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84.61% Emerald Eyes and New Beginnings / Chapter 11: Chapter 10: Interview Gambit

章節 11: Chapter 10: Interview Gambit

As he made his way up to the door of his foster parents' home, Harry wondered what their reaction to his current appearance was going to be.

At an even six feet now, he was impossibly tall for a not-quite-fourteen-year old. Well, impossible unless you were Dutch, which he wasn't. His growth had slowed down recently, so he figured that he might manage a few more inches at best before it stopped. He was still a bit on the gangly side of teenagerhood, but was hopeful that he would start filling out soon.

His black hair rested between his shoulder blades in a neat ponytail, even the Potter wildness defeated by gravity. Only the ends still tried to stick every which way, but for the most part ceded defeat with only mild use of cosmetic spellwork to keep it straight

Harry took a deep breath as he pushed open the door. He didn't keep too many things here anymore, having gradually moved them over to Potter Manor, so it didn't take him long to 'unpack' so to speak. After that was done, he made his way to the living room, where he figured that Robert and Katherine were currently watching the evening news. He mostly intended to just say hello and goodbye before he went back to the manor, and even that only because they expected to see him once the school year was over.

"Hey." He greeted as he entered the room.

"Welcome back." Robert said in a rather perfunctionary, even cold, manner. Harry figured that his constant absences must have started to become terribly inconvenient for them. The disapproval made his heart bleed. Not.

Katherine didn't say anything, merely walking up to him and looking him over intently. "If I didn't know better I'd say that you were at least seventeen if not older." She sounded a bit surprised.

That was about the physical age that Harry figured himself to be as well. "I must be an early bloomer." He said with a shrug.

"Is that actual stubble on your face? You're shaving already?" Katherine continued, now sounding quite a bit more incredulous. Height was one thing, but a beard was something else entirely.

Harry's lips twitched in amusement. He did indeed develop a patchy beard if he didn't shave often. He'd deliberately let himself grow some stubble to see how his foster parents would react.

"Yes, I am." He said simply. "Anyway, I just came to say 'hi' before going back. I've got a lot to do over the summer, so I'm not going to be around much, if at all."

"You'll need to be here on the seventh, we're meeting with the Burtons then." Katherine said.

"I can't, I have too much to do." Harry repeated, keeping the grimace he wanted to make off his face. The Burtons were as bad as his own foster parents from what he remembered.

"You can take a day off." Robert declared, as if that was the last word on the matter. "People have been asking questions about where you are and you need to make a few appearances."

"Their daughter has turned out quite well. I'm sure you'll like her." Katherine added, thinking to appeal to his hormones.

In this she failed spectacularly. Elizabeth Burton had indeed been a very pretty girl even a few years back and would by now probably be a very beautiful teen, but she was utterly vapid. Her personality would be more interesting if she was unconscious and Harry's libido was not nearly deprived enough of female companionship to willingly endure that kind of torture.

"My magical studies are more important." He said, simultaneously weaving a compulsion spell around Katherine. He firmly ignored the insidious thought of what else he could compel her to do. It wasn't the first time that he'd had thoughts of abusing his power like this.

"I suppose....." Katherine conceded reluctantly, the compulsion making her accept his words as truth.

"Now wait just a minute!" Robert protested at seeing his wife give in. "You have responsibilities to this family and you've been ignoring them for long enough already."

"You can handle the Burtons just fine without me." Harry told him, weaving another compulsion around the man. "The long term investment of my magic is much more important than having me go with you."

Robert subsided at that, his mind full of the possibilities that magic would open. Possibilities that Harry had neglected to inform him were illegal and which he would not carry out even if they weren't.

It was easy to leave after that, but something niggled at his mind despite the ease with which he had bent the wills of his foster parents and escaped their blasted socializing. Something had been wrong in that encounter and he wasn't talking about the questionable legality of it.

He couldn't pinpoint the feeling, but something had simply not felt right.

XXXXX

The mystery feeling didn't remain a mystery for very long, as it cleared up almost as soon as he made it back to the manor.

The situation had felt wrong because the gut feeling about people that he'd gotten used to had been absent. With no magic in them, Robert and Katherine were blank spots to this new sense he seemed to have developed. It had been a background sensation for so long that he'd only properly noticed it once it had vanished and returned.

It had been uncomfortable not to have that extra sense aorund people.

"Harry, are you listening to me?" Sirius asked in exasperation.

"I was thinking." Harry replied, mildly irritated at having his train of thought interrupted.

"How about you rethink this plan of yours then?" The dog animagus prompted.

"It's a good plan." Harry insisted.

Perhaps more complicated than he would have liked but solid all the same. The Ministry could not be trusted to do the right thing, so a situation had to be created where too many people knew the truth for things to be swept under the rug.

That meant the media and that meant reporters. Harry disliked reporters on general principle and disliked magical reporters as a matter of caution. The Wizarding World seemed to have much looser laws in regards to slander than its muggle counterpart. The Daily Prophet had come across as valuing sensationalism and shock value over facts more than once.

But in this case that could be used. Nothing pleased the vultures more than a shocking and sensational truth.

"What if it fails?" Sirius asked.

That was a legitimite worry. It was possible that the reporter would squeal to the Ministry instead of printing the story, but Harry considered it a low probability. Reporters thrived on controversy like fungus thrived on moisture. "In that case we'll have to improvise."

"I still think we should bring Dumbledore in on this. He's got contacts everywhere. He could get this handled without the risk."

"No." Harry scowled. "I don't trust the old man. He was Chief Warlock back when you were first imprisoned, but he didn't even bother to visit you once, much less provide you with a trial. I'm not going to rely on him unless I absolutely have to."

Nothing good ever came of owing favors to powerful people, wizards least of all.

Sirius frowned but eventually gave a grudging nod. Yes, it was possible that Dumbledore had been as duped by the deception as anyone, but it was hard not to feel resentful for twelve years spent in Azkaban.

"I guess I was just hoping to keep you from doing all the work." He finally admitted with a resigned sigh. "You're way too young to be pulling my arse out of the fire like this."

"I'm not looking forward to it either, but we don't have a lot of options with Pettigrew being dead." Harry replied.

They had gone over a lot of possible plans, but using the media to cause a big scene and drag everything into the open was by far the most reliable. They could have directly contacted Amelia Bones, the current head of the DMLE, but Sirius had only her good reputation from over a decade ago to go on rather than any personal – or even recent – knowledge, so it was deemed too risky. They could have gone to Dumbledore, but Harry refused to consider it as anything besides a last resort. They could have even tried to contact one of the other European Ministries of Magic and asked for asylum for Sirius, but they couldn't predict how those Ministries would react or how corrupt they were.

Even Charlus and Dorea had admitted that using the papers as a platform to spread the truth before the Ministry could act and causing a public outcry had the most predictable consequences. Not necessarily the best, but the most predictable.

The Ministry would panic and demand that Harry and Sirius present themselves, but they would have to follow procedure unless they wanted a riot on their hands.

"Well, at least it'll make a good prank." Sirius replied, now smirking.

"I guess you could say that." Harry smirked back. "But enough about that, I think it's time we start getting serious about the animagus transformation."

"I'm always Sirius." Sirius stated with a stone face.

"Yeah, and no matter how much I shave, I'm always Harry." Harry riposted.

Sirius let out a barking laugh and grinned widely at his godson.

"Very well then, my brother in puns, let's make you an animagus."

XXXXX

Andy Smudgley was a reporter for the Daily Prophet, one of the less prominent ones. He didn't have Rita Skeeter's penchant for viciousness or her uncanny ability to ferret out sensitive information, so he mostly had to content himself with writing fairly mediocre articles.

Upon receiving a letter from the Boy-Who-Lived, offering him the chance for an interview, he had jumped at the chance without hesitation.

So here he was, standing outside the Leaky Cauldron and waiting for Harry Potter to arrive.

He wasn't particularly comfortable in the Muggle World, being a wizard-raised halfblood. The odd looks and amused smirks he was getting from the passing muggles were certainly something that he didn't appreciate.

"Mr. Smudgley?" A voice questioned, making the reporter look at who had adressed him.

A tall teenager, with very distinctive green eyes and a lightning bolt scar.

"Harry Potter?" Andy near-gasped, looking slightly up at the boy who had vanquished Voldemort. The legend of the Boy-Who-Lived was such that he didn't even question why a not-quite thirteen-year old boy was taller than him. It seemed only right for heroes to be tall.

"I thought I asked you not to draw attention to yourself?" Harry sighed, already embarrassed about having to stand near such an outlandishly dressed individual.

The reporter was wearing white, knee high socks and lime green crocs, a pair of tight beige shorts with suspenders and a blue V-neck T-shirt that was almost definitely made with women in mind. Completing the mismatched ensamble was one of the old-style cameras that wizards used and a rather girly looking purse that presumably held his wand.

He looked like a vaguely crossdressing hipster that had just come from Oktoberfest or something equally baffling, but at least he wasn't wearing a skirt.

"Isn't this how muggles dress?" Andy asked nervously, afraid that his lack of knowledge on muggle fashion would cost him the story.

"The weird ones perhaps," Harry answered with a smirk. "but nevermind that now, we should go."

Andy nodded eagerly. He was determined to make the most of this opportunity and not dissapoint the Boy-Who-Lived, who must have been impressed by one or more of his articles to have chosen him over the other reporters at the Daily Prophet.

Contrary to his thinking, he had not been chosen for any kind of ability. Sirius had merely liked the fact that he'd made a pun with his name when reporting on the animagus' Azkaban breakout.

"Where are we going?" The reporter asked after a few minutes of walking through the city.

"Somewhere a bit more private." Was the only answer that Harry would give him in regards to that.

They spent the next ten minutes walking in silence, one of them wondering where they were going and the other wondering how wizards could possibly screw up getting dressed as an inconspicuous muggle when they had so many examples. It was like they got all of their source material from crazy events like the previously mentioned Oktoberfest, or maybe those fashion shows with the really screwed up 'clothes'.

"Alright, here we are." Harry said once they arrived.

"But....there's nothing here." Smudgley pointed out uncertainly, looking around the out of the way alley they had entered.

"Don't worry about that, this isn't our final destination, just a stopgap. Now, I'm going to need you to stay calm and not panic."

"Alright." Smudgley agreed easily enough.

"Teeny, transport us pelase."

"Yes, Harry Potter sir!" The little house elf said enthusiastically as she appeared and apparated them into a completely featureless room in Potter Manor. It was best not to let people know that he was back in residence.

Despite agreeing not to panic, Andy froze in panic at the sight of Sirius Black lounging on a chair.

But then a hand was laid on his shoulder and a feeling of calm spread through him.

"You've got nothing to be worried about, Sirius is only here to give you an interview." Harry said soothingly.

Once Andy got past the fear of being murdered, he quickly realized the journalistic value of this opportunity.

XXXXX

"Harry?"

"Yes, Luna?"

"You appear to have Sirius Black squatting in your home."

"Well spotted." Unlike the Daily Prophet reporter, Luna could be trusted not to reveal that Potter Manor was back in use, or that it contained Sirius Black.

"Hey, I am not squatting!"

"Squatting aside, Luna, would you like to interview Sirius for the Quibbler?"

"Not. Squatting."

"It would delay our trip to Germany by a few days, but I think daddy will understand. So Mr. Black, did you see any crumple-horned snorkacks during your stay in Azkaban?"

"Crumple what now?"

"Answer the question Mr. Black, or I will hold you in contempt."

"I don't think that reporters can hold people in contempt, Luna."

"Don't be silly, Harry, anyone can hold anyone in contempt. People do it to me all the time, and you do it to others all the time."

"I....can't refute that statement."

"Not to break up your moment of philosophy, but could we get to the part where I tell my harrowing story of betrayal and false imprisonment?"

"False imprisonment? Are you saying that you weren't in Azkaban these past twelve years, Mr. Black?"

"What? Of course I was in Azkaban!"

"Then how was your imprisonment false?"

Sirius worked his jaw as he tried to figure out the little blonde girl's logic, noticing that his godson was looking terribly amused by the whole thing.

"Stop smirking, Harry."

XXXXX

"That friend of yours is really something else." Sirius said after Luna had left.

"That she is." Harry agreed.

"What the hell is a crumple-horned snorkack anyway?"

"No idea, but I admire Luna's determination to find one."

XXXXX

Albus Dumbledore didn't like summers all that much. Oh, the weather was nice enough, but Hogwarts just felt so empty with the students and even several of the teachers gone. He couldn't even say that he had less paperwork to deal with since he had two other jobs, and DADA was an eternal thorn in his side.

At least he'd learned to expect his DADA teachers to become somehow unable to continue teaching for more than a year and had a replacement all lined up. He wasn't angry at Severus for outing Remus as a werewolf. He knew that there was bad blood between them, though he had hoped that the Potions Master would learn to leave it in the past.

He could only hope that Alastor would restrain himself a bit in the classroom and remember that the students were not Auror trainees. Still, having him around for the Tri-Wizard Tournament would be invaluable from a security standpoint.

The Tri-Wizard Tournament. How Ludo Bagman had come upon the idea of reviving that old competition and then convincing the necessary people to get it done, Dumbledore had no idea. He had to admit that he liked the thought of fostering international cooperation, particularly in light of the fact that he knew that Voldemort would almost certainly rise again someday, but he had been unwilling to agree to resurrect the tournament in its original form. He would not condone entering children into a deadly competition, no matter how skilled with magic they might be.

That at least had been agreed upon without issue by all involved. If only the rest of it were so simple. It was still being argued as to which school would have the honor of hosting the event. Karkaroff and Madam Maxime naturally wanted it to be at their schools, just as Dumbledore wanted it to be at Hogwarts. This was not merely a matter of prestige, but also of practicality. It would be quite inconvenient to be away from his school for that long after all.

Fortunately, tradition favored Hogwarts, as Durmstrang had hosted it the last time and Beauxbatons the time before that. Wizards and witches do like their traditions, and even the centuries that had passed since the last tournament weren't likely to sway people away from that.

These were the thoughts of Albus Dumbledore as he reached for his morning paper, idly wondering if Ms. Skeeter had printed any more of her vitriol today. Such a shame that a witch of her potential would spend her time spreading malicious rumors or gossip, but then, she had been like that for a long time now. Slytherin had not been kind to her during her school years, Dumbledore suspected.

It's a Sirius shock! Azkaban escapee Sirius Black tells his side of the story!

Safely alone in his quarters, Albus Dumbledore gaped unbecomingly at the headline on his copy of the Daily Prophet.

Yesterday, this reporter received an owl from Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, with an offer for an interview. We met outside the Leaky Cauldron and walked some distance away to a secluded alley, where Mr. Potter called for a house elf to transport us to an undisclosed location.

Imagine my shock when I found myself face to face with Sirius Black himself!

But the supposed mass murderer was not at all hostile. He was in fact rather friendly, though the shadow of Azkaban was still visible on his face.

Mr. Potter explained to me that the interview he had promised was not to be with him, but with Black.

The article then went on to reveal the tale of the switch between Secret Keepers, Pettigrew's betrayal, Sirius' wrongful imprisonment and subsequent escape, Harry meeting his godfather and offering him shelter from the Aurors and dementors and finally ending with the interview that he was now reading.

Dumbledore noted that it said nothing about the means by which Sirius had escaped, nor did it offer up any real details on the fate of Peter Pettigrew.

