend that didn't
check up on the orphaned son of his friends.
"I still should have checked up on you. I couldn't take you in because
of a medical condition I have, but I should have checked up on you."
"I did well enough without you." Harry replied, not deigning to inquire
about the oblique reference to lycanthropy.
Remus winced again. That was another way of saying that he'd do
well enough without him from here on out as well. Harry was being
decidedly lukewarm about getting to know him, and Remus couldn't
blame him. He wasn't upset about the absence, but he wasn't eager
to get to know him either. It would've been easier if Harry was angry
at him. That at least would have been clear.
"I'm going to need a note for Professor Sprout." Harry prompted.
Remus wrote him a note and spent the next twenty minutes brooding
over past regrets. He'd really dropped the quaffle with Harry and
there wasn't much he could do about it now.
Aside from Potions, the only class that had actually become more
interesting since his little Christmas adventure was Astronomy.
He still thought that the telescopes could do with replacing. The
enchantments on them made them substantially more powerful than
they should be, but that just meant that the newer models would be
even better.
That being said, it was hard not to develop an appreciation for the
night sky when he could practically feel the stars singing in his
magic.
"Have you got it, Harry?" Professor Sinistra asked, nudging him over
so that she could take a look herself.
"Almost." He replied and let her do it, taking a private enjoyment at
the feel of her breasts brushing against his back when she leaned
over him.
And that was the other reason why he liked Astronomy. He was
terribly tempted to flirt with the beautiful dark skinned Professor
sometimes. He didn't, because that could turn out very problematic,
but he was seriously tempted.
How ironic. Ginny had asked him earlier in the year whether he liked
older women and he'd said yes mostly to get her off his back, but
now it was turning out to be true. Women thirty-plus years in age did
more for him than girls in their teens.
Sinistra was thirty-three. Vector was forty. Both of them were hot. He
couldn't show even a hint of his attraction without making things very,
very awkward. He didn't even know if they were in a relationship.
Sometimes, life was just plain unfair.
Harry vowed to himself that he would try to sleep with at least one of
them before he left Hogwarts.
Back at Potter Manor.
Sirius put down the glass of firewhiskey that he'd been about to drink
and put a hand to his chest, wondering about the fierce burst of pride
he'd just felt for his godson.
Harry returned to his room in a state of mild sexual frustration, which
was pretty much normal for these late night Astronomy classes.
To the sight of Bryanna lounging on his bed, wearing what appeared
to be a set of chocolate underwear, obviously enchanted to behave
as it if were fabric.
"Hey lover."
Life might be unfair sometimes, but it could also be very good at
other times. He'd been wanting to give some of the stuff he'd read in
Luna's book a try for a while now, but he had needed a partner to do
so. Luna's great-great grandmother had postulated a lot of theories,
but only practice would determine whether they held any weight.
"I thought you could use a snack before bed."
Lots and lots of practice.
"I am feeling rather peckish." Harry admitted, quickly divesting
himself of his clothes and firing a contraceptive charm at his midnight
visitor.
Bryanna rolled her eyes t his paranoia. He still didn't trust the potion
to do the job.
Harry paid her exasperation no mind as he climbed on the bed,
zeroing in on her chocolate covered nipples.
Harry had no real idea how to implement the techniques described in
the book, but he figured that he couldn't go far wrong if he started
out by licking the chocolate off her breasts. He had magesight now,
so enough experimentation was sure to yield results.
Bryanna let out a shuddering gasp as she rode Harry to her third
orgasm, coincidentally triggering his fourth. She had no idea what he
was doing, but his member felt even better in her than that vibration
spell that Tiana had taught her at the end of last year.
Harry smirked to himself as Bryanna collapsed on top of him and
nuzzled his neck, taking deep breaths all the while. Being able to see
her magic reacting to his efforts was proving inordinately useful in
figuring out how to please her. The book was written from the
perspective of a woman, but it hadn't been too hard to adapt the
knowledge.
"Mmm, what have you been doing over the holidays?" Bryanna
nearly purred out, feeling deliciously satisfied. Harry had definitely
been improving.
"Oh, this and that." He replied mysteriously, rubbing circles on her
lower back and seeing if he could magically stimulate the nerves that
were supposed to be there.
"Well keep at it." She instructed, mashing her chest into his and
already feeling a slow heat returning to her groin despite her recent
orgasm. The fact that she still had him sheathed inside her and was
leaking a slow trickle of sperm from her opening was only making it
better.
"Yes ma'am." Harry chuckled, slowly refining his technique based on
the feedback feel he was getting from her own magic.
They stayed that way for a while, content to take a short break and
let the desire build before they jumped back into the sex.
"What do you think about having a meeting with all four of us girls
soon?" Bryanna asked out of the blue, raising her head to look him
in the eye.
Harry raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You mean…" He finished by
pressing her down more firmly on his once again erect member.
Bryanna laughed lightly, realizing what she'd just implied. "You wish,
Potter. No, that's not what I meant."
"Pity." He grinned. He could already imagine how jealous Sirius
would be.
"Isabel drafted up a contract and we'd like you to take a look at it."
She elaborated
"Sure." He agreed, starting to press kisses to her neck. "But I'm not
interested in contracts right now."
"What are you interested then?" She asked huskily.
His hands went to cup her rear end and then he quickly spun them
around so that he was the one on top.
"Oh, I could think of a thing or two." He said and kissed her, thrusting
his hips forward in the same movement and delighting in her grunt of
pleasure.
Harry wasn't sure if he liked Isabel and Jade.
They weren't rude or anything of the sort, but he was getting the
distinct impression that they held a mild resentment for him because
he was sleeping with their friends.
Harry could appreciate what the situation looked like from an outside
perspective, but he was also quite sure that Bryanna and Tiana
didn't find keeping him company at night to be distasteful. Tiana's
unsubtle complaint earlier that he was neglecting her was a good
indicator of that, as was Bryanna's shameless abuse of their shared
House status to get more solo nights with him.
Either they were enjoying the situation as much as him or else they
should abandon the clothes store idea and go to Hollywood.
Isabel came off as being rather starchy in addition to the slight social
awkwardness that seemed normal for Ravenclaws. She'd presented
him with the contract with the kind of stiff backed poise he'd expect
from McGonagall. She obviously wanted to get this over with as
soon as possible.
The Gryffindor of the group was a somewhat different matter. She
looked like she was just waiting for an excuse to get mad at him.
Harry couldn't be 100% sure, but he thought that they were both
magically weaker than Bryanna and Tiana. He had no hard evidence
to support this as his magesight and magic sensing only told him
whether something was magical or not and didn't quantify it, but a
gut feeling told him that Isabel and Jade were simply weaker people.
This same gut feeling had been giving him impressions of the people
around him ever since his return to Hogwarts.
It told him that Luna was a generally flighty person who drifted
through life without much concern, but there was something broken
in her that paradoxically made her stronger than she seemed.
Ginny; an insecure little girl wrapped up in a mixture of sulky
resentment and longing. That's what she felt like around him at any
rate. He didn't know if there was more to her or not.
Malfoy; a front of arrogance shoring up a brittle core, not nearly as
strong as he liked to portray himself as. He felt as if he would shatter
if the illusion of superiority was taken from him.
Lupin; the inner wildness of his wolf wrapped in walls of fear and
self-loathing. There was steel in him, but it seemed to be turned
inward, as if he was most afraid of himself.
Snape; bitter and hateful with a core of guilt and self-loathing even
stronger than Lupin. There was a fatalistic sense of determination
too, as if he was dead set on finishing something and cared little for
the aftermath.
These were all just vague impressions that only got marginally
clearer the more time he spent around the people in question. It was
also clearer with some people than others. Harry suspected that it
was clearer with the more powerful wizards and witches.
Dumbledore was for example a pillar of calm over a deep well of
grief and regret. There was an unshakable determination in him to
accomplish something, at any cost. It made feel very dangerous.
By contrast, people like Isabel Morris and Jade Dawson were much
less noticeable. Their souls did not shine as bright and would have
faded into the background if there were more people present. As it
was, Bryanna and Tiana nearly eclipsed them. His pretty
bedwarmers were far more self-assured than their friends, more
driven and just… more .
Harry couldn't quite help himself from labeling people like them as
NPCs.
But he wasn't here to woolgather, he was here to inspect the
contract.
"I'm sorry, but I can't sign this." He finally said, not needing to watch
to know that all four girls had tensed.
"You said you would!" Jade snapped peevishly.
Tiana kicked her in the shin, muttering something about Gryffindors
all the while.
"Is there something wrong with it?" She asked lightly.
"Yes." He responded bluntly. "Its way too simplistic."
"It covers the terms that we agreed on." Bryanna pointed out.
And hadn't that been a bitch to explain to Isabel and Jade. They
hadn't been too pleased at the fact that they would be minority
owners in the future no matter what, as the original plan had been for
equal shares. They were especially displeased that Harry had
decided this based on the fact that they hadn't participated in the
seduction plan.
Bryanna and Tiana were secretly pleased about reaping greater
rewards for the gamble they took, not to mention that Harry had
become very enjoyable night time company lately.
"Which was talked over a period of about five to ten minutes." Harry
pointed out. "This contract works well enough if you aren't planning
to turn a profit. The use of the Potter family name will protect your
business from being shut down by a made up reason by some uppity
pureblood, but it does nothing to protect you from anyone that might
want to muscle in on it for themselves later on. At the very least I
want a clause included that forbids any of you from selling your
share to anyone except me."
"What business is it of yours who we would sell it to?" Jade
demanded, earning herself another kick from Tiana.
"I suspect that the Potter family lost its vineyards and pottery
business to the Parkinsons exactly because of something like this."
Harry retorted. "Trusted managers given emergency authorization
because the owner was unreachable or dead, then in comes Lord
Parkinson making veiled threats of what might happen to those
same managers and their families if they don't sell. I still need to
investigate if that's what really happened, but after what I've learned
from Bryanna and Tiana and my own research it seems like a likely
scenario. The point being that if you can't sell to anyone except me,
then that means that you can't be threatened, bribed or blackmailed
into it either."