Mr. Potter is well aware that the DMLE will wish to speak to him and intends to present himself this very afternoon.

That particular line revealed the gist of Harry and Sirius' plan. The Ministry could not, after all, be seen to act rashly now that the truth was revealed to the masses, especially with Harry involved as he was. His status as the Boy-Who-Lived and Heir to the Potter family would shield him from the usual legal repercussions of harboring a wanted criminal.

Clever though this plan was, Dumbledore couldn't help but wish that they had come to him for help. He could have made things so much smoother. Things would now have to play out in the way that Harry and Sirius had set, but he still intended to be there.

He had clearly failed Sirius grievously once already by not taking the time to properly investigate the situation, so he would offer what help he could now. Not only was it a matter of doing the right thing, but also of keeping contact with Harry once Sirius took over his guardianship.

XXXXX

In the office of the Minister of Magic, there was much less certainty.

"This is a disaster!" Cornelius Fudge moaned. "What am I going to do, Lucius?"

Lucius Malfoy considered the situation carefully. Fudge was a simple creature to manipulate, but even a simpleton like him had limits to how far he could be bent with either words or 'donations'. Not many limits, but getting him to commit political suicide was one of them.

The exoneration of Sirius Black would reflect poorly on Fudge even if it had been Barty Crouch and the previous Minister, Bagnold, who had imprisoned him. The Minister was the face of the Ministry and it would be the Ministry as a whole who would end up with eggs on their face over this debacle. The statements he had made about hunting the fugitive down would not help either.

But that did not mean that simply doing away with Sirius Black would be possible, not after the truth was plastered all over the front page of the Daily Prophet. Too many questions would be asked if he mysteriously disappeared.

Lucius himself had long suspected that Black was innocent. As part of Voldemort's inner circle, he was aware of the identities of most every one of the Dark Lord's followers. That such a high profile member would slip past his notice was unlikely. Possible, but unlikely.

He had congratulated himself heartily over the windfall that the Malfoy family had gotten under his leadership. With Bellatrix imprisoned and barren(courtesy of a special, untraceable poison Lucius himself had added to her evening drink one day), Andromeda disowned, Regulus killed on some unspecified task for the Dark Lord and Sirius rotting in Azkaban, his own son was next in line to inherit the Black family and thus absorb it into the Malfoy line since his wife, Narcissa, was a Black by birth.

But now that was all in danger of being undone. Sirius was Heir to the House and had never been properly banished from the family despite his rebellion against everything that House Black stood for. If he was declared innocent, then Lucius could wave his dreams of absorbing House Black into Malfoy goodbye.

Unless of course another bout of misfortune happened to befall Sirius Black. But for that, information was required.

"Regardless of the...distressing nature of this article, Potter and Black have offered little proof of their words." He finally said. "Potter says that he will present himself to the DMLE this afternoon and I think that it would proper for the Minister of Magic to be present at such an important occasion, in order to judge for himself the veracity of these claims."

"Yes, yes of course. Black could be manipulating the boy after all, maybe even keeping him under the Imperious!" Fudge said, getting some of his composure back. "You'll be there too, won't you, Lucious?"

"If you wish for my advice, then who am I to refuse?" Lucius said, keeping the irony out of his voice with the ease of long experience. Weaning Fudge away from his reliance on Dumbledore and making him rely on Malfoy gold and advice instead had been almost too easy.

XXXXX

Harry made his way towards the visitors entrance of the Ministry of Magic, once again contemplating the dilapidated nature of this part of the city. He'd come here a few days ago to make sure that he could find it and had now apparated himself to a nearby alley.

He could sense several powerful aversion wards affecting the area, no doubt aimed at those without magic. It probably made this part of London unpalatable for muggles, leaving it to slowly decay.

He had to wonder if there was some kind of symbolism in having the magical government housed underground, covered by the filth of the surrounding muggles. Or perhaps it was the other way around, the presence of wizarding politics fouling the area.

A line of thought that was most unflattering to wizardkind either way.

Shaking the thought off, he stepped into the red phone booth that served as the entrance to the Ministry, amused at how completely it failed to be inconspicuous. If not for the aversion wards, this pristine looking but long since obsolete phone booth would probably attract a great deal of unwanted attention. In fact, that might be the reason for the wards in the first place.

Quickly entering 62442 to spell out 'magic', he waited for the operator that Charlus had told him would speak up.

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business." A female voice droned. It reminded Harry of Binns, though marginally less monotone.

"Harry Potter, here to meet with Director Bones." He didn't know if he would actually be meeting with Amelia Bones herself, but it seemed like a fair assumption.

"Thank you. Visitor, please take the badge and attach it to the front of your robes." The instruction was accompanied by a rattling as the aformentioned badge was deposited into a receptacle.

It helpfully proclaimed 'Harry Potter, meeting with Director Bones'.

Harry did as the cool female voice had suggested and pinned the badge to his robes, a rather more ostentatious affair than he would've liked. He had been intending to show up dressed in quality, but eminently muggle clothing. Charlus and Dorea had insisted that he take one of the more formal robes that were hanging around in the manor however, arguing that snubbing the traditional wizard's apparel would not work in his favor. He understood their arguments and it had been part of the coaching they'd given him on how to comport himself around influential people, however much it grated on him due to the memory of similar lessons with Robert and Katherine.

Thus, robes. At least he'd managed to find a set that was a subdued black.

The floor of the fake phone booth began its slow descent after that and Harry took the time to get into the proper frame of mind for the events ahead. He knew that he would likely be stared at by a nerve wrackingly large amount of people, so he would need to keep his wits about him and project the image of imperturbable calm.

Fortunately, that was one of those things that Occlumency adepts frequently learned to do and Harry was advanced enough in the discipline to do it. No two Occlumancers went about it in precisely the same way as it was a personalized thing. Harry himself liked to wrap his thoughts in a peace so deep that it was like Dark. His thoughts were a river of Dark that swallowed all that entered it but remaining undisturbed. They were the vast silence between the stars that allowed no sound.

He had practiced such things often since Christmas, so it did not take him long to get into the proper mindset. He was finished shortly before he arrived in the Ministry atrium.

It was essentially a very long and wide hallway line with fireplaces that constantly burned with the green flame of floo travel. To his mild surprise, the whole thing was decorated rather tastefully, though his assumption on wizardkind's lack of restraint was vindicated by the sight of a garish golden statue of a goblin, centaur and house elf looking adoringly up at a witch and wizard. He strongly doubted that anyone save possibly the house elf harbored any kind of positive feelings towards humans.

Sirius had never been here, but Charlus and Dorea had and had explained to him what he could expect. The atrium was usually the most busy during the morning and evening hours when people arrived for work or went home, but saw a fair amount of activity through the day as well. It being three in the afternoon, it should have been relatively empty, but of course the statement he'd left in the Prophet and Quibbler that he'd be showing up in the afternoon had attracted gawkers.

The atrium was therefore full of overly curious busybodies trying to pretend that they weren't waiting for his arrival, as well as several Aurors, Dumbledore and the Minister of Magic himself, who quite obviously were waiting for him if the way they were watching the fireplaces was any indication. Apparently they'd expected him to use one of those.

Dumbledore spotted him first and swiftly strode over, the Aurors following a moment later and the Minister lagging behind like a nervous but eager puppy.

"Harry." Dumbledore greeted genially.

"Professor." Harry returned calmly, dismissing the audience as unimportant.

"You gave everyone quite the shock yesterday, my boy." The old wizard commented, his eyes twinkling with amusement. It was not how he would've dealt with the situation, but he had to admit that Harry and Sirius had come up with an effective, if loud, scheme. Sirius was likely having a good laugh at the prank they had pulled on the Wizarding World and he had to admit that Harry was handling his part much better than he had expected him to.

"That was the point." Harry stated noncommittally and Dumbledore nodded in understanding.

"May I present Aurors Shacklebolt and Dawlish, they will escort you to Amelia bones, which I see you have already surmised." Dumbledore introduced, gesturing to the two Aurors.

Shacklebolt was a tall man with dark skin and a rather jovial face, whereas Dawlish was pale and dour looking. Of the two, Shacklebolt felt considerably stronger. Both men gave him a nod and a short greeting, to which he replied in kind.

"And of course, last but not least, Conerlius Fudge, the Minister of Magic." Dumbledore finished, gesturing to the shortest man there.

"A pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Potter." The Minister positively gushed and eagerly held out a hand for him to shake.

"Likewise, Minister." Harry replied, but didn't really mean it. Despite Dumbledore's words, it was quite obvious that Cornelius Fudge was indeed the least person here, both in magic and in stature. Charlus and Dorea had met him once and been unimpressed. Harry wasn't impressed either. A politician more than a wizard and corrupt besides, nothing to him but an empty title.

But he could definitely be useful. His presence had been expected but not guaranteed. His gradnparents had advised him to imply that he would support Fudge in exchange for help with the current situation, but Harry intended to go a step further than that.

As he shook the pudgy man's hand, he sent a mild compulsion through the point of contact, urging him to help Harry as much as possible. It was slightly harder than casting such spells on Robert and Katherine, but not by much. The Minister of Magic was the weakest adult wizard he'd ever encountered, weaker even than many Hogwarts students. Harry almost felt as if the Dark inside him could swallow the man whole.

Fudge laughed nervously and fidgeted with his lime green bowler hat when he took his hand back. He hadn't expected a boy barely into his teens to be this imposing, but staring up (how was he so damned tall anyway?) at those gleaming green eyes, he could easily believe that this was the one who had vanquished Voldemort as a baby.

He was even more glad now that he had asked Lucius to join them on this meeting. His good friend and advisor would surely help him make sure that this was handled properly.

"Shall we then?" He asked after nervously clearing his throat.

"Lead on." Harry prompted, his amusement at how easily bidden the Minister was a disconnected thing that didn't show on his face or in his voice.

Fudge nodded in a slightly jittery fashion and started walking at Harry's left side while Dumbledore took the right and the Aurors took up spots behind them.

Harry and Dumbledore were comfortable with their thoughts, but Fudge was apparently not.

"So...Harry, may I call you Harry?" He asked.

"If I may call you Cornelius." Harry replied unhurriedly. He felt nothing but disdain for the pudgy little man that was many decades his senior but undoubtedly a lesser wizard in spite of the age disparity. Nothing in his manner betrayed his true opinion though. He wouldn't be the first person to have been brought down by those who were less than him because he had overreached himself. A day would come when gnats like Fudge that hid their weakness behind politics would no longer concern him, but that day was quite a ways off into the future. For now, the idiot had his uses.

"Of course, of course." Fudge hastened to affirm, eager to forge close ties to someone as prominent as the Boy-Who-Lived.

On Harry's other side, Dumbledore withheld an amused smile. He wondered if Cornelius realized that he had just allowed a barely teenage boy with no tangible legal or political power to establish an equal relationship to the Minister of Magic. He wondered if Harry had done it on purpose and who had taught him if so. He wondered if Harry would even need his help to resolve this issue satisfactorily, as the lad truly was handling himself with remarkable poise. He wondered at how advanced Harry's Occlumency was to be capable of controlling himself like this already.

Dumbledore noticed that he spent a lot of time wondering where Harry was concerned.

"Anyway, I was wondering where Black was. The article in the Daily Prophet didn't mention that." Fudge continued.

"I'm not going to tell you that while you have a kill on sight order on him." Harry replied dryly.

"But I'm the Minister of Magic." Fudge protested, the first notes of an injured ego coloring his tone. The petulant whine of someone who thought he deserved respect.

"And as such you are required to uphold the law, are you not?" Harry asked archly. "It would reflect poorly on you for an innocent man to be killed due to a...bureaucratic mishap."

"Yes, yes of course!" Fudge was quick to affirm, nearly stumbling over the words in his haste to be seen as respectable. He didn't want the Boy-Who-Lived of all people to be his enemy! That would be a public relations disaster perhaps even worse than this business with Black.

The urge to roll his eyes popped into being in the Dark of Harry's mind and floated there aimlessly. How had someone this stupid and spineless ever made Minister?

"I believe that there is more to the story than what we learned from the Prophet." Dumbledore interjected mildly. "We should not make Harry repeat himself needlessly."

"Quite right." Fudge agreed as if that had been his idea from the start.

The lull in conversation did not last long, as they came upon a man waiting for them at the lifts.

Harry didn't even need Fudge's happy exclamation of 'Lucius!' to guess that this was Draco Malfoy's father. He'd been reminded of his annoying yearmate since he'd laid eyes on the blond man that was obviously trying entirely too hard to appear as aristocratic as possible, from his fancy robes and all the way down to that pretentious snake headed cane. In addition to that, Sirius, Charlus and Dorea had all described the man to him.

He and Sirius had gotten a good laugh at their description of the Malfoys being 'froggy bastards', due to their French heritage.

"Harry, this is my good friend Lucius Malfoy. I believe you are in the same Hogwarts year as his son, Draco." Fudge introduced enthusiastically, dreaming of having the support of both Lucius Malfoy and Harry Potter.

"A pleasure." Malfoy said neutrally.

"Yes." Harry said blandly.

Neither offered their hand, well aware that they would be unfriendly acquaintances at the most unrealistically optimistic best even if they had never met before. Lucius might have tried to get close to the Potter brat if he had not already heard from Draco about the antipathy between them. Attempting to be friendly would only serve to look suspicious.

Harry was merely trusting his gut when it told him that Malfoy senior was bad news.

"If I might ask, Cornelius, why have you invited Mr. Malfoy along for this." Dumbledore inquired in the uncomfortable silence that ensued.

Lucius' eyes tightened slightly at the subtle snub. Most referred to him as Lord Malfoy, but he was technically not a Lord. The Malfoy family had no seat on the Wizengamot due to being relatively new to Britain and were thus not a Noble House. They were very rich, and that money kept them high up in politics, but they were not one of those families that had a hereditary seat on the Wizengamot. That was another reason that he had been so eager for the Black family to be absorbed into his.

Truly, wooing Narcissa Black had been one of his better ideas. His father had been impressed with it too, for the little time that he'd lived after Lucius had arranged for him to get infected with Dragon Pox.

"He's one of my chief advisors." Fudge argued, unknowingly enlightening Harry as to the likely reason for his political success.

"Yes, but you will hardly need his advice in order to listen to Harry's explanation of the Prophet's article." Dumbledore countered in his best 'I'm everyone's wise and friendly grandfather' voice.

"I must say that I agree with the Headmaster." Harry added. "Your presence and that of the Aurors is expected of course and Professor Dumbledore is here both as Chief Warlock and as my current magical guardian, but as I understand it, Mr. Malfoy has no outstanding reason to be present for this."

He may not trust Dumbledore, but he wouldn't hesitate to use him as a shield if it was convenient.

"But-!" Fudge moved to protest.

Harry gave him no chance. Malfoy senior felt dangerous and he was not going to let him be present for this. The compulsion alone obviously wasn't enough for this.

"Minister." He said implacably, using his magic to press down on Fudge in a way that the basic five human senses could not perceive."This is a sensitive matter and it would not do for any more ears to hear than strictly necessary."

Cornelius looked into those powerful green eyes and felt the heavy regard of a much greater wizard, even if he didn't understand it.

"I'm sorry, Lucius, but he's right." He said meekly. He didn't want to send his friend away, but he couldn't gainsay the Boy-Who-Lived in this, especially with Dumbledore in on it too.

Dumbledore gave Harry a penetrating look. He had felt what the boy had done. Few wizards had the strength or knowledge to use their magic in such a fashion and they were generally of the old and powerful variety. He could do it, but even then perhaps not as subtly as Harry had just managed. How in the world had a boy of thirteen learned this skill? This bore investigating.

Lucius's lips thinned in displeasure as the group entered the lift. This, he reflected, was the problem with people like Fudge. Anyone with half a brain could yank them around and he could hardly offer the idiot a bribe in public.

Unnoticed by all, a beetle flew into the lift and hid in an unobtrusive corner

XXXXX

Harry found the Ministry lifts to be rather puzzling. The atrium was apparently on the 8th undreground floor, which meant that the visitor's entrance had taken him quite deep. Now they were going up again.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to have the atrium on the 1st floor if you were going to build underground? Wizards made no sense.

The short ride passed in silence, as Fudge seemed to be too off kilter after being made to leave Malfoy behind to chatter.

The walk through the DMLE was similarly short and uneventful, though Harry did find his attention captured once when they passed through Auror Headquarters, by a young woman in Auor robes . She was dressed properly for her job, but her spiky purple hair gave her the image of a punk rocker trying to infiltrate law enforcement.

She noticed him staring, her hair turned pink and she gave him a rather saucy wink, prompting Harry to return the gesture with a flirtatious smirk.

"Who was that?" He asked, quite sure that Dumbledore would know who he was referring to. The now pink haired Auror was very pretty and looked like loads of fun.

"Who was who?" Fudge asked in confusion, having missed the short byplay entirely.

"I believe that Harry was referring to Nymphadora Tonks." Dumbledore said, sounding amused. "A very capable young lady and a fine Auror." And Moody's last protégé, whom the grizzled old Auror had already recommended for recruitment into the Order of the Phoenix should it be reconvened.

There was an opportunity here.

"Why did her hair change like that?" Harry asked before Fudge could make an even bigger ass of himself.

"She is a metamorphagus, a natural shapeshifter." The old wizard explained.

"That sounds very useful." Harry mused. He knew that it was somewhat typically male of him, but his mind instantly jumped to the bedroom applications of such an ability.

"Indeed." Dumbledore agreed, sounding even more amused. He'd probably guessed what Harry had just thought about. "Further deliberation on the applications of shapeshifting will have to wait though, for we have arrived at Madam Bones' office."

Yes, Dumbledore had definitely guessed it.

XXXXX

Harry quickly deduced that Amelia Bones was a formidable witch, and not someone that could be pushed around like Fudge. Hers was the strongest presence he'd felt so far, bar Dumbledore himself.

The two Aurors left and then it was just her, him, Dumbledore and Fudge in the room. Something felt wrong about that number, but Harry couldn't for the life of him place what it was.

"Mr. Potter." Bones said by way of greeting, her displeasure ringing as clearly as a bell. "You've caused me and my department a great deal of trouble and embarrassment with those articles in the Prophet and the Quibbler."

Concern welled up in him at her tone, but was swallowed by the Dark in his mind and did not affect his composure.

"I apologize," He said calmly. "but I saw no better way to ensure my godfather's exoneration."

Amelia stared hard at the boy, noting with grudging respect that he remained unmoved by it. In fact, the only one who looked uncomfortable was Fudge. She wondered what had happened to Malfoy, whom she knew that the bumbling idiot had been planning to include on this meeting. Good riddance either way. She'd been tempted to cleave the bastard's head off more than once in the past twelve years.

"I'm sure that we can get this handled quickly, Amelia." The Minister fretted, worrying at his hat.

"We will handle it by the book, if that's alright with you Mr. Potter?" She stated more than asked in a tone that brooked no disagreement, a trace of sarcasm showing up at the end.

Harry felt a stirring of decidedly more personal interest in the woman. She was quite severe looking, but not at all unattractive, though that monocle was a bit odd. He wondered if she was this forceful all the time.

The thought was pushed aside. This was definitely not the time for that.

"Of course, Madam Bones."

"Good." She said with a firm nod. "Now, the first thing I want to know is when and how you came into contact with Black in the first place."

"During my very first Hogsmeade weekend. I recognized his animagus form and got him away from there before he did something stupid." He felt a spike of....something when he said that, but he once again failed to pin it down.

"Animagus form?" Bones asked, talking right over Fudge's surprised exclamation and noting Dumbledore's lack of surprise at the information.

"Yes, a big black dog. I remember him using it to play with me when I was a baby." Sorry Sirius, I know you wanted to keep that a secret, but Bryanna and Tiana were sure to have figured it out after this, if they haven't already. I might like them, but I'm not sure they'd keep it a secret and trying, and more importantly failing, to hide your animagus ability is the last thing you need.

"Your memory stretches that far back?" Dumbledore asked in some surprise.

"Yes." Harry answered simply.

"Do you remember what it was that caused Voldemort's downfall then?" The old wizard pressed.

Fudge yelped at the use of the Dark Lord's name, looking like he'd nearly lost control of his bladder.

Amelia merely twitched, the remnants of an old reflex.

"I do, but I'd rather not talk about it." Harry said. "It's not something that can really be used in anything other than a very specific set of circumstances."

Most people did not have months of forewarning that they were going to be murdered after all, nevermind the skill required to turn their own murder into a ritual sacrifice.

"Getting back to the matter at hand, what kind of stupid thing did you expect Black to do?" Bones asked, determined to stay on point despite her own interest.

"Sneak into the Gryffindor common room and murder Peter Pettigrew." Harry replied with a bland smile. That odd feeling from before manifested again, but remained elusive.

This time, even Dumbledore was surprised, though he quickly deduced the truth. He had assumed that the Weasley family rat had actually been several rats that Molly and Arthur had kept replacing in order to not upset their children, but it had apparently been just one animagus.

"Am I to understand that Peter Pettigrew is also an animagus and was hiding in Hogwarts all this time?" Bones asked, guessing at the truth.

"Close, he was a rat animagus and had been hiding with the Weasley family ever since his confrontation with Sirius."

"Was?" Bones asked sharply, picking up on the use of past tense.

Harry sighed heavily as he answered. "Yes, was. You see, I bought him from Ron Weasley just before the Christmas break. Sirius and I were intending to come forward with him and reveal the truth of what had happened after Voldemort's defeat."

"So why didn't you?"

"Sirius wanted to talk to him, he wanted to ask why Pettigrew had betrayed them and I admit that I wanted to hear it too. He was supposed to be their friend, but he sold them out to save his own skin. Sirius was always a brash sort and Azkaban hadn't improved his self-control any, so things got a little out of hand."

"Out of hand how?" Amelia's voice was considerably harder now.

"There was a lot of shouting and we stupidly hadn't thought to disarm the rat. Pettigrew reached for his wand and I panicked. I didn't even know what spell I was going to cast, I just knew that I couldn't let him do it first. Before I knew what had happened, I'd fired off a blasting curse." Harry did his best to put a tremor in his voice, though he wasn't sure how successful he was in that. He'd practiced doing it, but there really was no substitute for the real thing and he really couldn't muster much emotion over this months old issue anymore.

Fudge went a little pale and Dumbledore put a hand on his shoulder supportively, though he was sure that there was a very uncomfortable conversation going to happen between them in the near future.

Amelia on the other hand, was clenching her jaw and looking deeply irritated.

"You mean to tell me, that you have killed a man and presumably had his body stashed somewhere since Christmas and have deigned to report it only now?" She demanded slowly, her expression thunderous.

Harry winced, but went on with his explanation. "Sirius and I were at a bit of a loss as to how we were going to explain this without him ending up lunch for the dementors. We argued about it for months until we finally decided that putting that article in the papers was probably the surest way of doing it."

That those months were also spent planning out how to get away with it went unsaid.

"Why didn't we receive any notifications about underage magic use?" Amelia asked suspiciously, seeing a slight discrepancy in the story.

"We were in an area warded against detection at the time."

"Harry, why didn't you come to me with this?" Dumbledore asked sadly. "I could have helped you."

"You were Chief Warlock when he was first thrown in prison, Professor." Harry pointed out. "You didn't ensure that he got a trial back then and we were only going to get one chance at this. There was no guarantee that he'd get one now."

Dumbledore looked even more saddened by that.

"Wait a second, Black was never tried?" Amelia interjected, momentarily surprised out of her anger at the way that Potter and Black had played fast and loose with the law.

"No. From what he told me, he chased down Pettigrew only for the rat to fire off the blasting curse that blew up the street and the muggles on it. The explosion had rattled him pretty badly and by the time he'd gotten his wits about him, he'd already been in Azkaban." Harry explained.

"Crouch is going to have a lot of explaining to do." Amelia growled.

"Indeed he will!" Fudge hurried to add, eager to be seen as the man that was correcting past injustices. He might actually benefit from this if he dumped all the blame on Bagnold and Crouch!

"And speaking of that, here is Pettigrew's wand." Harry said, pulling it out of on of his robe pockets. "It might still have the trace of that blasting curse on it, since I doubt that it's been used since then."

Amelia took it and cast Priori Incantatem on it, seeing that it did indeed register a blasting curse as the last spell to be cast.

"I also have one other wand for you." Harry went on once she did that, more slowly now. He reached into another pocket and drew out a wand with a ghastly white bone handle, which he was sure had been a later affectation instead of something that Ollivander had made for an eleven year old.

"I know that wand." Amelia said softly "How did you get it?"

"Pettigrew had it with him. I assume that he grabbed it from my room."

"I don't understand, whose wand is that?" Fudge demanded, obviously not recognizing it.

"Voldemort's, Cornelius." Dumbledore told him calmly, ignoring the way the Minister flinched.

"All this aside, that still leaves us with you Mr. Potter. You've harbored a known criminal, even though it seems that he was innocent, and you've hidden the fact that you've killed someone for months now, even if it was in self-defense."

"Come now, Amelia, surely you can't blame the lad for wanting to do right by his godfather? The man has clearly suffered enough already." Fudge interjected.

"Thank you, Cornelius, I appreciate your support." Harry said, aiming a smile at the Minister.

Amelia's face went stony for a moment as she saw the way that Potter had Fudge wrapped around his little finger already, not that it was exactly a difficult feat. That, combined with Dumbledore's obvious support would mean that Potter would be getting away with this whole debacle with barely a slap on the wrist, nevermind a full investigation. The most that she'd be able to do was put a black mark on his record, anything else would get waved off by Fudge in an effort to curry favor with the Boy-Who-Lived.

She hated it when politics got mixed up with the law. She hadn't been intending to throw Potter into Azkaban over this, he was only thirteen after all, but the obvious abuse of his reputation, Dumbledore's protection and Fudge's...Fudgeness, grated on her.

"I want Pettigrew's body, and I want to talk to Black. Immediately." She bit out.

"Right away, Madam Bones." Harry quickly agreed, seeing that the formidable witch was most definitely not happy with him.

"You're taking an Auror escort with you." She stated uncompromisingly.

"If I might suggest Nymphadora Tonks?" Dumbledore said, his eyes on maximum twinkle. "She is a cousin of Sirius' and might serve to put him more at ease than others."

Harry gave the Headmaster an incredulous look. Was the old man seriously helping him get hooked up with the pretty shapeshifter?

"An excellent idea!" Fudge contributed, oblivious as ever.

Amelia gave Potter and Dumbledore a scrutinizing look, wondering what they were up to that involved Auror Tonks.

"Why her in particular?" She demanded.

"She is a most impressive young lady." Dumbledore replied, sounding very amused.

Amelia knew that this was true. Tonks might be a rookie and bit of a klutz, but she was powerful and resourceful. She fully expected her to become one of the best in a few years, after she got some experience under her belt.

That didn't explain why Dumbledore had suggested her though. There didn't seem to be anything nefarious about it and it was the kind of assignment that a rookie would be given, but Black was pretty high profile and she didn't feel charitable enough to go along with whatever this was.

"I'm assigning Shacklebolt to be your escort."

Was that a flash of disappointment that had just crossed Potter's face?

XXXXX

As Madam Bones' office emptied, Rita Skeeter buzzed stealthily out of the Ministry of Magic in her beetle animagus form, nearly vibrating with excitement over all the material she'd just gathered. The Daily Prophet's next headline would be sensational!

XXXXX

Harry felt that things had gone rather well, all things considered. Fudge's presence had been unexpectedly useful, as the man was quite obviously a politician for hire, supporting whoever would benefit him the most. Of course, this might be a bit problematic in the future if he ever expected Harry's support, but no promises had been made.

Amelia Bones had been quite a bit more intense than he'd been expecting, but he supposed that not every pureblood could be a useless waste of air. He hoped that he hadn't made an enemy out of her, as a woman like that could cause him quite a bit of grief in the future if she put her mind to it.

Dumbledore had acted more or less as expected, aside from that very odd attempt to contrive an opportunity for Harry to talk to the interesting metamorphagus Auror. He really had to wonder what the old man had hoped to achieve with that.

The thing that really bothered him about that meeting was the strange feelings he'd been getting the whole time. It had felt almost like there was another person in the room, but the only thing he had to go on with this theory was his gut feeling and the strange spikes of emotion when he said something particularly surprising.

XXXXX

Sirius had been anxiously pacing through the foyer of Potter Manor ever since Harry had left for the Ministry, waiting for his turn. His godson had wanted to keep the use of the place secret, displaying Moody-like levels of paranoia about information but had eventually conceded that the DMLE at least would need to be informed now.

It was almost a relief when Harry returned with the tall Auror that he introduced as Shacklebolt and he was side-along apparated directly to the DMLE to avoid any lingering gawkers. Even if things went pear-shaped, at least the tense waiting was over.

It had been replaced by an entirely new kind of tension.

"Sirius Black." Amelia Bones said in a stony tone that betrayed a certain amount of irritation.

"In the flesh." Sirius replied with a winning smile. He noted with dismay that Madam Bones seemed immune to his charm.

"First, let me just assure you that you aren't going back to Azkaban anytime soon. Since Crouch didn't even bother to properly charge you with a crime before throwing you in there, the Ministry actually owes you quite the hefty apology, as well as compensation if we determine that you are indeed innocent." She went on, almost kindly.

"I appreciate that." Sirius said, feeling a certain amount of tension bleed out of him. It was good to know that Amelia was as fair as her reputation claimed.

"That being said, I am extremely annoyed by the stunt that you and your godson pulled." The kindness was now replaced with a growl as she glared at him. "Now you are going to tell me everything that happened from the moment that the Potters switched Secret Keepers to the moment that you set foot in my office and if I find out that the two of you are trying to pull another fast one on me, then I am going to bury you. I don't care if your godson has Fudge and Dumbledore on his side, I am going to find a way to do it. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am." Sirius nodded, swallowing nervously. What a scary woman.

XXXXX

Harry had an uncomfortable conversation of his own to attend to and his wasn't even with an attractive older lady.

Dumbledore had somehow arranged for a private room for them and spent the next few minutes liberally applying privacy spells to make sure that it was actually private.

Once he was done with that, he turned to Harry and stared at him inscrutably, saying nothing.

Well, two could play that game. Harry stared back impassively, sinking further into the deep sense of peaceful Dark that had allowed him to keep himself composed during this entire nerve wracking experience.

"I see that your study of Occlumency is progressing well." Dumbledore finally said.