Jade and Isabel paled at that, obviously having never considered it.
Even Bryanna and Tiana were a bit perturbed.
"Wouldn't that make you a target then?" Isabel ventured.
"I'd be Lord Potter by then." Harry replied with a self-deprecating
grin. "I checked the laws. I can legally kill people for stuff like that,
among other things."
"And we can't." Tiana stated with a small sneer, getting another clue
as to how exactly it was possible for the purebloods to keep a
deathgrip on the economy. She'd missed that nugget of information
in her earlier research.
"Nope, only Lords can issue honor duels." Harry confirmed wryly.
Not that it was done much anymore as that was a rather extreme
course of action, but there were non-violent alternatives. That was
no doubt the main reason that the Noble Houses generally stayed
out of each other's business.
"Alright, we definitely need to add that." Bryanna stated firmly.
"We probably need to add a lot of other things." He said. "I'm not a
lawyer and there's probably a thousand other loopholes that I'm not
seeing. I'd suggest that we meet over the summer and get a
professional opinion on this, both muggle and magical."
"Why muggle?" Tiana asked curiously. "We're not really planning to
have too much contact with the Muggle World. As soon as we get
good enough at making our own clothes, we might cut contact with
them entirely aside from buying some materials."
"Because my dear, while the muggle side of business might not have
any of this Noble garbage involved - or perhaps because of it -, it is
ten times as cutthroat. "
Harry grinned as he tossed a compact fireball at the target that the
Room of Requirement provided for him.
Moving on to the next thing, he carefully began crafting a blasting
curse between his hands, infusing the raw magical energy with his
intent, all the while keeping it controlled. With a flick of his wrist, he
hurled it at another target, demolishing that one as well.
He moved on to other spells after that. Stunners, disarming hexes,
various transfigurations and more.
Now that he could clearly see and sense what was going on,
wandless magic was no longer such an impenetrable mystery. It was
slow, far too slow for combat purposes at this point, but also far more
controlled than anything he could do with a wand and no less
powerful.
Wands allowed a wizard to skip the difficult process of learning to
manipulate magic with their minds alone. Some wands were better
suited to certain things than others, but they could all be used for
more or less everything. The interaction between core, wood and
whatever else a wandcrafter did made sure of this.
Truly, whoever had figured out modern wands had been a genius
with few equals, but in allowing magic users to skip the journey, so
much had been lost.
For example, Modern wizards and witches used the Tempus charm
to find out what time it was, but they never once considered what
was involved with such a spell.
If Harry wanted to cast that particular spell wandlessly, he had to
take into account the position of the Sun in the sky, the Earth's axial
tilt, the form that he wanted the information to take and several other
things. It took him half an hour to craft the spell and his results were
very far from accurate.
With a wand, you just had to give it a little wave and something in the
stick and the movements allowed you to bypass all the nuances and
skip right ahead to the results. It was rather disturbing how
sophisticated wands actually were, but he supposed that they would
be after two thousand years of refinement.
The problem was that they had made wizardkind lazy . Obscenely
so. Wands had sucked all the wonder and mystery out of magic by
reducing it to a bunch of swishing and flicking. It was no wonder that
modern day wizards were so unimpressive when they didn't really
have to exert any kind of real thought to cast spells. Oh sure, you
needed a certain level of focus to use magic with a wand(though
even that was drastically reduced through the use of wand motions),
but it was not even close to the mental dexterity required to weave a
spell with only one's mind and will.
Harry moved on to the Patronus. It took him fifteen minutes to shape
the spell and work his desire to protect into it, but he could change
the size of his raven at will, increase its power to blinding luminance
or reduce it to formless mist.
So what if it took an age to cast right now? With enough practice, the
mental process would eventually become so familiar that he would
be able to do it in an instant.
A quick check of the time told him that he was going to be late for his
Charms class. Again.
With an aggravated sigh, Harry restarted the process of forming his
Patronus. Charms class was a waste of time anyway.
"Has anyone noticed anything… strange about Mr. Potter's behavior
lately?" Minerva asked.
"He's sometimes taken to staring at his cauldron like a confounded
troll ever since Christmas." Snape replied with dry derision.
"Severus!" She said sharply, but the Potions Master was undaunted
by her warning.
"While I wouldn't phrase it in the way that Severus did, he has been
acting a bit erratic." Flitwick added. "His practical work is as good as
ever, but his written work of late has been subpar to say the least.
His homework has the feel of being rushed to completion without
care for the quality."
"It is the same with me." The Transfiguration teacher said with her
brow furrowed in thought.
"Me too." Remus added quietly.
"He actually turns in passable essays to me." Snape admitted
grudgingly. The quality of Potter's potions had also been steadily
increasing, but he wasn't going to admit that unless he absolutely
had to.
"He is diligent enough with me as well, though obviously not
interested." Sprout chimed in.