"Yes." Hary replied unhelpfully. The old wizard would have to broach the subject more directly than that.

"I could have helped you, my boy." Dumbledore said sadly, repeating himself from earlier when he saw Harry's reticence. "If you had come to me after meeting Sirius, I would have listened. We could have captured Pettigrew easily and all of this would never have needed to happen."

Harry heard the implication as clearly as the words. You would never have needed to be a killer. It would have been better if you trusted me to handle things for you. He still didn't understand why Dumbledore wanted his trust so badly.

"You have a history of poor decisions behind you. I couldn't risk having you make another. Not with this." He said evenly.

Dumbledore sighed in a greatly put upon manner. "I am not perfect, Harry. I can make mistakes the same as any man, especially when I don't have all the facts as was the case with Sirius."

"Leaving me with the Dursleys? Leaving the school open with a basilisk on the loose? You should have had enough information to prevent those."

"There were extenuating circumstances for those decisions." Dumbledore argued, but declined to elaborate. He was not used to explaining himself to people.

"Hmm." Harry replied, unconvinced. "It doesn't matter anymore and we've gotten off topic. This matter is settled, Sirius will get the acquittal he deserves and become my guardian as my parents wanted."

He was perfect for it too. Still as immature as a man less than half his age and not at all inclined to be responsible, especially when he seemed to be looking at Harry as a replacement for his murdered friend rather than as a child to be protected. A poor parent and one more suited to doing rather than thinking. Perfect for Harry's purposes, as he'd likely leave him to do all the thinking.

"Yes, he no doubt will." Dumbledore agreed. He wasn't going to try getting in the way of that, even though he had some misgivings about Sirius' ability in that area. "I am merely saddened that the process was so messy."

"Was that all?" Harry asked, getting tired of the conversation.

"Just one more thing." Dumbledore promised. "Minister Fudge and Lucius Malfoy may not be sensitive enough to notice what you did, but I am."

"And what did I do?" Harry asked noncommittally, inwardly very worried. He might have become a great deal stronger since the first time he'd felt the power of Dumbledore's magic back in second year, but he was under no illusions that he would be able to match him. Even if their magic were of equal potency(which it wasn't), Dumbledore was simply too experienced right now for him to fight in any way. If the old man decided to start being difficult, then he could be very difficult indeed.

"You wielded your magic as a tool of intimidation, forcing the Minister to comply with your wishes to send Malfoy away."

Ah, that. The ability to project your will on another by exerting a spiritual pressure on them. He hadn't expected that any wand-reliant wizard would be aware of themselves enough to realize that their magic was more than just a power source for their spells, but he supposed that had been foolish of him. It had been arrogant to assume that everyone but him was completely blind.

"I do not know how you are capable of such a thing at your age, but I do know that you have used some ritual to speed your growth."

Harry's face went completely blank at that, listening silently as Dumbledore went on.

"I do not know which, as my own research has unearthed no ritual that fits my observations, nor do I know what price you paid for it. Furthermore, I suspect that you did not perform only one such ritual, as your mind went from completely undefended to impenetrable too quickly to be the result of Occlumency training."

"Is there a point to this, Professor?" Harry asked, deciding to ignore Dumbledore's not-quite admission to casual use of Legilimency. He'd already known that the old man did it after all.

"Yes, there is." Dumbledore said softly. "I would caution you to temper your lust for power, Harry. I was much like you in my youth. I too desired power over all other things and resented anything that held me back from my ambitions. It was only when those same ambitions caused the death of my sister that I saw the ruin I was causing around me. I would not wish for you to go through the same thing."

"I'll keep it in mind." Harry said, but was mostly just annoyed by the little speech.

"I know that I must sound terribly patronizing to you right now." Dumbledore chuckled self-deprecatingly. "I imagine that my advice is unwanted and the implication that you would repeat my mistakes resented."

Harry didn't reply, not wanting to make an obvious lie by denying it but also unwilling to outright agree.

"Wizards and witches have a very strange relationship with power." Dumbledore went on, seemingly off topic. "They hate it and adore it, fear it and worship it. The powerful among us do not often get the luxury of keeping to ourselves as we grow in strength. Whether by our own actions or by that of others, we find ourselves thrust into the center of events."

"Is that why you're the Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump, despite not being from a Noble House?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow, interested in spite of himself. He knew that neither of those posts required that the holder be from a Noble House, especially the Supreme Mugwump one as it was an international position, but they did usually require a lot of money to get elected, something that he was reasonably certain that Dumbledore did not have an abundance of.

"Ah, you've noticed that, have you?" The old wizard asked rhetorically. "Indeed, after my defeat of Grindelwald, there was no shortage of people eager to foist all responsibility for everything on me."

"And you expect that I will find myself in the same situation?" Harry guessed.

"You have had a reputation since the night Voldemort attacked you and have shown great potential in your schooling since then. There are those who will want to use you and what you represent to further their own agendas, or seek to remove you if they feel you will oppose them. This is especially true now that you have drawn attention to yourself." Dumbledore explained.

"So...what, am I supposed to cower and pretend to be less than I am?" Harry demanded. Pretend mediocrity to appease the masses unimaginative sheep? Unacceptable. He wanted to unravel the deepest mysteries of magic, not quibble over cauldron bottom thickness with a bunch of old greybeards who had more in common with mundane politicians than actual wizards. Even becoming a Dark Lord would be preferrable to that.

Dumbledore needed no Legilimency to guess at Harry's thoughts. He had felt the same way once. He imagined that most of those who stood above their peers felt that way at some point.

It was so easy to look down on those who were less powerful than yourself. So easy to become frustrated with society's limitations on magic use when you felt yourself capable of doing it, of mastering anything. Dumbledore still remembered the hunger for more and the bitter resentment at anything that stood in his way. He had been well on the path of a Dark Lord when Ariana's death had shocked some sense into him. Sometimes, as he paced in his office late at night, he still wondered if he could have swayed Gellert away from that path if he had been wiser and less bullheaded in his youth.

But all that hard earned wisdom would be meaningless to a lad of thirteen that didn't want to hear it. It had been meaningless to Tom Riddle as well.

"No, Harry, I do not expect you to do that. It is quite too late for that even if you wanted to. Instead, I would offer my help in navigating the treacherous waters you've just entered. I mean no disrespect to Sirius, but he is not a politician. You are still a few years away from your majority, regardless of the state of your body, but people like Minister Fudge will not be stopped by that in their attempts to use you. We may even be able to squeeze in a few lessons on magic."

Words may be meaningless, but an offer of help and a bribe of knowledge might work. He could try to steer the boy away from his current path during their meetings. Harry would eventually need to die in a confrontation with Voldemort anyway, but it would be much better if he did it as a champion of good rather than as a rival Dark Lord.

Harry was honestly tempted to accept just for the magic lessons. He might not trust Dumbledore, but the old man was indisputably an accomplished wizard. But the fact of the matter was that he didn't trust him and he remembered a saying he'd heard from somewhere, something about help when offered but not needed often being no help at all.

Besides, the only politics he intended to do was abusing the shit out of his noble status. Other than that, he was planning to do his own thing.

"I'll think about it." He said without really meaning it. Better to try navigating treacherous waters alone than with the help of a shark.

XXXXX

After that conversation, Harry made his way back to the DMLE. For one thing, he needed to wait for Sirius to finish talking to Director Bones.

For another, he wanted to talk to that cute Auror. This would actually be the first time that he was so blatantly making the first move with a girl since Zoe, and even then he'd been given an opening when she'd caught him staring at her boobs. Fortunately, Harry was finding the prospect of approaching a girl considerably less daunting ever since he'd killed Pettigrew. It was morbid as all hell, but killing a person had a way of changing your outlook on life and that wasn't even mentioning the ritual shenanigans that had happened immediately after.

It took a little effort to find her, as the area was divided into cubicles, but he knew her name and it was easy to ask which one was hers.

He found her in short order after that. She was doing paperwork and her previously vibrant hair had turned a dull brown. It wasn't even as spiky as it had been earlier.

"Good afternoon." He greeted, giving the wall of her cubicle a light knock.

She looked up and her mood visibly improved upon having something other than paperwork to do. Literally, as her hair perked up and turned a light purple.

"Wo- I mean, good afternoon Mr. Potter. What can I do for you?" Her hair turned an almost red sort of pink as she stumbled over the words.

Harry was deeply amused at seeing that her hair seemed to act like some kind of magical mood indicator. She'd obviously been going for a casual greeting before recalling that on-duty Aurors were supposed to be officious when talking to civilians, and was embarrassed by her near-blunder.

"Just Harry please. I've been called Mr.Potter too much today already." He said with his most charming smile.

"Well then, Harry, I suppose you can call me Tonks since you've saved me from having to do paperwork for a while." She smirked back, hair going a more playful pink.

"Not Nymphadora?" He inquired with an exagerrated wounded look.

"No." She growled, hair turning an indisputably angry red.

Okay, dangerous territory.

"Not fond of your name I take it?" He asked.

"You wouldn't be fond of your name either if my damn fool mother had been the one to pick one for you." Tonks grumbled.

"At least your name sounds special." Harry commiserated. "What kind of name is 'Harry' for a wizard anyway? I might as well go around calling myself Tim the Enchanter."

"Was that a Monty Python reference?" Tonks asked with a surprised laugh.

"You understood a Monty Python reference?" Harry asked back with equal surprise.

"My dad's a muggleborn and he loved those movies, insisted that we watch them. Mum and I didn't think they were as funny as he claimed, but we watched them anyway." Tonks explained.

"I'm just happy that I've finally met someone who understood one of my references." Harry replied with overdone relief. "You have no idea how much it sucks to make a Conan the Barbarian joke and only get blank looks in return."

"Who?" Tonks asked blankly.

"Yeah, that's the one." Harry sighed despondently, slumping his shoulders.

"Aw come one, you can't expect me to get every reference." She protested.

"I guess not, but you really got my hopes up with the Monty Python one." Harry complained.

"Well, excuuuse me." Tonks apologized sarcastically, smirking widely . Potter was turning out to be a lot more interesting than she'd expected him to be. And a great alternative to paperwork.

"How about you make it up to me by letting me take you on a date?" Harry proposed, once again smiling at her.

Tonks couldn't help it, she burst out into a loud peal of laughter that probably garnered some very odd looks from the Aurors in the surrounding cubicles.

"I'm going to take that as a yes." Harry said with dignity. He absolutely loved that hair of hers. It was keeping mostly to playfully bright pink colors that he was fairly sure indicated that she wasn't at all annoyed by his advances. She could probably control it if she wanted to, but as long as she wasn't bothering, he pretty much got free cues on how well he was doing.

"Smooth, Potter. Real smooth." She replied, still chuckling.

"I thought we agreed on 'Harry', and I'm still not hearing a 'no'."

"You're funny, but I usually prefer my men a bit...older."

"What a coincidence! I usually prefer my women a bit older, so we've already got something in common."

"What women?" Tonks snorted. "You might be able to pull off the late teens look, but everyone knows that you're only fourteen."

Harry decided to make no comment about not being fourteen yet.

"You'd be surprised." He said mysteriously. "If you want, I can tell you all about it on our date."

"You're serious? You really want want to take me on a date?" She asked with a raised eyebrow. She hadn't thought that he was actually serious about taking her on a date, but he apparently really was ballsy enough to ask out an Auror at his age and expect her to agree to it.

"No, Sirius is my godfather and he's currently getting grilled by your boss." Harry smirked.

"Merlin's hairy bollocks, that was horrible." Tonks groaned. "I remember Sirius making that stupid pun when I was a kid, but it didn't sound so bad back then and I didn't expect it from anyone else."

"You think that's bad? Just wait until I make one with my own name." Harry said back with a grin.

Tonks looked confused for a moment before it dawned on her what he was talking about.

"Don't you dare." She warned.

"I mean, I shaved before coming here, but I just can't stop being Harry!"

"You evil git, you're supposed to be a paragon of good, not some pun spewing monster."

"Don't believe everything you read, I'll keep throwing my darkest, dankest puns at you until you agree to go on a date with me and Sirius is probably going to be in there for hours, so I've got plenty of time."

"Fine, I'll go on a date with you! Just....stop."

XXXXX

When Sirius finally got to leave Director Bones' office, he was mentally exhausted. The woman was like a dog with a bone, and Sirius felt uniquely qualified to make that comparison.

It had taken forever before she was satisfied with his rendition of events and even then she'd still piled up a small mountain of conditions before allowing him to leave.

His animagus form would be registered now, which just plain sucked. He'd have to keep an amulet with a tracking charm on his person at all times that would vibrate if they wanted to speak to him again. He was to stay inside Potter Manor until a press release could be given that confirmed his innocence so as not to cause a panic. He was to stay available for further interviews at all times, until the DMLE was fully satisfied with their investigation. He was mildly surprised that she hadn't insisted on collaring Padfoot as well.

Sirius had the distinct feeling that he and Harry had deeply irritated Amelia Bones.

Now he just had to find his godson and go back home. He knew that Harry had received a similar set of orders, though slightly more lenient since he was a minor.

"All done?" Auror Shacklebolt asked as he closed the door behind him.

Sirius liked the dark skinned Auror. The man was polite and respectful and showed none of the hostility that he'd seen on the faces of some of the others. He'd been professional and even sympathetic for the entirety of their admittedly short acquiaintance.

"Yeah." He breathed. "That boss of yours is one tough cookie."

"You should've seen her this morning when the Prophet came in." Shacklebolt chuckled. "She looked about ready to breathe fire."

"I can believe that, it did feel remarkably like being locked in a room with an angry dragon." Sirius said with a theatrical shudder. "Now where is that godson of mine?"

Shacklebolt suddenly looked uncomfortable. "He's been talking to Auror Tonks while you've been in with the boss."

"Auror Tonks?" Sirius blinked. "Not Nymphadora Tonks? Andromeda's little girl?"

"That's her."

"And she's an Auror now?"

"That's right, Mad-Eye Moody's last trainee before he retired."

"That's great, I haven't seen her since she was six. Where is she?" He and Andromeda had never been hugely close, but she was his favorite cousin by far(admittedly not saying much when the other choices were a crazy sadist like Bellatrix and a spoiled snob like Narcissa, but Andromeda was a genuinely decent woman), so seeing her now grown up daughter again would be nice.

"Right this way." Shacklebolt sighed and led him through the maze of cubicles.

Sirius had to blink in surprise again when he laid eyes on his godson. Harry was apparently having a very good time flirting with Andromeda's daughter.

"So that's how it is?" Sirius demanded when he saw this, bidding Shacklebolt goodbye as the big Auror went back to work. "I'm getting interrogated and you're over here, flirting with my cousin the whole time?"

"Cut the crap, Sirius, you'd do the exact same thing." Harry retorted dryly without missing the beat.

"You're damn right I would. You make me so proud." Sirius grinned. He decided not to comment on the fact that Tonks and Harry were related. Dorea and Andromeda weren't that close on the family tree anyway, not nearly as close as the first cousin relationship of his own parents at any rate.

"Wotcher, Sirius. Long time no see." Tonks greeted with a wave.

"I'll say. The last time I saw you, you were just a little girl with rainbow colored hair that hated her first name." He agreed.

"She still does." Harry said with grin.

"Are you serious?" Sirius grinned back.

Tonks groaned, anticipating some bad puns.

"No, you're Sirius. I'm Harry."

"But I saw you shave today!"

"I know right? It's uncanny."

"Will you two idiots please stop with the puns? I already agreed to go on a date with Harry." Tonks groaned again.

"Harry, did you get yourself a date by using puns?" Sirius asked, very much impressed.

"Yep, you could say that I Blackmailed her into it."

"Hehehehe."

"You're monsters, both of you. You should be in Azkaban for having such a horrible sense of humor."

"That would be quite the punishment."

"This is why people hate their relatives."

XXXXX

Waiting on the muggle side of London, Tonks really had to wonder how she'd gotten roped into a date with a kid that didn't look quite as young as he should, nor act like it.

Ah yes, of course. He'd been funny, charming, very persistent and depressingly enough, more interesting than her usual brand of suitors. If she had to put up with one more idiot who thought he was being clever by asking what her 'true form' was, she might have seriously started considering the use of the Cruciatus as a corrective measure.The fact that she'd also found him rather attractive was best not considered. That way lay confusion.

Having a muggleborn father and a pureblood mother had been the cause of more than one culture clash during her upbringing, such as each parent having very different ideas on the age of consent. Her mother would not be at all bothered by this date, but it would be for the best if her father never heard of it.

It had been good to see Sirius again. She remembered liking him the few times that he had visited and being very upset when he suddenly stopped. She hadn't learned about his supposed murder spree until years later. It was gratifying to know that he was innocent, bad puns and all.

Speaking of Sirius, the man had wished them well on their date(complete with lewd remark of course) and gone back to Potter Manor. He was apparently planning to write to a friend of his and spend the evening catching up since he was effectively grounded until Madam Bones issued a press release declaring him innocent of all charges. Harry had gone with him to change out of his robes since they'd agreed that the date was going to take place on the muggle side.

Tonks was pretty sure that her boss had chewed out both Sirius and Harry for the way they'd sprung this whole thing on her. The entire department had tiptoed around her since morning, wary of attracting her obvious wrath. Even Scrimgeour, the humorless bastard, had looked a bit aprehensive.

She spotted her date approaching then, cutting through her train of thought. She had to admit that he cleaned up rather well in his black shirt and slacks, if a bit monochromatic.

"M'lady." He greeted with good natured mockery, looking over at her ripped blue jeans, black combat boots, pink tube tob, open black jacket, decorative black choker and of course, her usual spiky purple hair. "You look ravishing."

"And you look like like you wouldn't know casual if it bit you on the arse." She snarked back. They were going to look ridiculously mismatched.

"Ah, but not all of us can look as good as you in casual clothes and I felt that you deserved my best." He rejoinedered.

"Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?" She asked dryly.

"Not at all." He grinned. "The punk rocker look definitely suits you."

"Not going to be embarrassed to be seen with me then?" She asked with exaggerated disappointment, falling into step with him as they started walking.

"Embarrassed to be seen with a such a beautiful woman? Impossible. Meeting with that Daily Prophet reporter, now that was embarrassing."

Tonks rolled her eyes at the continued flattery, but was inwardly pleased nonetheless. It was always nice to be complimented. "What was he wearing? Some of the more muggle savvy of us in the DMLE have a competition going on who can find the most ridiculously dressed witch or wizard."

"That sounds like an interesting competition." Harry commented before describing the Oktoberfest-esque outfit that Smugley had worn for their meeting.

Tonks shook her head in disbelief once he was done. "I swear, some of these people have to be doing it on purpose. Either that, or they're getting their source material from the most out of the ordinary places possible. A few months back, there was a witch brought to St. Mungo's that thought all muggles dressed like death metal bands. She'd put a layer of white paint on her face that was at least an inch thick and used magic to solidify it."

"You can't be serious." Harry asked incredulously.

"No, that's your godfather." Tonks snarked vengefully.

"I probably deserved that." He admitted.

"Yes, yes you did."

"So what happened with the death metal witch?"

"Nearly suffocated under the paint, probably would have if her sister hadn't been there to apparate them both to St. Mungo's. I heard that the healers had to use a paint stripping spell to get her face cleared.

Harry winced. "That must've hurt."

"Probably." Tonks agreed. "Where are we going anyway? You never did tell me what you had planned for this date."

They'd agreed to stick to muggle entertainment for several reasons. For one, the Wizarding World tended to close its doors earlier. For another, it simply didn't have quite as much to offer in the way of entertainment either since it was so much smaller.

That was actually the primary reason that Tonks was so well acquiainted with the Muggle World in the first place. The fun on this side was much more to her tastes.

"It's pretty late already, so our options are a bit limited. I was thinking dinner and a movie?"

"Works for me." She'd had the afternoon shift today and hadn't eaten anything substantial since leaving home.

"I hope you don't mind buffet's. Regular restaurants always give out too small portions for me."

XXXXX

"How are you not the size of Hagrid?" Tonks demanded, seeing Harry finish off his third plate of food.

"Magic." He answered mysteriously, trying to keep down a grin and not being entirely successful.

"Seriously, you must eat as much as him." Tonks insisted.

"Nah, not that much." Harry refuted, but wasn't entirely certain. The Hogwarts gamekeeper tended to eat more in one sitting than him, but Harry knew that he ate more often.

And that wasn't even mentioning the various supplements he took, such as vitamins, calcium, iron and magnesium. He'd gotten a bit worried about nutrition after finding his appetite increased to its current ridiculous level, and had researched what he might be lacking in his diet. He didn't want to assume that magic would handle everything and later discover that his bones had become brittle from growing too fast with too little calcium or something. It was odd to feel grateful for Katherine's obsessive nutrition phase that he was even aware of that potential problem.

Potter Manor now had a room dedicated to the storage of a rather large amount of dietary supplements that Teeny faithfully brought him every day. He really wanted to do something nice for the little elf, because her help had been truly indispensable, but she threatened to cry every time he tried and there was nothing quite so guilt inducing as a blubbering house elf.

"Besides, can't you regulate your own figure with your special ability?" He asked. They were in a fairly out of the way corner, so it was safe to talk about magic if they were discrete about it.

"Some." She admitted. "But I'd still get fat if I ate like you."

"What are the limits of your shapeshifting anyway?" He pressed, seizing the opportunity. He'd been burning with curiousity about the ability ever since he'd heard of it. That had only increased when he'd gotten a good feel for Tonks' magic. It was far more.....fluid or maybe mutable would be a better term, than what he felt in other magicals.

"I can't add or remove too much mass, but other than that I can do more or less anything."

"Even gender switching?" He asked, further, eyebrows climbing upwards in surprise.

"Why, you'd prefer to date a man?" She asked back with a smirk.

"I walked right into that one." He said ruefully.

"Yup." She agreed smugly. "But yes, I can switch gender if I want to."

"That's incredible." He muttered. "But how? Wouldn't that require you to focus on all the internal changes?"

"Not really." She shrugged. "I just focus on what I want and it sort of happens by itself. I guess my magic must know what to do even if i don't."

"Fascinating. I wonder if it actually accesses your DNA to get the relevant information, or does it just forcibly change it?" He mused to himself, garnering an odd look from his date. "I don't suppose you would be willing to submit to experimentation?"

Tonks rolled her eyes at both the question and his cheesy grin when he asked it. "The Department of Mysteries already asked that and I'm sure you can guess what my answer was."

"No?" He ventured.

"I wasn't quite that polite, but you're essentially correct."

"Ah, too bad." He sighed dramatically. "I was hoping to duplicate the ability."

He was still going to try.

"Of course you did, bloody Ravenclaw." Tonks snorted. "This is why Hufflepuff is the best, you nerds don't know when to stop studying and the less said about Gryffindor and Slytherin the better."

"Can I have just one more question on this topic?" Harry requested.

This time it was Tonks who sighed dramatically, reaching for her glass of water. "Fine."

"Are you using it to keep your boobs so perky, or is that natural?"

The Auror spluttered with surprised laughter at the impertinent question, spitting a bit of water over her empty plate.

"See? I can have fun." Harry said smugly while Tonks worked on clearing her esophagus.

"Touché, Potter, touché." Tonks conceded. "I'm afraid that your question is stupid though, oh great intellectual comedian. For me, it's more natural to use my metamorphagus abilities than not."

"Ah." Harry nodded sagely. "So your boobs are both naturally perky and saggy. It's a breast paradox."

"How dare you call my girls saggy!" Tonks said, perhaps a bit too loudly if the odd look from a passing employee was any indication. "I'll have you know that I barely even need bra's. They're that perky."

"That's definitely something worth bragging about in public." Harry commented dryly, making Tonks flush in embarrassment as she realized that their conversation had gotten just a wee bit too loud to still be called discrete.

She cleared her throat and decided to move away from this topic. "So, what movie are we going to watch?"

"Lets check." Harry said and pulled out his mostly neglected smartphone.

"Ooh, is that one of those smartphone thingies?" Tonks asked eagerly and siddled over to sit next to him so that she could look over his shoulder.

"Yes." He confirmed, trying very hard to ignore what her tube top covered breasts were doing to him as they pressed into his back. They really were very perky. "I don't get much use out of it with how much time I spend at Hogwarts, but it's useful during the summer at least."

"I thought about buying one just for the novelty, but the paperwork is really a pain in the ass when you technically don't exist in the Muggle World. Not to mention the hassle of keeping it away from magic." Tonks commented, smirking as she noticed that Harry was sitting a bit too stiffly to be natural. Poke fun at her breasts would he? See how he liked it when her breasts poked at him.

"I guess that would be a problem." He agreed, almost managing to sound like he wasn't distracted. Almost. "Let's see....We've got the usual choices between sappy romance and car chases and explosions, as well as...a....few....Tonks?"

"Yeees?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, but do you have two wands in your jacket or are those your nipples poking me?"

"They might be, you said yourself that my breasts are perky."

"Well, it's just that....they feel awfully long to be nipples."

"They're very perky."

"You are an evil woman, Tonks." And Harry meant that with feeling. He'd known that the shapeshifting Auror would be loads of fun, but right now he was getting a serious urge to shag her on the spot. He had no idea how he was going to survive a whole movie feeling like this.

"I know." She breathed huskily into his ear and deliberately rubbed her now two inch nipples over his back, having entirely too much fun teasing him.

"So...um...which movie would you like to see?" He asked distractedly.

"You asked me out, so you should decide." She answered in the same husky tone. "Hurry, Harry! Before we puncture the Statute of Secrecy."

Harry groaned. "I thought you hated puns?"

"That's what I wanted you to think."

XXXXX

They left the restaurant shortly after that, with Tonks needing to take a quick side trip to the bathroom to magically repair her stretched out top, as it had not been made with two inch nipples in mind.

The movie was much less eventful than the dinner, with both of them taking a metaphorical step back.

Tonks had been a bit embarrassed at her own forwardness, having not intended to go anywhere near that far. Harry had been much better company than she'd expected him to be and she'd gotten a bit carried away because of it.

Harry had taken the reprieve from her teasing to get his libido under control with some emergency Occlumency. It was harder than he'd expected it to be, as both his body and magic seemed to have gotten used to regular intercourse as a means of dealing with that issue. He suspected that he was going to have a truly epic case of morning wood the next day.

Unless of course he managed to seduce Tonks all the way, but he was honestly not expecting that to happen. She wasn't the type to jump in the sack with him for his money or reputation and he didn't think that she was as easy as Zoe had been either.

Now the movie was over and it was approaching time to go their separate ways.

"I had a good time tonight, even if you did blackmail me into it." Tonks said, opening up the goodbye portion of the date.

"You know you liked my puns better than the paperwork." Harry retorted with a grin.

"That's not saying much, anything is better than paperwork." She shot back.

"Does that mean that you wouldn't be averse to doing this again?" He asked slyly, stepping a bit closer. "You know, just to get your mind off the paperwork."

"I might be open to it, if you agree to lay off the puns." She replied, not moving away despite his obvious intention to kiss her. He'd been a better than average date and certainly deserved it.

"I could do that." Harry agreed and closed in on her lips.

Tonks had assumed that it would be a simple peck on the lips, but Harry was apparently a rather greedy individual as he immediately went for a deep liplock. She might have protested his forwardness if it wasn't for the surge of warmth that suddenly exploded through her body and seemed to crawl slowly down to her groin. It got worse when his hands reached out to squeeze her butt.

Harry was doing more than just kissing her. He was pressing his magic against hers in a manner similar to what he'd done with Fudge, but for an entirely different purpose. Instead of making himself seem more imposing, he was mingling his own desire with that of the woman he was kissing. It was a technique that he'd actually learned from that sex magic guide that Luna had given him, a means of enhancing pleasure by forming a feedback loop between two people. He'd practiced it with Bryanna and Tiana frequently, though in that case it had been used during sex.

The kiss lasted a good deal longer than either intended as they lost themselves in the sensation, but lack of oxygen eventually prevailed and they broke apart.

"Wow." Tonks exhaled, breathing hard and staring at him with heavy lidded dark eyes. That hadn't been an inexperienced kiss. Not at all.

Harry smirked at her reaction, more accustomed to it. "Let's do this again. Soon."

"Yeah." Tonks nodded a bit shakily, trying to ignore the throb of arousal in her loins.

Harry waited for a few moments longer, still holding on to the slim hope that she would suggest that they continue this somewhere more comfortable.

Alas, no such luck. "Well...I'll see you later."

Tonks apparated away with that, her mind on finishing this date with an application of Mr. Purple, her favorite, heavily enchanted dildo. She'd put her Hogwarts education to good use after leaving its hallowed halls.

Harry stood there for a while, biting his lip and reflecting on the double edged nature of establishing an emotional feedback loop. His arm was going to be so sore.


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章節 12: Chapter 11: Awkward Goodbyes

"I should go." Remus Lupin said awkwardly.

He'd been about to leave the country when he'd seen the Prophet article that claimed his old friend's innocence. Filled with guilt once again for his lack of faith, he'd decided to stay for a little bit longer to see how things would play out.

Then had come Sirius' letter, asking him to come to Potter Manor and keep an old dog company while he was grounded.

He hadn't been able to refuse.

That had been last night, much of which Sirius and he had spent reminiscing and repairing their friendship. He'd spent the night at his friend's insistence despite feeling like an intruder in Harry's home.

Now it was the morning after and the actual owner of the house was present, but saying nothing and resolutely ignoring the both of them as he ate his breakfast.

"You don't have to." Sirius protested, in a nearly canine sort of whine. "Harry's just being cranky over his failure to seduce my cousin."

Harry shot his godfather a look of contempt, a true teenager look that spoke volumes about how lame what he'd just said was. "Shut up, old man. You haven't been with a woman in over twelve years and you're a product of incest on top of it."

"I'm not old!" Sirius insisted, looking incredibly affronted. "And I'll break my dry spell as soon as I can go out, the birds will love the bad boy ex-con image I'll have going for me and I can't help it if my parents were stupid. You can't go using that argument every time you want to shut me down."

The good natured bickering reminded Remus of James and Sirius during their school days so much that it hurt.

"Hmpf." Was Harry's only reply.

"Is it the creepy pedo mustache that Remus has now that's making you so hostile?" Sirius asked in exasperation. "I'll admit that it bothered me too at first, but you get used to it."

"What?" Remus exclaimed, startled. Then he ran his fingers over his facial hair as if to reassure himself (or perhaps it) that it wasn't a pedo mustache.