"Still, this is a worrying trend." Minerva continued. "And the sudden
drop in his work quality isn't even the worst of it, he actually skipped
one of my classes the other day and then refused to come to the
detention I assigned him!"
"Err, Minerva." Flitwick said with an embarrassed cough. "He's
skipped three of mine already."
"And you just let him do it?" She asked, mildly scandalized. No
wonder he'd refused to come to detention if his Head of House was
letting him get away with it.
"I talked to him about it and he admitted to being bored stiff in my
classroom." The half-goblin Professor admitted. "He was easily able
to demonstrate mastery of what we covered in those classes, to a
degree that made it obvious that he'd known the spells for some time
already. The curriculum is simply moving too slowly for him. I
suspect that might also be the reason for his poorly done homework,
he probably doesn't want to waste time on things that he already
knows."
That had the deputy Headmistress looking thoughtful. She still didn't
appreciate the boy outright ignoring the punishment she'd set for
him, but this shed some light on his behavior.
"Surely you cannot be thinking of allowing the brat to skip a year or,
Merlin forbid, allowing him free reign to decide which classes to
attend?" Snape questioned, his opinion on the matter clear.
"Well there is hardly any point in forcing him to attend lessons that
he has no use for." She retorted huffily.
"What do you think, Albus? You've been awfully quiet." Flitwick
asked.
Dumbledore had indeed been quiet, listening to the conversation and
turning things over in his mind.
"Professors Vector and Babbling tell me that they believe that Harry
may be able to take his OWLs for Arithmancy and Ancient Runes
over the summer if he continues to progress at the current pace." He
said.
"That's quite impressive, I had no idea he was so far along." Flitwick
said, ignoring the soft snort from Snape.
"Indeed, Septima and Bathsheda have nothing but praise for the
boy." Dumbledore chuckled. "I think that they enjoy having a student
take such interest in their subjects, which are often considered to be
quite onerous."
"So what is to be done about Potter?" Minerva pressed.
"I will talk to him first and then determine what to do." Dumbledore
decided.
Ever since his last ritual, Harry found that he could no longer sleep
through sunrise or sunset. The change in his magic as the sun rose
and set would always wake him.
Because of this, he often made his way to the top of the Astronomy
Tower to watch as it happened. At the very least on the days when it
wasn't cloudy.
These trips had also been an opportunity to spend some time just
thinking, mostly about the fact that he had killed someone. He'd
turned the event over in his mind countless times, but he simply
could not bring himself to feel particularly bad about the killing itself.
Wormtail had been a loathsome human being, a coward, traitor,
murderer and who knows what else. His death would go unmourned
by those who knew the truth and only the fact that it made things
more difficult for Sirius made it regrettable.
Eventually he'd simply gotten fed up of attempting to dredge up
some kind guilt or horror at the act. He just didn't feel it and
apparently wouldn't no matter that society didn't approve of killers.
Remarkably, the cracks in his soul seemed to heal a bit once he
stopped wrestling with himself over it.
"Back again, Harry?" Dumbledore asked as he walked up to stand
beside the tall but young teenager.
He hadn't been able to divine the reason for Harry's quick growth,
but he was by now certain that it wasn't natural. It didn't seem to be
affecting him aside from that though, so he let it go despite his
curiousity. The answer may yet come to him later.
"It's a nice morning." Harry replied noncommittally, having sensed
the old wizard's approach. "It'll be a beautiful sunrise."
"You have been coming up here frequently of late." Dumbledore
commented. "May I ask what prompted this sudden fascination with
the Sun?"
Harry's lips twitched into a small smile. Anyone would be fascinated
by the Sun if they knew what he knew and owed their continued
existence to the ball of fiery gas.
"There is something special about seeing the world bathed in Light."
He said instead, leaving out the fact that if forced to choose, he
would have to say that he preferred the Dark and the stars.
"There is indeed," Dumbledore agreed. "but I had not thought that a
boy your age would be able to appreciate it."
"You might be surprised by the things I can appreciate." Harry
retorted, mildly irritated by the mention of his age. He'd once felt
thirteen despite the size of his body, but he didn't anymore. Too
much had happened for him to stay a child.
"Such as the lovely female company you keep?" Dumbledore
chuckled.
"Hm, I guess it was too much to hope for that the rumor mill wouldn't
catch wind of that." Harry grumbled.
"Alas, the Hogwarts rumor mill rarely fails to spread about
uncomfortable secrets."
They lapsed into silence as dawn approached, an unspoken
agreement passing between them to watch the sunrise in silence.
They had a surprise late arrival in the form of the Headmaster's
phoenix, who arrived on Dumbledore's shoulder in a burst of flame
just a minute before the event.
"Have you come to watch the sunrise as well, Fawkes?" Dumbledore
asked with a smile, reaching up to ruffle the firebird's chest feathers.
Fawkes trilled in agreement, shooting a look towards Harry that he
would swear was distrustful.
Harry felt a shiver of discomfort go through him, but ignored it. The
phoenix was a creature of Light, so it was only natural for its song to
be mildly unpleasant to him now that he was full of Dark.
The small discomfort passed as the Sun rose over the eastern
mountains and pushed back the Dark. Harry was always slightly sad
to see it happen. The Sun's overpowering presence was simply not
as beautiful as the multitude of distant stars.
Fawkes trilled curiously, hopping from Dumbledore's shoulder over to
Harry's and poking his beak in the younger wizard's temple. Right
into the hidden Sol rune in fact.
"Oi, cut that out." Harry protested, gently pushing the firebird's head
away.
"He seems to like you." Dumbledore chuckled. "Or perhaps is
confused by you."
Harry figured that the phoenix must have sensed it as the magic
present in his soul shifted from Dark to Light. Being strongly aligned
with Light, the phoenix was probably naturally sensitive to things like
that in ways that wizards generally weren't.
Fawkes continued to make a pest of himself for the next few
minutes, much to Dumbledore's amusement. He'd never seen his
phoenix act like this around anyone before, but he took heart in it.
Phoenixes were generally attracted to good people when they
deigned to interact with them at all, so this boded well for the future.
"What do you want?" Harry finally asked in exasperation.
Fawkes trilled a beautiful song that resonated in his magic
wonderfully, but was ultimately unhelpful in figuring out what the
ostentatious feather duster wanted.
"What, do you want to praise the Sun in jolly cooperation?" Harry
asked sarcastically, starting to get annoyed by Dumbledore's
chortling.
Fawkes trilled happily.
"Was that a yes?" Harry asked with some incredulity.
Fawkes repeated the same trill.
"O… kay." Harry said dubiously, feeling entirely ridiculous but willing
to try it if it would get the feathered menace to stop poking its beak
into his head.
I can't believe that I'm doing this. He thought to himself. And with an
audience no less.
Staunchly ignoring the embarrassed blush creeping up his face at
what he was doing, Harry put his feet together, extended his arms as
far as they would go and raised them into the air, as if to embrace
the sunlight.
This robbed Fawkes of his shoulder perch of course, but the phoenix
solved that problem by jumping on his head and raising his wings in
a mimicry of Harry's arms, releasing a song full of nostalgic joy as he
did so.
"Happy now?" Harry asked, unable to quite muster any irritation
because of the sheer feeling that the phoenix had packed into the
song.
Fawkes trilled in the manner that Harry was starting to associate with
agreement and flamed away.
"What was that?" Dumbledore asked, intensely curious. "I have
never seen Fawkes act so strangely before."
"I think… I think that he might have missed the days when the Sun
was worshipped as a deity." Harry said slowly, mostly guessing but it
felt right. Obviously, the rituals from those days weren't likely to bear
much resemblance to something that he'd taken out of a video
game, but the core purpose was the same and that was all that
Fawkes seemed to have cared about.
"I suppose that is possible." Dumbledore mused. "The phoenix was
revered as a representative of the Sun in many ancient cultures."
"Anyway, did you have some reason for coming up here this early in
the morning on a weekend, sir?" Harry asked, wanting to move past
this little situation before the old wizard stopped asking 'what?' and
started on 'why?'.
"Ah yes, I had nearly forgotten in all the excitement. I was supposed
to discuss your education."
"What about my education?" Harry asked warily.
"It has come to our, that being the Professors, attention that you are
not feeling sufficiently challenged in some of your classes."
"I was always good at Charms and Transfiguration." Harry said with
a nonchalant shrug.
"And the others?" Dumbledore prompted.
"We're mostly doing creatures in defense, so I do still learn new
things there, but I would probably be quite far ahead if we were
doing spells. I'm not really interested in Herbology, so I'm just
slogging through that."
Dumbledore blinked in slight surprise. "How refreshingly honest of
you to say so, Harry."
"I've recently discovered a newfound interest in Potions, but I'm no
further ahead than anyone else." Nor was it likely to happen any time
soon. The kind of experimenting he wanted to try with potions wasn't
really something that he could do right now, as it would be very time
consuming.
"It's much the same with Astronomy and you already know that I'm
taking private lessons in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes."
"Yes, I have heard from Professors Vector and Babbling that you are
doing quite well in your electives. So well in fact that they feel you
would be able to take your OWLs in those subjects during the
summer if you continue to apply yourself as you have."
"Couldn't I take Charms, Transfiguration and maybe Defense too
while I'm at it?" Harry asked. He'd already spoken to Vector and
Babbling about the possibility.
"I am afraid that the Ministry does not offer early OWLs for core
classes." Dumbledore answered.
"Why not?"
"As you may know, getting an OWL in one's core classes represents
the minimum required education as decreed by the Ministry of
Magic. They ceased offering early OWLs for those classes after an
incident some three hundred years ago when a magical prodigy
managed to get all of the required OWLs in the summer after her
second year and decided to leave Hogwarts to advance her studies
further on her own."
"Why was that a problem?"