"No, it has nothing to do with his pedo mustache." Harry said succintly. "I just don't see any reason why I should like him simply on account of his friendship with my parents." He'd given Sirius a chance and the man had jumped at it. Remus had had all the chances he could've asked for and had spent them feeling sorry for himself. "The only reason he's even here is because you wanted to rehash the good old days with someone."

Remus would have dearly liked to remove himself from this situation, clearly seeing that he was a point of contention between Sirius and Harry, even if it seemed like a mild one. Harry's obvious disapproval of his presence made him want to flee.

He wasn't sure if the fact that Harry didn't care about his werewolf status made that sting more or less.

He was just about to make his excuses and leave when the Potter house elf popped in and handed Harry the day's issue of the Daily Prophet.

"You's newspaper, master Harry sir!" Teeny announced.

"Thank you, Teeny." Harry acknowledged, getting a beaming smile from the small house elf before she popped away.

"What does it say?" Sirius asked curiously, seeing the odd expression on Harry's face.

Harry said nothing, merely continued to read for the next couple of minutes before wordlessly handing the newspaper to Sirius.

The Boy-Who-Killed? Harry Potter avenges the betrayal of his parents by killing their betrayer, Peter Pettigrew.

By Rita Skeeter, journalist.

The large headline was accompanied by an animated picture of Harry walking through the Ministry atrium in the company of Fudge, Dumbledore and the two Aurors. Accompanied by the headline, it could be misconstrued as him being arrested.

After yesterday's surprise article portraying a different version of the events that occurred in the final days of the war against You-Know-Who than what has been commonly accepted as truth until now, Harry Potter, aged 13, arrived in the Ministry of Magic to explain himself to the DMLE.

He spoke to Amelia Bones, the head of the DMLE, in the company of Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge and Albus Dumbledore, giving more detail to the events first hinted at in yesterday's article.

From then on the article went on to describe a mostly truthful series of facts regarding the altercation between Sirius and Pettigrew after Voldemort's downfall, as well as lambasting Barty Crouch for his overzealous imprisonment of Sirius as well as Pettigrew's twelve years spent as the Weasley's pet rat.

Then things veered somewhat away from the facts and went into sensationalist prose.

The Boy-Who-Lived seemed as if he was carved from stone as he emotionlessly recounted taking Pettigrew's life with a blasting curse, only his eyes burning with remembered fury. His choice of spell was perhaps a deliberate bit of irony, as it was with the use of such a spell that Pettigrew faked his death and framed Sirius Black for his crimes.

Madam Bones was obviously displeased by the way that the law had been taken into the hands of a private citizen, but Potter immediately followed up his confession with the wands of Peter Pettigrew and that of You-Know-Who himself. After presenting these tokens, his claims of self-defense were accepted and Potter was allowed to go without further issue.

"What the fuck?" Sirius exclaimed. "This can't be a DMLE sanctioned press release! It makes you out to be some kind of vigilante that only walked free because you gave them the Dark Tosser's wand as a bribe."

Remus briefly considered remonstrating Sirius for his use of foul language.

"I don't think it is." Harry agreed. "I've read some of Skeeter's articles before. The bitch is about as toxic as your average League of Legends player and seems to get off on putting the worst possible spin on everything she writes."

Remus realized that it would probably be a bad idea to complain about foul language.

"League of Legends?" Sirius echoed in confusion.

"Nevermind." Harry waved off, having an idle thought of getting his technologically impaired godfather to try video gaming. That would probably be funny to watch.

"You're strangely calm about this." Remus dared to venture.

Harry glanced at him with a frown but decided to answer anyway. "The people whose opinions I care about aren't going to change because of this." That wasn't to say that he was happy about it, but what anger he did feel was contained easily enough by his Occlumency.

"That's a very mature outlook." The werewolf complimented.

Harry's frown deepened, unaccountably irritated at being complimented by someone he disliked.

"But we can't just let this go!" Sirius protested. "We need to prank the hell out of her!"

Harry gave his godfather a flat look. "Pranking? Really? What are you, twelve?" He ignored the minor hypocrisy of his rebuke.

"What else if not pranking?" Sirius near demanded. He knew just as well as Harry that Skeeter wouldn't be facing any legal repercussions because of this. The laws about journalistic integrity in Wizarding Britain had more holes in them than Swiss cheese. The only reliable way of making reporters back off was to do it outside the law.

Harry looked at over at the other Marauder sitting at the table again and this time Remus understood that he had definitely overstayed his welcome. Harry clearly didn't want to talk about this any further in his presence.

"I've got to go." The werewolf said, getting up from the table.

"Remus?" Sirius asked, blinking in surprise at the sudden declaration.

"I'll see you around, Sirius." Remus said, not giving his friend a chance to protest as he left.

"Did you notice anything odd about this article?" Harry asked once the werewolf was gone.

Sirius frowned slightly at his godson, wishing that he wasn't so cold to Remus, but went ahead with the subject change anyway.

"You mean aside from how it insinuates that you're a stone cold killer?"

"Yes, aside from that."

Sirius thought about it and reread it, then it finally dawned on him.

"How could she have known what you were talking about in Bones' office? Fudge doesn't strike me as the type to keep a secret, but this reads as if she was in the room with you."

"I felt strange for that whole meeting." Harry admitted. "I kept getting the nagging feeling that there was another person in the room, but I couldn't pin it down and I had to focus on Bones anyway."

"Invisibility cloak?" Sirius hazarded.

Harry considered it for a moment before shaking his head. "I don't think so. She would've had a hard time not bumping into anyone and I'm pretty sure that my magesight could see a regular invisibility cloak just as well as it can my special one."

Sirius was briefly stumped by that before another idea came to mind, this one even closer to home than the invisibility cloak. "An Animagus form! You could've easily missed it if it was small enough."

They'd already determined that Harry's newly gained sensing ability had more trouble picking out details for Sirius in his dog form and the 'size' of his magic also 'shrunk' to match his body. If Skeeter was small enough in her Animagus form, then detecting her could be problematic even for Harry, especially with Amelia Bones commanding his full attention.

"It's a definite possibility."

"She must not be registered. If she was then she'd never have been able to sneak into the DMLE like that." Sirius said, a slow grin growing on his face.

"And failing to register as an Animagus gets you time in Azkaban." Which Harry's cynical mind identified as more proof of the Ministry's obsession with control. Animagi were notoriously difficult to keep track of in their animal forms. "But we can't be sure if she's really an Animagus."

"What else could it be?" Sirius asked with some exasperation.

"I don't know, but I'd rather not make assumptions only to end up being wrong later." Harry retorted snippily.

XXXXX

Over in the DMLE, Aurors scrambled for cover as their boss stormed through, her nostrils flaring like that of an angry bull.

The second day in a row that the Daily Prophet had posted an inflammatory article. First Potter and Black and then that bitch, Skeeter. Both times kicking dirt on her department as a side-effect.

Amelia Bones wasn't the type to curse out loud, but she was sorely tempted just then. Time and again she had proposed adjustments to the law that would hold reporters to a higher standard, but the decrepit old farts on the Wizengamot shot it down every time.

Well of course they did. It would be hard to use the Daily Prophet as a propaganda tool if they were actually required by law to print only the truth.

Unlike Sirius and Harry, Amelia had been dealing with Skeeter's bullshit for a very long time now and didn't even question how the spiteful reporter had gotten her information. It wouldn't be the first time that she'd conjured up some mixture of fact and fiction that had a vague resemblance to the truth and Fudge couldn't keep a secret to save his life anyway. Half the Ministry had been yammering on about rat Animagi and Voldemort's wand within an hour of him leaving the DMLE.

She had intended to release the full details of what she'd learned in a press release the next day, but now she needed to scramble to do damage control. She might not be overly fond of Potter right now, but she wasn't going to let him be painted as a vengeful killer by that sorry excuse for a reporter.

XXXXX

Several hours later, Skeeter's article changed to include important details that she'd previously left out, such as the fact that Pettigrew had tried to draw his wand first and that Harry didn't simply kill him as revenge for his parents, but the damage had already been done and the general public opinion of Harry Potter was no longer of some kind of messianic figure that could do no wrong.

Harry saw the change in the paper and knew that it wasn't going to fix the damage that the original article had done, but was not overly concerned with the consequences. Yes, he'd learned to make use of his reputation instead of being irritated by it and would have preferred for the knowledge of his killing Pettigrew to be kept as quiet as possible, but he hadn't honestly expected to stay on that same saintly pedestal after this anyway. The reputation of the Boy-Who-Lived had become so inflated that it would never have survived a meeting with reality, it was always going to be something of a one-shot. Granted, Skeeter's poisonous slant probably did more damage than would have happened otherwise, but probably not as much as she'd hoped for.

The DMLE dropped by twice more in the following days to talk to both him and Sirius again, then his godfather was declared a free man. It all seemed rather rushed, for which Harry figured he had Fudge to thank. They'd even dug Sirius' wand out of Azkaban's storage and returned it to him.

That took care of the biggest thing he had to do for the summer, which still left him with the two OWLs he had to pass, figuring out the legal details of the business he was helping Bryanna and Tiana start up, talking to the former managers of the Potter business interests that had since been taken over by the Parkinsons and most recently, another date with Tonks.

He was looking forward to the latter most of all. He hadn't expected to find himself liking the Metamorphagus Auror to this degree considering his general dislike of the Ministry, but he did. Her naturally cheerful disposition was a stark contrast to his more stoic leanings and he couldn't help but find himself interested. He'd had a similar experience with Zoe, but his muggle friend with benefits had made it clear that she wasn't looking for anything serious and her lack of magic honestly made anything more than their casual arrangement more problematic than he was willing to deal with.

Come to think of it, that might be why he'd gotten along with Sirius so easily too. His godfather somehow managed to be in a good mood most of the time despite his life being best described as 'a field of crap with a few flowers breaking through the shit'. He had to respect the man's determination to enjoy life in spite of everything and the fact that he treated Harry like an adult didn't hurt either.

Harry knew himself to be somewhat frustrating as a friend. He could talk to people yes, but he also liked his alone time and he loathed it when someone tried to tell him how he should live. His early childhood was characterized by the Dursleys hatred, bullying by other children and later having his social interactions scripted out by Robert and Katherine, leaving him with little patience for pushy people.

His short lived friendship with Ginny had fallen apart as much because of her silly crush as it had because she couldn't understand that. Unfair perhaps to expect that kind of thing from a preteen girl, especially when she didn't know the circumstances, but life wasn't fair.

Luna understood though, or maybe that was just how she was. Luna never complained about his penchant for keeping things to himself or his disappearances when he wanted to practice his magic in secrecy, never tried to make him talk about it, never tried to tell him that he should be anything other than himself. Harry considered himself fortunate to have a friend like her, as he strongly suspected that he'd have spent his entire time at Hogwarts alone without her and first year had taught him that he wasn't so anti-social that he could be happy living in constant solitude. Enough to push people away though.

The other students were nice enough, but he simply had trouble relating to them. Even Bryanna and Tiana had only stuck around primarily for the gold and later for the sex, once he'd gotten good enough at it. For all that they were on good terms, he had no doubt that they would have drifted away if their plans for the future didn't hinge on a continued association with him. Harry had gotten very good at keeping people at arm's length without even meaning to.

He found himself hoping that Tonks would be another person that he could manage to really connect with. He wouldn't be surprised if not, but he would be disappointed. She was the first witch aside from Luna that he was looking forward to actually getting to know and not just sleeping with.

XXXXX

"One of the hardest parts of becoming an Animagus is finding your animal form." Sirius was saying. "It will almost certainly be an animal that you share characteristics with, but finding out which ones is the problem. You don't have much of a choice in the matter either and some people don't like what it says about them."

"I imagine that Pettigrew wasn't too pleased with his form." Harry guessed.

"You'd be right about that." Sirius laughed harshly, his resentment of his former friend still clear. "It took him the longest out of all of us to first transform. Since you mentioned Wormtail, there's another thing you should know about becoming an Animagus. It will change you, not in a way that would be instantly obvious, but it will change you. A lot of people that could have become Animagi choose not to because of this, aside from the other dangers that is."

"How did it change you and the others?" Harry asked, very interested in that bit and less so in the dangers. He was sure that Sirius would get around to mentioning those soon enough.

"It's hard to say for sure, but some of the animal instinct carries over. For one thing, I think that both James and I became a bit more vigorous in our pursuit of the ladies after our first transformation."

Harry snorted at the diplomatic phrasing.

Sirius pretended he hadn't heard it. "James also became a good bit more territorial about your mother and went after Snape any time he approached her."

Harry frowned at that, vaguely recalling some information from his non-magical schooling about male deer forming harems instead of mating for life.

"How long did you and my dad go around seducing girls anyway?" He asked.

Sirius looked at him oddly but answered anyway. "James stopped towards the end of sixth year when he started getting a bit desperate to win your mother over. I never stopped."

Ah, so he'd subconsciously been trying to form a harem, but had shaken it off in order to get the one he really wanted. And dogs were of course polygamous, so Sirius' aversion to a dedicated relationship would have only been increased. That fit with a few other distinctly canine characteristics that Harry had noticed about his godfather.

"Alright, how do I find my inner animal?" Harry asked with a smile.

"It should be familiar to you from your Occlumency training and is really the only part of learning how to be an Animagus that is completely safe." Sirius explained. His own Occlumency was crap, only good enough to detect intrusions, but he could see the parallels. "Not the same though. You're not looking to clear your mind and stop thinking this time. You need to sort of sink into your magic and let it show you what your inner animal is. It'll be something that you're familiar with, but don't make any assumptions or you'll throw the whole thing off. Once you manage it, you might get a mental impression or even a vision of being that animal. You'll have to keep doing this until you're absolutely certain which one it is."

A few minutes of instruction later, Sirius left Harry alone to try it.

His Occlumency both helped and hindered him in this, but mostly helped. He was already familiar with meditation and more than aware enough of his own magic to do it, but he had some trouble not blanking out his mind on instinct.

A few hours later, he came back to himself with a gasp, a dazed smile on his face but his mind still on the waking vision he'd just had. Of looking down at the world from the sky and gliding through the air on black feathered wings.

Corvus corax. The common raven. He supposed that his Patronus should have been a hint since he had called the guardian from within himself. He'd already read up on them a bit thanks to that, but he was going to study the species in a lot more detail now.

XXXXX

"Blimey, you know your form already?" Sirius asked with considerable shock when he was told. "Are you sure that you know it? Absolutely sure?"

"Yes." Harry replied, a bit exasperated.

"Don't take that tone with me, young man." Sirius said sternly, but couldn't quite keep a proud grin off his face. "If you rush into this thinking that your animal form is something else than what it really is, you could drive yourself mad or even die. Wouldn't be the first wizard it happened to because they were impatient."

"Like the Marauders?"

"Exactly like us. In retrospect, it's a minor miracle that none of us died or lost our minds."

"I'm still on the fence about your sanity, but I get your point and I'll be careful. I really am sure of my form though."

"That must be some kind of record." Sirius commented, letting the jibe about his sanity go. It wasn't the first time that someone had cast aspersions on it. "It took us months just to get our first success and months more before we could be sure of our forms."

"None of you were Occlumancers." Harry pointed out, not mentioning how his rituals and wandless practice had left uniquely him aware of his own magic. "And you were younger than me when you started, not to mention less amazing. Did you know that ravens are among the most intelligent animals alive?"