"Normally it wouldn't be, but you must recall that this was a thirteenyear old girl. She was not the most cautious of people and caused a
severe breach in the Statute of Secrecy after an altercation with a
belligerent muggle teenager. Incidentally, that was also how the
Reasonable Restriction on Underage Sorcery came about."
"Lovely." Harry said dryly. "Was that all?"
"Ah, no. Forgive an old man's digressing, but I actually came to talk
to you in order to assess if it would prudent to offer you the
opportunity to audit higher year Charms and Transfiguration classes
at your own discretion."
Dumbledore would have once hesitated to offer the boy such a thing,
but it was obvious by now that Harry was not going to be making
friends in his own year. He was cordial with most of them, but not in
any way close. Better to use the opportunity to build goodwill with the
boy than to hold him back in the vain hope that he would somehow
befriend people that he had not for the past two and a half years.
"I'm assuming that this is being offered since you mentioned it?"
"Indeed. If you choose to accept, then Professors Flitwick and
McGonagall will periodically test you to make sure that you are
keeping up with your studies, but you will otherwise be left alone to
study the material on your own."
"I'd like that." Harry said.
"Very well then, I wish you the best of luck." Dumbledore nodded.
"But one final bit of advice if I may. Do not get so consumed in your
studies that you forget to have fun."
"Oh, I don't think you need to worry about that." Harry replied with a
small smirk.
"I am glad to hear it." Dumbledore said with an amused smile of his
own and left the Astronomy Tower.
Harry stared after the old wizard, wondering what exactly he was
playing at. Either there was no actual plot or it was a seriously subtle
one.
Harry winked at Bryanna and Tiana, taking vast amounts of
amusement at their wide-eyed stares.
"Mr. Potter, I know that the Headmaster has given you leave to audit
any Transfiguration class you wish, but do you not think that a
seventh year class is a bit too advanced for you?" McGonagall
asked disapprovingly. In truth, she was thinking that he had picked
this particular class for the sole purpose of dropping in on his…
girlfriends, or whatever they were.
"I'm just trying to get a feel for where exactly I am in terms of ability,
Professor." Harry answered calmly.
"Very well." McGonagall conceded grudgingly. "But I do not want you
attempting to cast the spells you will see here. Human transfiguration
can be dangerous if done improperly and is not something that
should be attempted lightly."
"Wouldn't dream of it, Professor." Harry semi-lied. He certainly
wouldn't attempt it lightly, but he would eventually attempt it if he felt
that he could do it.
McGonagall was somewhat reassured about his seriousness when
he did not attempt to communicate with Ms. Torres or Ms. Day in any
fashion, but instead kept his eyes fixed firmly on her and listened
attentively. His focus was almost unnerving in its intensity in fact, but
better that than to have him treating one of the most difficult
branches of Transfiguration carelessly.
Harry spent the entire lesson studying how the energy flowed as the
other students transfigured each other into various things. He could
see why it was considered difficult, as the caster also had to take the
magic of his target into account in addition to their own.
This would probably be useful when he and Sirius got started on the
Animagus transformation.
The rest of the school year proceeded without any overt excitement
from then on. Harry kept up a sporadic attendance of Charms and
Transfiguration classes, in an order that nobody could really make
sense of, but Flitwick and McGonagall couldn't deny that he was well
ahead of where he should be so they couldn't protest much.
Lupin kept up a strange balance between wanting to approach him
again and staying away, drowning in self-pity all the while. Harry was
honestly not seeing much of the clever werewolf that Sirius
sometimes talked about in his letters. Professor Lupin had more in
common with an old man waiting to die. It might have helped him to
know that Sirius was not a traitor, but blurting out that kind of
dangerous secret to make someone feel better was just stupid.
Snape continued to be as unpleasant as possible because of what
he saw as the Potter spawn getting special treatment, but his odium
had become something of an unremarkable backdrop to Potions by
now and failed to really get much of a reaction out of Harry. He took
points constantly, he made rants occasionally and he glared
ceaselessly, but Harry simply didn't care enough about Snape's
personal opinion of him to take it to heart. He had what he wanted
and the Potion Master's hissy fits meant exactly bugger-all.
Unbeknownst to Harry, this passive disregard and failure to rise up to
the provocation was wearing Snape out. He couldn't really escalate
any further in a school setting and there was only so long that you
could rail at someone who didn't care before you ran out of steam.
On the more friendly teacher front, Vector and Babbling had decided
to double the number of lessons per week they had with him,
apparently determined to have him pass the Arithmancy and Ancient
Runes OWLs over the summer with a solid O.
Harry could only be thankful that Bryanna and Tiana seemed more
than happy to help him out with the tension that the increased
amount of time spent with the beautiful Arithmancy teacher was
causing him, even if it did nothing for the numerous detention
fantasies he was accumulating.
Last weekend before the end of the school year.
"You know, I think I'm actually going to miss these little get-togethers
of ours." Tiana said musingly, stretching out in the decadently
luxurious bathtub that the Room of Requirement had provided.
"Not as much as me." Harry said mournfully from beside her. "Who's
going to keep me company at night when you two graduate?"
"I'm sure you'll find some other girl to seduce." Bryanna snorted from
his other side. "Maybe you can even invite Rosmerta or Professor
Vector into your bed."
"I should never have told you that I have a thing for older women."
Harry sighed with a smile.
"I'm still offended by that by the way." Tiana chimed in teasingly. "You
have two sexy teens in bed with you and you fantasize about old
women."
"They're not old, just old er ." Harry protested. "And do you want me
to kiss it and make it better again?"
"Merlin's balls, no." She groaned. "I think my clitoris might revolt if
you went anywhere near it again."
Harry said nothing in response, merely smirked with supreme
smugness. Nothing like bringing a girl to several screaming orgasms
with magically enhanced cunnilingus to boost one's ego. That book
of Luna's might be just about the most awesome gift he'd ever
received.
"Would you look at that smug look on his face?" Bryanna
commented. "He learns how to properly lick pussy and suddenly he
thinks he's the king of the world."
Harry reached over and gave her nipple a pinch, enjoying her
squeak.
"So, when are we going to meet up during the summer?" Tiana
asked a few minutes later.
"I'll contact you when I know." Harry replied. "I'm going to have a lot
to do during the summer and setting up meetings with a couple of
lawyers is the least of it."
"What else will you be doing?" Bryanna asked curiously.
"I've got to take my Arithmancy and Ancient Runes OWLs at the
Ministry, track down the old managers of my family's business and
talk to them about why exactly that business now belongs to the
Parkinsons and a few other things."
Things like getting Sirius to teach him how to become an Animagus
and getting him acquitted.
"What about yout muggle girlfriend?" Bryanna teased. He'd told them
about Zoe one day when they asked who'd popped his cherry,
because it obviously hadn't been them.
"She's not my girlfriend, she's a friend with benefits." Harry said with
dignity. "A lot like you two actually."
"You really should get a muggle girlfriend." Tiana suggested with a
smirk. "I can already see the outraged headlines in the Prophet,
'Boy-Who-Lived dates a muggle! How far has our saviour fallen?'."
"Amusing as that would be, I'm not going to get a muggle girlfriend
just to spite Wizarding Britain's elite." Harry snorted. "Besides, I
doubt they'd be that obvious about their prejudice. The headline
would probably be something like 'Boy-Who-Lived dates a muggle!
Are Britain's witches not good enough for him?'."
"They just need to set you up with a nice middle aged witch and
that'll be that." Bryanna teased.
Harry groaned. He really shouldn't have told them about that.
"How about Molly Weasley?" The Ravenclaw girl continued.
"Don't even joke about that!" Harry retorted sharply, shuddering
theatrically. "There's a very big difference between a sexy mature
woman and an overbearing broodmother."
He knew that he was probably being overly harsh, especially as he'd
personally met the woman for a grand total of thirty seconds, but
he'd learned enough from second hand sources to steer well clear of
her. Ginny's commentary and the occasional howler she sent had
painted a picture of a woman who meant well, but who was also very
opinionated and had not the slightest clue when to ease up. That
wasn't even mentionning that she wasn't the slightest bit attractive as
far as Harry was concerned.
"Well enough about Harry's fetishes." Tiana declared, ignoring his
exasperated eyeroll. "Since this is our last night together, I've
prepared a little something."
The other two looked at her curiously as she grabbed her wand and
gave it a wave, causing three goblets and a bottle of wine to float
towards them.
"Goblets for drinking wine? Really?" Harry questioned wryly as she
poured him some. "This makes me feel more like Conan the
Barbarian than a wizard."
"Who?" The girls asked blankly.
"Right, I forgot that you wizard-raised savages don't know anything
about the classics." Harry sighed.
"At least we aren't some muggle-raised bumpkin who thinks that
goblets aren't appropriate for drinking wine." Tiana retorted.
"What are we drinking to?" Bryanna asked before the conversation
could devolve into a string of playful insults on the differences
between a muggle or magical upbringing.
"To profitable partnerships." Tiana suggested, raising her goblet.
"To future successes." Bryanna added, bumping her own goblet
against her friend's.
"And fringe benefits." Harry finished with a grin, mirroring their move.
"Cheeky little cunt." Bryanna smirked.
"That is not language fit for a Lady." Harry told her snobbily.
"Ah, but as a mere commoner, I can be as vulgar as I please. If that
bothers my Lord, then he should have let himself be duped into a
marriage." She retorted coquettishly, batting her eyelashes in an
overdone manner.
"I can ruin my life with a serious relationship anytime, but I'm only
going to be young once." He countered, grinning. He had been
somewhat upset about their plan when he'd first heard of it, but
they'd become friends since then and he couldn't fault their ambition
or even their reasoning. Prospects for them really weren't great in
Britain.
"I'll drink to that." The girls said in unison. They hadn't been
enthused about the idea of marriage before hitting twenty either,
seeing it only as a means to an end, so this turn of events was
actually preferrable to them.
The three of them brought the goblets to their lips and took a large
gulp of the wine.
"You know, judging by how fond people are of alcohol, I expected it
to taste better." Harry commented, smacking his lips with a
distasteful grimace.