"Ha bloody ha." Sirius deadpanned.

"So, what now?"

"You'll need to, for lack of a better term, turn yourself inside out."

"You mean like....become an animal with an inner wizard instead of a wizard with an inner animal?"

"That's it exactly. Your human mind is obviously a lot stronger than an animal's instinct, so you'll retain most of your rationality."

"Most?"

"You might get some odd urges on occassion."

"Sirius, does the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black have canine heirs wandering the world?"

"Piss off, Harry."

"I'm sorry." The younger wizard apologized, not sounding very sorry at all. "What else do I have to do?"

"In the old days, wizards would spend years or even decades observing the animal they were trying to turn into, to become as familiar with them as possible. You'll still need to do that, but thanks to the wonders of the modern age, you can get most of the needed information from a book."

"Who needs books when you have Wikipedia?"

"What's a Wikipedia?"

"I'll show you later." Harry was also wondering if watching YouTube videos of ravens counted as observation. He couldn't see any reasons why it wouldn't, but it might be best to find some wild ravens just to be on the safe side.

"Right." Sirius said with a nod, having no clue whatsoever what his godson was talking about. Probably some muggle thing. He'd considered himself quite knowledgeable on the Muggle World at one point, but he was waking up to the fact that it had become nigh on unrecognizable since the last time he'd ventured into it. The basics were still the same of course , but a lot of the things that Harry sometimes mentioned as if they were common knowledge flew right over his head.

XXXXX

With Sirius now being a free man, an opportunity presented itself to do something that Harry had wanted to do for some time.

"Do we really have to do this?" Sirius whined.

"Yes." Harry stated firmly.

"Couldn't we just burn it instead?" Sirius asked hopefully.

"No."

"But-!"

"Sirius, we are going into that house. If you hate it that much, we can sell it after we pilfer everything of worth from it."

"Not burn it?"

"If you want to set it on fire that much, then sell it to Malfoy first. Or Parkinson. Actually no, that's probably a bad idea even if we torch the place right after."

Sirius sighed the sigh of the resigned. "Alright, let's get this over with."

With heavy steps, the dog Animagus walked towards the front door of Nr. 12 Grimmauld Place.

Harry looked around curiously as they entered. The large townhouse was smaller than Potter Manor and the hallways more narrow. In fact, the whole place gave off an oppresive feeling of gloom. According to Dorea, the Blacks had once had a manor house in the country as well, but for reasons unknown, one of the past Lords Black had torn it down and appropriated this place from its previous non-magical residents. And by appropriated, Dorea had meant stolen.

They didn't get far before they were accosted by a portrait of woman that looked as if she had spent her entire life sucking on lemons.

"Ah, so the prodigal son returns." She said, trying to look superior but only managing constipation in Harry's humble opinion. "And who is this you've brought with you? What family is he from?"

"What's with the friendly attitude, mum?" Sirius asked bluntly, packing a lot of scorn into the last word. "Last time I saw you, you were shrieking at my grandfather to cast me out of the family."

"I heard that you've learned the error of your ways since then, turning your back on that blood traitor Potter and his filthy mudblood wife and leading the Dark Lord to them." Sirius' mother answered, her demeanor darkening slightly at the disrespect.

"I hate to disappoint you," Sirius began sarcastically. "but I was framed. I've just been cleared of all charges and am once again known as a muggle loving blood traitor to the world at large."

Could paintings have aneurysms? Harry felt sure that Sirius mother had just had one.

"YOU FILTH! HOW DARE YOU RETURN TO SULLY THIS HOUSE! KREACHER! KREACHER!"

Ye gods, he'd thought that Sirius had been exaggerating when he'd described his mother. No such luck though. If anything, the man had somehow managed to understate it despite making her out to be the most horrid woman in the world.

"No wonder you wanted to burn the place down." Harry commented as the portrait of Walburga Black went on a shireking diatribe about...something. It wasn't very coherent, but it did involve a lot of screaming about blood traitors and mudbloods.

Sirius' potential reply was cut off when a decrepit looking house elf popped in, glaring at them with a viciousness that Harry had honestly not thought the little creatures capable of.

"Filthy blood traitor master has come back." Kreacher said scornfully, barely heard over the portrait's continued yelling. "Kreacher will throw you out."

"No, you won't" Sirius said flatly. "I own this house now."

"FILTH! SHAME TO THE FAMILY!"

Kreacher's face twisted with fury as the truth of the words sank in. The wards had already transferred to Sirius, so he would now have to obey the master that he hated.

"First, I want you to take that thing's portrait down and burn it." Sirius went on contemptously, much to the increased rage of his mother.

"Kreacher cannot." The house elf said gleefully. "Mistress is permanently stuck to wall."

"Then take down the wall." Sirius growled.

"GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!"

"If Kreacher did that, the house would collapse. Stupid master." Kreacher sneered.

Harry rolled his eyes in exasperation at the situation, starting to develop a headache from the portrait's screaming.

"Can you brick her up then?" He asked. He wasn't at all convinced that the Sticking Charm couldn't be dismantled, but it would be quite a feat to concentrate on doing that with the painted harpy's constant yelling

Kreacher's mouth snapped shut and he glared at Harry mutinously, refusing to answer.

"Answer him!" Sirius snapped.

"Yeeeees." Kreacher growled unwillingly through clenched teeth.

"Then do it." Sirius ordered, now grinning at having a solution to the problem.

"Kreacher has no bricks." The house elf said sullenly.

"Oh, don't worry. I'll get you all the bricks you'll need."

"DISHONOR! DISHONOR ON THE FAMILY!"

XXXXX

"Lovely woman, your mother." Harry commented as they walked towards the library.

"Isn't she just?" Sirius asked sarcastically. "I'd almost forgotten the pounding headache that her diatribes gave me."

"What's with the house elf though?"

"Kreacher? He's always been a spiteful little bastard, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. He's never been allowed to leave Grimmauld Place and had nothing to listen to except my family's rants on blood purity."

"A bigoted house elf, now I've seen everything." Harry said with amusement as they entered the library.

"Speaking of seeing everything, are you sure you should be looking at some of these books?" Sirius asked nervously. He was not at all sanguine about his godson reading up on some of the stuff he knew was in there.

"You worry too much, Sirius." Harry waved off. "I've got no interest in sacrificing virgins or performing divination from someone's spilled intestines. I'm much more interested in the theory than the practical applications."

"You know, by all rights I should be forbidding you from coming anywhere near these books until I've had a chance to throw out the worst of them." Sirius commented wryly.

"But you won't because you're the best godfather ever."

"And you'd be pissy about it if I did."

"Knowledge is neither good nor evil, so yes, I would indeed be pissy if you discarded it."

"Fine." Sirius said, tossing his hands skyward. "I'll go find Kreacher some bricks, thanks for that idea by the way, and you can browse the books. Just avoid the cursed ones."

"Who curses their own books anyway?" Harry suddenly asked. "That sounds like a spectacularly bad idea."

"I told you that my family was nuts." Sirius shrugged.

Harry was left alone after that, Sirius trusting that Harry's magesight and caution would keep him from running afoul the cursed books. He simply browsed the titles for a while, waiting for something to catch his eye.

Not all of the tomes were filled with morally(and no doubt legally) dubious magic, quite a few of them he'd actually already encountered in either Hogwarts or Potter Manor. He wasn't interested in those though. He would never have a proper understanding of magic if he confined himself only to comfortable topics.

Ten minutes of browsing later, he'd found a tome that detailed the process of using the ritualistic sacrifice of other wizards, witches or powerful magical creatures to power large scale spells, wards or other magics. It was grim and sometimes downright ghastly reading, but it was also very interesting.

XXXXX

"This is the best side of my mother that I've ever seen." Sirius said proudly, looking at the brand new brick wall sitting incongruously in the hallway. From behind it, only blessed silence could be heard, which was only natural since it was enchanted to block sound from going in either direction.

"You're a real son of a bitch, Sirius." Harry noted, book on morally reprehensible magic in hand.

"I know, I've even got the right initals. Sirius Orion Black, also known as Son Of a Bitch."

"Bad master insulting mistress." Kreacher complained, much subdued due to the moral quandary of being forced to brick up his beloved mistress.

"You think that's bad, just wait until we start looting the place." Harry replied blandly. He generally did his best to be polite to house elves, but Kreacher was quite simply a pain in the ass.

"NO! Kreacher will not let you!" The house elf shrieked, getting ready to fight in defense of House Black.

"Yes you will." Sirius countermanded, more than happy to allow his godson to ransack the family home if he wanted to. He was already intending to designate him the Heir to House Black, so it would all be his eventually anyway. "Now go away."

Kreacher stalked off as ordered, bemoaning the ill fortune that had befallen House Black now that it had a blood traitor as its Lord.

XXXXX

"Hello, what's this?" Harry said softly, staring at a heavy looking golden locket inlaid with emeralds in a serpentine pattern.

The locket felt very similar to how he remembered the soul shard in his head feeling, and there was a seductive whisper of a powerful and subtle compulsion reaching out from it as well.

This was, to put it bluntly, Bad. Capitalized. Not so much the item itself as the implications of it.

"Strange, I don't remember seeing that one before." Sirius said, also staring at the locket. The compulsion was trying to grab hold of him just as much as it tried for Harry, but Sirius knew perfectly well how dangerous it was to touch unknown objects in Grimmauld Place.

"I think it belonged to Voldemort." Harry said, grabbing his wand and transfiguring a nearby item into a long metal pole with a hook on one end.

Sirius started in surprise, staring at his godson. "You're sure?"

"Pretty sure. It has the same feel to it as the thing I pushed out during my last ritual." Harry confirmed and gave the pole to Sirius.

"What are you thinking, Harry?" Sirius asked warily.

"I'm thinking that if Voldie is going to be handing out pieces of his soul like candy, then who am I to refuse such a gift?" Harry said wryly.

"This isn't something you should be playing with." Sirius said sharply.

"Don't get your panties in a wad, I know that it's dangerous." Harry retorted. "But you're missing the point. That thing is some kind of phylactery, which means that the Dark Moron is still not fully dead. I thought that the thing inside me was some kind of fluke, but this is the third one I've come across and I'm starting to suspect that it isn't going to be the last."

"So how do we destroy it?" Sirius asked, eager to get rid of it.

"Basilisk venom did the trick last time and I do have some in stock, but we're not going to destroy it."

"What do you mean 'we're not going to destroy it'?" Sirius demanded. "What possible use could you have for a piece of Voldemort's soul?"

"At the moment? None. But I find it hard to believe that I won't be able to do anything at all with it, there is just no way that having a piece of your soul in enemy hands could be a good idea. Now use that pole I gave you and let's drop that thing into my Bag of Holding."

"I still don't understand why you insist on calling your Mokeskin Pouch by that silly name."

"And I still haven't learned what the bloody hell a moke is. At least 'Bag of Holding' is a descriptive name."

"Don't try to distract me with your logic, it doesn't work on wizards. I still say we should destroy it right away."

"Damnit, Sirius, I have no desire whatsoever to end up being a prophesized Chosen One destined to beat Voldemort because some cracked Seer made a prophecy fourteen years ago. I might be able to use this thing to track down any others before the Dark Moron manages to crawl his way back to life and starts causing problems again. He's going to be in one hell of a snit over having his world domination scheme threatened and then fouled up by a baby and I'd really rather not deal with that."

"Well, when you put it that way....."

By the time that Kreacher returned to Grimmauld Place, the locket that Regulus had entrusted him with was long since gone. There was much house elven wailing and gnashing of teeth as a result.

XXXXX

Staring at the locket that had so abruptly made his life an order of magnitude more complicated, Harry scowled.

He'd thought that Voldemort was dead and gone in second year when his diary was destroyed, because he'd asumed that it had been like a D&D phylactery and held the entire soul. Then he'd learned that a soul could break and found another piece of Voldemort inside of him, but he'd still thought that it must have been some kind of freak occurence as a result of his mother's sacrifice.

Now he had a third and was no longer willing to assume it was the last. That fucking prophecy was really trying to turn his life into some kind of big dramatic struggle against the forces of evil. He just wanted to learn magic and see what things were like outside of Europe, maybe with some particular female company along for the ride. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently so, because Dumbledore's interest in him and his subtly manipulative actions were finally making some sense in light of the fact that Voldemort was still out there somewhere. The old man was trying to play the Secretive-As-Fuck-But-Trust-Me-Because-I'm-The-Wise-Mentor angle to his Chosen Champion. He'd probably get himself dramatically killed halfway through it too, leaving the half-prepared protagonist, in this case Harry himself, to clean up his mess. That seemed to be the norm in these situations anyway.

Dumbledore was seriously trying to pull an Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Well bugger that. No way was Harry letting some old fart that thought he knew best dictate his life.

This locket might be the key to finding what other soul anchors Voldemort had and destroying them before he could come back. He certainly didn't want to deal with a fully restored and probably very pissed off Dark Lord.

Of course, the problem here was that Harry's knowledge about souls was very limited. Judging by his own experiences, souls became damaged by sufficiently traumatic events and healed over time. His rage driven murder of Pettigrew had damaged him and that damage had repaired itself to a degree as time passed, but never back to the unblemished state it had been in before.

How that translated to creating a phylactery, he had no idea. Harry suspected that he would need that knowledge before he achieved anything. He would still see what he could find out without it, but like the diary, the locket seemed to have some kind of sentience, which made it dangerous to be around. He was not interested in being possessed.

He wouldn't be getting anything more done today in any case. His much anticipated second date with Tonks was approaching and he wasn't going to reschedule it simply because he'd just found out that Voldemort was still not-dead. The locket could wait a little longer.

XXXXX

This time it was Harry who found himself arriving to the designated meeting spot early. He'd gotten impatient and apparated out of the manor almost half an hour too soon, much to Sirius' poorly concealed amusement.

There was no helping it though, he'd simply been too eager and too nervous. The first date that he'd badgered the shapeshifting Auror into had no real expectations attached to it, but he'd developed a genuine liking for Tonks that had nothing to do with her good looks and the potential sex games that her special talent would allow.

All of his forays into intimacy with females so far had involved very little in the way of an actual emotional connection(aside from lust), which made this nerve wracking in a whole new way. He was acutely aware of the age discrepancy between him and Tonks and didn't want her to back off because of it, which meant that he couldn't give her any reason to think that she should. The Wizarding World might have a strange 'if-I-don't-think-about-it-then-it's-not-a-problem' mentality in regards to quite a few things, including age, but that would only go so far. This was even more of an issue with Tonks because she was not only part of the DMLE's elite law enforcement corps and had a reputation to maintain, but also because her father was a muggleborn and likely had some pretty strong opinions about certain wizarding practices. He knew that she'd enjoyed their first date, but she would probably break it off if it gave her issues at work or in her family.

Harry was not really the sort to develop silly crushes for no reason and his early forays into sexuality had only made it more unlikely, but he was just as vulnerable to falling prey to his own interests as anyone else. Thus, he had plotted out a plan of attack for getting Tonks to return that interest as quickly and as surely as possible, all the while avoiding any pitfalls that might cause her to decide that he was more trouble than he was worth. This had all happened without him really intending to be so calculating about it.....it had just sort of happened while he was laying in bed.