"Maybe it's a bad vintage?" Tiana asked weakly, having not been too
fond of the flavor either. "I don't know a thing about wine, so I just
picked one at random."
"It's not that bad." Bryanna commented, taking another sip.
Harry exchanged a look with Tiana and shrugged. They didn't see
what was so 'not bad' about it, but to each their own.
Harry and Luna had a compartment to themselves on the train ride
back to King's Cross. Luna had tried to invite Ginny along, but the
redhead wasn't as insensitive to social awkwardness as the blonde,
so she had declined and gone to sit with her brothers.
Harry was thankful for that. He didn't hate Ginny, but he'd rather not
be in prolonged close contact with her anymore. That constant
gloom she gave off about the way he lived his life was more than a
little off putting.
So the two of them had spent their time discussing what they would
be doing over the summer, though Harry had to lie about quite a bit
of it.
Luna had been happy to tell him all about the trip to Germany's
Black Forest that she had planned with her father. Apparently there
was a magical section of it that still remained hidden from muggles to
this day. She'd even invited him to come along, but he had had to
decline despite his interest in seeing the place. He simply had too
much going on this summer to accept.
Of course, the experience wouldn't be quite complete without Draco
Malfoy stopping by to visit.
"I'm surprised you don't have those two halfblood whores in here
with you, Potter." The poncy Slytherin sneered.
Harry scowled at the interloper, irritated by the insult to Bryanna and
Tiana more than anything else. "Get lost, Malfoy."
"What's wrong Potter? Don't like hearing what they are?" Malfoy
continued, sneer firmly in place. His omnipresent goons chuckled
sycophantically.
It was at this point that Harry noticed that the little shit was using the
doorframe for support since the train was currently passing a fairly
bumpy area of the tracks.
Carefully hiding a smirk, Harry grabbed hold of the door with his
magic and slammed it closed over Malfoy's fingers.
The Slytherin howled in pain and collapsed to the ground, clutching
at his smashed-but-luckily-not-broken fingers.
"You alright there, Malfoy?" Harry asked, no longer bothering to hide
his amusement. "That looked like it hurt."
"When my father hears about this…" Draco tried to threaten, but it
come out as more of a pained sob.
"He'll do what? Have the door executed?" Harry asked sarcastically,
making a reference to the hippogriff that had been killed by the
Ministry at the end of the school year on Malfoy senior's initiative.
Even Harry had noticed how mopey Hagrid had been after that and
he didn't even have any real contact with the half-giant.
"I know you did this, Potter!" Draco screeched.
"Sure I did, Malfoy." Harry replied with a practiced deadpan. "Just
like I made you trip into that suit of armor a few weeks ago, right?
And without a wand in both cases too."
To be fair, that was exactly what he'd done.
Angry, frustrated and in a great deal of pain, Malfoy sulked off. He
was sure that Potter was somehow the cause of all these weird
accidents that kept happening to him, but the fact that the
scarheaded Ravenclaw never had his wand in hand when it
happened left him stumped as to how.
The whole thing was made worse by the fact that nobody believed
him when he tried to explain that he sometimes felt a spell push him
off balance. They just assumed that he was clumsy and trying to
cover it up.
He had the same reputation for clumsyness as Longbottom now.
Longbottom !
"That wasn't very nice of you, Harry." Luna commented without
recrimination.
"It's not my fault that the door slid closed over his fingers." Harry
defended.
"Really?" Luna asked in honest puzzlement, lifting up her hamster
pet to her face. "But Boo seems so certain that it was."
"Does he now?" Harry murmured, looking at the hamster
suspiciously and wondering for just a moment if he hadn't somehow
stumbled across something other than a normal rodent. Or maybe
extended magical exposure had altered it. "What else does he say?"
"Not much actually, but he is excited to go hunting for snorkacks."
Ah, nevermind. All was well as long as Luna was going on about
snorkacks.
Deep in the forests of Albania, the disembodied spirit of a much
feared and now thought dead Dark Lord was reduced to possessing
animals, mostly snakes out of personal preference.
Had Peter Pettigrew managed to escape from his former friend and
the son of those he'd betrayed, he would have eventually followed
the clues he was able to glean from the rats with whom he shared a
form, seeking protection from the enemies he'd made. Had this
happened, Voldemort would have had a servant to help him make a
play for a return to physical form.
Alas for the broken Dark Lord, Pettigrew was dead and his other
followers had deserted him, even those few who had an inkling that
he was not quite dead, finding that they liked it better when they
didn't have to grovel before the massively powerful wizard. Political
games and economic ploys might be slower and less satisfying than
an eradication of mudbloods by force, but it was much safer.
Because of this notable lack of servant, the mildly brain damaged
Bertha Jorkins was able to make her way out of Albania without
issue and Voldemort never learned that one of his most faithful,
Barty Crouch Jr., was kept imprisoned by his father's Imperious
instead of in Azkaban.
Instead of that, he continued to stew in his hatred and plot ways that
he might use to return.
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