A smile came to his face when Tonks eventually arrived. She was dressed similarly to the last time, the only notable differences being that this time she had a purple tank top and pink hair. And a bra. She hadn't worn one the last time. That probably meant that she wasn't going to poke him with her extendable nipples again. Too bad.

"Wotcher." She greeted with her usual good cheer. "Been waiting long?"

"Not at all, I just got here." Harry lied courteously. There was literally no benefit to telling her that he'd been standing here for half an hour already. "So, where are we going? You were pretty vague about that." It had been decided that she would pick the venue this time.

"You'll see." She said vaguely. "Just take my hand, grasshopper, and I'll show you."

"That was a horrible misquote." Harry complained, but took her hand anyway.

"Ah shut up, you haven't seen the movie it came from any more than I have." Tonks retorted.

"That's not the point. The point is that you mangled a perfectly good quote." Harry insisted.

Neither one was aware that the original quote was not actually from a movie.

Tonks didn't deign to respond and simply apparated them to the destination.

Harry stared in bemusement at what he presumed was their destination, the apparition having deposited them in a secluded spot some ways of. "An amusement park? We're going to an amusement park?"

"Yes." Tonks said firmly. "And if you do't like amusement parks, then tough, because we're still going."

"I have no strong feelings one way or the other in regards to amusement parks." Harry droned blandly. "I've never been to one."

"What do you mean you've never been to one?" She demanded, scandalized. "Didn't you say that your foster parents are muggle and rich? What kind of people are they that they wouldn't take you to an amusement park at least once?"

"I can already imagine their response to the idea." Harry replied wryly and then adopted a snobbish air. "Why would you want to go to one of these....things? Amusement parks are the pastime of the unwashed masses."

Tonks laughed at the impression, but inwardly felt a bit sorry for him. That sounded kind of similar to the stories that her mother had told her about growing up in the Black family, minus the rants on mudbloods and blood purity.

"Well then I guess it's up to me to show you the ropes." She said decisively, grabbing his hand and dragging him towards the noisy and brightly lit area.

"I place myself in your capable hands." It wasn't something that he would have chosen to do by himself, nor did he think that he'd like the crowds and the noise, but the overall experience should be fun as long as she was there.

XXXXX

While Tonks was showing Harry the proper way to experience an amusement park, Sirius and Remus were having a more somber get-together in the Hog's Head. Sirius had wanted to go to the Three Broomsticks and maybe flirt with Rosmerta for old time's sake, but Remus had been reluctant to go there so quickly after having his werewolf status made known to the general public. Sirius had agreed after seeing the looks aimed not only at his friend but also at him. Apparently getting cleared by the DMLE wasn't enough to fully erase twelve years of everyone thinking that he was a notorious mass murderer.

"Don't worry about it, Remus, I'm sure Harry will warm up to you soon enough." The dog Animagus was saying.

Remus sighed at his friend's unwarranted optimism. "No, Sirius, I don't think he will. I don't blame him for it either. I certainly wouldn't be too fond of me if I was in his shoes."

"You're being too hard on yourself." Sirius chided. Remus had always been prone to brooding.

Remus withheld a grimace. If only that were true, but he knew that Harry was fully justified to dislike him. He'd acted like nothing more than a distant acquaintance of James and Lily and now he was being treated like one. No more than he deserved really, but Sirius was clearly having trouble understanding it, mired as he was in nostalgia.

"So what is Harry up to now?" He asked. He had no more hope of establishing a close relationship with the son of his dead friends, but he could still ask about him.

"He's on a date with Andromeda's girl." Sirius chuckled. "Precocious little scamp is better than James or I ever were at getting a girl to agree to a date. We were on Madam Bones' shit list but he goes right up to one of her Aurors and asks her out."

Remus didn't really know Andromeda Tonks, having only mer her once and rather briefly at that. She had been sympathetic to the Order during the war with Voldemort, but not a member. He did remember a cute Metamorphagus daughter that had scowled when she'd been introduced by her given name though.

"Isn't she in her twenties?" He inquired carefully. That meeting had been quite some time before Harry's birth.

"So?" Sirius shrugged.

Remus let it go. He didn't think it was very appropriate for a full grown woman to be going on dates with a boy Harry's age, but he knew that his opinion wouldn't be welcome. James and Sirius had gleefully taken advantage of the Wizarding World's laxity about age appropriate relationships.

"I was more interested in how his studies are going." He said instead.

"Good, great even. He's a smart kid and loves learning magic." Sirius made no mention of Harry's extra-curricular study. He felt that Remus could be trusted with the information, but Harry didn't and there was no denying that it would be bad if it got out that the Boy-Who-Lived was looking into dark magic. Sirius trusted Harry not to go off the deep end, but the rest of the sheep or the Ministry wouldn't be so reasonable.

His godson's cynicism was rubbing off on him.

They went into safer areas of conversation after that. Their friendship was still in some need of repair before it would be back to the state it had been in during their Hogwarts days.

XXXXX

"Heh, I never would have figured you for an adrenaline junkie." Tonks said with a wry grin.

Sitting next to her on a bench with one arm around her shoulders, Harry smirked back. "I may not like Quidditch, but I have always liked flying." He wondered if that had anything to do with his Animagus form. "Were you hoping that some of those rides would scare me?"

"Yes." Tonks pouted. "I wanted to hear high pitched screams of terror, but all I got was laughter."

"So sorry to have disappointed you, Dora." He replied with amusement.

"Dora?" She questioned with a raised eyebrow.

"It seemed weird to be calling you by your last name all the time." Harry shrugged.

Tonks gave it some thought before nodding. She could deal with being called Dora. The first part of her name was much more objectionable. "Alright, you can call me Dora."

"You're so kind." He said faux demurely.

They lapsed into a short silence, which Harry spent slowly mingling his magic with hers. She was a powerful witch and an interesting person. He felt as if he could spend days just doing this without a word being spoken and still know her better at the end of it than any amount of conversation would allow.

She shifted a bit and pressed closer to him with a content exhale of air. Harry's lips twitched into a smile.

He'd only tried this with Bryanna and Tiana post coitus before, and with Luna in their quieter moments when they just sat together. It was a shame that magicals had either forgotten or never learned how to properly do this. As far as being comfortable with other people went, he doubted that there was anything that could beat it.

Of course, he doubted that it would work with anyone that you didn't already like, but there wasn't any reason to be doing this with someone you didn't like anyway.

The very comfortable atmosphere was broken by the text message alert on his phone, causing Harry to huff with some irritation at the interruption. Dora's presence had tensed slightly at the noise, but not enough to expel him.

"What was that?" She asked curiously.

"Probably either Robert or Katherine being annoying." He grumbled and awkwadrly pulled the phone out of his pocket, unwilling to let go of his date's shoulder.

As it turned out, the message was not from either of his foster parents, but from Zoe.

"Want 2 cum over?" Tonks read, amusement coloring her tone, but her magic snapping out of its relaxed state into something much sharper. The gentle empathic connection he'd created broke and even her hair darkened slightly towards red.

Harry winced. He hadn't contacted Zoe at all this summer, either because he'd been too busy or because he was more interested in his current date. Apparently she was feeling randy and had decided to take the initiative. Usually something he wouldn't have hesitated to take advantage of, but it was damned inconvenient right now.

"Zoe is a muggle girl I met last summer." He started explaining. "We have a 'friends with benefits' sort of arrangement."

"I see." She said neutrally. "You going to take her up on it?"

"Of course not." Harry denied instantly. Zoe might be pretty, fun and a simple way of relieving tension over the summer, but that was all she was. She might have been more if the circumstances were different, but they weren't. "That's only if both of us are single."

He conveniently ignored that Zoe had technically not been single last year and probably wasn't this one either. That was her problem.

Tonks gave him a scrutinizing look for a few moments, thinking about it. She couldn't honestly be upset about something that had happened before they'd even met. Realistically speaking, she probably had little enough business getting upset even if he did decide to boff this 'friend with benefits' of his, seeing as this was barely their second date.

She was still feeling a bit territorial though. Yes, getting romantically involved with the Boy-Who-Lived would no doubt bring up quite a few problems from both her job and her parents(or her father at any rate), but damnit, she liked him. She hadn't had a decent boyfriend since that little adventure with Charlie Weasley in seventh year and that was just sad considering the fact that he would have probably liked her better if she had scales and breathed fire, literally.

Harry was young, very young. Far younger than she would have been willing to look for potential boyfriends under most circumstances. If he hadn't gone after her first, she would never have even considered it. Men tended to be immature enough even when they were older than her.

But he didn't look or act his age and the pickings were slim enough that she was willing to go along with it despite her misgivings. She'd been planning to just let things progress as they would and see what happened, but it looked like she was going to need to stake a claim. A twenty-one year old woman of her good looks, personality and talents should not be having such an abyssmal social life and she wasn't letting perfectly good boyfriend material get away simply because he was a bit on the young side. She might have been more hesitant if he'd been completely green, but that message and his explanation made it clear that he'd been sexually active for at least a year already. Though now that she thought about it, she probably should have guessed as much on their first date to begin with.

"Oh? Does that mean that you consider yourself spoken for?" She challenged, pretending that she hadn't just spent the past few seconds making him sweat with her stare.

"I did place myself into your hands." Harry reminded her, nervousness dissipating as he felt her magic settle down a bit.

"That's true." The Metamorphagus conceded. "I wonder what I should do now that I have you in my hands?"

"Please be gentle." He quipped.

She surprised him by pulling herself over until she was straddling his lap and leaning in to whisper into his ear. "But what if I don't want to be gentle?"

Harry shivered slightly, both at the feel of her breath tickling his ear and in arousal at having her so close. His hands reached out to grab her hips almost by themselves, just as his magic reached towards hers reflexively.

"I might have to lodge a complaint about Auror brutality." He countered, squeezing her hips and leaning forward to kiss her.

Tonks didn't bother to reply, instead just kissing him and groaning in pleasure as she felt the same heat spreading through her as she'd felt at their first kiss. She felt the bulge of his erection pressing up against her in short order and decided to grind her butt against it more firmly.

This time it was Harry who groaned. Maybe it hadn't been such a great idea to torture himself with a magical feedback loop again?

Ah screw it.

With that resolution, he pressed his hand to the small of her back and pressed down, bringing her even closer and sending a stream of stimulating magic into her nerves. He felt her shudder at the invading magic, but instead of rejecting it, the intensity of her kiss only increased.

"You go, girl!" A drunken sound of female enthusiasm came, causing Tonks to jerk out of the kiss.

Both of them breathing heavily, they looked around for the source of the yell and quickly noticed a group of tipsy looking teenagers giving them a thumbs up.

Bemused and not sure what else to do, Harry returned the thumbs up despite being a bit annoyed by the interruption.

"Still want to lodge a complaint about Auror brutality?" Tonks asked when the giggly group of teens moved on.

"You can brutalize me anytime." Harry smirked, still gently rubbing his fingers into the small of her back.

"Now there's a tempting offer, but the paperwork would be horrible." She sighed and slid back into place next to him, much to Harry's disappointment.

"That bad?" He asked, going along with the subject change into cooler waters even though he wanted nothing more than to get her in bed right now.

"You have no idea." She groaned dramatically. "I thought being an Auror was going to be all about action and catching the bad guys, but I spend most of my days filing reports for inappropriate prank spells or illegal Portkeys or something."

"That's what you get for selling your soul to the Black Order of Bureaucracy." Harry said unsympathetically.

Tonks burst out laughing at his name for the Ministry, which she had to admit was appropriate at times. "Not going to get a Ministry job when you graduate then?"

"Not a chance." Harry snorted.

"What are you going to do then?" She asked curiously.

"I was thinking of travelling a bit and seeing the world." He admitted.

"That sounds nice."

There was a moment of silence and Harry was seized by the sudden urge to ask her to quit her job and come with him. He wasn't that impulsive though and abandoned the idea as being premature. He could always ask later, once they knew each other better, which was something that he had high hopes for.

"Aren't Aurors the DMLE's elite though?" He asked instead, backtracking a bit. "Shouldn't the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol be dealing with all that small stuff?"

"They do." Tonks grumbled. "Thing is, Bones doesn't get along too well with Fudge or his backers and our esteemed Minister is worried that she wants to replace him, so any time that the Ministry needs to make a budget cut, we're the ones who take the hit."

"And now the DMLE is so understaffed and underfunded that even Aurors have to deal with the small stuff." Harry finished.

"That's about the size of it." Tonks confirmed. "And speaking of work, I should probably go home. I've got the morning shift tomorrow."

"And I've got my Ancient Runes OWL." Harry added, easily hiding his diappointment that the date was over. On the upside, he had the sense that his relationship with the pretty Metamorphagus had now gone beyond that 'maybe/maybe not' stage where nobody could say whether they were together or not. "Want me to come visit while I'm there?"

"Might be better if you didn't." Tonks admitted. "Bones and Scrimgeour aren't too fond of personal visits during work hours."

"Alright." Harry consented easily. "But only if you agree to go on another date with me."

"So that's how it is? I go out with you or you'll get me in trouble with the boss?" Tonks asked teasingly, inwardly very relieved that he was being mature about the no visits thing while she was working. A couple of her past attempts at a relationship had gotten a bit shirty about that, though in that case it had still been training rather than working. Moody had been even less tolerant of 'emotional hogwash' getting in the way of CONSTANT VIGILANCE.

"Damn straight." Harry confirmed. "If you don't agree, you might find me paying the DMLE another visit and lurking over your shoulder while you try to do paperwork."

"I guess I've got no choice then." Tonks sighed theatrically. "With you twisting my arm like that, i'll just have to put up with you for a bit longer."

"You'll get used to me." Harry chuckled and leaned over to steal another kiss.

Though a bit surprised, she quickly started to respond and almost gave in to the urge to climb back into his lap by the time they broke apart.

"I should go." She said softly, biting her lower lip as she stared into his bright green eyes.

Harry nodded and escorted her to a secluded spot that she could apparate away from.

"I'll be in touch." He said once they arrived and gave in to the urge to give her lips another quick peck. "Goodnight, Dora."

"Goodnight, Harry."

Harry stared wistfully at the empty spot where she'd been standing just a moment ago.

"Nice going Potter, first you decide to avoid serious relationships and then barely a week later you get infatuated with an Auror that will probably be obligated to arrest you if she finds out about some of the things you're doing." He muttered to himself. "That's pure genius right there."

Sighing, he pulled out his phone again and stared at the message from Zoe. As had happened on the last date with the Metamorphagus, he was horny as hell. Unlike the last time, he had a girl that would be more than willing to help him with that.

Instead of accepting, he sent her a reply to let her know that he wasn't going to be available for any more fun in the foreseeable future. Getting into a relationship with Tonks was dangerous beyond doubt, but then again, he had developed a bad habit of doing dangerous things ever since he'd entered the Wizarding World.

XXXXX

Appearing inside her flat, Tonks let out a deep breath and began pulling off her clothes in preparation for a shower.

She'd very nearly invited Harry to come with her back there, seven years younger than her or not. It was sometimes hard to remember his age when he didn't look or react like a boy in his early teens. It didn't help that she felt so comfortable with him or that his kisses made her want to stick her hands down his pants.

She had seen the same desire in his face plain as day and if he kept being so damned attractive, she might just have to do exactly that. She'd never been particularly uncomfortable with her sexuality anyway, even if she didn't drop her knickers on the first date.

But for now, Mr. Purple would be pressed back into service.


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